The Jordanian Construction Contractors Association (JCCA) will not compete for any tenders floated by the government to build a gas pipeline to bring gas from Israel into the Kingdom, Ahmad Yacoub, the syndicate’s president, said on Tuesday.
The association, which groups some 3,000 construction contractors firms, sent letters to its members stating its position on the project and demanding them not to participate in any tenders to build the pipeline, he said on Tuesday.
"We consider taking part in building the gas pipeline as betrayal to all those who died defending Palestine…. We will not support or be part of any project that supports the Zionist entity," Yacoub said in a phone interview with The Jordan Times.
In September 2016, the National Electric Power Company (NEPCO) signed a 15-year agreement with Noble Energy, a Houston-based company that holds the largest share in the Israeli Leviathan Gas Field, to purchase $10 billion worth of natural gas supplies.
The government then said it would import 250-300 million cubic feet of natural gas per day from Noble Energy, which is expected to save around JD700 million annually of the country’s energy bill.
I don't know how much control this association has over its members.
Historically, Arabs who dared to violate boycotts of Israel/Jewish businesses were in danger of being attacked themselves.
Obviously, the Jordanian government needs this natural gas and will not just give up because of this statement.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. The pipeline will be laid in the end but it will be interesting to see exactly who does it.
But there is one easy way to make sure that lots of Jordanian companies bid on this lucrative job despite the demand of the JCCA: Have Israeli construction firms bid for the job!
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Last week, a petition was started in France, signed by major personalities like Philippe Val , the former director of "Charlie Hebdo", the former President of the Republic Nicolas Sarkozy, three former prime ministers, the former mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoe, Gerard Depardieu, Charles Aznavour, Bernard-Henri Lévy and many other famous personalities.
In a statement published in Le Figaro newspaper, signatories highlight the “quiet ethnic purging” driven by rising Islamist radicalism, especially in working class neighbourhoods.
“In our recent history, 11 Jews have been murdered – and some tortured – because they were Jews, by radical Islamists.” This refers to the assassination of Ilan Halimi in 2006, the killing of Jewish schoolchildren and their teachers in Toulouse in 2012, the attack on Hyper Cacher in 2015, Sarah Halimi’s death in Paris in 2017, and, most recently, the murder of Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll in Paris.
Ms Knoll, 85, was stabbed 11 times by the perpetrators before setting her body on fire. Her murder prompted shock and outrage and 30,000 people joined a march in her memory.
“French Jews are 25 times more likely to be attacked by Muslims than their fellow Frenchmen,” the petition points out. “Ten per cent of the Jewish citizens of Ile de France [Metropolitan Paris] – that is, about 50,000 people – were recently forced to move because they were no longer safe in some towns and because their children could not frequent the public school of the Republic any longer.”
Signatories demand "that the fight against this democratic bankruptcy of antisemitism become a national cause before it is too late. Before France is no longer France.”
If there is a positive consequence that can be granted to the manifesto "against the new anti-Semitism" published by Le Parisien and signed by three hundred artistic, political and intellectual personalities, it is to have managed to temporarily unite the Muslim community. In a statement, Abdallah Zekri, president of the National Observatory against Islamophobia and also general delegate of the CFCM, writes that "politicians on the decline and in need of media recognition found in Islam and Muslims in France their new scapegoat." He denounced a debate as "nauseating and fatal" and believes that "it is time they (the signatories) pull themselves together and stop ascribing all evil to Islam and Muslims." Rector of the Great Mosque of Bordeaux, Tareq Oubrou believes that "to attribute anti-Semitism to Islam is almost a blasphemy, since two-thirds of the prophets of the Koran are Jews. When, in the petition, Philippe Val assures that the Koran "calls for the murder of Jews and Christians," it is according to Rector Gironde "a monumental error, and of an incredible violence." For him, he explains on Franceinfo , "attributing antisemitism to any 'Quranic genetics' is a monumental intellectual error. " Abdallah Zekri indicates that it is "time for the politicians to respect the law of 1905 establishing the separation between the State and the Cults and do not interfere in any way in the management of the Muslim religion. " On the side of the French Council of Muslim worship, President Ahmet Ogras says that "this platform is nonsense, an off-topic. He insists that "no one has the monopoly of being the oppressed or the victim" and denounces the use of the term "ethnic cleansing" by Philippe Val.
