Middle East

Malaysia is making news - at least in the Jewish media - for its refusal to allow Israeli participants into the Paralympic Swimming event it is hosting this year from July 29 to August 4. This has broader implications for Israel since this is a qualifying event for the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics.

This is not even the first time Malaysia has blocked Israel from participating in a sports event.


As Elder of Ziyon pointed out 3 years ago, Malaysia also blocked 2 Israeli teenagers from competing in the 45th Youth Sailing World Championships held there in 2016. Malaysia also refused visas to Israel that year to prevent them from participating in the World Team Table Tennis Championships. The International Table Tennis Federation threatened a ban, but in the end, Israel withdrew because of security concerns.

Paralympics logo. Public Domain

But Malaysia has no problem hosting Hamas terrorists, for whom it hosts their own special "events".

Hamas Logo. Fair Use

Malaysia provides Hamas with a training ground where it conducts financial activities, trains terrorists, and develops rockets and missiles.

When Malaysia’s prime minister Najib Razak visited the Gaza in 2013, he became the first non-Arab leader to visit Hamas since it grabbed control from the PA in a bloody civil war in 2007. Razak pledged Hamas political and financial support -- all of which is mutually beneficial: improving Hamas’ image worldwide, while also strengthening Razak’s own standing in Malaysia’s Muslim community.

As for Malaysia's Jewish community, there isn't one. In Malaysia itself, there are virtually no Jews remaining, as a result of state-sponsored Antisemitism:
Few Malaysians have laid eyes on a Jew; the tiny Jewish community emigrated decades ago. Nevertheless, Malaysia has become an example of a phenomenon called “Anti-Semitism without Jews.” Last March, for instance, the Federal Territory Islamic Affairs Department sent out an official sermon to be read in all mosques, stating that “Muslims must understand Jews are the main enemy to Muslims as proven by their egotistical behaviour and murders performed by them.” About 60% of Malaysians are Muslim.

In Kuala Lumpur, it’s routine to blame the Jews for everything from economic failures to the bad press Malaysia gets in foreign (“Jewish-owned”) newspapers.Ten years ago, Forbes ran an article on The Myth Of A Moderate Malaysia. Even without having to make any mention of either Jews (around 100 remain) or Israel in the article, the article had no trouble seeing that
Malaysia has rejected secularism in favor of a kind of ethnoreligious apartheid that belongs more in a medieval kingdom than in a modern democratic republic.

In Malaysia, Islam is the state religion. Higher education, the bureaucracy and vast swathes of the economy are operated as a kind of spoils system almost exclusively for Malays, whom the state defines as Muslim. Race and religion determine everything from your odds of getting into medical school to the amount you're expected to put down for an apartment.Not surprisingly, Malaysia is also a big supporter of BDS. Last year there was a call to boycott Malaysia’s largest television service provider, Astro, because it allegedly made a business deal with the Israeli software and service provider Amdocs. Malaysia also put pressure on McDonalds and Tesco, for alleged business relations with Israel. To counter this, these companies downplay the political aspect of their connection and instead emphasize how they provide jobs and help Malaysia's economic growth.

Yet Malaysia avoids the consequences of its actions, as its leader Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad manages to walk a thin line condemning the US while also playing a supportive role in fighting terrorism.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.
Public Domain
Back in 2002, The New York Times reported on how moderate Malaysia is:
Dr. Mahathir has cracked down hard on suspected terrorists and shared intelligence with the United States, the kind of support the Bush administration wishes it were getting from Indonesia.

Some American officials have said Malaysia was a launching pad for Sept. 11, that it is a base for Islamic terrorists. Although a few of the hijackers did pass time here, Western and Asian analysts say that this is a moderate Islamic country, where extremists are as unwelcome as they are in Europe or the United States. [emphasis added]In 2016, even the State Department praised Malaysia in its Country Reports on Terrorism praised Malaysia for its combatting terrorism, although it also noted that the same laws were used to harass and intimidate critics and political opponents.

It was a just a few months after that 2002 Times article that Malaysia's opposition Pan-Malaysia Islamic Party invited terrorists from Hamas and Hezbollah to speak at their conference, they claimed they had no formal links. That may be when Malaysia and Hamas terrorists started to begin to get close. At the time, Current Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad was prime minister then too -- and accused the opposition party of fomenting extremism.

So all things being equal, the question is not merely what is taking the International Federation for Paralympic Swimming so long to take real action.

The question is why are they holding their Olympics there to begin with?

Hat tip: This Ongoing War



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One of Netanyahu's undeniable successes as Prime Minister of Israel is his ability to increase the circle of Israel's friends. Part of his agenda to improve Israel's ties with other countries is his outreach to Eastern Europe. For example, he has extended Israel's friendship to Viktor Orban, the far right Prime Minister of Hungary. More than pursuing some vague, abstract goal, Netanyahu's actions can be seen as an attempt to weaken the EU's hostile strategy against Israel.

For example, last December, Hungary abstained when the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly rejected the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Hungary also joined the Czech Republic and Romania to block an EU statement criticizing the US for moving its embassy to Jerusalem.

For their part, right-wing Eastern European leaders get a hechsher, "kosher certification" from Netanyahu that protects them from accusations of being Antisemitic racists.

Now it appears that this wooing of Israel manifests itself not only on a global level but on a local level as well.


In his article in The Wall Street Journal, Bojan Pancevski writes how Europe’s Right Wing Woos a New Audience: Jewish Voters, reveals how right-wing groups in Europe are getting Jews to join their ranks:
Across Europe, anti-immigration parties with ties to far-right movements have stepped up efforts to recruit supporters in the continent’s small Jewish community, often drawing on perceptions in that community about anti-Semitism among Muslims.Based on the recent release of the EU survey on the increase in Jew-hatred and hate crime in the EU, this 'perception' has a very strong and very dangerous basis in reality. The fact that much of this Antisemitism comes from the Muslim immigrant community makes Jews natural allies of the far-right.

The article illuminates a developing trend -

• Jewish legislators in the Swedish parliament are members of the Sweden Democrats, a party with Neo-Nazi roots (that it has renounced).
  
  
• Austria’s parliament includes Jews who are members of the Freedom Party, which was founded by former members of Hitler’s SS.
  
  
• Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician and vociferous critic of Islam, has a Jewish legislator in his party.
  
  
• In France, which has Europe’s largest Jewish community, about 10% of Jewish voters are estimated to support the National Front. The party has renamed itself National Rally.
  
  
• Right-wing political leaders Ms. Marine Le Pen, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban have all traveled to Israel, building ties with the Israeli government as well as with their local Jewish constituencies
  
  
• Emanuel Bernhard Krauskopf and about 30 others recently founded a Jewish chapter of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD), the largest opposition group in parliament, among whose members are people accused of being Antisemites and right-wing extremists.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban meets with Netanyahu.
Screenshot from YouTube video


Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini. Screenshot from YouTube Video
Keep in mind that this is not part of an attempt to win the Jewish vote itself. According to the Pew Research Center, the total Jewish population of Europe is a little over 1 million, far less than the growing Muslim population.

The Muslim vote is more important than the Jewish one. What the Jews do offer, through their participation in right-wing parties, is their own hechsher of these groups.

Krauskopf says he doesn't mind “being used as a fig leaf" by the AfD in order to fight the growing Antisemitism, and no doubt many Jewish members of these groups and parties across Europe feel the same way.

But suspicions of AfD persist:

• In January, a court ruled against an AfD member and lawmaker in a libel case after he was accused of being a Holocaust denier for challenging the number of the Nazis’ victims
• The party’s co-chairman minimized the importance of the Third Reich in 1,000 years of German history. 

In response to such events, Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, the country’s biggest Jewish body, said “a party that tolerates people playing down the Holocaust cannot possibly stand for the rights of Jews.”

Sigmount Königsberg, appointed by the Jewish community in Berlin to monitor anti-Semitic acts takes a different tack in addressing Antisemitism, noting that "if we want to fight it, we can only do it together with the Islamic community.”

This reaction in Germany is likely indicative of the kinds of reactions to be found by mainstream Jewish groups throughout Europe. Clearly, not everyone agrees that the right-wing parties are part of the solution and no longer part of the problem.

Pancevski does note an example of Muslim leaders making an effort to address the rise of Antisemitism. He quotes Mohamad Hajjaj, chairman of the Berlin chapter of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, who says imams in Germany work together in their communities and in their schools to fight against Antisemitism. Since only the example of Germany is mentioned, it appears to be a very limited initiative. After all, the potential backlash Muslim leaders would face for the perception of helping Jews or for supporting some kind of normalization with Israel is obvious. Don't expect any imam-led trips to Israel in the near future.

Of course, none of this is going to affect the ongoing Jewish love affair with liberals and the Democratic party in the US. Growing accusations that Jews are white supremacists will see to that.

For now.



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This week, Rashida Tlaib will be one of our first 2 Muslim congresswomen. Ilhan Omar is the other. Tlaib's swearing-in will be noteworthy because she will be sworn in using Thomas Jefferson's own copy of the Koran.

Tlaib, of course, will not be the first to use Jefferson's Koran for the swearing-in -- Keith Ellison used it, amidst all kinds of discussion and debate back in 2007. At the time, Ellison said his use of Jefferson's Koran
demonstrates that from the very beginning of our country, we had people who were visionary, who were religiously tolerant, who believed that knowledge and wisdom could be gleaned from any number of sources, including the Koran.
Two volume set of the Koran, translated by George Sale
Snapshot from YouTube video
Yair Rosenberg touches upon the use of Jefferson's Koran, noting the complicated history of Thomas Jefferson’s Koran. The complication is that Jefferson's copy of George Sale's 1734 translation of the Koran has the following introduction:
“Whatever use an impartial version of the Korân may be of in other respects, it is absolutely necessary to undeceive those who, from the ignorant or unfair translations which have appeared, have entertained too favourable an opinion of the original, and also to enable us effectually to expose the imposture.”According to Rosenberg, this original intent of Sale's edition of the Koran to convert Muslims makes its use "particularly appropriate for this occasion, not in spite of the prejudice within it, but because of it." That is because it serves as a reminder that Islam has been part of American history from its beginning, while on the other hand, Sale’s translation reminds us of the fear and misunderstanding of Muslims.

Fair enough. Islam has been part of US history from the beginning -- but how?
And might there have been any other motivation for Jefferson to own a copy of the Koran?

Joshua E. London, author of the book "Victory in Tripoli: How America's War with the Barbary Pirates Established the U.S. Navy and Shaped a Nation" wrote an article back in 2005 about that part of US history in an article, "America’s Earliest Terrorists Lessons from America’s first war against Islamic terror."

Some background from Mr. London:
The Barbary states, modern-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, are collectively known to the Arab world as the Maghrib (“Land of Sunset”), denoting Islam’s territorial holdings west of Egypt. With the advance of Mohammed’s armies into the Christian Levant in the seventh century, the Mediterranean was slowly transformed into the backwater frontier of the battles between crescent and cross. Battles raged on both land and sea, and religious piracy flourished.

The Maghrib served as a staging ground for Muslim piracy throughout the Mediterranean, and even parts of the Atlantic. America’s struggle with the terror of Muslim piracy from the Barbary states began soon after the 13 colonies declared their independence from Britain in 1776, and continued for roughly four decades, finally ending in 1815.In 1786, a meeting was arranged in London for Thomas Jefferson and John Adams with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the Tripolitan ambassador to Britain in order to negotiate a peace treaty protecting the US from the threat of Barbary piracy.

