Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Israeli Arabs more bullish on Israel than Israeli Jews

The Israel Democracy Institute has a Peace Index which asks a series of questions every month about Israeli attitudes towards the state and some specific timely issues.

This month's results show that Israeli Arabs actually have far more confidence in the strength and future of Israel than Israeli Jews do.

Here are some of the results:

In your opinion, what is Israel’s overall situation today?

"Very good" or "moderately good": Jews 43.7%, Arabs 63%

In your assessment, what will be Israel’s overall situation in the new year that is now beginning?

Better than last year: Jews 22.5%, Arabs 54.4%

How will Israel's situation be in these domains compared to last year?

Military/Security:

Better than last year: Jews 27.4%, Arabs 39.9%

Socioeconomic:

Better than last year: Jews 19.5%, Arabs 42.6%

Political/Diplomatic:

Better than last year: Jews 14.3%, Arabs 42.3%

Disputes between different parts of the public:

Better than last year: Jews 10.2%, Arabs 31.6%

Israeli Arabs are more bullish on Israel's current situation and its future than its Jewish citizens.

Considering how the current Israeli government is portrayed as being a disaster both for the Arab public and for Israel as a whole, this survey shows a much different situation on the ground.

(h/t Yoel)

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10/25 Links: The Funeral of the Oslo Accords; Why Palestians can’t make peace

From Ian:

Middle East’s ‘demons’ now an unstoppable force, writes veteran correspondent

In the closing sentence of “The Age of Jihad: Islamic State and the Great War for the Middle East,” Patrick Cockburn gives a chilling warning to his readers.
“The demons released by this age of chaos and war in the Middle East have become an unstoppable force,” the veteran Irish foreign correspondent writes.
Existential threat is a phrase so overused in the political discourse of the Middle East nowadays, that it often tends to lose value or meaning. But for millions of citizens across Iraq and Syria, according to Cockburn, the term is an extremely frightening and very real prospect.
“The whole area is disintegrating,” says Cockburn, who has worked as a journalist in the Middle East for the past four decades.
“There are multiple reasons for this,” he explains. “Some are oil states. These look powerful, because they’ve got a lot of money. But they are much more fragile than they appear because the money is concentrated on the top.”
Mismanagement of oil revenues is a huge problem for many Middle Eastern states right now, Cockburn believes. Primarily because of the hierarchical structures within governments they helped to create, exacerbating corruption and sectarianism in equal measure.
The journalist cites Iraq as a typical example of a nation state where badly managed oil revenues has resulted in a chaotic failed state.

The Funeral of the Oslo Accords

Despite the unceasing waves of murdering innocent Israeli civilians, Western politicians speak as if Israel were not under attack. The politicians are not interested in hearing what Palestinian leaders say when they call for the ethnic cleansing of Jews.
These Western leaders can well imagine what those consequences would be if the Arabs had their way: genocide. One can only assume they are pleased with that.
In private, some people say that the burial of Shimon Peres was also the burial of the Oslo Accords and of a never-ending "peace process" that brought only war.
Understanding that the economic relations between Israel and Europe could deteriorate, Netanyahu set about negotiating free trade agreements with China, India, South Korea and Japan, and he signed economic and military cooperation agreements with seven African countries also threatened by Islamic terrorism.
Against all odds, Israel is now in a much stronger position than it was even a few years ago.

Palestinians announce year-long campaign against ‘crime’ of Balfour Declaration

Palestinian officials announced a year-long campaign to commemorate 100 years since the “crime” of the Balfour Declaration, official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported Monday.
Activities and events will take place worldwide, will be launched on November 2 and end on November 2, 2017 — the 100-year mark since British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour announced his government’s intention to establish “a national home for the Jewish people” in the Land of Israel.
Signed by Balfour in 1917, the declaration was seen as giving the Zionist movement official recognition and backing on the part of a major power, on the eve of the British conquest of the then-Ottoman territory of Palestine.
Calling the declaration a “colonialist project,” Taysir Khalid, a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), said Monday the new Palestinian effort was intended “to remind the world and particularly Britain that they should face their historic responsibility and to atone for the big crime Britain had committed against the Palestinian people.”
In July the PA said it was preparing a lawsuit against the British government over the 1917 document that paved the way for the creation of the State of Israel.

