Saturday, August 31, 2019

“President Trump has been unarguably the most pro-Jewish, pro-Israel president”

(awaiting title idea) [ Some suggestions from MIL-ED:

“President Trump has been unarguably the most pro-Jewish, pro-Israel president”

“There is no question that both Omar and Tlaib are antisemites who seek to destroy Israel and endanger Jews worldwide” ]

by Tabitha Korol:

President Trump has been unarguably the most pro-Jewish, pro-Israel president we’ve ever had, surpassing George Washington, John Adams, Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman. His stand against Iran (vociferous enemy of Israel), finally moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, cutting funds to the PA and closing the PLO office in Washington, his donations to Jewish causes, and developing housing for Russian-Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn are just some of the points, but many non-Orthodox American Jews are calling him antisemitic. It is primarily the Democrat Jews who appear antisemitic when they support their party and members who explicitly express their hatred of Israel and Jews worldwide. It may be that their desire to distance themselves from their heritage in eastern Europe and Israel has rendered them irrational, and psychological projection has them denying their own impulses as they attribute them to others – to President Trump.

Most recently, President Trump spoke out against the antisemitism spewed by Muslim Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, and was himself accused of bias. It is time to review the backgrounds of both women who are recognized as Islamic extremists and antisemites by such as Senator Lindsey Graham, Speaker Newt Gingrich, media personalities Mark Thiessen and Rush Limbaugh, as well as Imam Tawhidi, who added Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to the lot.

October, 2015, Rashida Tlaib joined and praised activists who support terrorist Rasmeah Odeh, guilty of the deadly 1969 bombing in Jerusalem.

December, 2017, Tlaib shared a Facebook post with Linda Sarsour in support of 17-yr-old Palestinian Ahed Tamimi, who assaulted an IDF soldier and promotes stabbings and suicide bombings.
February 2018, Tlaib joined Facebook group, Palestinian American Congress, which demonizes Jews and raised funds for her campaign. She denied both the Holocaust and the Jewish historical claim to Israel.
August, 2018, in her victory speech, Tlaib wrapped herself in a Palestinian flag and promised to “fight against every racist and oppressive structure that needs to be dismantled,” later telling the UK’s Channel 4 news that she would vote against US military aid to Israel. Despite her own foreign garb, she accused Jewish Americans of dual loyalty and has since established a record of Jew-hatred and an affinity for radical
January 3, 2019, to a MoveOn.org reception, Tlaib warned that the President’s days were numbered, and she’d “impeach the motherfu**er.” She took her oath on the Koran, which is the antithesis of our Bible and Constitution, and showed a sticker “Palestine” to replace Israel on her wall map.
A guest at Tlaib’s swearing-in ceremony and private dinner was Abbas Hamideh, who equates Zionism with Nazism, and who voiced his support for Hassan Nasrallah, who committed an horrific murder of an Israeli Jew and his 4-year-old daughter.
During the week of January, 2019, Tlaib condemned her congressional colleagues who did not support BDS against Israel.
March, 2019, Tlaib posed with a Palestinian activist who had mourned the death of a Hamas murderer who killed a rabbi in Israel.
August, 2019, Tlaib compared Israel to apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany, and co-sponsored a resolution to support the BDS movement. She consistently shows herself to be an enemy of Israel and the Jewish people.
Most recently, Tlaib shunned a bipartisan delegation to Israel in order to schedule her own trip to be led by the anti-Israel nongovernmental organization Miftah, where she could advocate her boycott and use her disinvitation as an accusation against the Jewish state.
Claiming racism, oppression and injustice, Tlaib used the event of Israel’s entry rejection to enhance her victimhood, and a way of showing Gaza’s inhumane conditions. However, videos of interviews of her family show a healthy grandmother, free-standing home, and plentiful grounds with outdoor furniture on a lovely summer night.

Ilhan Omar claimed to love America but shows her disdain for our country at every turn and a decided detestation for Israel and the Jews. She called herself the President’s “biggest nemesis”; said of the terrorist attacks on 9/11, “some people did something”; and wants our greatest ally, Israel, wiped off the face of the earth. The following are examples of her words and deeds:

In November, 2012, Omar called Israel an apartheid regime that “hypnotized the world” in order to conceal its “evil doings.”
In 2013, Omar said on PBS that she took a college course in terrorism, saying that the professor spoke with pride (his shoulders raised in intensity) about Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, but not when we say America.
During 2013-15, when on the Minneapolis City Council, Omar acknowledged her friendship with Al-Shabab, a Somali jihad terror group.
Omar often characterized Israel as the “Jewish ISIS,’ on Arab-American television, comparing members of Hamas to Holocaust victims.
Following the 2013 terrorist bombing that killed ~70 people in a Kenyan shopping mall, Omar blamed the act on a reaction to American injustices, and how the world contributed to Islamic radicalization.
After her election to the MN House of Representatives, November 2016, Omar wrote a judge for leniency in the sentencing of nine Somali-born men found guilty of attempting to join ISIS, blaming their desire for violence on alienation.
In 2016, Omar wanted the University of MN to divest its Israel bonds, and in 2017, she opposed a bill designed to counter economic boycotts against Israel, likening Israel to apartheid South Africa.
In 2017, Omar was one of two MN House members (out of 129) to vote against a bill that would allow life-insurance companies to deny payments to beneficiaries of suicide terrorists, and one of four to oppose legislation to make it a felony for parents to subject their daughters to female genital mutilation (FGM).
After only five days of winning her congressional seat in 2018, Omar worked to institute BDS to financially cripple the state of Israel.
In February, 2019, Omar tweeted that pro-Israel lobby AIPAC was guilty of paying politicians to favor Israel “It’s all about the Benjamins, baby.”
March, 2019, Omar’s disdain for Israel won praise from Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke.
March, 2019, Omar was keynote speaker for an Hamas-linked CAIR benefit event, along with Hassan Shibley who will not call out Hezbollah and Hamas as terrorist organizations.
April 2019, Omar called for the release of a senior Muslim Brotherhood member detained in Egypt.
July, 2019, Omar, Tlaib and John Lewis co-sponsored House Resolution HR496 for BDS, comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany.