During the meeting
These future United States presidents questioned the ambassador as to why his government was so hostile to the new American republic even though America had done nothing to provoke any such animosity. Ambassador Adja answered them, as they reported to the Continental Congress, “that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.”London emphasizes that this all happened long before Western colonialism made its way to Muslim lands -- before oil interests drew the US in and long before the re-establishment of Israel.

There is more to that copy of the Koran than an intent to convert Muslims.

Here is 4-minute video with more background on why Jefferson actually read the Koran:



You cannot argue about the Crusades without noting the conquests of the Islamic empire into Northern Europe. Similarly, you cannot properly appreciate the complexity of the symbolism of Jefferson's Koran without noting the history of the Barbary pirates and their jihad against the United States.

You need the balance from both sides of the story in order to appreciate just how complex and multifaceted a symbol Jefferson's Koran really is.


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In my last post, I wrote about the Democracy Index for 2017, compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Looking at its evaluation of Israel gave an opportunity to contrast 2 very different views of what the index revealed about Israel.

But the Democracy Index also evaluates "Palestine" and Iran, for example

Which raises the question: How do those two jive with this description of "democracy," from the report?

most observers today would agree that, at a minimum, the fundamental features of a democracy include government based on majority rule and the consent of the governed; the existence of free and fair elections; the protection of minority rights; and respect for basic human rights. Democracy presupposes equality before the law, due process and political pluralism.Looking at how the report evaluates those countries reminds us of the bias of the West when it comes to the Middle East in general, and these states in particular.

Here is a composite of the scores for Israel as compared with "Palestine" and Iran.

The Middle East and North African (MENA) section consists of 20 countries. Not surprisingly, Israel ranks first.

And guess who ranks 5th out of 20 countries.


In the area of Electoral Process and Pluralism, they rank low --  as you would expect.
But when you read the report, you find that of the 12 questions used to determine the ranking in that category, 9 relate to having elections.

Now we all know that tracking how long Abbas has been president after his 4-year term ended in 2009 is practically a spectator sport. There have been no elections, neither for president nor Parliament. Of the remaining questions about the freedom to form political parties, by no stretch of the imagination would they get full credit.

Also, "Palestine" is classified as a "hybrid" as opposed to a Democracy or Authoritarian. Hybrids are countries where:
Elections have substantial irregularities that often prevent them from being both free and fair. Government pressure on opposition parties and candidates may be common. Serious weaknesses are more prevalent than in flawed democracies—in political culture, functioning of government and political participation. Corruption tends to be widespread and the rule of law is weak. Civil society is weak. Typically, there is harassment of and pressure on journalists, and the judiciary is not independent.But in the West Bank, they don't have "election irregularities" -- they don't have elections at all!

Contrast the definition of 'hybrid' with the definition of 'authoritarian' government:
In these states, state political pluralism is absent or heavily circumscribed. Many countries in this category are outright dictatorships. Some formal institutions of democracy may exist, but these have little substance. Elections, if they do occur, are not free and fair. There is disregard for abuses and infringements of civil liberties. Media are typically state-owned or controlled by groups connected to the ruling regime. There is repression of criticism of the government and pervasive censorship. There is no independent judiciary.And in the category of "Political Participation," "Palestine" comes in with a score of 7.78, tied for second place with Tunisia behind Israel. Add to that how the Palestinian score of 7.78 in Political Participation ties with Canada and exceeds the US score of 7.22 and it appears clear that different standards apply to different areas of the world -- the soft bigotry of low expectations.

As it turns out, the Index uses criteria that The Economist has decided are not really all that important:
The Economist Intelligence Unit’s index is based on the view that measures of democracy which reflect the state of political freedoms and civil liberties are not thick enough. They do not encompass sufficiently, or, in some cases, at all, the features that determine how substantive democracy is. Freedom is an essential component of democracy, but not, in itself, sufficient. In existing measures, the elements of political participation and functioning of government are taken into account only in a marginal and formal way.Yet the report claims that "the condition of holding free and fair competitive
elections, and satisfying related aspects of political freedom, is clearly the sine qua non of all definitions [of Democracy]."

The report also claims "freedom of expression is a sine qua non of democracy"

We have 2 areas that constitute a "sine qua non" of democracy, areas where "Palestine" is clearly deficient, yet it ranks 5th in the Middle East.

This mirrors how Europe bends over backward trying to find excuses not to label Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations and why a corrupt terrorism-sponsoring dictator like Abbas is always welcome in Europe and gets standing ovations.

Apparently, some elements of Democracy are judged to be less important than others when it comes to the Middle East, provided that the country is Muslim or Arab.

The report also expresses its concern numerous times that "anti-terror laws have also been widely criticised for curbing the exercise of freedom of expression in the name of protecting public order and national security." Oddly, there is no indication in the report that those states which commit acts of terrorism lose points at all, which mirrors the EU's general lack of an outcry in response to Abbas's habit of paying stipends to terrorists.

Also, while "Palestine" is included in the list, nowhere is there any indication how "Palestine" is being defined -- does it include Gaza with its Hamas terrorist leadership -- an issue that those calling for a two-state solution never get around to addressing.

Another example of the superficial nature of the evaluations in the report is its rating for Iran, which claims:
an improvement in Iran’s score in 2017, which saw it climb four places to 150th globally as a result of consistently high voter turnout in recent elections.But according to the American Enterprise Institute, the reason for the large turnout may have nothing at all to do with political participation:
One correspondent explained that the government also stamps birth certificates at polling stations when the presidential ballot is collected. Those stamps are necessary for university admission, bank loans, or state employment. What reportedly happens is that many voters outside the capital and major cities pick up the presidential ballot in order to qualify for such benefits. The state counts the ballot, and the “voter” spoils the presidential ballot since their interest is local only and they do not wish to legitimize the broader regime.At a time when the media, traditional as well as social, is understood to have its own biases and agenda, their reports and articles require a critical eye, now more than ever.



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With the passing of its Nation-State Law this year, the issue of Israel as a democracy continues to be a topic of debate, and at times becomes even more pointed.

But last week we were reminded that for all the debate and the claims that Israel was revealing its fascist colors, Israeli democracy is alive and well:



The Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index measures the categories of Electoral process and pluralism, Functioning of government, Political participation, Political culture and Civil liberties.  -- and taking all of that into account, Israel maintained its 2016 ranking of 30 in a field of 167 countries:

Israel rated 30th as a democracy, among 167 countries - tied with Estonia
Interestingly, with the perpetual accusations each year that Israel under Netanyahu is descending into the depths of fascism, this same Democracy Index indicates the opposite. During Netanyahu's second stint as Prime Minister from 2009 to date, (his first term being from 1996-1999), Israel's democracy rating has been on an upswing -- at least until 2017:


Who knows what rating Israel will get for 2018 in light of the Nation-State Law?

Israel had a mediocre score for both Function of government (which is understandable to anyone who has watched the Knesset in action) and Political culture.

"Function of government" is determined by such things as partisanship, corruption, accountability, checks & balances, levels of political engagement and confidence in government.

"Political culture" is based on levels of popular confidence in democracy, and environment where "the losing parties and their supporters accept the judgment of the voters and allow for the peaceful transfer of power."

The biggest drag on Israel's score was in the area of civil liberties. It is the reason Haaretz's Anshel Pfeffer rails against Israel's "High-functioning Illiberal Democracy," noting that "the country’s strong showing is marred by the Chief Rabbinate’s hegemony and the way Israel treats the Palestinians and other minorities."

On the issue of religion in Israel, one can argue the point.

In their book, #IsraeliJudaism: A Portrait of a Cultural Revolution, based on extensive surveys with more than 3,000 respondents in Israel, one of findings of Shmuel Rosner and Camil Fuchs is that
you get a new picture of Israel’s Jewish society and of Israel’s Jewish culture. It is a society that moves away from religion and from religious coercion, but does not move away from Jewish traditions. It moves away from the control of rabbis and the mandatory observance of certain practices, but does not move away from voluntary, relaxed, widespread Jewish practice.According to Rosner and Fuchs, the claim that Israel is becoming a theocracy is a myth.

For that matter, one can ask how Pfeffer derives an implied condemnation of the Chief Rabbinate from the Democracy Index to begin with.

On the more pressing issue of the rights of the Arab minority, according to a report issued this month by the Israel Democracy Institute:
More than two-thirds of the Arab respondents (67 percent) said they did not think that the Israeli government treats its Arab citizens democratically. Among Jewish respondents, however, only 23 percent thought that Arab citizens suffer from discrimination. Still, more than half the Arab respondents (51 percent) said they were proud to be Israeli (compared with 88 percent of Jewish respondents), even though this was lower than in recent years. About two-thirds of both Jewish and Arab respondents said that they believed that Arab citizens want to integrate into Israeli society.There is potential there for improvement, but obviously with a lot of work ahead. According to that same report by the Israel Democracy Institute, respondents this year rank tensions between left and right as being a greater problem than Jewish-Arab relations, though whether that means that Jewish-Arab relations have improved slightly or left-right tensions are worse is unclear.

Writer Zev Chafets takes a different view of the Democracy Index, writing that Israel’s Version of Democracy Is in Good Health. He quotes from a 2002 decision by former Israeli chief justice of the Israeli Supreme Court Aharon Barak regarding, on the one hand, the minimum definition of Israel as a Jewish state:
“At their center stands the right of every Jew to immigrate to the State of Israel, where the Jews will constitute a majority; Hebrew is the official and principal language of the State, and most of its fests and symbols reflect the national revival of the Jewish People; the heritage of the Jewish People is a central component of its religious and cultural legacy.”and on the other hand, the minimal requirements for Israel as a democratic state, consisting of:
recognition of the sovereignty of the people manifested in free and egalitarian elections; recognition of the nucleus of human rights, among them dignity and equality, the existence of separations of powers, the rule of law, and an independent judiciary system. [emphasis is Chafets']According to Chafets, Israel fulfills all of Barak’s requirements for a Jewish state -- and lacks one of his criteria for a democratic state: full equality for its Arab citizens. That is because while the Arabs are guaranteed the same civil rights as all other Israelis by Israel’s Basic Law, only Jews have the right to immigration and citizenship.

He explains:
This discrimination is foundational. Israel was created to be the one place where the Jewish people have self-determination, and the chance to rebuild its culture after a hiatus of two millennia. Israel is for the Jews. The great majority of Jewish Israelis, including many champions of egalitarian civil liberties, understand and accept this. Roughly 90 percent vote for political parties that regard the Law of Return as sacrosanct. [emphasis is Chafets']We have already seen, from the reaction to Israel's Nation-State Law, that many in the West (and in Israel) see things differently.

With elections scheduled for April, we don't have long to wait before getting an idea of what Israelis really do think about Israeli democracy.








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Last month, UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti was interviewed on an i24NEWS program called The Rundown. At one point, starting at 3:33 and extending to 4:40, Tenenti described just what UNIFIL's mandate is:



So, according to Tenenti:

• UNIFIL's job is limited to monitoring
• UNIFIL has no mandate to disarm Hezbollah
• UNIFIL is not allowed to search private property

UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti. Video screengrab

At first glance, Tenenti seems to be right.