Chag Sameach! Some historic Simchat Torah flags

Once again I will not be blogging for the next two days because of the last of the season's Jewish holidays, Shmini Atzeret/Simchat Torah.

Here are some historic Simchat Torah flags:

From Russia, featuring Theodor Herzl and Max Nordau, co-founders of the World Zionist Organization. It is fascinating that these staunch secularist Zionists were celebrated at Simchat Torah services - apparently the idea that religious Jews were axiomatically anti-Zionist is quite wrong. (Nordau married a Protestant Christian woman.)

Woodcut Simchat Torah flag, late 19th or early 20th century.

King David celebrating Simchat Torah, Jewish Museum, New York.

Chag sameach!

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A tweet from the head of the Arab Joint List Ayman Odeh, translated:

550 Arab students joined the Technion, 60% of them women! The Technion was once virtually closed to us and this year 25% of the male students and 35% of the new female students are Arab!

Dani Dayan first responded by thanking Odeh for pointing out that Israel doesn't discriminate. Odeh then replied that the Arabs are successful in spite of Israeli discrimination and racism. In other words, all achievements are due to Arabs and all obstacles are due to Jews.

Dayan again responded by pointing out that clearly Israel doesn't practice discrimination, as any statistician would point out that the percentage of Arabs at Technion are way higher than their numbers Israel-wide.

Anet Haskia, a proud Israeli Arab, responded that if Odeh didn't exist he would have to be invented just to perpetuate his racism towards the state.

(h/t Yoel)

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The New York Times Magazine has a skeptical profile of Miri Regev, Israel's right-wing Minister of Culture and Sport, by Ruth Margalit.

The bias is clear, but this episode in the article blows apart the idea that Israel's right is anti-Arab:

One evening, I joined Regev for a Ramadan visit to her Arab supporters at a private home in the northern town of Ma’alot-Tarshiha. It was an airless night. An enlarged print of the Dome of the Rock, the holy site in Jerusalem, hung in the entryway. Every table inside the carpeted house was laden with watermelon wedges, puff pastries and silver carafes of black coffee, even though the fast wouldn’t be broken for another couple of hours. Regev was the guest of honor, and a line of men with their young sons formed to greet her and her aides.

She shook each of their hands, hugging the men she recognized and pinching the boys’ cheeks. “They killed you with this heat, huh?” she said. She turned to one of the men, who wore a white button-down shirt. “You look like a groom today! Come, neshama. Join us.” She glanced at the tables, feigning disbelief. “What’s all this food for if you can’t eat?”

“It’s for you,” the host replied warmly.

The atmosphere was festive, but the gathering itself seemed unlikely, surreal even, considering Regev’s past rebukes of Arab lawmakers — “Betrayers! Terrorists!” she fulminated in 2014 — and the fact that Arab Israelis rarely vote for Likud (the party garnered about 1 percent of the Arab vote in the last election). I was told that the evening’s host was a veteran Likudnik — he referred to Regev as being “like family” — but I wondered how many of the other men present actually voted for her.

Then one of the town’s deputy mayors, a genial lawyer named Ayman Shanati, spoke. “I’m not a man of Likud,” he said. But with Regev, “we are seeing real change and a lot of new projects in the Arab sector.” He praised Regev’s reallocation of funds, which has benefited Arab towns much as it has the peripheria and ultra-Orthodox communities, but complained that his town still didn’t meet certain budget criteria.

Regev nodded. “Write it down,” she told an aide.

...She doesn’t see a disconnect between her radical statements against the Palestinians and her attempt to promote Arab culture or woo Arab Israeli voters, many of whom identify as Palestinian. Arab Israelis want to “raise their children in peace,” she says, while members of the Palestinian leadership “sanctify death.” (Arab municipalities are used to such double speak from government ministers but often decide to swallow the insult in order to maintain working relations.)

