Donate Us

Help us keep this free site alive with a small contribution from you. Select an amount below.

Friday, September 30, 2022

Haters now falsely claiming that Israel is forcing Bedouin women to take contraceptives

Independent Arabia reports that Hadash MK Aida Touma condemned Israel making injectable contraceptive Depo-Provera available to Bedouin women in the Negev. She said it is “dangerous and falls within the appalling racist policies,” adding that this Israeli policy aims to control and restrict childbirth in the Bedouin community  in the Negev.
It quotes Israel's Liberal magazine:
Inside a women’s clinic in the city of Beersheba, the largest city in the Negev desert region in Israel, Fatima Abu Al-Qia’an (30 years old) and a group of her married companions are standing in queues, anxiously waiting for their turn for an urgent medical examination.

This is just like the fake controversy over Israel supposedly forcing Ethiopian Jewish women to take Depo-Provera.  

As I reported at the time, in more patriarchal societies, women who want to take birth control prefer to covertly use the Depo-Provera injection without their husbands knowing. Husbands might want huge families but many of their wives do not.

Israel is giving these women the option of birth control, giving them more control over their own bodies. Which means that the "progressive" crowd will report this as the exact opposite. 

What about the side effects of Depo-Provera, which Touma says outweighs any benefits, specifically its effect on bone density? Well, the Royal Osteoporosis Society of the UK quotes the  World Health Organization:

More recent advice however from The World Health Organisation (WHO) 2007 recommends that there should not be any restriction on the use of Depo-Provera if you are aged between 18 and 45 nor on the length of time you can use it (if you are eligible to use this method).

It recommends special consideration if you are under 18 (when bone density is being built up rapidly) or over 45 (when you are approaching the menopause) although it is felt that the advantages will generally outweigh any concerns about the theoretical consequences (fractures) of long term Depo-Provera use. This is in part due to emerging evidence that has shown that bone density tends to recover over time once Depo-Provera is stopped. However with continuing use of this contraceptive it recommends that the overall benefits and risks are periodically reviewed.

Other pro-women measures, like anti-polygamy laws, laws promoting female employment and laws against child marriages, are also meant to empower Arab women in Israel - and they also peripherally discourage the Arab women having families as large as they were forced to when their husbands didn't allow them to work. They too have been spun as "anti-Arab," 

Israel's attempts to modernize Bedouin society and empower Bedouin women is twisted as being racist. 

Because when you are an antisemite, everything Israel does is assumed to be racist.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 

09/30 Links Pt1: ‘You little boy’: Abbas says he scolded Blinken for not pressuring Israel; PA envoy: Israel has committed most terrible massacres since WWII

From Ian:

‘You little boy’: Abbas says he scolded Blinken for not pressuring Israel
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told a group of Palestinian Americans last week that he scolded US Secretary of State Antony Blinken for failing to pressure Israel to make peace.

While Abbas has not shied away from publicly vocalizing his frustration with the Biden administration over the past year, his remarks during a private meeting with representatives of the Palestinian diaspora on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York appeared to go further and included the belittling of the United States’s top diplomat.

In a recording of the September 22 meeting obtained by The Times of Israel, the PA leader recalled a recent phone conversation with Blinken during which Abbas said he grew frustrated with what he called a recurring US practice of claiming that Israel is not interested in peace, while refusing to use the American bully pulpit to pressure Jerusalem into moving in that direction.

“I told Blinken, ‘You little boy, don’t do that,'” Abbas told the Palestinian Americans, speaking in Arabic. Some details of the meeting were first published by the Haya Washington Arabic news site.

Abbas said he then recalled to Blinken how during the 1956 Suez Crisis, Israel agreed to withdraw its forces from the Gaza Strip after US president Dwight Eisenhower ordered prime minister David Ben Gurion to do so.

“I know your history,” Abbas said he told Blinken, detailing a string of phone calls that Eisenhower held with Ben Gurion at the time. In one of those conversations, the PA leader said the US president called the Israeli prime minister and asked, “David, have you gotten out of [Gaza]? Tonight, you’ll withdraw and you’ll tell me yourself that you’ve done so.'”

“Ben Gurion wrote in his memoirs that he withdrew that same night,” Abbas said, seeking to prove that the US has the power to press Israel when it wants to.

Commenting on the testy conversation with the US secretary of state, the PA president said he told Blinken: “The lesson [from this] is not to say, ‘My beloved, do this or don’t do that,'” when dealing with Israel, but rather to use the “red phone” and the authority of the president’s office to strong-arm Israel into changing its policies. He claimed the US deals with “190 countries” in this manner, but not Israel.

Abbas told the meeting attendees he used to believe US administrations that claimed that Israel does not want peace. However, he now realizes that “it’s not that the Israelis don’t want peace but the Americans don’t want peace.”


PA envoy: Israel has committed most terrible massacres since WWII
Israel has executed the worst humanitarian massacres since World War II ended in 1945, Palestinian Authority Ambassador Ibrahim Khraishi charged in a speech he delivered to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on Friday.

"Israel has committed the most terrible crimes and massacres against humanity since WWII," he said.

"So, Israel is the primary [nation] responsible for the international legal chaos supported by the positions of a number of countries led by America," he said, as he accused the Biden Administration of "blind bias" toward Israel.

The UN, he said, must work to deter "Israeli aggression" and to hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law.

Khraishi spoke under Agenda Item 7, during the 51st session of the UNHRC, which began on September 12 and is slated to end on October 7.

The UNHRC is mandated to debate alleged Israeli violations of international humanitarian law at each one of its three annual sessions. Such a mandate has not been leveled against any other country. Israel routinely boycotts Agenda Item 7, arguing that it is an example of UN bias against Israel.

Khraishi's speech to the council fell in line with the increasingly hostile PA rhetoric against Israel. His words were delivered in Arabic and translated into English by the UN.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas was condemned in August when he compared Israel's actions against the Palestinians with those of the Nazis, which sought to exterminate the Jewish people and who killed six million Jews during the Holocaust.
Seth Frantzman: Nord Stream sabotage will permanently shift global trade
Headlines on September 29 painted an increasingly worrying picture. CNN said that European security officials say Russian ships were in the waters near the pipeline when the leaks occurred. A fourth leak was discovered on Thursday. According to Reuters, “NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday attributed the leaks on the Nord Stream pipelines to acts of sabotage and said he had discussed the protection of critical infrastructure in NATO countries with the Danish defense minister.”

Reports say that seismic meters recorded the explosions that damaged the lines. Now there is concern that a new phase of “hybrid war” may be coming, and Russia could use these kinds of incidents to upset the global order.