Here's what the petition said about ethnic cleansing:
. In our recent history, eleven Jews have been murdered - and some tortured - because they are Jews, by radical Islamists. However, the denunciation of Islamophobia - which is not anti-Arab racism to fight - conceals the figures of the Ministry of the Interior: the French Jews are 25 times more likely to be attacked than their fellow Muslims. 10% of the Jewish citizens of Ile-de-France - that is to say about 50,000 people - were recently forced to move because they were no longer safe in some cities and because their children could no longer attend the school of the Republic more. This is a low-level ethnic cleansing in the country of Emile Zola and Clemenceau. Why this silence ? Because Islamist radicalization - and the anti-Semitism it conveys - is considered exclusively by some of the French elites as the expression of a social revolt..... Because the old anti-Semitism of the far right, adds the anti-Semitism of a part of the radical left that found in anti-Zionism the alibi to transform the executioners of the Jews as victims of society. Because electoral baseness calculates that the Muslim vote is ten times higher than the Jewish vote .
"Jews are our cousins, we are also Semites," says Abdallah Zekri, Secretary General French Council of Muslim Worship (CFCM). "I strongly condemn this platform," says the one who is also president of the National Observatory against Islamophobia: "Making the connection between Muslims and anti-Semitism is unacceptable." "The Muslim signatories who signed are self-proclaimed imams! They are not recognized by the Muslim community, they do not have a mosque, they do not preach. [...] They are what I call, and I will be strong in my terms, 'service Arabs' to please their masters.
Muslims are especially upset at part of the petition that calls to have Muslim leaders distance themselves from certain antisemitic and anti-Christian verses as "obsolete." However,
Mohamed Guerroumi, a practicing Muslim and leader of interreligious dialogue in Nantes, who signed the manifesto, explains in Le Figaro that "we must set the record straight and review the exegesis of the Qur'an, because it is a question of an interpretation dating back to the 9th century ". "Surat 9 is very violent, Jews or unbelievers being considered enemies of Muslims. This is what is taught at the moment to young Muslims in France. "
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In a popular Syrian news group on Facebook, a Syrian activist recently shared a video of Ahed Tamimi, the Palestinian teenager in jail for slapping an Israeli soldier. Across the world, Tamimi has become a cause celebré, a symbol of the Palestinian resistance to Israel’s occupation. But when the activist posted the Amnesty International video about Israel’s policy of detaining children and Tamimi in particular, most of the group’s members — all of them Syrian — reacted dismissively.
“They are better off than us by far, and prisoners are better off compared to how they are treated by Assad’s army and even the revolutionary factions [rebels],” wrote one Syrian from Lattakia.
“If the Syrian army was like the Israeli army, no one would have been displaced from their home,” another commentator, from Daraa, wrote. “If [Tamimi] had raised her head in front of a Syrian soldier, he would have field executed her.”
Far from outliers, these comments exemplify a changing reality among Syrians. The extreme levels of brutality meted out by the Assad regime and its allies against civilians in Syria have improved the image of the IDF by comparison across the Arab world.
On April 17, 2018, when Palestinians mark Prisoner’s Day, a popular Syrian opposition website decided to mark the occasion by posting an infographic comparing Israeli prisons and those of the Assad regime.
The infographic shows that while 7,000 Palestinians are incarcerated in Israel, 220,000 Syrians are held in regime detention facilities. According to the infographic, 210 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons since 1967, while 65,000 Syrians have died in regime detention over the past seven years.
Such irreverence of Palestinian suffering by an Arab media outlet would have been unimaginable a few years ago.
The Trump administration is seeking the dismissal of a suit alleging the nonprofit helmed by former president Jimmy Carter has used taxpayer funding to provide material support to international terrorist groups, including Hamas.
The Zionist Advocacy Center, which filed the recently unsealed suit in 2015, alleges the Carter Center received more than $30 million in taxpayer grants while violating federal statutes barring it from using the cash to provide material support to terror groups.