Why is it double speak? In the next paragraph we see that it isn't:

She stood up and thanked Shanati. “The cultural revolution that I am leading is to give voice to the Arab sector,” she said at a volume more suitable for a conference hall. “My office is your home. Every problem, every issue.” Yet earlier she ventured a qualifier by way of hyperbole: “Whoever is loyal to the state, we’ll bring him the moon.”

Regev is not being hypocritical - she is being entirely consistent. Arab-Israelis deserve to be treated better and she is working to do so. Arabs - and Jews - who are disloyal do not deserve automatic funding for anti-Israel plays, poetry and films. It isn't a "right" and refusing to fund such art is not censorship.

Similarly, loyal Arabs and Jews whose voices have been stifled by the left-wing Ashkenazic artistic elite should be supported. The state does not have the responsibility to support art that tries to undermine its very foundation, whether it is from the Arab or Jewish sectors.

There is no anti-Arab bias whatsoever, but Margalit is so wedded to the idea that Regev is a racist that she cannot see the distinction that she herself reports.

The only bias here is from the reporter.

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10/23 Links: Jacobson: Let’s be clear – antisemitism is a hate apart; The U.N. – UNbearably UNbalanced

From Ian:

Howard Jacobson: Let’s be clear – antisemitism is a hate apart

To the question posed by the parliamentary committee last week, as to whether Shami Chakrabarti’s soft inquiry into antisemitism in the Labour party was a whitewash for which Corbyn brazenly rewarded her with a peerage, or evidence of a deep-seated reluctance to take the subject seriously, there is unlikely to be a satisfactory answer.
Where people are convinced of their own rectitude – and Corbyn and Chakrabarti belong to the more un-self-questioning wing of British politics – there is no separating what they know from what they don’t want to know.
The Chakrabarti inquiry didn’t fail, it was stillborn. Corbyn has always defended himself against the charge of antisemitism by protesting his freedom from all racisms – an insistence that feels like an evasion and blurs a crucial distinction – and the moment Chakrabarti widened the terms of her inquiry likewise, there was no hope for it.
To assert that antisemitism is unlike other racisms is not to claim a privilege for it. Hating a Jew is no worse than hating anyone else. But while many a prejudice is set off by particular circumstance – the rise in an immigrant population or a locally perceived threat – antisemitism is, as often as not, unprompted, exists outside time and place and doesn’t even require the presence of Jews to explain it. When Marlowe and Shakespeare responded to an appetite for anti-Jewish feeling in Elizabethan England, there had been no Jews in the country for 300 years. Jewishness, for its enemies, is as much an idea as it is anything else.
The part played by Jews in the evolution of Christianity has much to do with this. In the popular imagination, the Jew is the killer of Christ. To a philosopher like Nietzsche, the Jew is culpable not for rejecting Christianity but for inventing it. For cultures unable to make up their minds, whether they are heathen or Christian – remember those demonstrations of Teutonic paganism on the streets of Christian Germany 80 years ago – the Jew fits the bill of villain twice.

Shocked by antisemitism at university

Last night for the first time in my life I felt the genuine threat of antisemitism. The event was a discussion titled “Is criticising Israel antisemitic?” led by Tony Greenstein, the political activist, who was recently suspended from the Labour party. While addressing his suspension he ensured us that there was “absolutely no anti-Semitism in the Labour party”, while also promptly ensuring that we all knew that “Ken Livingstone is a long term friend and I know he doesn’t have a racist bone in his body” - really akin to saying that one can’t be racist if they have a black friend. But unfortunately the problematic nature of the discussion, and the affirmation of antisemitism in Bristol and further through the UK and Europe, was achieved not only through the views of Greenstein himself, but worsened by the booming, loud, obnoxious voices of drunken white men, with no affiliation to Israel personally but whose speech and actions made countering any point impossible.
Ultimately this is not a feminist issue. I went in to the meeting with criticism of the image used on the Facebook group, and the antisemitic (NOT anti-Zionist but specifically antisemitic) connotations of equating Israel/Judaism with the power and wealth of America as well as the use of age old rhetoric of the corrupt, capitalist Jew.
I felt bold enough to make my point in front of these people (having got cocky from 11 likes on my comment on the event’s post on Facebook) but ultimately I was so overwhelmed with the threatening voices of those who were so ardently anti-Zionist, that I don’t believe they would have felt held to account by an accusation of antisemitism, and I found it impossible to speak. And in fact the entire status of antisemitism was countered by the claims of Greenstein that “anti-Semitism is a tool by the right to destabilise the left”.