There is no question that both Omar and Tlaib are antisemites who seek to destroy Israel and endanger Jews worldwide, and that the Democrat Jews who support those policies do the same. Those who speak ill of President Trump and PM Netanyahu and side with the Marxist-Islamic ideology emanating from the Democrat party, who compare the southern-border invaders to the Holocaust’s Jewish refugees, and who failed to attend and celebrate the dedication of the US embassy in Jerusalem, Israel’s capital, cannot be judged otherwise. Yes, President Trump’s honesty may sting, but it is nevertheless honesty.

According to Jewish law, the Democrat Jews are still Jews, but the betrayal of their own brethren and heritage confirm that they are not in consonance with the laws and morality of Judaism, and that their hearts are elsewhere.

Tabitha Korol

With appreciation to frontpagemag.com for their detailed reporting.

The New York Times Has a Jewish Problem

The New York Times Has a Jewish Problem by Hugh Fitzgerald

August 31, 2019

https://drrichswier.com/2019/08/31/the-new-york-times-has-a-jewish-problem-by-hugh-fitzgerald/

An editor at the New York Times has recently apologized for having written several anti-Semitic and racist tweets. Tom Wright-Piersanti is a senior staff editor at the Times. In the years 2008-2010, Wright-Piersanti wrote several offensive tweets, which were uncovered by the website Breitbart.

On New Years’ Day 2010, Wright-Piersanti tweeted, “I was going to say ‘Crappy Jew Year,’ but one of my resolutions is to be less anti-Semitic. So… HAPPY Jew Year. You Jews.”

The previous month, during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, Wright-Piersanti shared a picture of a car with a lit menorah on its roof and wrote, “Who called the Jew-police?”

“I have deleted tweets from a decade ago that are offensive,” Wright-Piersanti tweeted after the Breitbart article was published. “I am deeply sorry.”

He also mocked Native Americans, and Afro-Americans, for which no doubt he is also “deeply sorry.”

Amazing how “deeply sorry” people are about so many things the minute they are found out, but not one minute earlier. Perhaps he is “deeply sorry” only because those tweets came to light. They were not just “offensive,” but disgusting. In any event, Wright-Piersanti apparently needn’t worry about his job. As of this writing, he’s still at the New York Times, a paper that has a Jewish, and latterly an Israeli, problem.

It recently published two antisemitic cartoons in its international edition. The more offensive of the two depicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a guide dog (a dachshund) wearing a Star of David collar and leading President Donald Trump, who is wearing a black kippah. Anyone of sense would have seen this cartoon as antisemitic, save apparently the editor at the Times who approved the cartoon.

And the Times, just like Wright-Piersanti, said it was “deeply sorry.” Yes, it was “deeply sorry for the publication of an anti-Semitic political cartoon” that appeared in its international print edition. And the Times has decided to stop publishing cartoons from non-staff members. It has also said that it will also overhaul its bias training to have an emphasis on antisemitism, according to an internal note from the Times’s publisher, A.G. Sulzberger. What about training on how to bring a modicum of fairness to reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Or would that be asking too much?

The Times has had a “Jewish problem” ever since Hitler came to power in 1933. So let’s go back to the 1930s and 1940s, before there was even an Israel for the Times to be anti-Israel about, to see how, and to ask why, the most influential paper in the world, owned by Jews, paid so little attention to the murderous threat of Hitler and the Nazis as it grew throughout the 1930s.

It was precisely because the paper was owned by Jews, who were determined not to have their paper be thought of as an organ of special pleading about Jewish suffering, that the New York Times failed so miserably, in its under-reporting of the Holocaust and the antisemitic crimes during the 1930s that led up to its final, murderous efflorescence. In her brilliant Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper, Laurel Leff notes that Arthur Hays Sulzberger, who became the publisher in 1936 (though he was effectively the publisher from 1933, because of the illness of the previous publisher, Adolph Ochs) and continued in that post until 1961, at the most critical period for the Jews of Europe, had studiously refrained from having anything to do with Jewish organizations or causes.

He (Arthur Sulzberger, the publisher of the Times) refused to donate to the United Jewish Appeal or the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. He wrote in 1934, “I am a non-Zionist because the Jew, in seeking a homeland of his own, seems to me to be giving up something of infinitely greater value of the world. … I look askance at any movement which assists in making the peacemaker among nations merely a national Distribution Committee, favoring instead the National Missions of the Presbyterian Church.” In 1948, he wrote, “I know of no difference in my way of life than in that of any Unitarian.”