The plaintiffs maintain the Carter Center has violated the law by hosting designated terrorists at is facilities, as well as by providing various forms of assistance to the Palestinian terror group Hamas and other known terror entities, according to recently unsealed court documents.
The Department of Justice surprised pro-Israel insiders recently when it moved to have the case dismissed on the grounds it is too expensive to prosecute, according to court filings the administration had requested remain secret.
A hearing on the dismissal motion will occur on April 25, though legal experts handling the case are hoping to convince the DOJ to reverse its opinion beforehand, according to those familiar with the proceedings.
Evidence presented in the case purports to show the Carter Center accepted millions in government grants while falsely certifying it was not violating prohibitions on providing material support to terror groups, which include a broad range of factors including lodgings, expert advice, and other types of support.
Former President Carter's ongoing and well-documented interactions with Hamas and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) are tantamount to material support for terror groups, the suit alleges citing evidence Carter hosted these officials at his Center's offices.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has denounced a “different type of anti-Semitism” that has taken root in her country.
She also vowed to do everything possible to ensure the safety of Jews in Germany.
“We have refugees now, for example, or people of Arab origin, who bring a different type of anti-Semitism into the country,” Merkel said in an interview with Israel’s Channel 10. “But unfortunately, anti-Semitism existed before this.”
Her comments follow an attack targeting two men wearing kippahs that made headlines across Germany last week.
One of the victims, a 21-year-old Israeli, was hit with a belt, police say. A video of the incident was posted on Facebook showed the attacker repeatedly shouting “Yahudi,” the Arabic word for “Jew.”
A suspect turned himself in to police on Friday. A spokesperson for Berlin Police told NBC News that he is a 19-year-old Syrian refugee.
(The victim of the beating turns out to have been an Israeli Arab, wanting to find out if Jews really are in danger walking around the streets of German cities.)
Arabic media reported this story pretty straight. But the headline in several newspapers was bizarre. "Merkel flirts with German Jews at the expense of Arabs "
The headline, copied from site to site, reveals a lot. It shows that mainstream Arabs will be on the side of the Arab attackers of Jews rather than the victims. It shows that Arabs still have the zero-sum mentality that says that if something is good for the Jews, then it must be bad for them. And the corollary to that is that Arab do not distinguish between Jews and Israelis. It also seems to indicate the idea that a politician would only pretend to be against antisemitism in order to pander to Jews.
You can learn a lot from a headline...
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The editor of Ma'an, Dr. Nasser al Laham, considered a moderate, independent publication, has gone completely off the rails in his editorial about Israel's 70th birthday.
Just the first paragraph could keep psychiatrists busy for months:
Thousands of statements made by the leaders of the Zionist movements these days can be summed up in one sentence: "Israel will not collapse and the Jews will not flee to Europe again)." In fact, this denial confirms to the world that Israel is still liable to collapse and that its Jews will flee to their hometowns in Europe again eventually.
Al-Laham is exposing his own wishful thinking, that the Jews will for some reason flee to Europe. (One wonders what will happen to all the Sephardic Jews, American Jews and Ethiopian Jews.)
The rest of the column is even more unhinged and reveals even more about where al-Laham's mind is:
In the speeches and statements of the leaders of the Zionist parties, they came to enumerate the "achievements" of Israel and their superiority over the Arab countries; as Israel depends on marketing methods to talk about its goods. Those who see the picture from afar do not see in the celebrations of the occupation the 70th anniversary as a celebration of independence. It looks like marketing a condom, a new washing detergent, or a Viagra pill.
Why exactly do two of his examples of Israel's marketing have to do with penises? Calling Dr. Freud!
The editor then goes on to list some insane lies that he says Israel has accomplished over 70 years, like killing hundreds of thousands of people, displacing millions of refugees, the destruction of entire countries, and causing losses of $70 trillion.
Yes, $70 trillion.
In his list of Zionist crimes, he includes this beauty:
- The destruction of the Palestinian society through a geopolitical division, which made it turn from being one of the most important Arab countries in terms of progress, science and civilization to a people of refugees.