‘’Jews aren’t an ethnicity and modern antisemitism is a myth’’ — What happened when I went to an event by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Bristol (same event as a first article)

Last night in my home of Bristol I went to a an event entitled ‘’Is criticising Israel antisemitic’’ held by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, they were hosting Tony Greenstein, an activist who had been suspended from the Labour party for calling people ‘zionist rats’. I was one of the first people there and sat and watched as the room filled up. The turnout was more mixed than I expected, at least half the people there must have been around or over the age of fifty. They set up a table at the back with a selection of pamphlets, one of which claimed that the city of Jerusalem was 51% Christian in 1922 before the Israelis ‘expelled’ them (which is untrue). The vibe felt more like a village hall meeting than the hotbed of young radicalism I expected. Nevertheless, the other half were youngsters like me, it was a decent, pleasantly surprising mix.
The event started with a man wearing a fabric white poppy on his blazer introducing us to the event and to Greenstein, he talked about the turn against Palestine activism. He talked about the zionist agenda, how zionists secretly control the media and have brainwashed us all to support Israel. I hate to admit it, but at this point in time, I felt uncomfortable. I know full well that what he was saying wasn’t antisemetic, it was antizionist, but it was delusional. Neonazis believe the same thing, except they say ‘’Jews’’ instead of zionists, it felt like he had just taken their rhetoric and copypasted away the word ‘Jew’ with ‘zionist’ and with very little effort. I felt like I had just entered the world of fringe politics, maybe I had.
Greenstein was introduced to us as an encyclopedic figure who knew everything there was to know on Israel and Palestine. He slouched back in his chair and told us anecdotes and what he believed was ‘going on’. He talked about how Bristol is apparently home to the largest Palestinian diaspora in the United Kingdom, that and its large activist community therefore meant the city has ‘Palestine’ in its heart. That nobody ‘’gets Palestine’’ as much as Bristol. Bristol should be known as a centre of his sort of activism he said. I wondered what ‘’getting Palestine’’ meant.
His central point was that Zionism, and he didn’t specify how he was defining ‘Zionism’, was a form of antisemetism. All Zionism is, for the uninformed, is the belief that Jews should have a national home where they can practice their right to self-determination. But he believed that it was a form of antisemetism, because it assumes that Jews are an ethnicity, in the same way that antisemitism does.

MYOPIA

Some time ago one our participants at Israel Thrives suggested that my focus on Israel, and the rise of Political Islam, is myopic in terms of the forthcoming US presidential election.

I take such criticisms seriously and even though I might not respond immediately - or at all - it does not mean that I am not chewing on the matter.

This writer proposed that there are plenty of other things to consider, beyond the never-ending Arab-Israel conflict, when determining who to vote for. He is right, of course. Americans are coping with a huge range of life-effecting issues that must be addressed through our politics.

So, why focus on an entirely sectarian issue like the Arab-Israel conflict?

There are a number of reasons.

This first is that the focus of Israel Thrives is what it is. If it were a blog devoted to fishing nobody would complain that it is not discussing duck hunting. This is not to say that murdering perfectly innocent ducks isn't a worthwhile endeavor, delicious as they are, but it simply has nothing to do with fishing other than the fact that both are outdoor sports.

What is more troubling are charges of semi-irrelevant sectarianism, because such charges promote indifference of, and dismissiveness toward, the fundamental issue of Political Islam.