Sulzberger was committed to an odd definition of journalistic balance. The Times refused to run letters to the editor that attacked the rise of antisemitism in Germany, so that it would not also have to offer space to those supporting antisemitism.

Instead of speaking of Jewish refugees, Times editorials tended to speak of German refugees. Arthur Hays Sulzberger refused to intervene with American officials to get a visa for a cousin, Fritz Sulzberger, advising him in 1938 to stay in Germany. So indifferent was he to what was going on in Germany, apparently, that he thought as late as 1938 that Jews should remain in Germany and ride out the storm. His misreading of reality was astonishing. By that year, it should have been clear that staying in Germany amounted to a death sentence.

In 1933, Jews had been discharged from all universities, and then from all civil service jobs. Long before Kristallnacht, there were boycotts of Jewish shops, Jews were attacked, even beaten to death, on the street, Nazi rallies were held where Jews were hysterically denounced; a phrase from a 19th-century antisemite, Heinrich Treitschke, was recycled for use by the Nazis: “Die Juden sind unser Unglück!“(“The Jews are our misfortune”).

Yet in 1938, the publisher of the New York Times was advising a relative to remain in Germany. A. H. Sulzberger didn’t want to hear about all the atrocities German Jews were enduring. And he didn’t want his paper to make too much of such things either.

The threat to Jews was always minimized by the Times. Early in the war, the Times ran a campaign of nine editorials and three front-page stories that urged Congress to allow British families to send their children to safety in America, but made no such campaign on behalf of the Jews. Those British children might have been in danger from V-2 rockets, if they lived in the East End of London, but the Jews in Nazi-occupied countries faced certain death if they were not brought to America. The New York Times – under Arthur Hays Sulzberger – didn’t care enough to call for their admission.

Nor did the Times think helping Jews find refuge from the Nazis outside of America was a cause to promote in its editorials. When the British issued the White Paper of 1939, restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine to 15,000 a year for five years, the Times ran an editorial praising the move as necessary “to save the homeland itself from overpopulation as well as from an increasingly violent resistance on the part of the Arabs.”

That White Paper effectively kept hundreds of thousands of Jews, who might have escaped from Europe in time, from being admitted to Mandatory Palestine. Churchill thundered against it as unjust and cruel. But not according to the New York Times; its editors thought the White Paper was perfectly correct in permitting no more than 15,000 Jews a year to find refuge in Palestine from the Nazis. Otherwise, the editorial absurdly claimed, Mandatory Palestine would be “overpopulated.”

On what basis did the Times editors make that claim? Israel now has a population that is six times the population of Mandatory Palestine in 1939, and it is still not overpopulated. And the Times actually thought that it was preferable in 1939 to keep Jews in Europe, where they were almost certain to be killed, in order not to anger the Arabs in Palestine. The Mandate for Palestine’s provisions, that required Great Britain, as the Mandatory authority, to “facilitate” Jewish immigration and “encourage close settlement by Jews on the land,” were to be ignored so as not to upset the local Arabs.

Arthur Hays Sulzberger lived among, and wanted to be accepted by, other people of great wealth, including many non-Jews, and he did not wish to be thought of as caring too much for the fate of Europe’s or Palestine’s — Jews. In that he succeeded, and for that he deserves endless obloquy in the history books. Assimilated and anti-Zionist, he instructed his editors to downplay news about the suffering of Europe’s Jews so that the newspaper would not appear to be too concerned with Jewish matters. He was a horrible man.

There was very little reporting in the Times on the rising antisemitism in Nazi Germany all through the 1930s. Atrocities against Jews in Germany, which began in the streets soon after Hitler took power in 1933, were mentioned intermittently, almost always in a few paragraphs deep inside the paper.

Even Kristallnacht, November 9-10, 1938, when Jewish homes, hospitals and schools were demolished by Nazi attackers using sledgehammers, received less treatment in the New York Times than it did in many other newspapers around the world. The rioters destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany and Austria and the Sudetenland. Over 7,000 Jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed; 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Hundreds of Jews were murdered, often beaten to death by mobs.

This had no visible effect on the editorial and reporting policies set down by Arthur Hays Sulzberger.

Why did this underreporting at the Times matter so much? It mattered because it had a direct effect on the sense of urgency among American Jews, and on the attitude in the government about rescuing Jews from the Nazis.

When the Holocaust began in earnest, and news about the roundups of Jews sent to concentration camps – labor and death camps were distinguished, though in the “labor camps” the inmates were often worked to death — managed to filter out, the New York Times continued to give such reports a few paragraphs deep within the paper. It did the same with reports from the Eastern Front, about the gassing of Jews in the mobile gas vans, about the mass shootings right on the edge of open pits into which those killed would topple.

The paper never connected the dots of the Nazi efforts to exterminate the Jews of Europe, never presented it as part of a comprehensive genocidal plan. Its coverage of the murders of six million Jews was absurdly small, given the world-shattering size of the atrocity; this “Jewish news” from Europe was most often covered in a few paragraphs in the back; more attention was given in the Times to business, movies, golf championships, and racing news than to the Holocaust.