Yes, the fictional nation of Palestine was one of the most important Arab nations, contributing so much to culture and science and civilization, until Israel destroyed it.
Perhaps the world should outlaw whatever medication he is taking.
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In the run-up to this week’s 70th anniversary of Israel’s independence, Israeli Defense Forces chief of Staff General Gabi Eisenkot pronounced the country “invincible.”
This was a bold statement. The country faces a growing threat from Iran and its puppets in Lebanon and Gaza, and the possibility of a clash with Russia over Syria. And yet, few Israelis have disagreed with this assessment.
There is mood of confidence here, and its origin lies in a doctrine of strategic defense that has proven itself over nearly a century of intermittent warfare.
That doctrine was first enunciated in an article in 1923 entitled “The Iron Wall.” Its author was Ze’ev Jabotinsky, a visionary Zionist leader and the ideological father of the Likud.
At the time of its publication, the Jews of Palestine were a small, embattled minority. Only three years had passed since the first Arab riots in Jerusalem against them. The Jewish community’s socialist leaders hoped they could appease Arab enmity by offering economic cooperation, progress and prosperity.
Jabotinsky derided this as childish, and insulting to the Arabs, who would not barter away their homeland for more bread or modern railroads. They would, he said, resist while they had a spark of hope of preventing a Jewish state.
“There is only one thing the Zionists want, and that is the one thing the Arabs do not want,” he wrote. Nothing short of abandoning the Zionist project would placate Arab hostility and violence. If the Jews wanted to remain, they would have to come to terms with a harsh reality: This was a zero-sum game. There could be no peace until the Arabs accepted Israel’s right to exist.
Jabotinsky saw that the Arabs (in Palestine and beyond) were far too numerous to be defeated in a single decisive war. The Jews needed to erect an iron wall of self-defense and deterrence -- a metaphorical wall built of Jewish determination, immigration, material progress, strong democratic institutions and a willingness to fight. Gradually, the enemy would be forced to conclude that this wall could not be breached.
The Palestinian Authority and Abbas' Fatah continue their terror role modeling, presenting terrorist murderers as heroes to Palestinian youth. This month, 600 high school students belonging to Fatah's Shabiba youth movement in Jenin are participating in the "Martyr Abu Jihad Camp." The camp is held at a facility of the PA National Security Forces:
"The Fatah Movement's Jenin branch, in cooperation with [Fatah's] Jenin region leadership, held the third coexistence camp under the title Martyr Abu Jihad Camp, and this was at the [PA] National Security [Forces] camp Horsh Al-Saada. The camp will last for an entire month, three days a week, and 600 students from the [Fatah] High School Shabiba will participate in it." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 7, 2018]
The PA Ministry of Education emphasized the importance of the terrorist's heritage to students in all PA schools via school radio:
"Director-General of Student Activities and Spokesman of the [PA] Ministry [of Education] Sadeq Al-Khadour said that as part of the activities in the schools, broadcasts of the radio stations in the schools were dedicated to talking about the prisoners in the occupation's prisons and the life of Martyr Khalil Al-Wazir." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 18, 2018]
Abu Jihad (Khalil Al-Wazir) was a founder of Fatah and deputy to Yasser Arafat. He headed the PLO terror organization's military wing and also planned many deadly Fatah terror attacks in the 1960's - 1980's. These attacks, in which a total of 125 Israelis were murdered, included the most lethal in Israeli history - the hijacking of a bus and murder of 37 civilians, 12 of them children.
On the occasion of the anniversary of Abu Jihad's so-called "Martyrdom," the PA, Fatah, and Fatah's Bethlehem branch in particular made a point of glorifying the arch-terrorist as a great heroic Palestinian leader, vowing to remain "loyal" to his "path."
A new campaign launched by the Zionist organization Im Tirtzu is calling on the Israeli government to end all cooperation with the New Israel Fund.
The campaign will see billboards titled “Ridding Israel of the NIF” displayed throughout the country, the first of which, a 100-foot sign, was displayed this morning on Tel-Aviv’s Ayalon Highway.