DISMISSIVENESS

When we dismiss concerns about Jihadism as racist, anti-Muslim, Islamophobic bigotry (as Pamela Geller might put it) we not only stifle the possibility of discussion through a slander that has ruined peoples lives, but call our own ideological credibility into question.

Jews or no Jews, al-Sharia persecutes millions of people throughout the Middle East and Europe and how we react to that persecution speaks volumes toward our credibility in speaking on other issues concerned with human rights.

1) The Abuse of Non-Jews Under Sharia

The Jews of the Middle East are victims of al-Sharia who refuse to be victims of al-Sharia.

Israel may be The Dhimmi that Got Away, but that doesn't mean that the much larger, hostile, majority-population of the Middle East are not intent on retrieving it.

That is, even as Israel stands strong militarily, technologically, and economically, Israeli-Jewish society lives under a constant threat of Jihadi violence that kills innocent people thereby propelling hatred and fear throughout much of the culture.

Israel, however, has the IDF, but the Christian Copts in Egypt do not.

The Yazidis of Nineveh, Iraq, do not.

Neither do women anywhere in the Arab-Persian-Muslim World who are generally treated - at least, according to contemporary western standards of human decency - as something approaching chattel.

We are talking about hundreds of millions of people, almost all of whom are non-Jewish, who live under medieval systems of jurisprudence derived from Islamic primary sources. We know that in many parts of the Islamic world, such as Saudi Arabia, they are still hacking at body parts as a form of Holy Justice.

In the Quran, Surah 5:33, we read that one such punishment takes the form of chopping off one foot and one hand from opposite sides of the individual's body and then, presumably, leaving that person to simply writhe to death in the sand.

One can only wonder if that particularly evil form of "justice" is still practiced in Riyadh today.

2) The Maintenance of Ideological Credibility

How we respond to the issue of rising Political Islam is, or should be, an expression of our political ideologies.

If we claim to stand for social justice then we have an obligation to stand up for women in the Middle East, Gay people in the Middle East, and all non-Muslim peoples living under al-Sharia. And it must be said that the greatest victims, by far, of the Jihadi trend are Muslims, themselves.

If we fail to speak out definitively against Political Islam then we cannot claim the mantle of social justice or universal human rights and, therefore, any claims that we make along such lines can be airily dismissed, with the wave of a hand, as hypocrisy.

That is, if we claim to stand for women's rights, but cannot bring ourselves to vocally and consistently condemn practices like burying condemned women up to their shoulders in preparation for a proper stoning in Iran, then we have no right to claim to stand for women's rights.

If we claim to stand for GBLTQ rights, but cannot bring ourselves to vocally and consistently condemn the execution of Gay people under al-Sharia, then we have no business claiming to be pro-Gay.

If we claim to stand for secular democratic principles in western lands, but have no problem with dual and, thus, unequal legal systems in European countries, then our claims to stand for secular democratic principles are precarious, at best.

Finally, for those who think that standing for universal human rights is inconsistent with being pro-Israel, then I recommend that one read more deeply into the history of the Jewish people under thirteen centuries of Islamic dominance in the Middle East, prior to World War I.

Thirteen hundred years of second and third-class non-citizenship under the boot of imperial Islam was quite enough for the Jewish people, and all other non-Muslims, living in the Middle East.

One cannot understand the never-ending conflict if one refuses to place it into its larger historical and geographic context.

Martin Gilbert's, In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands (2010, Yale University Press) is a good place to start.

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

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UN terrorism "expert" absurdly claims that ISIS doesn't use refugees to launch attacks

Ben Emmerson, UN Special Rapporteur on counter terrorism and human rights, claimed on October 21 at a UN meeting, " There is no evidence that terrorist groups take advantage of refugee flows to carry out acts of terrorism." As we show, this is quite untrue.

This video was conceived by Anne Bayefsky of Human Rights Voices, and produced by me. Anne does a stellar job actually watching what the UN is doing and exposing its hypocrisy and lies.