Sulzberger, the publisher, was not haunted by what was going on in Europe. He gave his own attention to such pleasures as vacationing at Knollwood on Saranac Lake, in the Adirondacks. Knollwood was an enclave consisting of seven or eight luxurious “rustic cottages” that belonged to leading members of “Our Crowd,” that is, the assimilated and rich German Jews of New York, members of the Harmonie Club, families who had arrived in the 19th century from Germany and looked down on the recent Jewish arrivals from Eastern Europe. They were glad to host a celebrity refugee from Germany – Einstein went twice to Knollwood, and his photograph is still on display in one of the “cottages” – but didn’t want to be unduly bothered with unpleasant news from Europe. And Sulzberger was one of them.

That failure by the New York Times to report adequately throughout the 1930s on the growing danger to Germany’s Jews was not without consequences, as shall be discussed tomorrow.

Monday, August 26, 2019

Were Donald Trump’s ‘Loyalty’ Comments Anti-Semitic? John Podhoretz Commentary. 8-26-19

Were Donald Trump’s ‘Loyalty’ Comments Anti-Semitic?

John Podhoretz Commentary. 8-26-19

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/anti-semitism/donald-trump-this-whole-loyalty-business/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=The+Beginning+of+the+End+of+the+Outrage+Mob&utm_campaign=Daily+newsletter+08%2F26%2F19

Some facts are so simple they seem too obvious. This tempts people to believe there’s some kind of trick, some conspiracy, behind these facts because nothing could be that straightforward. Tricks and conspiracies are far more interesting, especially if they can be twisted to confirm the biases and beliefs of those who preach them.

That is how it is with Donald Trump and Israel. If Trump isn’t the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House, he’s pretty close.

Here’s how you know: He sides with Israel. Period.

Forget why. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. He sides with Israel. He has put in place policies friendly to Israel. He has implemented at least one American policy—moving our embassy to Jerusalem—that was mandated by American law two decades before he did it; a law his predecessors found a way to circumvent. Why? Because they didn’t want to side with Israel that much.

They had defensible reasons—fears of region-wide violence and the like. And because of those reasons, it was thought that Trump moving the embassy was, at best, imprudent and, at worst, a knowing effort to trigger war. But as the result has demonstrated, the facts on the ground in the Middle East have changed so profoundly that the move happened at extraordinarily low cost. In this case, as it turned out, siding with Israel proved to be a no-brainer.

Except, that is, for those who don’t think siding with Israel is a good thing, or with the current Israeli government, or whatever.

There are many prominent Jews among those who don’t think siding with Israel in this way is a good thing.

Some of them think this way out of genuine love—because they are convinced the Israeli government is acting in ways that endanger the Jewish state in the long term, and that siding with Israel encourages self-destructive behavior. That the government acts as it does because it was elected to do precisely that by Israel’s voters does not invalidate this concern. After all, the voters of Israel could be wrong—in which case, the choices they are making at the ballot box could literally be their funeral. One thing is certain, though: It won’t be the funeral of these American Jews, whose love has not yet impelled them to make Aliyah. Their concern is real but, when push comes to shove, whom should one trust: The anxious armchair quarterback or the players on the field?

Then there are others, who look like the ones I just described but who are posing disingenuously as concerned lovers of Israel. What they say is that Israel needs “tough love.” It needs to be told what to do and how to do it better because Israel is being stupid, or feckless, or self-destructive.

The “tough love” idea is astonishingly condescending. Those who advocate it are dismissing the acts of a democratic nation that has gone through hell—and changed its approaches to things as a result of that hell—as though it is akin to a recalcitrant teenager or a drug addict. That should be invalidating in itself.

Finally, there are those American Jews who believe refusing to side with Israel is a mark of their higher virtue, their moral superiority. They are rising above petty in-group rah-rah emotions to a higher plane of dispassionate judgment. Their sense of right and wrong is unencumbered by blood bonds. They are only interested in Truth. Shot through their self-righteousness is an implicit humblebrag. They are actually brave by refusing to side with their own—thus, demonstrating that their humility is more onanistic than pluralistic.

So, let’s review: Donald Trump is a great friend of Israel. The only real way to argue otherwise is to say that he isn’t a great friend of Israel because the only true friends of Israel are those who oppose the policies Israel has decided (through its own political system) are in its best interest. By these lights, Barack Obama was a great friend of Israel and Trump isn’t.

Now, people can believe this. They certainly act like they believe this. But most probably don’t believe it deep in their souls. They probably just believe it because they like Barack Obama for other reasons and want to apply those reasons to Israel, too.

In 2015, when Obama struck his nuclear deal with Iran, the aides tasked with selling the deal essentially accused those who opposed it, in part, because of the danger it posed to Israel of disloyalty to the United States. This charge could not have been levied without Obama’s knowledge. It was disgusting–a sign of deep intellectual rot. Funny how so few people on Obama’s side pointed this classic anti-Semitic canard out, given how readily they call out Trump.

This past week, Donald Trump openly mused about the loyalties of American Jews. The outrage was all but universal. As Abe Greenwald pointed out, Trump’s words were so imprecise people chose to take them as anti-Semitic—as an accusation of dual loyalty, the very accusation of dual loyalty Barack Obama through his giggling Renfields had so easily hurled. Trump did no such thing.

What he was doing was calling out the disloyalty of Jews who vote Democratic to their own people. Not to the United States.

Now that is a weird thing for him to have done. First, it’s a bizarre subject for a president to opine about. And it’s a discomfiting subject for a non-Jew to offer an opinion about. Basically, it’s none of his business, either when speaking as a public figure or a Gentile.