It’s worth thinking about what this means globally. Nord Stream was seen as an important project worth tens of billions of dollars, mostly financed by banks in Europe and by Gazprom. Reports said that Gazprom’s investments were driven by Moscow’s interests and geopolitics.

Russia was not only working on these lines – bypassing Baltic states and trying to literally get Europe addicted to the line from Moscow directly – but Russia was also moving ahead with Turk Stream, a project under the Black Sea to Turkey. This means that Turkey was also angling with Russia to make Europe dependent.

How does this impact Israel?
This matters also for Israel and the Middle East because Israel, Greece and Cyprus wanted to partner on an East Med line. It’s not a coincidence that Iranian-backed Hezbollah has threatened the Karish gas field off the coast. Iran has exported drones to Hezbollah, which has tried to use them to threaten the infrastructure working the field. Russia is also acquiring Iranian drones and using them against Ukraine.

The threat that Hezbollah poses to offshore gas platforms – and that Russia apparently poses to undersea pipelines going to Europe – links to related aspects of this hybrid war and shows how non-Western regimes may work together to wreak havoc on energy supplies.

The realization that Russia cannot be trusted to supply gas securely to Europe is leading to an earthshaking, once-in-a-generation event. Global economies, which have been marching zombie-like in one direction toward globalization and knitting everyone together, are now moving in a new direction.

This regional protectionism is embodied not only by Europe’s shift away from relying on Russian gas, but also by forums like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, where Russia, China, Turkey, Iran and other regimes recently met. Those countries want to work together and they are almost all authoritarian regimes.

Meanwhile, the US, Europe and Western states, and their allies in Asia such as Japan, South Korea and India, also want to work together. Israel’s growing ties with the United Arab Emirates and with South Korea, with free trade talks recently resulting in a new deal, represent an important step for the global economy and the Eastern Mediterranean.

Connecting the dots between Europe, the US, Israel, the UAE, India, Australia and other countries makes economic sense – but it also showcases how global trade networks are shifting.


Jerusalem’s Temple Mount is Israel’s ground zero - opinion
WHILE MUSLIMS play soccer and desecrate antiquities, Jews have been prosecuted for reciting the Shema.

As I said, the winds of change are beginning to blow, and the only reason they are is because there have been consistent challenges to protocols that have been upheld in court.

Increasingly, prayer is being heard, both individually and even in minyans. Israeli flags have been known to appear, and even the “Hatikvah” has been sung. Most recently, intrepid members of B’yadenu, including our CEO and a Board Member, along with former MK Yehuda Glick, blew shofarot outside the Eastern wall of the Mount, prompting their knee-jerk detention, but ultimately – after legal intervention – their release.

Just as the Abraham Accords succeeded in bursting the bubble of received wisdom as to how peace could be advanced in the Middle East, so too, it is high time for Israel’s leaders to recognize that they must break out of the failed assumptions and approach that have characterized Israel’s control, or lack thereof, of the Temple Mount.

It is time to assert our sovereignty over our holiest site, to send a clear, unambiguous message to the world, friends and adversaries alike, that the Temple Mount will indeed be a place for free worship and association by respectful people of all faiths, including Jews.

At a time when Hamas chooses to project itself as the “Guardians of Jerusalem” and when segments of the Arab community see the opportunity to exploit Israeli reasonableness and compromise for the weakness that is ultimately perceived, it is absolutely critical that we assert ourselves on the Temple Mount.

Al-Aqsa has never been nor will ever be under attack, except if the mere presence of Jews on the Temple Mount is perceived as a threat in the ethnically cleansed mentality of some Muslim visitors. To that perception, we need to invoke timeless kindergarten wisdom: “well, we’re sorry you feel that way, but you are going to have to learn to share.”

I am very proud of the individuals and the organizations who, with great clarity, and even greater determination, have made the reclamation of the Temple Mount into a new Jewish imperative. The proof of that determination is the dramatic rise in Jewish ascendance to the Temple Mount. More than 50,000 Jews ascended this past year, a number greater than any time since the destruction of the Second Temple.

In this new year, may we redouble our efforts to extend our rights, presence and our connection with the Temple Mount. It is not a zero-sum game. Asserting our rights comes with no derogation to anyone else.

When King Solomon inaugurated the First Temple, he invited the nations of the world to come to pray there. We are similarly welcoming. It’s just that it is long overdue for the Temple Mount to be beckoning and welcoming to Jews.

Next year on the Temple Mount!


The Israel Guys: Do the Palestinians Have a Right to Their Own State?
The day before Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid dropped his bombshell at the UN where he announced his support of the two-state solution, Joe Biden said much the same thing, but with a unique twist. At the UN General Assembly, Biden proclaimed his support for the two-state solution, but he went a step further, and said that Palestinians are “entitled” to their own state.

At first glance, this makes sense, and seems like it should be true. On today’s program however, we take a deep dive into why the Palestinian Arabs who live in Judea and Samaria are not entitled to their own state. Indeed, the creation of this state would be the worst thing that could happen to Palestinian Arabs, and it would be political suicide for Israel.




Deadly Standards Bloody Days in Jenin Vs. Tel Aviv
It’s a noteworthy data point. But it also gives a highly misleading picture when other relevant information – like the fact that all of the four fatalities were gunmen affiliated with designated terror organizations – is concealed or obscured.

Both AP and Reuters failed to make that basic information clear. By highlighting yesterday’s high number of fatalities and whitewashing the fact that all of them were gunmen affiliated with terror groups, media outlets falsely portrayed Israel killing with abandon, recklessly gunning down innocent Palestinians.

Indeed, the selective reporting gives sustenance to the false charges of Palestinian Authority’s presidential spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh, as quoted in the CNN story:
[T]he Israeli occupation continues to play with the lives of our Palestinian people, and is tampering with security and stability by continuing its policy of escalation.

Israel is still a state above international law, and that Israel and the United States of America have lost their credibility by demanding calm and the preservation of stability, and on the ground practice all forms of escalation, killing and destruction against the Palestinian people, their land and their holy sites.

Consider, in contrast, the different understanding that emerges when a news agency makes clear even in the headline that Israeli forces killed four Palestinian gunmen, and not simply four Palestinians. Reuters, to its credit, went that route, forthrightly reporting: “Israeli forces kill 4 Palestinian gunmen in flashpoint West Bank town.” The accompanying article began: “Israeli forces killed four Palestinian gunmen in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday . . . .”

In addition, Reuters added: “The Islamic Jihad and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades factions said four of their gunmen were killed.” That’s information that AP and CNN did not report. (Analyst Joe Truzman observed that both terror organizations claimed the four men, but open source material suggests they were Islamic Jihad members.)