The billboard depicts NIF President Talia Sasson as harming IDF soldiers, and states that the NIF has transferred over 310 million NIS ($87 million) to “activities against IDF soldiers and the State of Israel.”
According to Im Tirtzu, the campaign’s goal is to expose the NIF as a foreign political organization operating as a political opposition within Israel against the government and IDF, while engaging in anti-Israel lawfare by means of its grantees in the Supreme Court.
At the same time, Im Tirtzu published a new position paper detailing what it dubs the NIF’s M.O. in wiping Israel of the map. The position paper, titled “The Roadmap to Israel’s Destruction,” comes in the form of an Israeli map and accuses the NIF and its grantees of exploiting various issues in the country in order to accuse Israel of perpetrating war crimes, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and other crimes against humanity.
The report also notes how many NIF grantees receive extensive funding from European governments, the European Union and United Nations.
Someone limited to just the media coverage of the "Gaza March," could be forgiven for thinking that the issue of the IDF's Rules of Engagement (RoI) during those riots is e a simple matter of math - most of the Gazans rioting at Israel's border are civilians, so that should be the guiding rule for Israel's response.
The report presents scenarios, along with the differing opinions of experts on how force should be used. The expert opinions are presented anonymously.
Flag of the ICRC
One of the case studies presented is "Riots in armed conflict situations":
In the context of a non-international armed conflict, a demonstration to protest against the governments’ repression of the insurgency takes place. More than a hundred people gather on the main street of the capital, where government troop are based. Initially, the protest is peaceful. After some attempts by the government army to disperse the crowd (e.g. with a loudspeaker), the crowd becomes more aggressive and starts to throw rocks at the soldiers. At the same time, fighters take advantage of the riot and attack the soldiers with rifles. Some contend that fighters instrumentalized the population and incited it to demonstrate in order to hide in the crowd and to conduct an attack.
This roughly corresponds to the situation Israel is facing now.
According to the report, as long as the actions of the civilians do not cross the required threshold of harm, the "law enforcement" paradigm applies as opposed to "conduct of hostilities." The vast majorities of experts believed that it was best to combine the two paradigms into a parallel approach: apply law enforcement to the civilians and conduct of hostilities to the fighters.
Sounds so simple - even a journalist could have come up with it.
But keep in mind that according to those ICRC experts, incidental damage among the civilians would not be prohibited -- as long as the force used is not excessive in relation to the direct military advantage that is anticipated. In other words, as long as disproportionate force is not used.
And we already know what a simple issue that is.
Outside of that, rioting civilians, unlike fighters, cannot be considered to be directly participating in hostilities. Therefore the rioting civilians cannot be targeted using the "conduct of hostilities" paradigm and under International Humanitarian Law, the presence of fighters does not change the overall civilian nature of the group. Again, it sounds straightforward.
However, according to footnote 70 of the report:
One expert expressed the view however that, in some wholly exceptional cases, rioting civilians can be considered as directly participating in hostilities if they are performing acts of violence which are specifically designed to harm directly the State having to face the riot in support of its enemy. This would be the case, for example, if a riot is led by the enemy in order to destroy the military equipment of the State’s armed forces or in order to divert attention of the armed forces and conduct a military operation in a nearby village. In this exceptional situation, the rioters are actually civilians directly participating in hostilities and become targetable under a conduct of hostilities paradigm.
According to this opinion, the rioting civilians can be considered to be directly participating in hostilities:
if it is determined that a riot has as its goal to conduct a military operation in a nearby village
if the violence is designed to harm the State facing the riots.
The first case arguably is the current case of the Gaza riots, where one of the clear goals is to infiltrate the border fence...
...and if possible reach the Israeli communities nearby.
Source: IDF on Twitter
The second case describes the latest attempts to use kites to carry Molotov cocktails across the border and set fires in Israel.
Kite with Molotov cocktail being flown from Gaza into Israel
In such a situation, according to this opinion, because the civilians are directly participating in hostilities, the paradigm of "conduct of hostilities" and not law enforcement applies - and those civilians taking those steps can be targeted.
Another wrinkle is that according to International Law, as quoted in the report, the presence of civilians does not provide carte blanche for the entire group to act with impunity: “[t]he presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations.”