But unlike the Renfields, Trump was in no way calling the loyalty of American Jews to America into question. The problem here is, again to cite Abe, Trump speaks in vagaries that then require defensive exegeses long after the initial impression gave offense.

There’s something else upsetting about this.

Jews make up a little less than two percent of the population of the United States. Now, naturally, I am deeply fascinated by this ethnic sliver because I am among it. My children are Jewish Americans, like my wife and me. This publication you are reading, which I edit, came into existence in 1945 to argue for the view that it is possible to be fully Jewish and fully American. Continuing to advocate for this blessed dual existence, unique in the annals of Jewish history, is one of the missions of my life.

That said, there are 330 million Americans and (by what is surely an inaccurate count but the only one we have) 5.8 million American Jews. Similarly, there are 6 billion people on earth and only 8 million Israelis. The question is: Why do people who are not us care so much about us, about our internal arguments, about our political sympathies?

In this respect, Trump is easy to understand. He doesn’t really care about us. Rather, he wants what he sees as his just reward. He wants credit and votes (and financial support) for being such a stalwart friend to Israel. Moreover, he thinks Jews should punish Democrats for the way they kowtow so shamefully to the squad of freshman anti-Israel congresswomen. And you know what? So do I. And maybe more American Jews than anyone expects will show that they think so too when they vote next. We don’t know yet.

What’s different about Trump is that other politicians ask for one’s vote. Trump demands your vote as his right. When he does it, he does himself no favors in the mind-changing department—especially when it comes to American Jews, who really don’t like being told what to do by Gentiles, especially a Gentile to whom some very dangerous anti-Semites in the United States do seem drawn.

But what of Trump’s point? Do I think Jews should be “loyal” to Israel? No, because I think “loyalty” is the wrong word here.

Jews have an obligation to protect and defend Israel because it is the ingathering of the exiles after two millennia. Is one called upon to be “loyal” to one’s sister? To one’s cousin? To those of us whose Ancestry.com record reveals consanguinity connections hovering around 100 percent to other Jews?

The Jewish state is one of the greatest (if not the greatest) miracles of our time, and while it is strong and vibrant, it is still under threat. Its enemies express their enmity by killing our fellow Jews, by stockpiling rockets and missiles to target our fellow Jews, and by developing nuclear capability to commit the mass murder of Jews. Do you turn your back on your sister, your cousin, at a time of threat and justify your behavior by complaining about theirs?

We American Jews are not disloyal when we turn our backs on Israel and insult its friends and treat them as though they are enemies–and when we treat its enemies as though they are our friends, Peter Beinart.

At best, we are blind fools who do not see how a mere twist of fate has kept us from speaking Hebrew as a first language as we ride on a bus headed toward Mount Scopus that will be blown up or ensanguined by a knife-bearing terrorist.

At worst, we are far lower than merely disloyal. We are acting as active collaborators with those who wish our destruction. Such people do not bother sorting out which Jew is full of deep feeling for Palestinian rights and which Jew is a settler seeking to annex the entire West Bank. What they see is a Jew, and the Jew should be dead, and that Jew could be you or your mother or your baby.

Clearly, Trump shouldn’t have wandered into this minefield. But spare me the outrage about Trump saying no Jew should vote Democrat. This isn’t about Jews. Trump thinks no person in America should vote Democrat. This is just part of his own evolution as a partisan since he was a Democrat until about five minutes ago. Now, he’s a Republican, so he thinks everybody else should be, too, especially because he’s sure he so wonderful. Why is this surprising? Every liberal thinks everybody should vote liberal. Every conservative thinks everybody should vote conservative. Every Jew thinks every other Jew should vote the way he does. You think you’re right and the other side is wrong. You can work to understand the opinions of others and respect them, but you still think they’re wrong. If you didn’t, you would vote the other way.

Donald Trump says things no president has ever said before, and many of his rhetorical innovations have not been good for our political life or our country. But in this respect, he’s just like everybody else these days.

Were Donald Trump’s ‘Loyalty’ Comments Anti-Semitic? John Podhoretz Commentary. 8-26-19

Were Donald Trump’s ‘Loyalty’ Comments Anti-Semitic?

John Podhoretz Commentary. 8-26-19

That is how it is with Donald Trump and Israel. If Trump isn’t the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House, he’s pretty close.

Here’s how you know: He sides with Israel. Period.

Except, that is, for those who don’t think siding with Israel is a good thing, or with the current Israeli government, or whatever.

There are many prominent Jews among those who don’t think siding with Israel in this way is a good thing.

What he was doing was calling out the disloyalty of Jews who vote Democratic to their own people. Not to the United States.

There’s something else upsetting about this.

But what of Trump’s point? Do I think Jews should be “loyal” to Israel? No, because I think “loyalty” is the wrong word here.

Sunday, August 25, 2019

Note to American Jewish leaders: The (Democratic) Party is over | JNS.org

Note to American Jewish leaders: The (Democratic) Party is over | JNS.org

Zahava Englard Shapiro August 25, 2019

https://www.jns.org/opinion/note-to-american-jewish-leaders-the-democratic-party-is-over/

The botched Middle East trip of U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib has provided pundits and mainstream media endless fodder for blame: President Donald Trump, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are all targets.

Clearly the Omar-Tlaib non-visit to Israel has been fraught with missteps—Trump’s coarse tweets, a premature statement by Dermer saying the two would be allowed in, Netanyahu appearing to vacillate on whether to accept them. But no mistake: Omar and Tlaib are the anti-Semitic stars of this fiasco.