In 2006, when UNIFIL took on its new mandate, the commander in charge of UNIFIL, Major-General Alain Pellegrini set the limits on UNIFIL's mandate:
Pellegrini made it clear, however, that UNIFIL's mission, even with the new rules of engagement, does not include disarming Hezbollah. "It's not my job," he said. UNIFIL's role, he said, is to assist the Lebanese army in guaranteeing state authority over all Lebanese territory.That was on September 3.
Three weeks later, Pellegrini gave an exclusive interview to The Jerusalem Post:
In his first interview to an Israeli paper since the war in Lebanon, Pellegrini revealed that last week a Syrian weapons convoy on its way to Hizbullah was intercepted by the Lebanese army near the Lebanese-Syrian border. While the new rules of engagement set by the UN allowed the new UNIFIL force to open fire in order to implement resolution 1701, Pellegrini said he would not automatically order his troops to open fire on Hizbullah guerrillas if they were spotted on their way to the Blue Line to attack Israel. The job of the new multinational force, he said, was to assist the Lebanese army and not to disarm or engage Hizbullah or even to prevent its attacks.Pellegrini's admission that UNIFIL is allowed to use force to implement Resolution 1701 contradicts Tenenti's claim that UNIFIL's role is just to monitor. That Pellegrini goes on to turn around and then claim that their role is to assist the Lebanese army and not to disarm, engage or prevent attacks is puzzling.

It also contradicts the text of Resolution 1701, which:
authorizes UNIFIL to take all necessary action in areas of deployment of its forces and as it deems within its capabilities, to ensure that its area of operations is not utilized for hostile activities of any kind, to resist attempts by forceful means to prevent it from discharging its duties under the mandate of the Security Council, and to protect United Nations personnel, facilities, installations and equipment, ensure the security and freedom of movement of United Nations personnel, humanitarian workers and, without prejudice to the responsibility of the Government of Lebanon, to protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence; Again, this assigns to UNIFIL more than just a monitoring role.

Now, what about a mandate to disarm Hezbollah?

Back to the text of Resolution 1701, which:
Requests the Secretary-General to develop, in liaison with relevant international actors and the concerned parties, proposals to implement the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, and resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006), including disarmament...Who are the relevant "international actors" who are supposed to implement disarmament?

Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appears not to have gotten the memo -
Annan angered Israeli officials when he told Channel 2 on Tuesday that "dismantling Hizbullah is not the direct mandate of the UN," which could only help Lebanon disarm the organization.Resolution 1701 implies an orchestrated effort; the only proposal that Annan seems to have developed was to keep the UN as far away as possible. But if UNIFIL is supposed "to ensure that its area of operations is not utilized for hostile activities of any kind," how is it supposed to maintain that kind of control without having the authority to disarm Hezbollah at some level?

The last point Tenenti makes is that UNIFIL has no authority to search private property.

But according to the Report of the Secretary-General on the implementation of Security Council resolution 1701, that is not exactly accurate either:
In accordance with its mandate, UNIFIL does not proactively search for weapons in the south. UNIFIL cannot enter or search private property unless there is credible evidence of a violation of the resolution, including an imminent threat of hostile activity from that location. In situations in which specific information is received regarding the illegal presence of armed personnel, weapons or infrastructure inside its area of operations, UNIFIL, in cooperation with the Lebanese Armed Forces, has remained determined to act with all means available within its mandate and capabilities. Again, instead of maintaining just a monitoring mode, UNIFIL does have a mandate to search homes when there is evidence of violations. More than that, the text clearly states that when the illegal presence of weapons is detected, UNIFIL not only has the authority to search but also to act "with all means available" -- meaning that it can disarm.

There is, in fact, a documented case of UNIFIL doing a search of private homes in 2010, using sniffer dogs and resulting in villagers retaliating by grabbing the weapons of a UNIFIL patrol, throwing stones at them and blocking the road.

In this case, it was UNIFIL that was disarmed.

The bottom line is that clearly, the role of UNIFIL was not intended to be as passive as Tenenti claims, limited to monitoring.

• UNIFIL is allowed to use force
• The issue of disarming Hezbollah is a hot potato everyone is trying to avoid, but there is no clear indication that UNIFIL cannot disarm Hezbollah in specific circumstances "to prevent hostile activities"
• UNIFIL is allowed to do searches when there is evidence of a violation

The fact that Hezbollah was able to dig multiple tunnels into Israel is just one more reminder of UNIFIL's failure to do its job.
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Ken Roth is entitled to his opinion.

And Ken Roth thinks the Israeli settlements are illegal.

So far, so good.

But Ken Roth is also the executive director of Human Rights Watch



When Roth tweets, he is tweeting as the head of HRW, not as a private person -- and he does not even include the usual "retweets are not endorsements" disclaimer on his Twitter profile.

The halo effect that surrounds Human Rights Watch extends to Ken Roth, and he appears not to mind that.

That's OK too.

But Ken Roth does seem to throw around that claim of illegality an awful lot.

When he Tweets about Airbnb


And when he writes about the Gaza riots:


Using his position as executive director of HRW to support his Tweets condemning Israel for alleged illegal acts appears to imply that Roth is not merely offering an opinion, but is offering an assessment based on actual expertise and knowledge that he has.

Does Ken Roth actually have that kind of expertise?

It depends on where you look.

According to Wikipedia, Roth does have expertise:
His biography on the HRW website says he has "special expertise on: issues of justice and accountability for atrocities committed in the quest for peace; military conduct in war under the requirements of international humanitarian law; counterterrorism policy, including resort to torture and arbitrary detention; the human rights policies of the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations; and, the human rights responsibilities of multinational businesses."Wikipedia indicates its source is the 2011 version of Ken Roth's bio on the Human Rights Watch website.

As recently as last year, in his book "International Law and the Use of Force against Terrorism", Shadi Adnan Alshdaifat writes in a footnote:


As far back as 2009, Roth has been credited with having this 'expertise':
On the HRW website, Roth is listed as having ‘investigated human rights abuses around the globe’, with ‘special expertise’ on issues of justice and accountability for atrocities committed in the quest for peace; military conduct in war under the requirements for international humanitarian law etc.But when you actually take a look at his bio on the Human Rights Watch website, Roth's CV is more modest:
Prior to joining Human Rights Watch in 1987, Roth served as a federal prosecutor in New York and for the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington, DC. A graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University, Roth has conducted numerous human rights investigations and missions around the world. He has written extensively on a wide range of human rights abuses, devoting special attention to issues of international justice, counterterrorism, the foreign policies of the major powers, and the work of the United Nations. [emphasis added]Roth's background in law is as a federal prosecutor. He has conducted "investigations" and "missions" on human rights and he has even written on issues of international justice -- but no, there is nothing in Ken Roth's background that makes him an expert in international law.

That has not stopped Ken Roth from regularly presenting his personal opinion on Twitter as legal fact.

This is reminiscent of the Marc Galasco controversy. Galasco resigned because of the optics of an avid collector of Nazi paraphernalia accusing Israel of war crimes. But there were questions about Galasco's expertise as well.

NGO Monitor has noted about Galasco:
Although the level of his expertise and experience are obscure, Garlasco consistently presents himself and is presented as an “expert” on weapons and military technology. He has no combat experience, and his various Pentagon positions were apparently not concentrated on dealing with the details of weapons systems. This has not prevented him from making public statements and authoring reports that project the pretense of both a detailed knowledge of weapons such as unmanned drones and white phosphorous, and an understanding of the implications of their use under international law.Even the most basic qualification, that of critical objectivity, seems to be lacking at Human Rights Watch.

A report from NGO Monitor about Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW's director of its Middle East and North Africa [MENA] division, finds that:
“Whitson’s soft approach towards totalitarian regimes clearly is counterproductive and immoral, as in the Libya cover-up” adds Herzberg. “She met with Hamas in May 2010 to reassure the terrorist organization that HRW’s reports were ‘objective and impartial,’ while at the same time promising that HRW’s next report would denounce Israeli violations of international law. Prior to that, she solicited funds in Saudi Arabia to combat so-called pro-Israel ‘pressure groups.’ Instead of confronting human rights violators, the MENA division under Whitson has helped sustain their power.”

During a November 2010 trip to Lebanon, Whitson praised “the Lebanese sophistication for human rights,” contradicting HRW’s own Lebanon Director, Nadim Houry, who condemned the lack of effectual and accountable state institutions, the absence of political will to implement change, and the problems created by the country’s political “confessionalism.” Shortly after Whitson’s assessment, Hezbollah overthrew the Hariri government in a bloodless coup.Whitson's lack of objectivity may be explained by her background.

According to Whitson's biography on the HRW website:
Before joining Human Rights Watch, Whitson worked in New York for Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard Law School.David Bernstein of The Volokh Conspiracy notes what the HRW website omits about Whitson:
What the official bio doesn’t tell you is that Whitson was an active member of the New York chapter of the American-Arab Antidiscrimination Committee. She had served on the Steering Committee (source: ADC Times, Apr 30, 2002). When HRW hired her, she was serving a two-year term on the new Board of Directors, which replaced the Steering Committee (Source: ADC Times, Jan. 31, 2004).

The ADC styles itself as a civil rights organization, but like the Jewish organizations on which it is modeled, it also involves itself in Middle East issues, specifically by supporting the Arab and Palestinian cause against Israel. Local chapters are often more active on foreign policy issues than is the national organization.

...when HRW hired Ms. Whitson to be its Middle East director, it was hiring someone that was in the middle of serving what amounted to a second term on the Board of Directors of an organization that was firmly and openly on the Arab side in the Arab-Israeli conflict. And she had personally engaged in pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel activism while serving in that position. I don’t know whether she resigned her position when she started working for Human Rights Watch; if she didn’t, it was a clear conflict of interest. Regardless, it should hardly come as a surprise that one of her first acts at Human Rights Watch was to involve the organization in political action, supporting the campaign to get Caterpillar to stop selling tractors to the Israeli Army.Human Rights Watch is not big on either expertise nor objectivity.


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One of the last speakers to address the Jewish New Media Summit 2 weeks ago was Emmanuel Nahshon, spokesperson for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He spoke on the topic of "Israel and the Media: Challenges and Opportunities."

Emmanuel Nahshon, spokesman for the Ministry for Foreign Affairs
Image cropped from video
The New Media
Nahshon noted that there are between 250 and 300 foreign journalists posted in Israel on a permanent basis, even while the nature of media in the 21st century is changing. "Classical" media is in a battle with social media, and losing its importance.

This change impacts on how the Foreign Ministry now does business. As Nahshon puts it:

“Talking to journalists is one thing, but conducting public diplomacy on social media is something totally different”In this new environment, there is a change in the way that Israel is being perceived.  Though we tend to think that the image of Israel in the world is not necessarily positive, Nahshon believes that actually, the reality is a little bit different -- it depends on where and how you look.

Israel's New Image
He noted that in major parts of the world, Israel is actually perceived in a positive way. The key is that there are people who look at Israel not only through the prism of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but in a larger way. This is especially true in areas such as Latin America, Africa, India, China, and Eastern Europe.

The Foreign Ministry conducts public opinion polls regularly, asking people in those areas what comes to mind when they hear the name Israel, and they usually give positive responses, such as:

• Water management
• Desalinization
• Agriculture
• Security
• High tech
• Medicine
• Literature and art

Nahshon's point, about changing the prism through which people see Israel, from one of conflict to one of Israel's achievements, was suggested 10 years ago.