AP captions encapsulated the distorted portrayal of events by highlighting “deadly raids” and ignoring that the fatality was violently attacking troops when he was killed and that he was a member of a terror organization.
US asks Israel to launch investigation after boy dies during riots
Israel said it was not involved in the death of a Palestinian boy who family members said died form heart failure while running away from troops.

The US State Department voiced sorrow at the incident and encouraged an investigation. Seven-year-old Rayyan Suleiman was coming home from school with other pupils in the village of Tuqu when troops gave chase, and he "died on the spot from fear," his father Yasser said in a video circulated on social media.

A medical official who inspected the body told Reuters that it bore no sign of physical trauma and that the death appeared consistent with heart failure. The Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned the incident as "an ugly crime" by Israel.

An Israeli military spokesman said troops were in the vicinity at the time to search for Palestinians suspected of fleeing into the village after having thrown rocks at motorists.

"An initial inquiry shows no connection between the searches conducted by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) in the area and the tragic death of the child," the spokesman said.

In Washington, deputy State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said, "The US is heartbroken to learn of the death of an innocent Palestinian child."

"We support a thorough and immediate investigation into the circumstances surrounding the child's death" alongside an Israeli military probe, he added.


Jonathan Tobin: Obama and Biden aided the real war on women in Iran. Can the US change course?
Apparently, there are some mistakes from which the U.S. foreign-policy establishment thinks it can learn. In 2009, when Iranian protesters thronged the streets of Tehran to protest a rigged election for the president, the United States said and did virtually nothing.

But faced with another surge in protests against the despotic government of Iran, the Biden administration is trying to behave slightly differently. Rather than ignoring or downplaying the efforts of courageous individuals (particularly the women who are defying the oppression of the Islamist morality police) pushing for change, President Joe Biden publicly sided with them during his speech last week at the United Nations General Assembly. His administration has also taken some steps to help restore satellite links and Internet service that the Islamist regime in Tehran has shut down in order to aid its repression.

That’s a commendable step. But, coming as it does after this administration has done so much to strengthen Iran’s theocrats by seeking to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, it’s too little and too late to deserve much praise.

Still, when National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan confessed last weekend that the Obama administration—in which he, Biden and most of the current foreign-policy team served—erred by standing aloof from the struggles of the Iranian people in 2009, it was something of a breakthrough. Such an admission of error was novel in and of itself for a group that operates as if everything it’s always believed and done—especially with respect to the Middle East—was and always will be correct.

Contrary to Sullivan’s grudging acknowledgment, however, the problem wasn’t merely one of tactics, with the U.S. feeling that public support from America would hurt, rather than help, the Iranian freedom-seekers.

At the time, President Barack Obama was just beginning his effort to appease Iran’s theocratic regime. The brutal oppression of the Iranians who dared to challenge that regime—symbolized by the murder of Neda Agha-Soltan by the security forces—came only weeks after he had launched his effort to fundamentally alter America’s approach to the region with a speech in Cairo, Egypt.

In that speech, Obama apologized to Muslims for a generation of U.S. foreign policy and made an analogy between the Holocaust and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. It was the start of a process by which Obama would reorient the U.S. away from its traditional allies in the region, Israel and the Sunni-Arab states led by Saudi Arabia. The object of his initiative was not just to make good on his Cairo promises to renounce what he considered his nation’s sins of the past, or even merely to achieve a rapprochement with Iran. Rather, it was an attempt to shift to a position in which America’s friends would be more or less replaced by a foe as Washington de-engaged from the Middle East. The deal with Iran that enriched the regime and legalized its nuclear program, while ensuring that it would eventually obtain nuclear weapons with Western permission, was key to this strategy.
Seth Frantzman: Why do ongoing Iran protests have the regime flailing, worried?
What is different this time than in past protests?

For one thing, the US and the West has been more openly supportive of the rights of the Iranians to protest.

This would seem an obvious cause. Here you have a regime whose police killed a woman. Westerners who preach about women’s rights and diversity would seem hypocrites if they didn’t back Iranian women’s rights to protest.

However, The New York Times pointed out that “the last time waves of protests swept Iran, after the killing of a young woman who was standing on the sidelines of an anti-government rally in 2009, Barack Obama hesitated to back the anti-government movement publicly for fear that Tehran would claim the CIA was secretly sparking the unrest.”

It’s not clear if this assessment is accurate. The Obama administration in 2009 was already setting sights on a shift in relations with Tehran, wanting to talk to the regime and work on nuclear issues.

The same administration was seeking a reset with Russia, to be able to work with Russia and Iran; both of whom are US adversaries. For supporters of working with the Iranian regime, the argument was that the regime could help “stabilize” the Middle East.

This theory was one that was held by other experts. The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, a book slamming pro-Israel voices in the US, had been published in 2007. One of its authors was quoted in 2012 as arguing that “a nuclear-armed Iran would bring stability to the region.”

It’s worth recalling that the paradigm at the time asserted that the US could work with Tehran. To work with them, you can’t be undermining the regime too. That means US interests at the time were to keep the regime in power and not let protesters undermine it. The stronger the regime, the more it could be relied on.

By contrast, a weaker regime might not adhere to a “deal” and it might change hands from what the US termed “moderates” to “hardliners” or even be overthrown.


Call Me Back PodCast: Cracks in Iran’s Theocracy – a view from a former CIA officer
We have all seen the images of women in cities across Iran burning their headscarves and cutting their hair in public to chants of “Death to the dictator.”.

The protests began after the September 13th death of 22-year-old Masha Amini. According to reports, Iranian morality police had accused Amini of violating laws mandating women cover their hair.

These events appear to have sparked a major public backlash against the Iranian regime. But how serious is the threat to the Iranian regime?

Reuel Marc Gerecht is a senior fellow at the Washington-based think tank, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. He was previously a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Earlier, he served as a Middle Eastern specialist at the CIA’s Directorate of Operations. In that role, he was focused on Iran targets.

Among his many books, Reuel is the author of Know Thine Enemy: A Spy’s Journey into Revolutionary Iran and The Islamic Paradox: Shiite Clerics, Sunni Fundamentalists, and the Coming of Arab Democracy. He has been a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, as well as a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Dispatch.


Iran accused of massacre in South amid wave of protests
Footage showing Iranian security forces massacring protesters using live ammunition in Zehdan, southern Iran during Friday prayers was posted online, showing shows Iranians bleeding and apparently shot.

Other videos purportedly show the aftermath of clashes between locals and members of the local security forces, with protesters allegedly trying to storm a police station and being shot.

Protests in minorities-dominated areas surge in Iran
The recent incident came as protests continue in Iran and the regime appears to be resorting to more force against the protesters. In Sistan Balochistan, Iran fears a larger rebellion among the minority Baloch people. This area borders Afghanistan and Pakistan. There has been an insurgency in this region for many years, including across the border in Pakistan.