First, Israel had every reason and every right to ban Omar and Tlaib:

• Both are anti-Semites. Evidence: Both representatives continue to employ anti-Semitic tropes including Jewish dual loyalties, Jews paying off U.S. politicians and half a dozen more.

• Both support the hateful Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which is clearly anti-Semitic since it denies the right of Jews—unlike any other ethnic group—to self-determination and a nation state in their ancient homeland.

Because BDS stands for Israel’s destruction, the movement has been overwhelmingly condemned by Congress, in bipartisan votes. In addition, Israeli legislators recently passed a law barring supporters of BDS from entering Israel, which Israel has every right to enforce.

• Omar and Tlaib reportedly intended to visit Al Aqsa mosque atop the Temple Mount, which has been the scene of dozens of spontaneous riots, many violent. Surely the notoriety of these two members of Congress would have provided enough fuel to spark another conflagration.

In short, if you support the “rights” of Tlaib and Omar to visit Israel, you’re giving aid and comfort to anti-Semites who were preparing to demonize Israel and possibly endanger Israeli police and other citizens.

Second, many civilized countries bar entry to “dangerous” actors:

• In 2005, the U.S. State Department prevented then Indian regional official Narendra Modi (now India’s prime minister) from entering the United States to address Indian-Americans at Madison Square Garden.

• The United Kingdom once banned Israeli politician and future prime minister Menachem Begin from visiting, and has forbidden entrance to another Israeli Knesset member, Moshe Feiglin, because he was, British officials declared, “fostering hatred which might lead to inter-community violence in the U.K.”

• The United States, under the Obama administration, barred entry to a right-wing Knesset member Michael Ben-Ami in 2012. We find no record of Democrats objecting to this action. Yet members of the House majority caucus are livid about Israel banning two anti-Semitic representatives.

• Just this year, the United States (justifiably) refused admittance to Omar Barghouti, founder of the BDS movement.

If you criticize Trump and Netanyahu for wanting to prevent Omar and Tlaib from visiting Israel—as Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden did in a tweet last week—without holding President Obama to the same standard (which Biden, who was Obama’s vice president, failed to do), you are a hypocrite.

Third, despite the openly anti-Israel sentiments expressed by Omar and Tlaib, Israel was willing to allow their visit under certain circumstances.

Omar and Tlaib had every opportunity to visit Israel on an organized trip with 41 of their Democratic colleagues from the House of Representatives several weeks ago, but they spurned the invitation. Instead the pair opted for a trip sponsored by Miftah, an organization that supports BDS, approves of suicide bombings against Israeli civilians and reportedly has ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a designated terrorist organization.

After Israel denied Tlaib’s visa for the Miftah trip, she asked for “humanitarian” permission to visit her Palestinian grandmother and committed to avoiding pro-BDS and anti-Israel activities. Once Israel granted that permission, however, Tlaib backtracked and decided she could not accept those conditions.

While no country is obligated to permit its enemies to enter, Israel showed uncommon willingness to host Tlaib and Omar. But Israel was understandably not willing to support an anti-Israel propaganda tour on its own soil.

Fourth, the House of Representatives should expel Tlaib and Omar.

The U.S. Constitution provides that “Each House [of Congress] may punish its members for disorderly behavior and, with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member.”

House Republican Steve King was justifiably censured by Democrats and his fellow Republicans for controversial comments he made about white supremacy, which were considered racist. King lost all his committee posts, including a senior position on the Judiciary Committee.

Surely the steady stream of anti-Semitic comments by both Tlaib and Omar, as well as their support for the blatantly racist BDS movement, qualify them for the harshest possible punishment from their congressional colleagues. (If they were white supremacists, would they be spared?)

Attempts to turn attention away from these disgraceful politicians by attacking Trump, Israel or Netanyahu are diversionary tactics distracting from the moral cancer afflicting Congress.

Saturday, August 24, 2019

Who’s funding illegal Palestinian settlements in Area C? Confronting history | JNS.org Parts 1 & 2 Edwin Black

Who’s funding illegal Palestinian settlements in Area C? Confronting history | JNS.org Part 1

Edwin Black

(August 14, 2019 / JNS) “Area C,” which comprises some 60 percent of the West Bank, also known as Judea and Samaria, is making news these days. This time, the hot-button issue is illegal Palestinian settlements sprouting across the region, shredding the last vestige of the Oslo Accords, which, for a generation, propelled the “two-state solution.”

Most observers of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis are accustomed to hearing talk of “illegal Jewish settlements” on slivers of land comprising 1 percent to 2 percent of the West Bank, mostly near Israel’s Green Line. But attention now focuses on an explosion of thousands of illegal Palestinian constructions: village clusters, agricultural tracts, water networks, roads and general infrastructure crisscrossing Area C of the West Bank. All of this violates the 1993 and 1995 Oslo Accords, which specify full Israeli administrative control in Area C. Under the international agreement, only the Israeli Civil Administration can authorize new construction in the zone—for Israeli and Arab alike. However, continuous waves of recent Palestinian settlements are being established without permits, often without even bothering to apply. One senior official of the Israeli security apparatus called it “the Wild West.”