In 2008, an article in The Canadian Jewish News described a new effort in "branding" Israel, outlined by Ido Aharoni:
Aharoni said the ministry has conducted market research over the past few years that showed “Israel is viewed solely through the narrow prism of the Arab-Israeli conflict… Israel’s personality is 90 per cent dominated by conflict-related images and some religious connotations,” he said. “Those of us who know the brand intimately are disturbed by the divergence of brand and the perception.”

...aspects of Israel are worthy of promotion, including its culture and arts; its accomplishments on environmental matters such as water desalination, solar energy and clean technology; its high-tech successes and achievements in higher education; and its involvement in international aid, he added. [emphasis added]Apparently, the branding effort has been a success.

The Remaining Challenge
According to Nahshon, the biggest challenge facing Israel is in Western Europe and some of the media outlets in the North American continent. Just because Israel has a relatively positive image in Africa and Latin America does not mean it can ignore the negative media in those areas, where Israel is viewed mostly in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This view of Israel persists there, despite the best efforts to explain that Israel is more than just that conflict, and that conflict is not at the heart of the existence of Israel.

The reason some do see the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict as the heart of what Israel is about is because the foreign media assigned to Israel tends to report mostly on the issue of the conflict. They see the issues surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the ones the editor will want to publish and that the public will want to see.

There remains a lot of work to be done to change that perception. Changing this perception of the media is something that Matti Friedman addressed when he spoke at the Summit.

He said it couldn't be done.

Nahshon says he explains to foreign journalists that there is more to see in Israel - not in an effort to hide the conflict, but to show there is more to Israel.

But the journalists are not interested. There seems to be a very rigid mind-set among journalists that the context has to be the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that solving it will bring peace. As if the responsibility for tensions is on Israel’s shoulders, and if only Israel would do x or y, things would be wonderful.

On the contrary, solving the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis will do nothing more than solve the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis.

Israel's Success in the Arab World
In parallel to its efforts in other parts of the world, the Foreign Ministry is working with social media in the Arab world and keeping track of the perceptions of Israel in the Arab world and in Iran.

In the last few years, this perception is becoming increasingly positive.

The Foreign Ministry does polls in the Arab world via international companies and there is a changing perception whose beginnings can be traced back to the Arab spring.

This change in perception can also be tied to the advent of smartphones, which Nahshon describes as a big instrument for change because they enable the free flow of information.

As he puts it: if you are a young Arab person “no one can tell you lies about Israel anymore because you can check it personally."

(This may be a bit too optimistic, seeing how there is nothing to stop the free flow of lies -- as we regularly see on Facebook and Twitter.)

Israel's Foreign Ministry invests a lot of time, effort and energy on developing contacts with the Arab world via social media and has millions of followers on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The idea is to reach young people, without telling them what to think or what to do.

According to Nahshon:
“We have abandoned any concept of propaganda...a long time ago”Instead, the goal is to present the Israeli reality in all of its complexity, but also all of its beauty. He says the results are extremely convincing and extremely positive and that people are happy to receive Israeli videos and posts on Facebook. They understand that Israel is not only not the problem in the Middle East, but Israel is part of the solution.

This change in perception is the basis of the recent major diplomatic developments:

• Netanyahu visiting Oman
• Gradual normalization with the Gulf states
• Possible changes we may see with Saudi Arabia

When the president of Chad visited Israel, he did not visit because he suddenly became a Zionist. Rather, he understands that Israel is able to provide the means to help his own country, with expertise in the area of agriculture, water management, and security.

That is why Arab countries want closer ties with Israel.

But also, the Arab Street is no longer brainwashed against Israel -- because, going back to his earlier point, the Arab leaders understand that brainwashing is no longer a viable option: they can no longer tell their people lies, because they can see the truth for themselves.

According to Nahshon, we are just at the beginning of a revolution, a major change.


Nahshon certainly paints an optimistic picture, even while admitting the problems that remain. Judging by developments in the relationship between Israel and the Gulf states, it is hard to deny that there is something to what he says.

Yet it is hard not to see social media as a two-edged sword. If it can be used as a tool to enhance Israel's image in the world, it can be -- and has been -- used as a weapon to damage that image as well.

The New Media still presents challenges as well as opportunities.








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An employer who agrees not to discriminate against any employee or job applicant because of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, physical or mental disability, or age
Definition of 'Equality Opportunity Employer', Merriam Webster
Nor on the basis of "politics."

In 2004, then-Commissioner-General of UNRWA Peter Hansen was interviewed on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and said that UNRWA hiring Hamas terrorists is not a big deal:

Hansen said he believes there are Hamas members on UNRWA's payroll, but they have to follow UN rules on remaining neutral."Oh I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don't see that as a crime. Hamas as a political organization does not mean that every member is a militant and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another," Hanson told CBC TV.

"We demand of our staff, whatever their political persuasion is, that they behave in accordance with UN standards and norms for neutrality," he said.UNRWA logo

Well, isn't that reassuring?

In 2006, when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he was giving $25million to UNRWA, The Toronto Sun made clear
UNRWA has, according to various experts, been infiltrated by Hamas members and sympathizers. Hamas is an Islamist terrorist group, as designated by the Government of Canada.And better yet, Hamas does not restrict membership to leadership positions on the basis of being a member of UNRWA either.

Just last year, AP reported U.N. agency suspends Gaza staffer amid alleged ties to Hamas
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees suspended a Palestinian staffer Sunday, a spokesman for the U.N. agency said as Israel alleged the employee was elected to a leadership position with the Islamist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Chris Gunness of UNRWA said Suhail al-Hindi, the chairman of the UNRWA Palestinian workers’ union in Gaza and the principal of a UNRWA elementary school, was suspended due to “substantial information” received by the agency.

...The agency temporarily suspended al-Hindi in 2011 for participating in events with Hamas officials.The AP helpfully adds that "The U.N. agency forbids its staff from holding political office." [emphasis added]

Considering the connection between the UN and Hamas, is it any wonder the lengths the UN will go in order to protect the terrorist organization from any kind of criticism in the UN, most recently in the sudden requirement for a two-thirds instead of majority vote to condemn Hamas for terrorist attacks on civilians?

And what about UNIFIL, which operates in Hezbollah's back yard?

UNIFIL logo

As it turns out, UNIFIL is no slouch either when it comes to the integration of the local populace either.

Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, writes how despite its mandate to keep Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon -- UNIFIL has all kinds of time on its hands:
Both the LAF and UNIFIL share the same objective of not disturbing the status quo, which is to say, not to cross Hezbollah’s red lines. In turn, this raises a question about the point of underwriting this arrangement altogether, while pretending UNIFIL is doing something that it clearly cannot and will not do. Instead, UNIFIL has become more akin to yet another UN aid agency. It clears minefields, and works “together with the Lebanese authorities, in creating the conditions conducive for the population to build their future.” It also “works closely with many municipalities and local authorities to strongly support their communities.” It even hires Hezbollah members and supporters! [emphasis added]Here is Badran's source, Google-translated from the French:
The Lebanese Shiite organization has always suspected Blue Helmets spying for Israel. On the other hand, it does not hesitate to infiltrate Finul [UNIFIL], whose civilian staff numbers 585 Lebanese. "Some employees do not hide from belonging to Hezbollah," admits a Finnish commander. Another anomaly: some UN battalions are from countries that do not recognize Israel. "I can assure you that Indonesian peacekeepers are constantly reporting Israeli movements to various Lebanese actors," said the senior officer. [emphasis added]All of which raises the question: in the fight against terrorism, which side is the UN on?



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Of the topics that came up during the Jewish New Media Summit in Israel 2 weeks ago, one thing that was not discussed was what exactly we were doing there.

That of course was taken for granted, though not all of us necessarily had the same goals in mind.

Jewish New Media Summit 2018 logo

There were approximately 150 bloggers and journalists from about 30 different countries attending. The bloggers outnumbered the journalists.

In his critical article of the event, Gary Rosenblatt -- of the Jewish Week -- asked the question, What Was The Goal Of The Jewish Media Summit In Israel: Advocacy Or Access. He also delved into the answer, with the distinction that:
there is a difference between journalists, whose mandate is to strive for facts and fairness, and bloggers, whose goal is opinionated engagement.That is the standard answer, and generally still valid.
But there are qualifications.


Unlike in the world in general, when it comes to Israel the distinction between journalism and blogging is not necessarily iron-clad.

There is arguably no country in the world whose very existence, policies -- actually, almost every move -- are attacked as vociferously in both the old and new media as is Israel. Under the circumstances, it would be understandable for the Israeli government to see such a summit as an opportunity to strengthen its defense in the media. But as one of the attendees pointed out at the end of the summit, he bristles at the idea of being an "ambassador" for Israel -- and no wonder. An ambassador by definition defends the country he represents and is expected to never criticize it, at least not publicly. What blogger wants to be hemmed in like that?

So no, being a blogger does not mean leaving pointed and critical questions at the door and the tension resulting from such an expectation was palpable. Jenni Frazer pointed out in When journalists asked Benjamin Netanyahu whether he considered a role in Ukrainian cinema that
it is hard to expect diaspora Jewish journalists to take Israel seriously, and vice-versa, if it insists on treating them as an extension of its public relations arm, a practice long derided by communities around the world.Yet when discussing Israel, we seem to enter a Bizarro world where journalists are the ones who are opinionated (if not outright jaundiced), while it is the bloggers defending Israel who often respond with facts, and pointing out what often appears to be a lack of fairness and balance on the part of the journalists.

Glenn Greenwald was prescient, if not a cause, of the current state of journalism, sometimes referred to as "fake news". Back in 2013, Greenwald decried how
this suffocating constraint on how reporters are permitted to express themselves produces a self-neutering form of journalism that becomes as ineffectual as it is boring...all journalism is a form of activism. Every journalistic choice necessarily embraces highly subjective assumptions — cultural, political or nationalistic — and serves the interests of one faction or another.This may have signaled the first manifestations of "blogger-envy" by journalists, abandoning objectivity for subjectivity, though you need to keep in mind that Greenwald's own roots are in blogging -- and old habits die hard.

This touches on comments that Matti Friedman made to the group, as described by Judean Rose in her post, Framing the Narrative: Matti Friedman on the Israel Story on what encourages this bias and how it exhibits itself in the media. Friedman explained that the goal in countering this bias is educating the journalists, which sounded encouraging when he said it. But rather than addressing how to do this, he later conceded that this was nearly impossible and that the bloggers in the audience should content themselves with working towards making Israel a better place.

For myself, I did not see a tension between being informed and being persuaded. The former made be better equipped to do the latter by being better armed with facts and background material.

The fact that other bloggers had different goals and a different threshold of subjectivity was simply a function of the wide spectrum of blogs they represented.

At the very least, being at the new media summit was a source of food for thought.
And resulted in this post.






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If your child came home from college and said she was challenged by a classmate who claimed that Palestine is Arab land stolen by the Jews, could you provide her with a response?
That is the question Douglas Feith asks in the article he recently wrote for Tablet Magazine. Based on a speech he gave to the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, Feith offers a helping hand to his fellow Jews - who really should not be having such a tough time arguing for the Jewish right to Israel:
The campaign to delegitimate Israel has been scoring successes. The efforts to counter that campaign have often proven inept. That too I find astonishing.