Incidentally, based on the video, there were literally five people in the audience during his speech.

(UPDATE: It was a press conference, and reporters often don't bother showing up because they can see the conference on live webcam.)

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UNESCO and my Etrog box

A few years ago, I bought a leather Etrog box - used during the holiday of Sukkot that ends today- in Hebron.

It looks like this:

The words are a paraphrase from a Midrash written before 500 CE:

אמר ר′ יודן: שלושה מקומות אין אומות העולם יכולות להונות את ישראל ולומר להם גזולים הם בידכם, ואלו הן: מערת המכפלה וקבורתו של יוסף ובית-המקדש

R. Yudin says: In three places the nations of the world cannot taunt Israel and say that they stole them from their hands, and they are: the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the burial place of Joseph and the Holy Temple.

In all three cases, the Torah records that the sites were publicly paid for.

According to UNESCO, however, the Temple Mount is exclusively Muslim, the Tomb of the Patriarchs is primarily Muslim and Joseph's Tomb has little to do with Judaism.

The Arab world, of course, deny any Jewish connection to any of those sites, as well as for Rachel's Tomb and other Jewish holy sites. While most towns in the region retain their Biblical names, for these three places these sites are in have been renamed "al-Khalil" instead of Hebron, Nablus instead of Shechem, and Al Quds instead of Jerusalem.

The very three places that Jews have always known belong to them are the ones that the world claims to be exclusively Arab and Muslim.

The irony is too bitter for words.

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Why won't the Left quote the actual words of Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour?

+972 publishes a call by 200 Israeli academics to release Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour from house arrest:

On October 11, 2015, Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour was arrested by Israeli police during a night raid on her home in the village Al-Reineh, near Nazareth. On November 2, 2015, an Israeli court indicted her for incitement to violence. At the center of the indictment was a poem Tatour wrote in protest of the killing of Muhammad Abu Khdeir, Hadeel al-Shalamon, and members of the Dawabshe family in Duma. The indictment cites the full translation of the song, which was edited by an officer who has no prior experience in translation or poetry. Even according to the translation — which is fully of inaccuracies, most of them giving the poem an extremist tone — there is a call to resist the occupation, but there is no incitement to violence.

Previously, +972 reported about the story:

The main clause of her indictment was based on a poem that she had allegedly posted on YouTube under the title: “Qawem ya sha’abi, qawemhum” (Resist my people, resist them). Another main clause in the indictment relates to a news item, cited in a post on Tatour’s Facebook page, according to which “The Islamic Jihad movement calls for continuing the Intifada all over the [West] Bank…” The same post calls for a “comprehensive intifada.”

Their initial post about the arrest likewise didn't actually quote the poem, nor linked to her Facebook page, allowing people to verify the facts for themselves. Instead, +972 claimed that the translation of the poem was incorrect - without saying what the actual translation was.

However, an accurate translation of her poem is available, translated by an Arab poet. I published excerpts in August, but the +972 editors could have found it months beforehand.

And her poem called for ethnically cleansing Jews from the Jewish homeland:

Resist, my people, resist them.In Jerusalem, I dressed my wounds and breathed my sorrowsAnd carried the soul in my palmFor an Arab Palestine.I will not succumb to the “peaceful solution,”Never lower my flagsUntil I evict them from my land.
I cast them aside for a coming time.Resist, my people, resist them.Resist the settler’s robberyAnd follow the caravan of martyrs.
Resist, my people, resist them.Resist, my people, resist them.

Whether she explicitly advocated violence in the words of the poem are debatable. But the the video that she created to publicize the poem includes numerous romantic scenes of Palestinians throwing rocks and setting fires - you know, violence:

It is reasonable to question whether Tatour should be arrested for her poetry advocating ethnic cleansing and her video making it clear that she supports violence. But her supporters who claim that she did neither are doing everything they can to stop people from finding out the truth on their own about what she wrote.

If they are so supportive of Tatour, they should not fear publicizing her words.