According to Israeli activist watchdog groups such as Regavim, in the past half-decade, illegal Palestinian settlements and infrastructure have sprawled across more than 9,000 dunams (nine square kilometers) in more than 250 Area C locations, supported by more than 600 kilometers of illegally constructed access roads and more than 112,000 meters of retaining walls and terracing. This massive works project is being conducted in broad daylight, often heralded by announcement placards and press releases.

When questioned, various Israeli government officials did not dispute the Regavim numbers. In exasperation, one military spokesman close to the Area C files located at Bet El estimated “close to 10,000” illegal construction efforts are now underway, adding that they felt “powerless to stop them.” The rapid buildup is funded by hundreds of millions of euros annually, funneled by the European Union and individual European nations into scores of building and infrastructure projects.

Understanding the tortuous history that created the current sovereignty vacuum in Area C can be daunting and confusing.

Leaving out 99 percent of everything … the indigenous Israelites of Canaan were expelled starting in 70 C.E. by the Romans, who renamed the region “Syria-Palaestina”—or Palestine, for the Philistine sea invaders from the Greek Islands. In about 637 C.E., the Islamic invasion swept up from the Arabian Peninsula to conquer and convert. For about four centuries, the Turkish Ottoman Empire governed until its 1918 defeat in World War I. Afterwards, the Allies dismembered Ottoman colonies throughout the Middle East and concomitantly encouraged self-determination for ethnic peoples across the Levant. The League of Nations, in association with 51 countries and competing nationalist groups, eventually established five modern Arab countries: Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, modern Hejaz (Arabia) and post-colonial modern Egypt, plus one democratic and pluralistic Jewish state in Palestine. The original 1920 “Mandate” boundaries of the modern Jewish state extended from the Mediterranean Sea across the area now known as Jordan—a country which then did not exist.

The Arabs were shortchanged by the French in their quest for an Arab Kingdom in Syria. In recompense, the British modified the Palestine Mandate in September 1922 by virtue of an official memorandum, carving off some 70 percent of the intended Jewish nation to invent Transjordan (now Jordan)—the territory extended from the Jordan River east to the borders of Iraq and what is now Saudi Arabia. For decades, co-existence between Arabs and Jews in the former Turkish colony could not be achieved. In 1947, the non-binding U.N. Resolution 181—known as partition—recommended side-by-side Jewish and Arab states. In those days, the identity of the two peoples was “Arab” and “Jewish,” as local Arabs did not adopt the identity of “Palestinian” until about 1964.

Israel accepted partition, but the Arabs refused. The surrounding League-created Arab nations attacked the newly declared Jewish state. In 1948, Jordan (created by the British memo) illegally invaded and annexed the area west of the Jordan River, including eastern Jerusalem, thus coining the new term, “West Bank” for the still-disputed former Turkish colonial provinces.

In June 1967, when Israel fought its preemptive Six-Day War and expelled Jordan, the Jewish state occupied this same disputed former Turkish colonial region, still called the West Bank. In 1988, Jordan rescinded any claim of sovereignty, deepening the sovereignty vacuum.

In 1993 and 1995, after years of diplomatic wrangling, Israel and the avowed Palestine Liberation Organization terror group signed the Oslo Accords, envisioning a peaceful two-state solution. Under these accords and subsequent modifications at Wye, Sharm el-Sheikh and elsewhere, the “West Bank” was divided into three separate administrative zones: Areas A, B and C.

Area A is reserved for Palestinian civil and administrative control, and seats the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Area B is governed by Palestinian civil control under a joint Israeli-Palestinian security apparatus.

Area C, also called Judea and Samaria, comprises roughly 60 percent of the West Bank. It more closely resembles the biblical and original international demarcation of a Jewish state during the initial League of Nations mandate, but is now considered occupied by the international community. The majority of Area C residents are Israelis—an estimated 325,000 alongside some 300,000 Arabs. In essence, Oslo normalized and structured the Israeli occupation and administration of the disputed former Turkish lands.

But by virtue of a cumulative multibillion-euro effort, European capitals are working hard to destabilize the last pillars of the Oslo Accords. Thus, these countries seek to create a Palestinian state along the 1948 armistice line (also known as the 1967 lines) without further consulting the Jewish state. This ensures that the Palestinian Authority knows it need not negotiate with Jerusalem, even as the United States and Gulf countries make a daring dash to achieve peace.

As the urgency of Area C is becoming clearer, still murky is the source of the diverse European funding that enables this conflict and the routes those billions of euros take across the Mediterranean. What’s more, there is widespread fear that millions in funds are continuously funneled through entities openly accused of being affiliated with established terrorist organizations.

Who’s funding illegal Palestinian settlements in Area C? Nearly 10,000 cases | JNS.org Part 2

Edwin Black

(August 15, 2019 / JNS) “Area C,” which comprises some 60 percent of the West Bank, also known as Judea and Samaria, has become highly volatile again. In the past, debate has centered on Jewish settlements. Now, “illegal Palestinian settlements” sprouting across the region are under the spotlight.

According to Israeli activist watchdog groups such as Regavim, during the last five years, illegal Palestinian settlements and infrastructure have sprawled across more than 9,000 dunams (nine square kilometers) in more than 250 Area C locations, supported by more than 600 kilometers of illegally constructed access roads and more than 112,000 meters of retaining walls and terracing. This massive works project is being conducted in broad daylight, often heralded by tall announcement placards and press releases.