In the arena of argumentation, the Jews are practiced, having continuously honed their debating skills since Abraham questioned God about Sodom. They should be formidable in explaining why Israel is not colonialist and refuting other calumnies. Yet they’re often beaten into retreat by anti-Zionist polemicists. There’s no excuse for it.He then goes on to outline a response.


What he writes is not new, but still bears repeating --

• During the 400 years leading to World War I, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire -- was owned by the Turks, not by the Arabs living in Palestine.
  
  
• There was never a country called Palestine.
  
  
• Palestine was never ruled by its own Arab inhabitants.
  
• Therefore, it is not accurate to say that Palestine was a country, or that it was Arab land.
  
  
• And neither the Jews nor the British stole it from the Arabs.
  
  
• The original Zionists who came to live in then-Palestine did not come as colonists, nor with the backing of an imperialist or colonialist power. Jews bought the land on which they settled.

Rabbi Moses Porush (c.) and Arab Landowner holding deed for a large tract of land
that Rabbi Moses Porush and Rabbi Joseph Levi Hagiz purchased from the Arab.
Credit: Wikipedia. Public Domain
Feith does give context to the situation during WWI that is generally overlooked.

The British invasion of Palestine in World War I was precipitated by the Ottoman Turks, who joined Germany and attacked the Allied forces. When the British war cabinet approved the Balfour Declaration on October 31, 1917, -- it was already more than 3 years into World War I.

And the war was not going well for the Allies.

It was one of those rare occasions when the exaggerated belief in Jewish power and influence actually worked to the benefit of the Jews. The British saw an opportunity to gain support in Russia and the US.

As for Palestine itself,
colonialism didn’t bring Britain to Palestine. Britain didn’t seize Palestine from an unoffending native population. It conquered the land not from the Arabs, but from Turkey, which (as noted) had joined Britain’s enemies in the war. The Arabs in Palestine fought for Turkey against Britain. The land was enemy territory. [emphasis added]The British view of Palestine, and of the Arabs living there, was taken in the context of the area as a whole. Palestine was just a small part of a huge region the British forces conquered from the Turks -- and even though most Arabs had fought for the Turks, the Allies were ready to set the Arabs on the path to independence and national self-determination. However, the small piece of land that was the "Holy Land" had a unique status, of special interest to Christians and Jews around the world.

And the Arabs already living in Palestine?
The idea that a small segment of the Arab people – the Palestinian Arabs – would someday live in a Jewish-majority country was not thought of as a unique problem. There were similar issues in Europe. After World War I, new nations were created or revived: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Hungary, for example. Inevitably, some people would have to live as a minority in neighboring states. Seven hundred thousand Hungarians would become a minority in Czechoslovakia, almost 400,000 in Yugoslavia and 1.4 million in Romania. Where they were a minority, they would have individual rights, but not collective rights. That is, ethnic Hungarians would not have national rights of self-determination in Romania, but only in Hungary.

The principle applicable to European minorities applied also to the Arabs of Palestine. In any given country, only one people can be the majority, so only one can enjoy national self-determination there. The Arab people would eventually rule themselves in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Arabia. They were going to end up in control of virtually all the land they claimed for themselves. They naturally wanted to be the majority everywhere. But then, the Jews could be the majority nowhere. The victorious Allies did not consider that just. The British were actually taken by surprise by the accusation that they were being unjust to the Arabs, especially considering the actual history of Palestine, what the British had sacrificed for the liberation of the Middle East from Ottoman control and the fact that the Arabs fought on the side of the enemy.

Feith quotes from a speech Balfour gave in 1922 on the issue:
“Of all the charges made against this country,” he said, that “seems to me the strangest.” It was, he recalled, “through the expenditure largely of British blood, by the exercise of British skill and valour, by the conduct of British generals, by troops brought from all parts of the British Empire . . . that the freeing of the Arab race from Turkish rule has been effected.” He went on, “That we . . . who have just established a King in Mesopotamia, who had before that established an Arab King in the Hejaz, and who have done more than has been done for centuries past to put the Arab race in the position to which they have attained—that we should be charged with being their enemies, with having taken a mean advantage of the course of international negotiations, seems to me not only most unjust to the policy of this country, but almost fantastic in its extravagance.”Arthur Balfour. Source: Wikipedia. Public Domain

This is all part of the Zionist history that Feith believes Jews need to know in order to respond to the claim that the British stole Palestine and just gave it away to the Jews.

The problem, of course, is that the "other side" is not arguing from facts, nor are they appealing to logic. Just look around. On social media, people do not make logical arguments and they have no interest in history -- facts just make their eyes glaze over. Meanwhile, on college campuses, Jews are not being engaged in debate, they are being harassed by groups who want to eliminate debate and the free speech of their victims while isolating them.

Yes, we do need to know about our history and our birthright.
But let's not fool ourselves into thinking that Israel is the subject of a debate.

Israel is the target of an attack.
And we are still on the defensive.

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On March 19, 2004, a man was shot to death while jogging in French Hill in Jerusalem, Israel.
And Fatah was profuse in its apologies.

Why?


The man killed was 20-year-old George Khoury, a Christian Arab and son of a well-known attorney, Elias Khoury of Beit Hanina.

He was killed by Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade (after all, what peace partner doesn't have their very own terrorist group?)

Ironically, in 1975, George Khoury's grandfather, Daoud Khoury, was killed, along with 12 others, when a booby-trapped refrigerator set up by Fatah exploded in Jerusalem.

In a statement, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades apologized and said that the killing of Khoury was a case of "mistaken identity" -- they thought Khoury was a settler. They went on to say that as far as the terrorist group was concerned, Khoury was a shahid, a martyr.

The most recent Palestinian Arab victim of Palestinian terrorism is Mahmoud Abu Asba, a construction worker in Ashkelon. He was killed this past Monday when one of Hamas' hundreds of rockets hit the apartment building where he was staying while working in Israel.

In Mr. Abu Asba's case, there has yet to be an apology from Hamas.

And what about Abbas?

Abbas has been vociferous in his defense of his payment of stipends to the families of Palestinian terrorists who have murdered Israelis. In the past, as an equal opportunity supporter of terrorism, Abbas has paid stipends to the families of Hamas terrorists as well.

Will Abbas be as quick to dispense a stipend to the family of Mahmoud Abu Asba, who was murdered by Hamas?

For that matter, just how many innocent Palestinian Arabs have been killed by terrorist groups like Hamas and Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade?

Back in 2014, Yisrael Medad wrote a post, "Of Course Hamas Kills Gaza Civilians" and links to a report that can still be found, archived here. The website for the group no longer exists.



In a later post, Does Hamas Really Kill Its Own Civilians?, Medad followed up and found for the first 4 months of 2014:

• 9-22 January: out of 36 Home Made Rockets (HMRs)/Mortars, 19 landed in Gaza. 
• 23 January-5 February: 50% fell inside Gaza. 
• 6-19 February: no mention. 
• 20 February-5 March: 6 dropped in Gaza. 
• 6-19 March: 24 out of 64 firings dropped short/exploded on-site. 
• 20 March-2 April: 9 civilians injured and 1 death due to accidents involving explosive devices and unexploded ordnance. 
• 3-16 April: 3 fatalities and 6 injuries due to accidental explosions. 
• 17-30 April: 8 rockets dropped short out of 24.

In an article in The Syndey Morning Herald in 2014, Gregory Rose, a specialist in International Law, wrote in "How Gaza became one big suicide bomb":
About 5 per cent of Hamas rockets misfire and land on Gazan targets, such as one in a hospital and another in a market last week. Three rocket caches at three UN schools have been discovered in the past fortnight. Ironically, in each case, the rockets were handed by UN employees, who are mostly locals, back to Hamas, which is the local government authority with which the UN co-operates.In July, 2014, Gabriele Barbati tweeted -- after leaving Gaza -- about Gazan children killed by a faulty Hamas rocket
Even Amnesty International noticed that one:
Amnesty International said Thursday Palestinian rocket fire during the 2014 summer war in Gaza had killed more civilians in the Gaza Strip than in Israel.

...In the deadliest such attack, "13 Palestinian civilians -- 11 of them children -- were killed when a projectile exploded next to a supermarket in the crowded Al-Shati refugee camp," the report said.

Palestinian witnesses blamed the attack on the beachside camp on an Israeli F-16 warplane, but the army denied that, accusing militants of misfiring their own rockets.

Amnesty said "an independent munitions expert who examined the available evidence... concluded that the projectile used in the attack was a Palestinian rocket."

Army figures released after the war ended on August 26 showed Gaza militants fired 4,591 projectiles at Israel.

Of those, 3,659 struck Israeli territory and 735 were intercepted by the Iron Dome air defence system, leaving another 197 falling short and landing inside the coastal enclave.All of which raises questions:

• How many Hamas rockets have misfired and landed in Gaza?
• How many Gazans have been injured by Hamas rockets?
• How many Gazans have been killed by misfired Hamas rockets?

There is no real way to know.

Hamas is not about to admit to how many of their own people have been killed, and there is no free press to report on what is happening.

But the murders of people like George Khoury and Mahmoud Abu Asba are a reminder that Palestinian terrorists also kill their own people.


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"All of this isn’t to say that hate speech doesn’t matter. It does. But white supremacists are not joining the Nation of Islam, not now nor ever."
"Deciding Who We Throw Away," Cassady Fendlay, Communications Strategist, Writer, and Editor

Actress Alyssa Milano made a welcome point when she criticized the Women’s March leaders for not condemning the Antisemitism of Louis Farrakhan. Findlay's evasion of the issue took the form of a personal attack on Milano and anyone associating with her:
Alyssa Milano and all the white women lined up behind her are actually enforcing the power of white supremacy through their misguided attempt to challenge hate speech.But what is interesting is Fendlay's apparent ignorance of the history of the Nation of Islam and how it has affiliated with white supremacists over the years.


According to an article in the Pittsburgh Courier:
Malcolm X admitted publicly that he met with the heads of the Ku Klux Klan [in 1960] to negotiate a land deal for Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm said, “They had some very responsible persons in the government who were involved in it and who were willing to go along with it. They wanted to make this land available to him so that his program of separation would sound more feasible to Negroes and therefore lessen the pressure that the integrationists were putting upon the White man. I sat there. I negotiated it. I listened to their offer. And I was the one who went back to Chicago and told Elijah Muhammad what they had offered.”The following year, on June 25, 1961, ten members of the American Nazi Party, including their leader, George Lincoln Rockwell, arrived at a Nation of Islam rally in Washington, DC. The Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad was supposed to be the keynote speaker but ended up canceling because of illness.

Instead, Malcolm X spoke, and afterwards led an appeal for donations. Rockwell contributed $20, for which Malcolm X thanked him:



Rockwell spoke too:
You know that we call you niggers. But wouldn't you rather be confronted by honest white men who tell you to your face what the others all say behind your back? Can you really gain anything dealing with a bunch of cowardly white sneaks? The yellow-liberals who tell you they love you, privately excluded you every way they know how. I am not afraid to stand here and tell you I hate race-mixing and I will fight it to the death. But at the same time, I will do everything in my power to help the Honorable Elijah Muhammed carry out his inspired plan for land of your own in Africa. Elijah Muhammed is right -- separation or death! [p.30, footnote 86]In addition to Elijah Muhammed and Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan has also found White Separatists useful.