Instead, if rioting civilians commit acts of violence, then force may be used under "law enforcement" paradigm, which would allow an escalation of force.
On top of all that, the experts who preferred to combine both paradigms -- applying the rules of law enforcement to civilians and of war to fighters -- found their own solution to be impractical:
How could soldiers distinguish between fighters (who might not distinguish themselves), civilians directly participating in hostilities and rioters who are not directly participating in hostilities?
How could soldiers be expected to apply two different paradigms at the same time and place?
Moreover, in most situations of armed conflicts, belligerents may not have snipers able to target surgically fighters among the crowd and thus targeting them may cause excessive incidental civilian losses in violation of IHL.
Also, situations of civilian unrest in the context of an armed conflict can be highly volatile and can turn into actual armed clashes amounting to hostilities.
And then there is the issue of self-defense.
Thus, even if a fighter not using lethal force could be identified and targeted, armed forces would be instructed not to do so because of the risk to cause excessive incidental civilian losses. Instead, if the fighter is using force, he might be targeted under self-defence rules, by a sniper for example
These are just a few of the variables involved, according to the ICRC report.
"The purpose of IHL is to strike a balance between military necessity and humanitarian concerns during an armed conflict. Rules that ignore legitimate military needs are not likely to be sustainable."
The idea that International Law looks out for military necessity, and not only humanitarian rights, is lost on journalists and those who freely volunteer their personal opinion of international law as a club to beat the IDF whenever a military situation arises.
The ICRC report illustrates that the issues are not nearly as simple and straightforward as the media has been presenting it. Maybe the proposed probe will help to further clarification of the issues involved.
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These photos are from Palestine Today showing a large group of Gazans, including many children, cutting large section of the barbed wire fence in Gaza, which would be the inner fence.
This happened on Monday, according to the photo essay, not during the weekly Friday riots.
Judging from the photos, they dismantled several meters of fence and dragged it back to the tents set up for the staging of the Friday riots.
The photos show no indication of any IDF response.
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Here's another gem from the PCPSR poll taken of Palestinians last month.
Q: If reaching a peace agreement that leads to the creation of a Palestinian state side by side with the state of Israel requires allowing Israeli Jews to live in the Palestinian state either as citizens or as residents while enjoying the same rights and duties enjoyed by Palestinian Christians and Muslims, would by support or oppose that?
62.6% oppose equal rights for Jewish citizens in a Palestinian state, and only 30.6% support.
Even though the question calls them "Israeli Jews," they are obviously no longer Israeli if they are citizens, so this means that Palestinians overwhelmingly oppose equal rights for Jews in their state.
If Jews said the same thing about Arab Israelis, no matter how it was worded, Haaretz would lead the world media in breast-beating about Israeli racism.
But Palestinian racism and antisemitism isn't exceptional, it is expected.
So it is unreported.
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Trayon White, the Washington D.C. councilman who earned national scorn last month when he blamed this winter’s persistent snow on the work of a shadowy cabal of Jewish conspirators, is trying to broaden his perspective. His unpublicized attempts at penance have included attending a Passover seder, meeting with local Jewish leaders, and making a sojourn to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. That last bit went about as well as you might expect.
“Are they protecting her?” White asked his tour guide. He was referring to a 1935 photograph that shows a woman being paraded through the streets by uniformed Sturmabteilung. Around the woman’s neck was a sign that read, “I am a German girl and allowed myself to be defiled by a Jew.” White adhered to his interpretation even after it was explained to him that this was an effort to dehumanize Jews and stigmatize associations with them.
Discomfited by the experience, White apparently snuck out of the tour early. The staffers he left behind were, however, no better educated about one of the 20th Century’s greatest crimes than their boss. When they were confronted by imagery of and a lecture on the Warsaw ghetto—one of many walled enclaves into which Jews were packed and denied food and medicine before they were all eventually sent to the death camps—they seemed perplexed. One asked if this was the Nazi version of a “gated community.”
Though it remains unclear if these experiences convinced White to abandon his prejudices, he did tell reporters that he was grateful to have met a lot of “good Jews.”