Meanwhile, in Ahwaz, the province in Iran’s Southwest which contains a large Arab minority, there were also protests reported on Friday. The overall picture then is one of the growth of the protests in southern Iran. The protests began in the Kurdistan region two weeks ago, but they have spread to Tehran and many other cities. The regime was careful the first week to not carry out massacres.

However, as the protests are now two weeks old the regime is lashing out and has threatened to attack US forces in Iraq after attacking Kurdish opposition groups on September 28 with missiles and drones. Iran has been bombarding these Kurdish groups for a week.

Iran claims to foil "Zionist plan for chaos"
In addition, on Thursday night, Iranian media reported that it had foiled what the regime called a “Zionist” plan for chaos in Iran. The regime also admitted numerous banks and financial institutions had been damaged in the protests.


Soccer-Women’s Rights Group Calls on FIFA to Kick Iran Out of World Cup
Rights group Open Stadiums have called on FIFA to throw Iran out of the World Cup finals in Qatar in November because of the country’s treatment of women.

In a letter sent to FIFA President Gianni Infantino on Thursday, the organisation said Iranian authorities continued to refuse to allow female fans access to games inside the country despite pressure from the game’s governing body.

“The Iranian FA is not only an accomplice of the crimes of the regime. It is a direct threat to the security of female fans in Iran and wherever our national team plays in the world. Football should be a safe space for us all,” the letter said.

“That is why, as Iranian football fans, it is with an extremely heavy heart that we have to raise our deepest concern about Iran’s participation in the upcoming FIFA World Cup.

“Why would FIFA give the Iranian state and its representatives a global stage, while it not only refuses to respect basic human rights and dignities, but is currently torturing and killing its own people?

“Where are the principles of FIFA’s statues in this regard?

“Therefore, we ask FIFA, based on Articles 3 and 4 of its statutes, to immediately expel Iran from the World Cup 2022 in Qatar.”

The articles cited cover the issues of human rights and non-discrimination based on gender, race, religion and other matters, with breaches punishable by suspension or expulsion from the global body.

Neither FIFA nor Iran’s FA immediately responded to a Reuters request for comment.




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!
 

 

Israel's gamble with Hezbollah on Mediterranean natural gas

From the perspective of negotiations, Hezbollah has effectively won the dispute with Israel over ownership of disputed areas of the Mediterranean.

This map (my additions to a map from Alma) shows the four major positions:

Line 1 has been Israel's position as to the maritime border with Lebanon. Line 23 has been Lebanon's traditional position. The "Hof Line" was the compromise suggested by US Special Envoy to Syria and Lebanon, Frederic Hof, during the Obama administration, rejected by Lebanon. 

In 2021, Lebanon suddenly claimed that Line 29 was really the proper border. This new area includes part of the Karish field which no one ever disputed before was part of Israel. 

This allowed Hassan Nasrallah to threaten that Hezbollah would attack the Karish field if Israel starts extracting gas from there, and he sent drones there this past summer that were shot down by Israel.

From all indications, the Lebanese claim to Line 29 was a bazaar bargaining tactic. It was never formally approved by the government nor formally claimed in international forums. 

Yet it has worked. The Hof line is no longer even being considered, and reports indicate that in current negotiations with US envoy Amos Hochstein,  Lebanon will get virtually everything up to Line 23, their original maximalist position. 

Hezbollah's threats seem to have paid off. Yesterday,  Arab Tawhid Party leader Wiam Wahhab tweeted after a meeting with Nasrallah that “Lebanon is on the verge of obtaining its full rights” in the dispute, meaning that even Hezbollah never seriously claimed that Line 29 was the Lebanese maritime border.

The latest news is that Israel would agree to leave the specific position of the seashore border unresolved, which would allow Hezbollah to continue to provoke Israel the same way it does in the (supposedly) disputed Shebaa Farms land border.

So why is Israel apparently conceding the border issue and leaving this uncertainty? 

It appears to be a gamble: Lebanon needs the revenues from offshore gas extraction very badly, and Israel wants Lebanon to be a stable state. Israel also wants to show that negotiations with Lebanon can bring results, and not war.

Part of the calculation is an illusion of mutual deterrence: if Hezbollah attacks Israeli gas fields, Israel could destroy any Lebanese gas infrastructure in response. But this isn't true: Lebanon can claim that Hezbollah was a rogue actor and Israel's response would be regarded as aggression by the international community, as it usually is. 

Lebanese economic stability and a calm between Israel and Lebanon would be of great value to Israel. But this agreement seems to be conceding Israeli claims without any real guarantees that Hezbollah will ever stop its own claims - or threats.

And as long as Hezbollah effectively controls the southern Lebanese border with Israel and has the ability to attack Israel's own gas platforms, I don't see a way that Israel's security interests are being taken into account with the current reported outlines of the deal.




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!
 

 

"The Jews are the real antisemites" is not a new argument by antisemites

Modern antisemitic groups like Electronic Intifada, IfNotNow and others like to claim that they aren't antisemitic -  the real antisemites are the Jews (they say "Zionists.")

It turns out that even that argument was used by the classic antisemites of history.

This op-ed in The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, October 03, 1941 shows that this argument was used by the antisemitic "America First Committee."

This op-ed shows a methodology of antisemitism that remains popular today.


"That's the trick, the technique and the plan of the anti-Semite. Blame the Jews for everything bad, then deny that it is anti-Semitism, and then blame the Jews themselves for bringing up the subject at all."

Nothing has changed in 80 years. 


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!
 

 

Thursday, September 29, 2022

Palestinians upset that Abbas gave New Year greetings to Herzog, Gantz

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

Naturally, the Palestinians are upset. 

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 



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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Another proof that antisemitism trumps Left/Right politics comes from the new West Bank terror group, called The Lion's Den. As Khaled Abu Toameh reports:
This is the first organized armed group that consists of gunmen belonging to a number of Palestinian factions – including Fatah, Hamas, IJ and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The PFLP is a Communist group. Islamic Jihad and Hamas are Islamist groups. How can they work together?

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

The only consistency is Jew-hate. 

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

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

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 

Today's Palestinian antisemitism: Rewriting the history of the Levant




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As they sow in the minds of their children hatred for the Palestinian, the Arab and the Muslim... By forgery and fabrication they try to erase the ideas of the Palestinian students who are steadfast on their land with their families and poison the facts and distort their ideas and distance them from their heritage and their ancient past. 
Then, in part 4, a truly bizarre analogy is made, but one that leaves no doubt that "Zionists" and Jews mean the same thing to Qaddoumi:

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

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

Qaddoumi writes for many Palestinian and Arab news outlets.