The New York Times reported in October 1985 of Farrakhan and a former head of the KKK working together:
The former head of the Ku Klux Klan in California said today that he headed a ''white nationalist'' delegation that attended a speech here last month by Louis Farrakhan, leader of a Black Muslim group, and that talks between the black and white groups have been going on for a year.

The former Klan leader, Thomas Metzger of San Diego, said that he and nine members of his organization attended the Farrakhan rally here Sept. 14 as guests of Mr. Farrakhan and that they contributed $100 to support the Muslim's cause.At the time, Metzger described himself as the head of the White People's Political Association, which he described as a ''white nationalist'' organization.

Last year, in 2017, the ADL noted a meeting of the minds between the alt-right and the Nation of Islam. A tweet by Farrakhan in favor of creating their own nation met with approval from the alt-right, not only from white supremacist Richard Spencer and Neo-Nazi Mike Enoch, but also from white supremacist Jared Taylor’s American Renaissance:

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Farrakhan responded in turn. Though stopping short of accepting dialogue, he did not repudiate these white supremacists either. Instead, he referred to them as "white people of intelligence":
“Do you know white people of intelligence feel the same way? Somebody told me that the alt-right, Mr. Trump’s people, had a tweet or something – we kinda like what Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam is saying, we with them to separate in a land of their own. I said: very good, alt-right, ya’ll want to talk about it? Talking has been done, nothing to talk about because now it’s either separation or death.”And why should Farrakhan repudiate them?
After all, they are unified in their hatred of Jews.

But why work together?

In his article in Vice magazine, Sam McPheeters suggests what the Nation of Islam and Rockwell's American Nazi Party saw in each other:
Rockwell and Muhammad saw each other as authentic, as people willing to speak the truth—their versions of it—no matter the cost. Their marketing to their constituencies depended on this image, and each man drew legitimacy from the appearance of being a straight shooter. Rockwell's existence was useful to the NOI as a recruiting tool, his physical presence a testament to Muhammad's own authenticity.Following the success of Martin Luther King using non-violence, Rockwell doubled down on his hate while Malcolm X softened his tone.

And as for Farrakhan and his connection with Metzger on the one hand and his refusal to condemn the white supremacists who offer dialogue on the other, maybe Elijah Muhammed understood Farrakhan best:
"We cannot ignore him," Mr. Muhammad said, adding that he feared that undue attention could fuel Mr. Farrakhan's movement because "it is not only the media that have to live off sensationalism."

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Following the discovery on October 22 of a mail bomb that was sent to the home of financier George Soros, the media responded with the claim that opposition to Soros was based on Antisemitism.

The Guardian headline was 'Dripping with poison of antisemitism': the demonization of George Soros'

The Guardian article quotes from a post on the ADL blog, written 11 days before the attack - "The Anti-Semitism Lurking Behind George Soros Conspiracy Theories."

In that post, The ADL warns against:
well-worn anti-Semitic tropes such as control of the media or banks; references to undermining societies or destabilizing countries; or language that hearkens back to the medieval blood libels and the characterization of Jews as evil, demonic, or agents of the antichrist.The Washington Post joins the chorus with Conspiracy theories about Soros aren’t just false. They’re anti-Semitic.

And the New York Times?


Already last year The New York Times came out with Israel’s War Against George Soros, an op-ed contributed by Mairav Zonszein, a journalist who blogs at 972mag.com.

In the op-ed, Zonszein writes that Soros is pro-Israel, yet is attacked because of his criticism of Israel:
“For years Mr. Soros largely avoided Israel-related philanthropy, but he became involved in 2008 when he contributed to J Street, a moderate pro-Israel, pro-peace lobbying group based in Washington, after it was founded.”George Soros, from a screen capture of YouTube video
Well, that's one way of putting it.

Ira Stoll responded to the op-ed in The Algemeiner, highlighting Nine Flaws With New York Times ‘Israel’s War on George Soros’ Article. Stoll noted a pattern:

• Already back in 1995, Soros admitted to the New Yorker how detached he felt from Israel: “I don’t deny the Jews their right to a national existence — but I don’t want to be part of it.”
• In 2003, Soros publicly blamed Israeli and American policies for antisemitism. For its part, Commentary Magazine noted that “Soros likened the behavior of Israel to that of the Nazis, invoking some psychological jargon about victims becoming victimizers.”
• Soros described himself in a 2007 piece in the New York Review of Books as neither a Zionist nor “a practicing Jew” -- and he denounced denouncing Israel as bloodthirsty:
  “The current policy of not seeking a political solution but pursuing military escalation — not just an eye for an eye but roughly speaking ten Palestinian lives for every Israeli one — has reached a particularly dangerous point.”
• Far from becoming involved in Israel-related topics only since 2008, as Zonszein claimed, Soros is a longtime and major funder of Human Rights Watch - an organization so critical of Israel that its founder abandoned it.

The actions Soros takes and the organizations he supports derive from that attitude toward the Jewish right to a national existence:
"I don't want to be a part of it"This distance sheds light on what groups Soros pours money into.

In 2016, Tablet Magazine came out with an article on Soros Hack Reveals Evidence of Systemic Anti-Israel Bias. Soros' network of philanthropic organizations -- The Open Society Foundations -- was hacked and its confidential reports made available on the website DC Leaks.
the Soros network has given $2,688,561 in 14 grants since 2001 to Adalah, which accuses Israel of war crimes in international forums, and has called on governments to sever their diplomatic relations with Israel.
$1,083,000 went to I’lam, a Palestinian media center which accused Israel of ethnic cleansing, claiming that “the practical meaning of the Nakba undermines the moral and ethical foundation of Zionism and, hence, of the State of Israel.”Then there is the OSF's Arab Regional Office (ARO). A 2014 document reviewed ARO's Palestine/Israel international advocacy portfolio:

According to a leaked report, the Arab Regional Office was motivated by
“a particular shift in political dynamics particularly in the US reflected by the publication of the Walt and Mearsheimer article ‘The Israel Lobby’ in Spring 2006 which pointed out the lobby’s role in, among other things, influencing the Iraq invasion.” Another encouraging shift, according to the report, is the rise of the international movement to boycott Israel: “A number of factors make this a good moment to review this portfolio,” it reads, “including some new or improved opportunities we may choose to exploit. In recent years there’s been heightened international solidarity around Palestinians’ rights, the rise of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and other economic levers, and increased use and traction of arts and culture by Palestinians as a means to raise awareness of violations and the impact of the conflict.”Soros and the OSF decided not to work with the concerned parties -- Israel and the Palestinian Arabs -- but instead to work on exerting external pressure on Israel, forming various groups in the US and the EU, and in Washington DC to be trained in advocacy.

Groups were also formed in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza,
creating a web of small organizations supporting each other’s goals in the media, vis-à-vis foreign governments, and elsewhere. This, traditionally, is how an echo chamber works: by creating an enclosed system of like-minded partisans that appears sufficiently diverse in scope, it is often able to amplify its messages and lend them credibility. A number of the Soros-funded organizations, for example, including Adalah and others, have been key in promoting the false accusation that the Israel Defense Forces wantonly massacred innocent Palestinian civilians in Jenin in 2002. Coming from a plethora of well-funded Israeli and Palestinian NGOs, all geared exclusively towards communicating with European and American government and lobbying groups, these false accusations were reported extensively in the international media and were widely considered factually true. [emphasis added]Soros is not some Israel-related philanthropist involved in moderate pro-Israel, pro-peace lobbying.
Neither is he evil incarnate.

He has the money and the means to push his agenda.
There is nothing wrong in pointing out what that agenda is -- and pushing back.




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When the popular demagogue Linda Sarsour demonizes Zionism, she tends to talk in generalities, leaving its evils to the imagination of her audience. Considering her unconditional support for Farrakhan and his own incitement of Jew-hatred, it is not difficult to figure our where Sarsour and her allies stand.

But Zionism, for all of Sarsour's talk, is simply the national movement of the Jewish people in support of the re-establishment of the Jewish homeland in its historic territory.

That being said, how many Jews in the US are Zionists, that is -- how many Jews are pro-Israel?

According to a national survey done last month by the Mellman Group, a lot:



While 32% of those surveyed were pro-Israel and supportive of its policies, 35% described themselves as pro-Israel while being critical of some of its policies and 24% described themselves as pro-Israel while remaining critical of many of its policies.

That's 91% - and the report itself actually puts the number at 92%:
Most Jewish voters (92%) consider themselves to be “generally pro-Israel,” but fewer than a third (32%) say that they are also supportive of the current Israeli government’s policies. A majority (59%) say that they are “pro-Israel,” but critical of at least some Israeli government policies, with 24% critical of many of the government’s policies.The implication?



Its one thing to generalize and attack the idea of Zionism, but when the real numbers indicate that the vast majority of Jews in the US are pro-Israel, attacks on Zionism and upon those who support Israel is no longer an abstraction.

But those same results play into another of Sarsour's attacks on the Jewish community.

Sarsour, who has difficulty dealing with criticism, reacted harshly to criticism of Ilhan Omar's support for BDS. Sarsour lashed out, claiming that Omar was
“being attacked for saying that she supports BDS (Boycott Divestment Sanctions) and the right for people to engage in constitutionally protected freedoms. This is not only coming from the right-wing but some folks who masquerade as progressives but always choose their allegiance to Israel over their commitment to democracy and free speech.”The claim of Jewish dual loyalty is, of course, an old Antisemitic standard, something that Sarsour doesn't think applies when she talks about the Palestinian roots of herself and other Muslims.

But the same poll dashes that idea.

Jewish attitudes towards both Israel and the US defy the simplistic labeling tossed about by Sarsour:

According to the poll, despite 92% of Jews identifying as being pro-Israel -

• American Jews are not pro-Trump, despite his strong support for Israel
• American Jews oppose moving the US embassy to Jerusalem
• American Jews oppose the way Trump is handling US relations with Palestinian Arabs

And this goes beyond being anti-Trump.

According to The American Jewish Committee's 2007 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion, taken 11 years ago strong feelings about Israel did not translate into favoring Israel interests over US interests.

Yet despite 70% feeling close to Israel and 69% responding that caring about Israel was very important to them when it came to picking priorities of what were the most important issues in the 2008 election - only 6% chose support for Israel as being a main factor in deciding whom they would vote for:

The bottom line is while Jews continue to consider themselves pro-Israel and support her, that support has not overshadowed their concern for domestic issues in the US itself.

That fact has been a source of frustration because many would like to see that level of support for Israel to translate into support for politicians who are even stronger in their support for Israel.

At the same time, however, it proves the lie to the antisemitic incitement Sarsour tries to stir up against American Jews, claiming they are disloyal to the country they live in.


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"Those who call me a bigot, a hater, an anti-Semite, I want you to listen to me real carefully. If anything like that comes out of my mouth I want you raise your hand and stop me."
Louis Farrakhan, October 8, 1985

Louis Farrakhan seems to have been in the news fairly often as of late -- not only for what he is saying but for what others associated with him have not been saying.

Louis Farrakhan. Screenshot of Youtube video

Seems like the antisemitism that comes out of his mouth doesn't get a reaction.
Social media platforms don't condemn it.
Politicians don't condemn it.
Black leaders don't condemn it
And of course, the leaders of Women's March don't condemn it either.

But there was a time when racist comments coming out of The Nation of Islam did draw condemnation.

In spades.

It's just that you have to go back 25 years in order to find it.