As the 20th century’s horrors fade from living memory, columnists and commentators have settled on the word “forgetting” to describe the powerful way in which nostalgia cleanses the memory of trauma. Increasingly, the atrocities of that period and the mock science that justified them exist only on grainy, black-and-white celluloid. But to call it a “forgetting” implies passivity. In White’s case, forgetting appears to be a choice, which isn’t forgetting at all. It’s more like banishment.
Unfortunately, Councilman White—who, at age 33, is representative of a generation with almost no memory of the great ideological struggles of the last century—is in voluminous company. According to the Claims Conference, 40 percent of White’s fellow Millennials could not name a single Nazi extermination camp and 41 percent think the number of Jews who died in the Holocaust has been wildly exaggerated. This is disturbing, in part, because it is the result of a conscious effort.
Mallory, Karega and White are depicted as simply ignorant or in need of a bit of outreach to “educate” them on the issues. But what about Valerie Plame, the former CIA operative who shared an article titled “America’s Jews are driving America’s wars.” She initially defended sharing the article, which she claimed was “provocative and thoughtful.” The blind spot on antisemitism reared its head again.
The blind spot misses the forest for the trees. According to those suffering from this blind spot, all these examples are just individuals, and most of them just made a mistake, a bad choice of words, and an invitation to a Passover dinner will sort it all out. People don’t suddenly wake up in the morning and think the Rothschilds run the World Bank or that Jews “drive” America’s wars. No one wakes up in the morning and suddenly thinks that one wealthy Jewish family is responsible for depopulating the world with AIDs.
No. People are led to think such things through years of conditioning and being in circles where everyone talks this way. No one becomes a racist overnight. They become a racist by being exposed to racism, learning it through relatives, friends, family, at religious events and social events.
Those confronting antisemitism have not done a good job of exploring how it festers. How about a survey to see how many people believe that “the Rothschilds” are responsible for all the ills in society? How about a survey asking whether people think “the Jews” are responsible for America’s wars? Maybe some voices don’t want to ask direct questions about antisemitism because it might reveal a troubling fact, namely that it is growing and is already worse than it was 10 years ago, worse than it was 50 years ago and that it is bubbling up in influential, educated circles, to the extent that professors, politicians, civil servants, religious leaders and major leaders of social movements openly hold antisemitic views.
On this podcast, we explain why, for the state of Israel, these are the very best of times, even though American Jews and those who hate Israel seem to believe otherwise to the exclusion of all available evidence. Then we talk about what Sohrab Ahmari dubs the North Korea “somewhat” and Mike Pompeo’s nomination. With a guest appearance by Skeletor.
In a precise, no-nonsense fashion, retired British Colonel Richard Kemp speaks with Eve about the “RE-creation” of the Jewish state in it’s Homeland.
Their discussion covers the Israel Defense Forces’ extreme morality, the tremendous benefits that Israeli military intelligence and civilian advances provide the world, Israel’s patchy relationship with his own country and his personal experience with Israelis. Colonel Kemp’s insights include how Judaism’s inherent decency and antipathy to violence is a larger influence on Israeli society than usually recognized, and he reiterates -from his vast experience in the region -that Israel is at the forefront of battling the Islamic threat to the entire West and Iran’s reshaping of the Middle East. A true friend of mankind, he shed no tears at yesterday’s death of the Hamas engineer of terrorism. His clarity and moral integrity are a breath of fresh air in a world that sometimes seems to have lost its way. For Eve, this interview was a very real honor.
Please join me here as I discuss with Avi Abelow of Israel Unwired Natalie Portman’s behaviour over Israel’s Genesis Prize, developments in the North Korea crisis and the implications of Rudy Giuliani joining President Trump’s legal team.
The boycotters have been wetting themselves over last week’s
“victory” getting 50 student groups at New
York University (NYU) to jointly pledge a boycott of not just Israel, but
campus groups (i.e., organizations created and run by other NYU students) and
off-campus groups (such as Birthright, StandWithUs and the ADL) that support
the Jewish state.