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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 

Wednesday, September 28, 2022

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

From Ian:

The first Jew to escape Auschwitz helped save 200,000 lives — but few know his name
On April 7, 1944, a nineteen-year-old named Walter Rosenberg and a twenty-five-year-old from the same town in Slovakia named Fred Wetzler became the first Jews to escape from Auschwitz. The two made their way through the Polish countryside and into their native country, where Rosenberg—taking the name Rudolf Vrba as cover—tried to get the story of what he saw to his fellow Jews, and to the world at large. Robert Philpot, reviewing a new biography of this forgotten hero, writes:

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

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

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

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


‘The God-Damnedest Thing’: The Antisemitic Plot to Thwart U.S. Aid to Europe’s Jews and the Man Who Exposed It
On June 19, 1939, over lunch at the White House, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. attempted something he was loath to do: He prodded his best friend. “A year has passed,” he told Franklin D. Roosevelt, “and we have not got anywhere on this Jewish refugee thing. What are we going to do about it?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


What You Won’t Read in the New York Times about Al-Haq and the Designated NGOs
On September 23, 2022, Shawan Jabarin, General Director of Al-Haq, published an op-ed in the New York Times (“We Document Human Rights Violations. Israel Wants to Silence Us.”) presenting a misleading and incomplete picture of Israel’s decision to designate Palestinian NGOs as terror organizations due to their links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

What Jabarin doesn’t say about himself
Jabarin in the Times: “Israel’s attempts to suppress Al-Haq are based on false claims that I am a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine… When I was a university student, I was briefly involved in student activities with the Popular Front and in 1985…”
- In 2007, 2008, and 2009, the Israeli High Court of Justice reviewed the evidence regarding Jabarin’s ties to the PFLP and found that he was “among the senior activists of the Popular Front terrorist organization” and “apparently acting as a manner of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, acting some of the time as the CEO of a human rights organization, and at other times as an activist in a terror organization which has not shied away from murder and attempted murder, which have nothing to do with (human) rights… ” - According to multiple Arabic-language media sources, Jabarin represented the PFLP at a December 2011 meeting of the Palestinian Follow-Up Committee for Issues of Public Liberties and Trust Building. This body served as a reconciliatory body between Hamas, Fatah, PIJ, the PFLP, and other Palestinian factions. - In February 2019, Jabarin participated in an event hosted by the PFLP in memory of “comrade fighter” Maher Al-Yamani. Al- Yamani was a PFLP “founder,” a “member of the Central Committee and one of its most prominent military commanders,” and “coordinated special operations…in particular the operation against an aircraft of the Israeli company El Al in July 1968 in Greece.” - In May 2019, Jabarin attended a memorial event organized by the PFLP. It centered on PFLP political bureau member Rabah Muhanna, who, according to information posted by the PFLP, “contributed to the establishment” of several PFLP-affiliated NGOs. The hall was decorated with PFLP paraphernalia.

What Jabarin doesn’t say about Al-Haq
Jabarin in the Times: “Al-Haq, the oldest and largest human rights organization in the occupied Palestinian territories… Al-Haq documents violations of the individual and collective rights of Palestinians in the occupied territories, whether committed by Israel or the Palestinian Authority, and presses for accountability.”
- Al-Haq is a political advocacy group that pursues legal and economic pressure against Israel – with the ultimate goal of undermining the legitimacy of a Jewish state, regardless of borders.
- In the past 4 months alone, Al-Haq has signed multiple outrageous statements that highlight its true agenda:
- Al-Haq spearheaded an antisemitic submission (May 31) to the UN’s permanent Commission of Inquiry against Israel, presenting a blatantly false historical account, denying Israel’s right to exist, and denying the Jewish people their right to sovereign equality. (“The Israeli settler colonial state adopted the Zionist ideology of transferring and replacing the indigenous Palestinian people, and established an institutionalized regime of Jewish racial domination and oppression over the Palestinian people in order to achieve an exclusive Jewish majority state.” “The 1948 Territory refers to the territory of the settler-colonial State of Israel, established by the displacement and dispossession of the vast majority (around 80 percent) of the indigenous Palestinian people during the Nakba and the maintenance of a settler colonial and apartheid regime over the Palestinian people since its creation.”)
- Al-Haq signed a letter (September 15) to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, demanding he “withdraw recognition of the State of Israel.”
- Al-Haq signed a letter (September 26) addressed to EU Foreign Affairs head Josep Borrell, calling on the EU to rescind the resumption of the EU-Israel Association Council, complaining about the “mainstream[ing of] the very problematic ‘Abraham Accords’,” and referring to Israel as a “colonial enterprise and apartheid regime”
- This is in addition to Al-Haq’s extensive involvement in BDS and lawfare.
Rashida Tlaib and the coming purge of progressivism
The question, then, is what American Jewish progressives will do in response to this threat. The first option, it seems, is denial. Tlaib herself gave an example of this when she said that she has a "good working relationship" with the left-wing lobby J Street – which bills itself as pro-Israel – and "they agree that I have a unique lens and perspective on what is happening in Palestine."

That "unique lens" is the belief that Israel should not exist. J Street, then, appears perfectly comfortable allying itself with someone who both rejects what the lobby claims to be its basic values and reserves the right to toss it out of its own movement on a whim. Giving J Street the benefit of the doubt, it seems that its response to the threat of being purged is to simply ignore it.

Others are less willing to bury their heads in the sand. Groups like Zioness and numerous social media activists are attempting to carve out a place for Zionism in a progressive movement increasingly dominated by anti-Zionists like Tlaib. They may or may not succeed in doing so, but the fight is admirable, and more than worth making.

What is most striking about Tlaib and her purge, however, is its extraordinary irony, because the truth is that Jews have a far greater right to the progressive movement than privileged late-comers and hijackers like her ever will. The Jews are indigenous to American progressivism, and Tlaib and her allies have no right to dispossess them and colonize the movement that the Jews played such an extraordinary role in building for more than a century.

Moreover, in embracing an antisemitic purge, Tlaib and those like her seek to transform progressivism into the most reactionary force imaginable, and this has enormous implications for the movement. History has long since proven that societies, organizations and movements that purge their Jews always, in the end, impoverish and ultimately annihilate themselves. Anti-Semitism inevitably destroys the vessel.