On November 29, 1993, Farrakhan's top aide, Khalid Abdul Muhammad, gave a speech at New Jersey's Kean College to about 150 students. At the time Muhammad held the positions of both minister and "national assistant" in The Nation of Islam.

And he had a mouth like Farrakhan himself.

Here is a small sample of what Khalid Abdul Muhammad said that day:
Brothers and sisters--the so-called Jew, and I must say so-called Jew, because you're not the true Jew. You are Johnny-come-lately-Jew, who just crawled out of the caves and hills of Europe just a little over 4,000 years ago. You're not from the original people. You are a European strain of people who crawled around on all fours in the caves and hills of Europe eating Juniper roots and eating each other. Who are the slumlords in the black community? The so-called Jew who is sucking our blood in the black community. A white imposter Arab and a white imposter Jew, right in the black community, sucking our blood on a daily and consistent basis. They sell us pork and they don't even eat it themselves. A meat case full of rotten pork meat, and the imposter Arab and the imposter white Jew, neither of them eat it themselves. A wall full of liquor keeping our people drunk and out of their head, and filled with the swill of the swine, affecting their minds. They're the bloodsuckers of the black nation and the black community. Professor Griff was right when he spoke here--and when he spoke in the general vicinity of Jersey and New York, and when he spoke at Columbia Jew-niversity over in Jew York City. He was right.
Khalid Abdul Muhammad. Screengrab from Youtube video
The black leadership reacted strongly.

• Benjamin Chavis Jr., executive director of the NAACP: "I am appalled that any human being would stoop so low to make such violence-prone anti-Semitic statements."
  
  
• William Gray III, president of the United Negro College Fund, deplored the "tragic and anti-Semitic comments at Kean College” and said anti-Semitism cannot be "justified as a response to repression."
  
  
• Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) condemned the speech
  
  
• Al Sharpton condemned it too
  
  
• Jesse Jackson made a point of calling The New York Times to condemn the speech as "racist, anti-Semitic, divisive, untrue and chilling...The madness of the speech is not in the tradition of our civil rights movement."
  
  
• Representative Kweisi Mfume, the Maryland Democrat who led the Congressional Black Caucus, stated that no alliance could exist between the caucus and Farrakhan's group as long as blacks in Congress had doubts about Mr. Farrakhan's tolerance toward Jews, Catholics and other groups

Even Farrakhan himself issued his own condemnation -- of sorts. But while he condemned the way the speech was given, he defended what he claimed were the "truths" it contained:
"I found the speech, after listening to it in context, vile in manner, repugnant, malicious, mean-spirited and spoken in mockery of individuals and people, which is against the spirit of Islam. While I stand by the truths that he spoke, I must condemn in the strongest terms the manner in which those truths were represented."Farrakhan went no the attack, framing the criticism as an attack and practically called the Black leaders who participated in the criticism traitors:
And in a clear rebuff of the calls to distance himself from the Kean College speech, Farrakhan reportedly said people were using Muhammad’s words against him to “divide the house,” and that Farrakhan’s enemies “want to use some of our brothers, and some of our brothers are willing to be used” to curry favor.He also made a point of singling out the ADL as an enemy of blacks, a tactic that has been picked up by Sarsour. Farrakhan announced
"I therefore, am calling on the Black Caucus, the N.A.A.C.P., Reverend Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition, black churches, and black leaders to review their relationship with the A.D.L. in view of its wickedness against our people."Nevertheless, Farrakhan did demote Muhammad, who later left the group.

Reaction to Khalid Muhammad was so strong that even Congress took action.

On February 23, 1994, Congress voted on Resolution 343, "Expressing the sense of Congress on the senior representative of the Nation of Islam":
Whereas the United States House of Representatives strongly oppose racism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Semitism, and all forms of ethnic or religious intolerance; Whereas the racist, anti-Catholic, and anti-Semitic speech given by Kahlid Abdul Muhammad of the Nation of Islam at Kean College on November 29, 1993, incites divisiveness and violence on the basis of race, religion, and ethnicity; and Whereas Mr. Muhummad specifically justifies the slaughter of Jews during the Holocaust as fully deserved; disparages the Pope in the most revolting personal terms; and calls for the assassination of every white infant, child, man, and woman in
South Africa: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the House of Representatives
(1) condemns the speech given by Kahlid Abdul Muhammad as outrageous hatemongering of the most vicious and vile kind; and (2) condemns all manifestations and expressions of racism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Semitism, and ethnic or religious intolerance.While it may be reassuring to see that there was a time when leaders were more interested in calling out the Antisemitism of The Nation of Islam than in forming alliances with the group, the fact remains that as the leader of The Nation of Islam, Farrakhan faced minimal backlash back then -- even as he resorted to Antisemitic remarks to attack his critics.

And that is unlikely to change.


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The IDF provides an aerial photo showing the path of the tunnel that necessitated Israel's Operation Northern Shield:


And where was UNIFIL all this time?
In the image below, the UNIFIL watchtower is indicated by the white circle, just hundreds of meters from where the tunnel ended.


Clearly, Hezbollah is not afraid of UNIFIL.
And why should they be?


On August 30, 2018 the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2433 extending the mandate of UNIFIL in southern Lebanon:
Reaffirming its commitment to the full implementation of all provisions of resolution 1701 (2006), and aware of its responsibilities to help secure a permanent ceasefire and a long-term solution as envisioned in the resolutionAnd it goes further, explicitly calling on Israel to support the ceasefire:
4. Reiterates its call for Israel and Lebanon to support a permanent ceasefire and a long-term solution based on the principles and elements set out in paragraph 8 of resolution 1701 (2006);Oddly enough, though, Resolution 2433 which renews the mandate does name Lebanon, but does not mention Hizbollah (UN's spelling).
At all.
Not this year, nor last.

That might seem a bit odd, considering the fact that the Hezbollah attack in 2006 is what made this expanded mandate for the already existing UNIFIL necessary.

Thankfully, Hizbollah is mentioned in Resolution 1701 which created this mandate:
Expressing its utmost concern at the continuing escalation of hostilities in Lebanon and in Israel since Hizbollah’s attack on Israel on 12 July 2006, which has already caused hundreds of deaths and injuries on both sides, extensive damage to civilian infrastructure and hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons, [emphasis added]In his article, Hezbollah Ritually Humiliates the UN, Tony Badran describes just how little Hezbollah terrorists think of UNIFIL, and the UN:
On August 4, following a well-established modus operandi, Hezbollah orchestrated an attack on a UNIFIL patrol in the town of Majdal Zoun, north of Naqoura. “The locals”—a Hezbollah tongue-in-cheek euphemism—spotted the Slovak unit taking pictures and surrounded it and obstructed its path. When the patrol tried to escape, the Hezbollah “locals” attacked it, damaging its vehicles. As the patrol moved on, Hezbollah operatives in nearby villages cut it off again, attacked it, confiscated some of its weapons, its cameras and equipment and set fire to their vehicle near the headquarters of the Italian contingent. Later on, Hezbollah “negotiated” the return of the equipment through the LAF, clarifying precisely the role the LAF plays in Lebanon, that of Hezbollah errand boys.Still, you would have thought that Hezbollah would have had more respect for UNIFIL.
After all, in the past UNIFIL has a history of being helpful to Hezbollah in their fight against Israel.

During that war in 2006, the "neutral" UNIFIL played a decidedly one-sided game
throughout the recent war, it posted on its website for all to see precise information about the movements of Israeli Defense Forces soldiers and the nature of their weaponry and materiel, even specifying the placement of IDF safety structures within hours of their construction. New information was sometimes only 30 minutes old when it was posted, and never more than 24 hours old.

Meanwhile, UNIFIL posted not a single item of specific intelligence regarding Hezbollah forces. Statements on the order of Hezbollah "fired rockets in large numbers from various locations" and Hezbollah's rockets "were fired in significantly larger numbers from various locations" are as precise as its coverage of the other side ever got.The cooperation of the UN and UNIFIL with Hezbollah goes even further back:
On October 7, 2000, Hezbollah forces illegally crossed the Israeli border with Lebanon through a UN patrolled area and kidnapped three Israel Defense Force soldiers, Adi Avitan, Binyamin Avraham, and Omar Souad. UNIFIL peacekeepers videotaped the incident; however, the United Nations denied possessing any such videotape for almost nine months. On July 6, 2001, The UN admitted, contrary to their earlier denials, that they had possession of the tape as of 18 hours after the incident occurred.At the time, David Kopel of The Volokh Conspiracy noted how the UN coverup of the gross negligence by UNIFIL went a long way:
One soldiers (sic) said that the brigade should arrest the Hezbollah, but the brigade did nothing.

According to the Indian soldier, the UNFIL brigade in the area "could have prevented the kidnapping."

"I'm very sorry about what happened, because we saw what happened," he said. Hezbollah "were wearing our uniforms and it was too bad we didn’t stop them."

It appears that at least four of the UNIFIL "peacekeepers," all from India, has received bribes from Hezbollah in order to assist the kidnapping by helping them get to the kidnapping spot and find the Israeli soldiers. Some of the bribery involved alcohol and Lebanese women.

The Indian brigade later had a bitter internal argument, as some members complained that the brigade had betrayed its peacekeeping mandate. An Indian government investigation sternly criticized the brigade's conduct.

There is evidence of far greater payments by Hezbollah to the UNIFIL Indian brigade, including hundreds of thousands of dollars for assistance in the kidnapping and cover-up.

The UN cover-up began almost immediately.Kopel continues with a full description of how the UN not only withheld evidence from Israel, it also destroyed evidence as well.

And it's not as if fear of Hezbollah is the only motivator for UNIFIL to betray their neutrality. Wikipedia reports on an incident in 1992 based on an article in YNet News how UNIFIL helped 2 Lebanese terrorists who escaped from an Israeli prison:
A 2010 book published by Norwegian journalist Odd Karsten Tveit revealed that the Norwegian Army was complicit in the escape of two Lebanese men who were arrested by the Israeli Army and being held in Khiam prison. According to the book, in 1992, two detained Lebanese men escaped from Khiam prison [in Southern Lebanon]. Fearing that they would face torture or execution if caught by the Israel Defense Forces or South Lebanon Army, the soldiers dressed the detainees in UN uniforms, and placed them in a UNIFIL convoy which left Southern Lebanon through Israeli roadblocks. Shortly afterward, Israeli Army commander Moshe Tamir visited the Norwegian battalion's camp, and accused Norwegian commander Hagrup Haukland of "sheltering terrorists". Immediately after the confrontation, the Lebanese men were smuggled onto a bus used by Norwegian peacekeepers on leave, which took them to Beirut.The long history of UNIFIL incompetence in enforcing its mandate to keep southern Lebanon clear of weapons and Hezbollah terrorists is not surprising, considering its lack of the most basic integrity and failure to fulfill its obligations and neutrality.

The fact that Hezbollah was able to tunnel into Israel without UNIFIL being tipped off by any tremors from just a few hundred meters away speaks for itself.

Badran writes that unlike last year, this year US Ambassador Haley did not even bother attending the UN vote to extend the UNIFIL mandate and did not issue a statement afterward either.

Clearly, there are no words to describe the failure of one more organization of the UN.


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Typical of the denial of the Jewish right to define Jew-hatred is this article appearing in The Middle East Eye:
How the IHRA's anti-Semitism definition is a threat to British democracy

The IHRA definition is yet another tool in the arsenal of Israel’s far-right government and the UK Israel lobby to destroy any possibility of developing an independent approach to Israel-PalestineThe underlying claim is that when Jews want to define Antisemitism, it is really nothing more than an attempt to undermine criticism of Israel.