Clearly, the +972 editors and Tatour's other defenders at Mondoweiss, Salon, Jewish Voice for Peace and elsewhere want to ensure that their readers only see their own pre-digested version of the truth, and not reality.

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10/22 Links: Amnesty International now a terrorists' rights organization; Vox Docs Reinvents History, Legitimizes Bigotry

From Ian:

The Incitement Must End

On Sunday October 9 2016, after a busy day with family I sat down to catch up with the events of the day across the world. I’ve always been interested in the world around me and given my job I feel it’s my duty to be as informed as possible about events in Israel and the wider Middle East.
My heart sunk when I read that there had been a terrorist shooting in Jerusalem, reminding me of how I felt when I was last in Israel and heard about the Sarona Market attacks. Since October 2015 a wave of terror has hit Israel, with this infographic from BICOM providing the details of the terrorism Israel has faced.
As highlighted by the infographic many Israelis have been killed and injured, just because they are Israelis. Palestinian terrorists are brought up on a diet of hating Israelis, and in many cases, hating Jews. That motivation led to the murder of two Israelis in Jerusalem on October 9 2016.
We can often become desensitised to terrorist attacks and forget that behind every person murdered is a personal story. Therefore, I’ve written below about those who died in Jerusalem.

Amnesty International now a terrorists' rights organization

Popular Social Media Channel Jumps in on the Worldwide Anti-Semitism Act

Anti-Semitism continues to rage worldwide. YouTube is now joining the vindictive party.
Israel National News reported this week that the popular social media channel, owned by YouTube, has placed 21 videos of nonprofit educational organization "Prager University," run by conservative talk-show host Dennis Prager, on "restricted mode." Among these are three pro-Israel videos relating to the founding of Israel, the IDF and Palestinian refugees.
Restricted mode allows guardians to protect children from objectionable content by filtering out "restricted" videos in Youtube searches. "PragerU" videos are designed to be viewed by all ages.
Israel National News reports that "One of the restricted PragerU Israel-related videos titled 'Why are There Still Palestinian Refugees?' explains that while Jewish refugees from Arab countries were quickly absorbed into Israel, Arab countries have intentionally refrained from absorbing Palestinian refugees so as to continue to use the Palestinians as a political tool."
The second video, titled "The World's Most Moral Army," features retired British general Richard Kemp explaining the uniqueness of the Israeli army in its intense care not to injure innocent civilians on the battlefield.
The third video, titled "Israel's Legal Founding," features world-renowned attorney Alan Dershowitz relating how Israel was founded "step by legal step."

10/21 Links Pt2: Murray: The Party of Left-Wing Anti-Semitism; Dave Rich examines ‘The Left’s Jewish problem’

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: The Party of Left-Wing Anti-Semitism

Readers depressed at the state of U.S. politics can console themselves with the knowledge that however bad off their party might be, it’s not Britain’s Labour. The party of Clement Atlee, Harold Wilson, and Tony Blair now finds itself in the worst crisis in its 116-year history. It has not won a general election for a decade. Its advocacy of mass immigration and the European Union has alienated it from much of its voter base. And worse, it has lost whatever halo-advantage it once had by becoming irrevocably tainted with what was once one of the greatest sins of European civilization. Over the last 15 years, it became increasingly clear that anti-Semitism, which had previously been expected to surface only on the political right in Britain, had traveled around the political circle and snuck up behind the political left. And now it has taken over the Labour Party.
Surveying the horrifying news from September’s Labour Party conference, one would have been forgiven for thinking that the biggest question facing Britain is a Jewish one. The place of Jews in the party and in Great Britain altogether seemed to dominate the proceedings. Activists at a “Momentum” grassroots event—Momentum being the group created to promote the leadership of the radical back-bencher Jeremy Corbyn, who won Labour’s top slot in 2015—handed out leaflets calling for the Jewish Labour Movement to be disbanded because its members represented “a foreign power.” Ruth Smeeth, a Jewish member of parliament, found it necessary to bring a bodyguard to protect her from potentially violent anti-Semitic members of her own party. On the main stage of the conference, a Jewish Labour Movement member was heckled from the floor as he was describing how let down many Jews in the party feel. Lord Mitchell, a Jewish peer, resigned from the party. His co-religionists in Labour now find themselves debating whether to stay and fight or declare the party a lost cause. It is not an easy choice.
The story of the takeover of the Labour Party by forces aligned with naked anti-Semitism begins with the aftermath of September 11 and the run-up to the Iraq war. In September 2002, three Jewish leftists who marched in a Stop the War demonstration described in a letter to the Guardian how they became increasingly uncomfortable with the “anti-Israel and anti-Jewish imagery” of their comrades: “Where does that leave us,” the trio wrote, “as Jews who totally oppose the war in Iraq but felt hostility or indifference from many of our fellow marchers?” The open link between leftist politics and the defenders of anti-Semitic terror in the Middle East was made clear by the way that the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament, a Cold War–era radical leftist group, allied itself with the Muslim Brotherhood to form the Stop the War coalition, one of whose leaders was Jeremy Corbyn.