Whatever one may think of the progressive movement, then, it ought to be clear to those who believe in it that it cannot survive Tlaib's purge. It will render progressivism at best hypocritical and at worst monstrous. If they wish to save the movement for the century to come, then Jewish and non-Jewish progressives who reject Tlaib's brand of privileged racism and hate must steel themselves for what is coming, and observe Hillel's third dictum: "If not now, when?"
Can the state tell yeshivas what they can teach? Here’s what the courts may decide.
Earlier this month, the New York State Board of Regents approved a set of amendments to the educational requirements for private schools—written primarily with ?asidic schools in mind. Michael A. Helfand considers the constitutional limits on the state’s ability to govern what happens in religious educational institutions:

New York’s rule requiring private schools to provide “instruction in mathematics, science, English language arts, and social studies that is substantially equivalent to such instruction required to be provided in public schools” is likely to withstand constitutional challenge even if that challenge is grounded in a combination of parental- and religious-liberty rights. And that’s because it will almost certainly be viewed as necessary to ensure students become full and productive members of a democratic society. Thus, while the Supreme Court has been sympathetic to religious-liberty claims in recent years, the need to provide citizens with educational basics is sufficiently weighty that it will likely overcome constitutional challenge.

At the same time, some of New York’s rules veer beyond these core objectives. For example, New York’s education law requires students to study “patriotism, citizenship, and human-rights issues,” including “the study of the inhumanity of genocide, slavery, . . . the Holocaust, and the mass starvation in Ireland from 1845 to 1850.” This sort of very particular curricular list, while undeniably providing important educational lessons, is far more vulnerable to constitutional challenge because it is less connected to the essential skills that typically justify limitations on parents’ 14th Amendment rights.

Maybe there’s a lesson in all of that. To the extent government officials impose only core educational requirements, they stand on strong constitutional footing. . . . But if government gets carried away, and moves beyond what is essential to that goal, its authority wanes—and the strength of potential constitutional challenges grows.
How anti-Israel faculty are radicalizing U.S. campuses - opinon
Take San Francisco State University’s Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi.
As the Director of SFSU’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies (AMED), she has repeatedly engaged in hate speech directed toward Jewish students, making them feel disrespected on their own campus. In 2018, she outrageously declared that “welcoming Zionists to campus” is akin to a “declaration of war against Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians.” In May 2019, while guest lecturing at UCLA, she denigrated “those who support Israel” as “white supremacists.” That same year she posted a large banner on AMED’s official Facebook page that equated Zionism with racism.

Last week, in unauthorized events, Abdulhadi listed her university’s insignia on publicity materials and as a stage backdrop for a two-day conference in Beirut which featured panels of speakers linked to terrorism: Salah Salah, a founding member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP); Palestinian-Lebanese guerilla fighters Kifah Afifi and Anwar Yassine; and Sami Al-Arian, a former Florida professor who pled guilty back in 2006 to providing support to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The notorious PFLP airplane hijacker Leila Khaled was also listed on the program but reportedly was a no-show, although she may have been Zoomed in.

Abdulhadi is in a league of her own.
Even most virulently anti-Israel faculty aren’t winding up as defendants in lawsuits filed by Jewish students and don’t have a soft spot for the affiliates of U.S. designated terror organizations. As part of her “Teaching Palestine 2022” delegation to Lebanon this week, Abdulhadi was seen sitting in the front row at an event alongside the head of the PFLP in Lebanon and a Hezbollah member in charge of the group’s “Palestine portfolio.”

Now she reportedly may face disciplinary action for the unauthorized use of the SF State name in conjunction with her Beirut conference.

But for every rogue professor like her, there are hundreds more who teach skewed and one-sided courses about Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, shortchanging their students from getting a robust education. Every semester academic departments sponsor events and guest lectures that demonize Israel. Pro-BDS faculty have refused to write letters of reference for their students who want to apply to study in Israel. On some campuses, they’ve spearheaded academic boycott campaigns—calling for satellite campuses in Israel to be closed and study abroad programs shuttered, working to deprive their own students of the valuable educational experience that most certainly comes from studying in Israel’s top-ranked universities.
Antisemitic attacks on Rosh Hashanah target US Jewish college students
Jews were targeted with antisemitic attacks on multiple college campuses on Sunday and Monday as Jews around the world celebrated Rosh Hashanah - the Jewish new year.

In University of Michigan, antisemitic flyers were spread around the campus by white supremacist group the Goyim Defense League. One flyer was entitled "Every Single Aspect of the COVID Agenda is Jewish" and listed a large number of health officials who are either Jewish or Shabbat goys that have been influential in fighting the pandemic.

A Shabbat goy is a non-Jew who is sometimes called upon by Jews on Shabbat to do something for them that they cannot do according to the religious rules of Shabbat. The implication on the flyer is that since these people help Jews on Shabbat, they will also help with the "Jewish agenda".

Another flyer that had been placed in a plastic bag to protect it from the rain implied that Israel controls the world.

Following the finding of the flyers, Michigan Rep. Shadia Martini took to Twitter to condemn them.

"I am horrified and disgusted to hear that Jewish students at the University of Michigan woke up to find rabidly antisemitic flyers on their porches in Ann Arbor this morning, on the first day of Rosh Hashanah," she wrote.

Martini later tweeted an update, saying the Ann Arbor police had been notified and informed her that the flyers had been placed off-campus but in a residential area that is traditionally populated by students. The police also said they were investigating the incident. At American University in Washington DC, a swastika was graffitied on the ceiling of a bathroom on Monday.

"I wish the only message I sent today was shanah tovah," university president Sylvia M. Burwell said in an email detailing the incident.
Quakers in Britain cancels David Miller booking at Edinburgh Quaker Meeting House
Quakers in Britain has cancelled a booking of the disgraced academic David Miller at Edinburgh Quaker Meeting House.

Mr Miller was due to speak yesterday at a Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign event called “Solidarity with academics under attack: free speech on Palestine,” but in a statement on Twitter, Quakers in Britain said: “After further consideration this booking at Edinburgh Quaker Meeting House has been cancelled. Quakers in Britain believe that all forms of racism, including antisemitism, are barriers to building a just and peaceful world.”

David Miller was fired by the University of Bristol over comments he had made about Jewish students, a month after Campaign Against Antisemitism commenced a lawsuit on behalf of current students against the institution and amidst a Jewish communal outcry.

He is a conspiracy theorist with a history of controversy relating to Jewish students. In one outburst, he asserted that “Zionism is racism”, declared his objective “to end Zionism as a functioning ideology of the world” and accused the Bristol University Jewish Society of being part of a worldwide Zionist conspiracy, adding that it is “fundamental to Zionism to encourage Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism”. At the same online event, Prof. Miller also observed that the Jewish Society and the Union of Jewish Students are Zionist, thereby implying that Jewish students (and the wider Jewish community) inherently “encourage Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism”.

He also portrayed the International Definition of Antisemitism as an attack on free speech and accused the Israeli Government of engaging in an “all-out attack” on the global Left as part of an “attempt by the Israelis to impose their will all over the world”. In comments reminiscent of the darkest years of the United Nations, Prof. Miller insisted that “Zionism is racism” and asked how “we defeat the ideology of Zionism in practice”, “how is Zionism ended” and about the way “to end Zionism as a functioning ideology of the world”.