And now, a similar kind of muzzling of Jewish opinion took place just the other day -- this time affecting how Jews talk about their own holidays.


It started with a tweet about Hanukkah:


It was just an accurate description of the holiday of Hanukkah and of its implications.
But that was just too provocative for some.Here is how Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney responded -- originally


Coveney questions the Peace Initiative itself ("U say u are working on a New Peace Initiative") and finishes off claiming that this is just one more in a series of "unhelpful statements."

But then Coveney thought better of what he wrote.
Here is the revised version Coveney tweeted after he toned it down a little:


But still: Jews describing Jewish holidays is provocative when they are tied to the history of the Jewish people and how they have fought for their lives -- and their land.

Are Tweets like this provocative in and of themselves, or because they go against the ongoing flow of UN bias against Israel? Just yesterday, the UN passed 6 anti-Israel resolutions, including one UN resolution that refers to the Temple Mount only by the Arab name of Haram al-Sharif

Can't have Jews going around pointing out that Hanukkah is predicated on the Jewish identity of the Temple Mount now, can we?

The world may be willing to wish the Jews a Happy Hanukkah, but they are only willing to go so far:

 
During Hanukkah, the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount and Jerusalem is more blatant, but even holidays like Passover, Shavuot, Rosh HaShannah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret remind us of Jewish Jerusalem -- if for no other reason than the prayers that recall the sacrifices that were brought to the Temple in Jerusalem.

The same goes for Tisha B'Av and other fast days that commemorate the destruction of the Temple.

Likewise, even in during the holiday of Purim, which did not even take place in Israel, the status of which day the Megillah is read is dictated on whether the city was a walled city when Joshua conquered the land -- and the only city that fulfills that requirement today is Jerusalem.

So while the world has no problem remaining quiet while Palestinian Arab leaders deny the historical bond between Jews and Jerusalem, when Jews openly celebrate their holidays and their ties to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, we are the ones being provocative.

As usual.


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Last week, 150 bloggers from 30 countries around the world came to Israel at the invitation of the Israeli General Press Office for the 3rd Jewish Media Summit, on the theme: Israel and the Jewish World Relationship: It's Complicated.

That doesn't mean that Israeli/Diaspora relations were the only topic.

One of the topics was Antisemitism - discussed on a panel featuring Lior Weintraub (media advisor and former diplomat), Anshel Pfeffer (Haaretz), Caroline Glick (Jerusalem Post, Maariv and Breitbart) and Efraim Zuroff (Israeli historian and Nazi Hunter). Haviv Rettig Gur of The Times of Israel moderated.




There were a number of insights, some of them cynical.

For example, Haviv Rettig Gur started the ball rolling with a comment on the difficulty that antisemite Linda Sarsour and her friends were having in distancing themselves from Farrakhan -- despite his best efforts to make easy.

Weintraub made the required comment that criticizing Israel in and of itself is legitimate.

Personally, it is unfortunate that we feel the need to even state this. But of course we do, because one of the common tactics antisemites use to fend off accusations of Antisemitism is to claim that the label is being used in order to defend Israel from criticism of any kind.

Antisemitism Defined
But what sets Antisemitism apart from ordinary criticism of Israel is the special standard used in order to single out Israel. This is where the non-legally binding, working definition of Antisemitism established by International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) comes in:
“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”By itself, this is a rather dry definition. The controversy enters with the examples, which include, but are not limited to: 

• Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.
  
  
• Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.
  
  
• Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.
  
  
• Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust).
  
  
• Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.
  
  
• Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
  
  
• Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
  
  
• Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
  
  
• Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.
  
  
• Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
  
  
• Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.

This is the meat of the definition and goes beyond the 3 D's definition of Natan Sharansky, which was not even mentioned during the discussion and perhaps has fallen into disuse despite its brevity.

But even the IHRA definition does not address what, if anything, is new about Antisemitism today and how it is different from Jew-hatred in the past.

Antisemitism Evolves
That is where Caroline Glick came into the discussion, saying that hatred of Jews should be seen in terms of the prevalent Gestalt of the time.

Glick said that the term 'Antisemitism' itself is antiquated. It goes back to a time when Jew-hatred was based on race. It was a time when the eugenics was considered the height of science and Jews were hated as a people -- as opposed to an early time when Jews were hated as followers of a particular religion.

After periods when religion and then race were part of the Gestalt, now we have 'Anti-Zionism' -- a hatred of Jews in an era where globalization and post-nationalism are the influential sentiments.

What did not come up in the discussion, and perhaps should have, is that there has to be more to it than that, if for no other reason than the fact that Islam and the Islamic countries also stand against - and are resistant to - the same globalization and post-nationalism (unless we talk in terms of the Islamist goal of the globalization of Islam)

Glick referred to Airbnb, whose boycott of Israel she described as a big blow, and a big smack in the face. Airbnb decides that they cannot rent out a basement in Efrat on land bought lawfully, cannot rent out because they are Jews. That is the very definition of anti-Jewish discrimination.

Like Glick, Zuroff also went into how the definition of Antisemitism has changed. Classicly it is based on differences in religion -- a distinction which today is not considered politically correct. Today it has morphed into Anti-Zionism.

This he sees as the reason for the difference in reactions to the massacre in Pittsburgh on the one hand and the missile attacks on Gaza on the other. There is an outpouring of support for the former, but not for the latter. This is despite the fact that there are 500 rockets being aimed at civilians.
As Zuroff put it: "The world loves defenseless Jews."

And when Sarsour claims that some of her best friends are Jews, she means that is because they are the right kind of Jews. As Glick put it, according to the left, there are certain Jews who deserve to be hated. To me, that is reminiscent of Farrakhan's distinction between 'satanic Jews' and 'good Jews' -- as if he had been put in charge of deciding who fits in which category. The problem, as Glick put it, is that for those on the left to take a hard look at progressive Antisemitism is just "too ideologically expensive."

Antisemitism and Israeli Foreign Policy
At this point, the abstract discussion of Antisemitism turned into a critique of Netanyahu's foreign policy.

As opposed to Western Europe, Eastern Europe may hate Jews, but they are beginning to profess a love of Israel. Zuroff was very vocal in his dislike of the overtures Netanyahu has been making to Eastern Europe, where during WWII they were not merely accessories but actively helped the Nazis kill Jews and went so far as to kill Jews on their own initiative.

Zuroff criticized Netanyahu for being silent about the past history, instead of using the "Holocaust card". One example he gave was the friendship Netanyahu has extended to Viktor Orban, the far right Prime Minister of Hungary. A Hungarian blogger at the conference described it to me as Netanyahu giving the "kosher seal" to Oran, protecting him from the criticism both in Hungary and in the EU that he is an Antisemite.

Here Rettig Gur stepped in and explained the thinking behind Netanyahu's actions. Netanyahu's actions could be an attempt to weaken the EU's hostile strategy against Israel. For example, last December, Hungary abstained when the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly rejected the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

More importantly, Hungary joined with the Czech Republic and Romania to block an EU statement that criticized the US for moving its embassy to Jerusalem.

On Hasbara
On a final point, Pfeffer differed from the rest of the panel. He was the only one who insisted that Israel was doing a good job in Hasbara and also went so far as to say that the EU was being maligned.

It actually makes a lot of sense that Pfeffer would hold such an opinion.

According to Pfeffer, Israel is violating international law in terms of the occupation and the settlements. That being the case, he sees eye-to-eye with the EU both in terms of the illegality and in terms of the measures the EU is taking against Israel. Since Pfeffer sides so heavily with the EU, he would see what few successes Israeli hasbara has as a clear measure of success. And of course, Pfeffer was not bothered by the recent decision by Airbnb in the way the rest of the panel was.

But at least they all agreed that Antisemitism is a bad thing.

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"...I'm afraid that you [Jewish people] will come to regret the day that I offered you a chance to let us sit down together and dialogue and you, in your emotional reaction, rejected that offer...You will [regret it] because if my influence and growth and power in America does not diminish and it will not, by the help of God, then what benefit would it be to you not to sit down and dialogue with me when the racial problem is not getting any better..."
Louis Farrakhan, Fox News Sunday interview, 3/30/97. Source: Jewish Virtual Library

That is the question -- just how influential is Louis Farrakhan, the Antisemitic leader of The Nation of Islam?


We know that he is influential enough that the likes of Tamika Mallory, Carmen Perez (msladyjustice1) and Linda Sarsour have no compunction about associating with Farrakhan and praising him.




Farrakhan is influential enough that he got a front row seat at the funeral of Aretha Franklin, along with Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson -- and Bill Clinton.

Farrakhan is influential enough, that while the video of his calling Jews "termites" was banned by Facebook, Twitter continues to allow it:


But if you click on that link to watch the video on YouTube, you see this:




It's hard to understand how when the media claims to be dedicated to rooting out racism and Antisemitism, and people are being banned on social media for less -- Farrakhan roams free and untouched.

An article asking "Who Is Louis Farrakhan and Is He Still Relevant?" presents both sides of the case as to whether Farrakhan is relevant, let alone influential.

Though 20 years ago Farrakhan's Million Man March brought hundreds of thousands of black men to Washington, DC, putting him in the public spotlight, his events today draw thousands. -- and Farrakhan’s 2015 demonstration on the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March was not as large.

The article quotes Jay Tcath, executive vice president of the Jewish United Fund in Chicago, who says that Chicago’s Jewish institutions don’t see Farrakhan's hate as a major threat:
“He has not grown the movement, he has not graduated to a larger venue, he has no public policy agenda, the number of mosques under his domain are not increasing,” Tcath told JTA. “That’s not to diminish his bigotry, but it’s to recognize that of the many challenges our community faces, including anti-Semitism, his brand is not contagious among many others.”But on the other hand, the article quotes Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, who says the fact that Farrakhan can still draw thousands makes him the most popular peddler of hate in the US -- more influential than the likes of Richard Spencer and other white supremacists. After all, for all their publicity, the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, in August drew only 500 people.

The influence of Farrakhan and The Nation of Islam is deceptive:
“Its influence is broader than its individual members. Farrakhan has been sort of marked not only as an anti-Semite for many years, but given a pass by some in the mainstream in ways that others don’t get a pass.”Which puts Farrakhan on the level of Al Sharpton. Journalist Jeff Jacoby notes that despite Sharpton's incitement of hatred and violence in the case of Tawana Brawley, Crown Heights riots and Freddy's Fashion Mart -- the latter two of which led to deaths:
If Sharpton were a white skinhead, he would be a political leper, spurned everywhere but the fringe. But far from being spurned, he is shown much deference. Democrats embrace him. Politicians court him. And journalists report on his comings and goings while politely sidestepping his career as a hatemongering racial hustler.The secret to Farrakhan's success is The Nation of Islam's positive messaging and work within the African-American community. While Farrakhan incites hatred of Jews, he stresses family values and encourages his followers to avoid drugs.

How successful that "positive messaging" is remains unclear or how successful a leader he really is. The fact remains that Farrakhan has to continually fall back on periodically relying on Jew-hatred to rally and unify his flock.

Meanwhile, hatemongers like Farrakhan and Sharpton will continue to wield influence out of proportion to any actual accomplishments, put on a pedestal by the same media that claims to be the guardians of human rights and values in society.


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