While the effort to get student organizations to join
together to ostracize Israel supporters was one major goal of Students for
Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) who drove the NYU
measures, the pledge also helped SJP achieve another vital goal: rulership over
left-leaning politics within a university.
As I’ve noted before, the intersectional
pecking order tends to lead to domination by the ruthless. Allegedly, the intersectional construct
assumes every injustice is linked with every other, requiring all oppressed
groups to join together in solidarity. Such
solidarity tends to be a one-way street, however, which is why alleged Israel
“oppression” is on the intersectional-left’s agenda while the murder of woman
and gays throughout the rest of the Middle East will never be.
The initial response to the NYU outrage has been the usual
supportive (if tepid) criticism of the boycott by school administrators,
coupled with sorrow-and-regret statements by local students and Jewish leaders
on and off campus. What is missing is
outrage, and an agenda fueled by the outrage that should accompany this level
of injustice.
As long-time readers know, I tend to council caution in
turning to authority figures (especially government) when dealing with
BDS-related issues that could be solved by on-the-ground activists, including
student activists. But the organization
of dozens of campus groups to attack their Jewish schoolmates reeks of such overreach
that it demands a response beyond what even the most capable campus groups can
generate.
With that in mind, here are a few steps that would have a
high impact on the situation at NYU:
1.Alumni donors who care
about Israel or just care about the toxic atmosphere at their alma mater should
contact the school and alert them that their donations are on hold until the
school gets its house in order. Efforts
to stem the flow of donor dollars to the school should extend to campaigns
within the donor community to get others to pledge to not give to NYU while the
campus is ruled by mobs engaging in illegal discrimination.
2.Speaking of illegal
discrimination, legal support groups should immediately contact city, state and
national bodies mandated to battle discrimination and provide whatever is
needed for them to open investigations into whether anti-discrimination law is
being violated at NYU.
3.Such investigations – which
can be supplemented by private civil and criminal lawsuits – should target not
just the school, but the campus groups and individual members of those groups
to make sure everyone who might be involved with illegal discrimination is
required to live with the consequences of their choices (rather than force
others – like school administrators – to take the brunt of consequences for
irresponsible student behavior).
4.While I’m not sure how
student groups are funded at NYU, on most campuses this is done through a
mandated student fee that bodies within student government get to
distribute. But if it turns out that funds
are being used to support student groups actively discriminating against other students,
that means fees students are forced to pay are being used to fund potentially
illegal activity. Given this, there may
be legal grounds to halting such funding immediately (or during the next
academic year), or replacing mandated fees with a voluntary opt-in (vs.
opt-out) alternative.
5.During the outrage that
would ensure if any or all of these suggestions are put into place, our side
should refrain from talking about (or even mentioning) the Middle East. Rather, all of our talking points should
focus on “illegal discrimination,” using the phrase as incessantly as our
opponents use “Apartheid.”
These are certainly harsh measures likely to make the
atmosphere on campus even more toxic.
But right now, the only people being targeted are Jewish students
leaving the Israel haters free to spew their poisons without consequence.
School administrators tend to make decisions based on who
will cause them the most vs. the least trouble, which is why they are not
likely to come down hard on 50 campus groups who could take over their offices,
especially if the countervailing threat comes from a Jewish community writing
them tearful letters about feeling unsafe.
But visits by civil rights lawyers from the city and state of New York,
as well as the Federal Department of Education (especially one run by Ken Marcus) would
definitely change leadership calculus, hopefully causing them to take the reins
of the school they allegedly lead.
As noted before, legal responses should be limited to just
those situations where political options have been blocked or are
impossible. But if one chooses to go down
the legal route, such a response should be overwhelming, even (dare I say it)
disproportionate, in order to let the world know that an assault on Jews is no
longer cost free.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
The recent PCPSR poll of Palestinian Arabs shows that they are completely brainwashed as to Israel's goals.
In answer to the question "What do you think is the long run aspiration of Israel?" more than half think that Israel's goals coincide with the Kach party - that was outlawed by Israel.
Again, the Western media won't report on this - because it seems racist to show that an entire population of Arabs is so delusional.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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Wednesday, April 25, 2018
Elder of Ziyon