Israeli government officials contacted did not dispute the Regavim numbers. In exasperation, one military spokesman close to the Area C files estimated “close to 10,000” illegal construction efforts are now underway, adding they feel “powerless to stop them.”

In the 1990s, after years of diplomatic wrangling, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed the Oslo Accords, envisioning a peaceful two-state solution. Under the complex Oslo Accords, the “West Bank” is divided into three separate administrative zones: Areas A, B and C.

Area C, also called Judea and Samaria, comprises roughly 60 percent of the West Bank. The majority of Area C residents are Israelis—an estimated 325,000 alongside some 300,000 Arabs. Under the Oslo Accords, only the Israeli Civil Administration can authorize new construction in the zone for Israeli Jews and for Arabs alike.

But in 2009, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Fayyad introduced the so-called Fayyad Plan, well-described by a 2011 article in the Palestine-Israel Journal of Politics, Economics and Culture as having “the potential to dramatically transform the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, by extension, the Middle Eastern political landscape.” The analysis adds, “The essence of the Fayyad plan involves establishing an internationally recognized demilitarized Palestinian state encompassing both the West Bank and Gaza, based on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Since August 2009, Fayyad, with the help of the Barack Obama administration and the European Union, has been quietly building national institutions and physical infrastructure … in the West Bank.”

To create a de facto Palestinian state without further negotiation or even diplomatic consultation with the Israelis, European countries—individually and through the European Union—have pumped hundreds of millions of euros annually into scores of illegal state-building and related projects, called Area C “interventions.” Just one cluster of the “European Union Area C Development Programme” boasts a 300 million euro annual commitment, and within three years, is budgeted to reach about 1.5 billion euros. A single 1,650-meter roadnear Jenin in Area C was funded with a 500,000 euro allocation.

The Area C Palestinian boom advances without any coordination with Israelis about land use, security, environmental impacts or close proximity to Jewish villages. The P.A.’s 2014 “Roots Project” greatly accelerated the entire process. Thus, European governments and the P.A. have completed the shredding of the already weakened Oslo agreements.

Most of the new Area C settlements are not natural Arab urban growth or urban sprawl. Rather, they are often strategically scattered to effectively carve up Area C, sometimes to surround Jewish villages and sometimes to push onto Israeli nature or military reserves.

In many instances, Arab residents from Areas A and B are bused in, encouraged by incentives to relocate or start a second home in the new settlements. Some structures are makeshift, festooned with the logo of the European Union. Some are multi-floor office centers. Others turn out to be palatial homes. The gamut of construction styles can be seen.

In several cases, the illegal constructions are deliberately established on Israeli military reserves. Since the 1970s, Israel Defense Forces have maintained military training and firing ranges, such as Firing Zone 918. That zone now has illegal settlements.

One road, dubbed Smuggler’s Route, courses through the hills from the Palestinian city of Yatta all the way to the Arad Valley in the Negev Desert.

In prior years, Israel’s Civil Administration boasted of its many Palestinian construction permits. A glowing report cites 328 projects authorized during 2011 and 2012. That number has drastically diminished because Area C Palestinians no longer apply for permits; they deny Israel’s right to issue them. Now, they just start building.

While the sudden development rush has been percolating in the Jewish and Israeli media, many Jewish leaders worldwide are completely unaware of this phenomenon. Many are incredulous that the Israeli government has not acted to block the illegal projects. But a security spokesman close to the Area C files located in Bet El blames the inaction on Israel’s complex legal system.

“When we discover something,” stated a security spokesman, “we give them a stop order, and if they don’t stop, they are summoned to an [adjudication] panel. But they don’t come. They go to court to enjoin us.”

These court cases are frequently financed and represented by well-funded NGOs, such as the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. The Gordian knot of legal principles to parse includes Ottoman land law from a long-dismantled empire, Jordanian law from the withdrawn 1948 illegal occupation, post-Six Day War military administrative law, and a library of international legal codes—all stoked and poked with competing maps, surveys, expert opinions, decrees, chronologies and historical accounts.

“It can take years to decide, and without a court ruling, we cannot get close,” lamented the spokesman. “Meanwhile, they are still building. We can’t do anything about it.” The spokesman said that going to court “can take half a year—or four years. There is no specific time. Each case is different. We have some cases that were opened 15 years ago.”

Once the court rules, if Israel takes enforcement action with bulldozers, the international headlines, E.U. accusations of war crimes, threats of sanctions, close-up photos of weeping people and the overall global uproar make being legally right a very unappealing political idea. The E.U., NGOs and illegal settlers know this.

What makes the Palestinian settlements “illegal” is the thin wisp of Oslo that remains. The accords have now been fractured so many times that what remains is only the preserved corpse of a long-deceased vision.

At the end of July 2019, when the Israeli cabinet voted to authorize an extra 715 permits, the Palestinian response was immediate. Shtayyeh declared: “We don’t need permission from the occupying power to build our homes on our lands,” adding that the Oslo classification of land into A, B and C “no longer exists.”

Before year’s end, the P.A. is expected to issue thousands of new permits further circumventing Oslo. As Palestinian expansion roils across Area C, the prospect looms of Gaza fence-style encounters coming soon to a hill in Judea and Samaria.

As Area C dynamics become clearer, still murky is the source and route of the diverse European funding that enables this confrontation. What’s more, there is widespread fear that millions in funds are continuously funneled through entities openly accused of being affiliated with established terrorist organizations.