Video: Dave Rich examines ‘The Left’s Jewish problem’

Dave Rich is deputy director of communications at the Community Security Trust (CST), and is the author of a timely new book titled The Left’s Jewish Problem: Jeremy Corbyn, Israel and Antisemitism.
The following is a short clip from Rich’s talk at an Oct. 20th Fathom Forum on: Antisemitism and Labour: where has this crisis come from, how has it impacted the UK Jewish community, what must the party do now to put things right?
Dave Rich | ‘The Left's Jewish problem’

David Collier: The story of a Jewish boy called Haim

Today Haim is a successful and happy adult. If we were to make a list of what constitutes success, Haim would score highly in almost every single one. Yet my word, this Jewish lad has enemies. In a sickening turn of events, some act as if Haim’s life is somehow up for debate. There are actually people who publicly suggest they want Haim killed.
Not the Chinese kid or the boy from Pakistan. Not the Russian or the South African, nor the Brit or the African. They see the little Jewish kid, and it is *only* him they want ‘removed’.
These people are the modern day anti-Zionists.
The Jewish umbrella
This letter in the Guardian is a classic example of twisted logic.
In 1903 the British government offered the early Zionist movement an isolated area of what is now Kenya for a national home for the Jews, a proposal that split the Zionists into opposing camps. One favoured acceptance, but the other insisted that a Jewish homeland, and future Jewish state, could only be in the historic homeland in Palestine. The second camp won, and the proposal was refused. I am one of those who regrets that rejection. Does this make me a Jewish antisemite?
Apparently, because some people opposed a theory in 1903, objecting to today’s reality somehow amounts to the same thing. The Independent are another that throw this false premise around at will.
Radical left and Islamic groups find and use Jewish people willing to promote the smear and elevate them to ‘guru’ status. Ilan Pappe, Max Blumenthal, Ronnie Barkan are a few examples. In the UK, people like Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi are readily sought out by radio stations and newspapers to push this insane idea. As about 90% of Jewish people in the UK see Israel as forming part of their Jewish identity, the tiny minority of ‘opposites’ are rolled out to provide an umbrella against arguments of antisemitism. As if a few Lord Haw Haw‘s could represent the people of Britain in 1940.
It is absurd of course. Whatever theoretical discussions one may have had 80 years ago, it is patently absurd to suggest that anti-Zionism of the 1930’s is the same as opposing Israel today. Israel is not a theoretical discussion; Israel is a vibrant democratic state with a population of over 8 million.
And anti-Zionism TODAY means destroying Israel. It means ignoring the democratic will of 8 million people. Anti-Zionism does not mean having issues with Israeli actions, with Israeli settlements, with Israeli policy. It means taking the only liberal democracy in the Middle East and destroying it.
Which leads to another chronic deception. The people who say criticism of Israel is not antisemitism Of course it isn’t. Criticism of Israel is legitimate, but these anti-Zionists do not want to criticise Israel, they wish to destroy the Jewish nation.