Campaign Against Antisemitism revealed that Mr Miller was behind disgraced MP Chris Williamson’s Resistance Movement. The group aimed to give a home to the “politically homeless” politicians who had been expelled from the Labour Party for antisemitism, such as Jackie Walker, Tony Greenstein and Mark Wadsworth.


Al Jazeera’s boring propaganda trilogy, ‘Labour Files’ is not real journalism
Following the airing over the past week of the ‘Labour Files’ programme on Al Jazeera, Campaign Against Antisemitism has released a statement assessing the so-called documentary.

A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “Those who managed to watch all the way through Al Jazeera’s rather boring propaganda trilogy, ‘Labour Files’, were presented with a parallel universe of the Labour Party’s antisemitism crisis.

“With the astonishing and insulting premise that ‘Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party was condemned for antisemitism [but] the Labour Files reveal they were the victims of distortions and misrepresentation’, the so-called documentary purports to show that antisemitism in Labour was a sham without speaking to any of the victims or leaders of the Jewish community or antisemitism experts. A viewer would barely know from the programme that the EHRC, an independent body established by a Labour Government, found that Labour was so racist that it broke the law, following an investigation in which we were the complainant.

“Relying on testimony from members of an antisemitism-denial group and sham Jewish representative organisation, as well as figures with records of inflammatory views, the programme ludicrously tries to argue that there were significant fissures within the Jewish community on Mr Corbyn or the International Definition of Antisemitism. The programme also repeatedly insists that the facts plainly support claims that Labour antisemitism allegations were fraudulent, yet this is not borne out by the outcomes of any of the legal cases relating to the matter so far.

“Just as the Corbyn era ended with claims of a ‘hierarchy of racism’, so does Al Jazeera, with a repellent last-ditch assertion that there is a hierarchy of racism in Labour that privileges Jews, which is itself a form of antisemitism.

“The Labour Files has added next to nothing to the collective understanding of Labour’s antisemitism crisis. It is not real journalism, but rath


Schwarzenegger calls for 'fight against hate' during Auschwitz visit
Hollywood star Arnold Schwarzenegger visited the site of the former German Nazi death camp Auschwitz in Poland on Wednesday, vowing to fight hatred and discrimination and keep the story of what took place there between 1940-1945 alive.

Austrian-born Schwarzenegger, 75, is the son of a Nazi party member who served in the German army in World War Two.

The former California governor and Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation Chairman Simon Bergson, the son of Holocaust survivors, highlighted how prejudice can be wiped out in the space of a generation.

"He (Bergson) was born after the Second World War to this wonderful Jewish family and I was the son of a man who fought in the Nazi war and was a soldier," he told reporters.

"One generation later - here we are... we both fight prejudice and hatred and discrimination."

History of Auschwitz death camp
More than 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, perished in the gas chambers or from starvation, cold and disease at Auschwitz, which the Nazis set up in occupied Poland during World War Two.

Schwarzenegger entered the camp through the main gate which bears the phrase "Arbeit macht frei," or "Work makes you free." He then visited the exhibition of the Auschwitz Memorial museum and a crematorium.

He placed candles at the 'Death Wall', where German soldiers shot many inmates, and at a monument to victims in the Birkenau section of the camp.

During the visit he also met Holocaust survivor Lidia Maksymowicz, who was an inmate in the camp when she was three years old.

"People like her can help us to never stop telling that story about what happened here 80 years ago... this is a story that has to stay alive," Schwarzenegger said.


German Antisemitism Monitor Highlights Growing Abuse of Holocaust
Abuse of the Holocaust forms an increasingly significant element of antisemitic abuse in the southern German state of Bavaria, according to a new report published on Wednesday.

The report from the Munich office of RIAS, a nationwide antisemitism monitoring organization, documented hundreds of antisemitic incidents between 2019 and 2022 that invoked the Holocaust as a means of insulting or demeaning Jews.

One of the examples cited occurred in August, when a security guard described as being “of Arab descent” proffered a Nazi salute at a group of Israeli athletes who were paying tribute at the site of the 1972 massacre of the Israeli team competing at the Munich Olympics that year. In a subsequent Twitter posting, Israel’s Ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, connected that incident with a speech delivered in the same week by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who accused Israel of carrying out “50 Holocausts” at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

According to the RIAS report — “Multidirectional Attacks on Memory – Post-Shoah Antisemitism in Bavaria” — since 2019, out of more than 1,000 antisemitic outrages in Bavaria, there were three physical assaults, 35 instances of property damage and 437 cases of insulting behavior that mentioned the Holocaust. The report also recorded 183 public events where the Holocaust was demeaned or relativized in chants and slogans and on posters.

Many of the Holocaust-related antisemitic incidents manifested in protests against Israel, particularly during the May 2021 war in Gaza, and against the social distancing and masking measures mandated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw large numbers of protestors donning the “Judenstern” — the “Jews’ Star” which the Nazis compelled Jews to wear on their outer clothing — as a protest against their perceived lesser status. In June 2020, the city of Munich went as far as to ban the display of the “Judenstern” at the pandemic protests.
Italy’s Jewish community isn’t worried about new 'fascist' PM
World media has been intensively covering the Italian election and the victory of right-winger Giorgia Meloni as Italy’s first female prime minister and also a politician who heads what used to be a fascist party. But according to a Jewish community leader who spoke with The Jerusalem Post, her election is “a lot less dramatic than what the world media or Israeli media portrays it to be.”

Meloni is president of the right-wing populist and national-conservative Brothers of Italy Party (FdI in Italian). FdI was the largest party in the 2022 Italian general election.

Sources in the Jewish community said right-wing parties have been part of the government in the past, and there is no comparison to France’s Marine Le Pen. Meloni has a relationship with the Jewish community and has been very positive toward Israel, one source said, adding: “The only problem may be with members of her party” who have been identified as fascists.

Nevertheless, according to all sources in the Jewish community who spoke with the Post, Meloni told Jewish leaders she knows she has a challenge to deal with within her party, and she intends to do so. A few years ago, a number of party members celebrated former prime minister Benito Mussolini, who established Italian fascism, with fascist and Nazi memorabilia in their regional headquarters. Meloni supports Israel

Meloni supported Israel when Hamas fired missiles at it from Gaza. As minister of youth about a decade ago, she visited the Jewish community and had positive ties with it.
South Korea finalizes free trade deal with Israel
The free-trade agreement between Israel and South Korea is set to take effect on December 1, after the parliament in Seoul gave it final approval on Tuesday.

“This is significant good news for Israel’s relations with South Korea, one of the leading economies in the world and an important trade partner for Israel,” Economy Minister Orna Barbivay said.

The Economy Ministry estimates that the value of the agreement to the Israeli market will be NIS 500 million each year, and it will lower the price of Kia and Hyundai cars, food products, toys, video-game consoles and more.

“Israeli exporters will enjoy easier conditions and a competitive advantage, and I expect that additional importers will recognize the potential and increase imports to Israel in quantity and variety of products,” Barbivay said. What will the free trade agreement be for Israel?

The free-trade agreement will be Israel’s first with a country in East Asia. South Korea has 18 free-trade agreements, including with the US, EU, India and China.

Jerusalem and Seoul finished negotiating the agreement in May 2021.

The agreement will exempt more than 95% of Israeli exports to South Korea from duty, making Israel more competitive in the Korean market in areas such as electronic equipment, machines, fertilizers, medical supplies, cosmetics, plastic products, metals, fruit juices, wine and more.

Trade between Israel and South Korea reached $3.5 billion in 2021, a 35% increase from the previous year
Israeli plant-based vegan food company to build production facility in Australia
Vgarden, which produces plant-based, dairy-free cheeses, spreads, pastries, meat, and fish, is to partner with an Australian company to build its first overseas production facility — in Brisbane.

The facility will replace a traditional dairy product processing plant and is set to employ 50 people once it’s fully up and running by late next year.

Based at Kibbutz Gan Shmuel near Haifa in northern Israel since its founding in 2015, Vgarden — marketed in Israel under the name Mashu Mashu (“something special” in Hebrew) already counts several major international restaurants and food suppliers among its customers, among them Papa John’s, Domino’s Pizza, Pizza Hut, Costco and Woolworths.

Ilan Adut, Vgarden’s CEO, said, “The Israeli spirit of innovation combined with the fact that Israel is home to the highest number of vegans per capita have helped transform Israel into a food tech powerhouse, particularly in the plant-based sector.”

According to the Good Food Institute, Israeli companies are leading the world in food tech investments in the plant-based alternative proteins sector, and come second only to the US in funds invested in the alternative protein industry as a whole.

A recent report published by Fortune Business Insights predicted that the global vegan food market will grow from from $26.16 billion in 2021 to $61.35 billion in 2028.
Nike Releases Lebron James ‘Maccabi Tel Aviv’ Sneakers Ahead of Athlete’s 20th NBA Season
Nike released to the public on Wednesday morning a pair of retro sneakers modeled after ones that NBA All-Star Lebron James wore while playing in Israel in 2004, which he put on again for the Los Angeles Lakers’ Media Day earlier this week.

The Nike LeBron 2 “Maccabi Tel Aviv” sneakers features a white and metallic gold colorway and some laser-etched graphical illustrations on the shoe’s tongue and top collar. An old James Nike logo is featured on the shoe’s side, and the back of the shoe has James’ first name. The sneakers retail on Nike.com and in select stores starting at $215.

The sneakers are a replica of an original player-exclusive shoe, which is never available to the general public, worn by James during a Cleveland Cavaliers preseason exhibition game against the Israeli basketball team Maccabi Elite Tel Aviv in 2004.

The Lakers shared a picture of the sneakers on its official Twitter account. The “Maccabi” shoes are among a line of sneakers that will be sold to celebrate LeBron’s upcoming 20th NBA season, during which the Lakers forward will turn 38.
Israeli Youth Soccer Team Qualifies for Euro U21 Championships
Israel’s national youth football team qualified for the under-21 UEFA European Championships after defeating Ireland 3-1 at Tel Aviv’s Bloomfield Stadium on Tuesday.

It is the third time in history the Israeli men’s team qualified for the championships. The tournament will take place next summer in Georgia and Romania.

“You have once again proven that spirit, courage, and a lot of faith will take Israeli football forward,” Israel Professional Football Leagues chairman Erez Kalfon said.

Israel’s Prime Minister Yair Lapid also congratulated the team on Twitter “for the great achievement.” Defense Minister Benny Gantz said the players “might be young, but every one of them is a champion.”
Unpacked: Who are the Mizrahi Jews? | The Jewish Story
In the second century CE, the Romans exiled the Jews of Judea and created a far flung diaspora which saw many Jews make their way to Europe, Asia and North Africa. Those who ended up in the East in countries like Iraq, Iran, and Syria and in North African countries like Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia would later become known as Mizrahi Jews.

Mizrahi Jews often prospered under Muslim rule in these countries, however by the twentieth century, as Nazi ideology spread to the Middle East, they found themselves facing violent attacks from their once peaceful neighbors.

By the mid-twentieth century, Mizrahi Jews were in desperate need of a safe haven. From 1948 to 1972, nearly 600,000 immigrated to Israel alongside other Jewish refugees from around the world. Though they faced a difficult transition and discrimination in their new home, Israel today is known for its richly-integrated Mizrahi culture.




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!
 

 

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

EoZTV Podcast

Powered by Blogger.

follow me

search eoz

Recent posts from other blogs

subscribe via email

comments

Contact

translate

E-Book

source materials

reference sites

multimedia

source materials for Jewish learning

great places to give money

media watch

humor

.

Source materials

Sample Text

EoZ's Most Popular Posts Ever

follow me

Followers


pages

Random Posts

Pages - Menu

Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون

Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون

Donate!

Tweets

EoZ Videos

On YouTube
EoZNews channel
On Liveleak

Compliments

Monthly subscription:
Subscription options

One time donation:

Interesting Blogs

Categories

Best posts of 2016

Blog Archive

compliments

Algemeiner: "Fiercely intelligent and erudite"

Omri: "Elder is one of the best established and most respected members of the jblogosphere..."
Atheist Jew:"Elder of Ziyon probably had the greatest impression on me..."
Soccer Dad: "He undertakes the important task of making sure that his readers learn from history."
AbbaGav: "A truly exceptional blog..."
Judeopundit: "[A] venerable blog-pioneer and beloved patriarchal figure...his blog is indispensable."
Oleh Musings: "The most comprehensive Zionist blog I have seen."
Carl in Jerusalem: "...probably the most under-recognized blog in the JBlogsphere as far as I am concerned."
Aussie Dave: "King of the auto-translation."
The Israel Situation:The Elder manages to write so many great, investigative posts that I am often looking to him for important news on the PalArab (his term for Palestinian Arab) side of things."
Tikun Olam: "Either you are carelessly ignorant or a willful liar and distorter of the truth. Either way, it makes you one mean SOB."
Mondoweiss commenter: "For virulent pro-Zionism (and plain straightforward lies of course) there is nothing much to beat it."
Didi Remez: "Leading wingnut"
Copyright © EoZ | Powered by Blogger
Blogger Templates