Sunday, October 15, 2017
Elder of Ziyon
Sunday, October 15, 2017Elder of Ziyon
The Labour party is now engulfed by a problem of antisemitism which it refuses properly to identify let alone effectively confront.Melanie Phillips on Sky News Australia
The eruption of anti-Jewish hostility at the Labour conference left decent people aghast. This followed years of escalating anti-Jewish incidents in the party, causing even non-Jewish commentators to criticise Labour’s “serious and growing” problem of antisemitism.
A number of Labour members have now torn up their party card in disgust. Not so Lord Winston, who in a letter to the Jerusalem Post taking issue with my comments on the subject claimed that activists attending conference were not necessarily representative of the party. “I myself”, he added, “seldom need to speak on behalf of Israel in the House of Lords because so many non-Jewish Labour members there are first on their feet to show support for Israel”.
Not everyone shares Lord Winston’s sunny optimism. The Home Affairs Select Committee accused Labour of creating a “safe space for those with vile attitudes towards the Jewish people”. The Labour MP John Cryer said he was shocked by antisemitic tweets by party members coming before its disciplinary panel. Such stuff, he said, was “redolent of the 1930s.”
Last September, Lord Parry Mitchell quit the Labour Party over what he called the “violent anti-Israel views” of the allies of its leader, Jeremy Corbyn. “I think it’s very difficult if you are Jewish and you support Israel to be a member of the Labour Party,” he said.
Clearly, it must be painful for people like Lord Winston and other Jewish party members to try to square their devotion to the Jewish people with their loyalty to the Labour cause.
The truth, though, is that while antisemitism is found elsewhere in British society its major influence and growth are on the left.
In this interview with Rowan Dean and Ross Cameron on Sky News Australia, recorded on September 27 2017, I discuss multicultural confusions in the west, the Arab war against Israel and why so many American Jews are losing the plot. (The sound quality improves after the first few minutes.)
There is something rotten in Denmark, but also something rotten in America and here is the uncomfortable truth. The painful, confusing, disturbing truth. The great threat that we face as Americans and as Jews comes not from the Alt Right but from the Alt Left. Some are violent, rampaging criminals, others wear suits and ties, jeans and t-shirts. Some make no pretense of their disdain for America while others appear loyal citizens. Their tactics are different, but their goals are the same. They do not understand America nor American exceptionalism. We are a dangerously polarized society and have tumbled into a place of binary values that define who and what we are. This cultural divide will also define where we go as a nation. As Americans and as Jews we must pick a side. And though it should be an easy choice it is confusing because the Left claims the moral high ground, wrapped in what they define as tolerance, equality, sensitivity and decency when in truth, their agenda is intolerant, unequal, insensitive and indecent. “We are the champions of all that is good,” they cry out, when in fact they are on the wrong side of benevolence. They are the true bigots. The true oppressors. The true deniers of human rights. The true threat to authentic democracy.
Let me provide a simple test to help us figure out what to do when our hearts take us in the direction of what we believe is tikkun olam, when we are motivated to march. To raise our voices. To donate resources in the hope of creating an improved society. There is no better way to distinguish between what is moral and what is immoral. What is good and what is corrupt than in the Middle East impasse between Israel and the Palestinians. Though neither side is without blemish, the difference between the two is huge and provides us the definition of good and the definition of evil.
The Palestinians have steadfastly refused generous settlements from Israeli administrations, even the sharing of Jerusalem as capital. They still dream and chant of a homeland, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” No compromise. The Palestinians provide tens of thousands of dollars to families of terrorists who were killed. They hold parades to honor terrorists who murdered innocent children. They name parks and streets after barbarians who slaughtered entire Jewish families. They have built playgrounds with rubber toys of Jewish body parts for their children to reenact terrorist attacks. And a new strategy recently introduced: The Palestinian Education Ministry will give any student arrested for throwing Molotov cocktails at passing Israeli cars a passing grade in school.
Meanwhile, a few kilometers from Ramallah, what does apartheid, genocidal, ethnic cleansing Israel do? She has provided medical attention for countless numbers of wounded Arabs fleeing the bloodshed in Syria. Arabs are voting members of Knesset. An Arab sits on the Supreme Court of Israel. In wars with ruthless enemies, Israel warns, as no other army does, of an impending attack so non-combatants can get out of the way. Arabs enjoy full civil rights. They worship as they wish. They shop alongside Israelis. They set up umbrellas on the beaches next to Israelis. They sit in buses next to Israelis. They are cared for in hospitals next to Israelis.
Contrast the two. One is enlightened and civilized. The other is depraved and primitive. And yet, who is vilified by the Left and who is celebrated? Who is demonized by the Left and who is embraced? It is a cliché we have all heard, but it needs to be said here again. “If the Arabs/Palestinians put down their weapons today, there would be peace tomorrow. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no Israel tomorrow.” The Left likes the latter part of the quote and we who sing Hatikvah, eat felafel and go on Birthright, don’t get it.
Sunday, October 15, 2017Elder of Ziyon
book review
Sunday, October 15, 2017Elder of Ziyon
Sunday, October 15, 2017Elder of ZiyonForest Rain, Opinion, poetry, Simchat Torah
Sunday, October 15, 2017Elder of Ziyonالصهاينة يرقصون في المسجد الإبراهيمي وحكام العرب يتمنون التطبيع مع الكيان الصهيوني. pic.twitter.com/jv13ZNxt3J— مفتاح (@keymiftah79) October 10, 2017
Peace is not possible in the Middle East because values and goals other than peace are more important to Middle Easterners. Most important to Middle Easterners are loyalty to kin, clan, and cult, and the honour that is won by such loyalty.Melanie Phillips: Modernity starts here, if only the world realized it
There was no group and no loyalty above the tribe or tribal confederation until the rise of Islam. With Islam, a new, higher, more encompassing level of loyalty was defined. All people were divided between Muslims and infidels, and the world was divided between the Dar al-Islam, the land of believers and peace, and Dar al-harb, the land of unbelievers and war. Following the tribal ideology of loyalty, Muslims should unite against infidels, and would receive not only honour, but heavenly rewards.
Honour is gained in victory. Losing is regarded as deeply humiliating. Only the prospects of a future victory and the regaining of honour drives people forward. An example is the Arab-Israel conflict, in the course of which the despised Jews repeatedly defeated the armies of Arab states. This was not so much a material disaster for the Arabs, as it was a cultural one in which honor was lost. The only way to regain honor is to defeat and destroy Israel, the explicit goal of the Palestinians: "from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea." This why no agreement over land or boundaries will bring peace: peace does not restore honor.
We in the West, unlike Middle Easterners, love "victims." But what if Middle Easterners are victims of the limitations and shortcomings of their own culture? (h/t Elder of Lobby)
So it begins once more. In the synagogues this week, it’s Groundhog Day. Jews go back to the opening of the Five Books of Moses and start the narrative all over again.
The secular world looks on with indifference, bemusement or contempt. Among unbelievers, it is an article of faith that reason, science and modernity are in one box and religion, superstition and obscurantism in another.
Ah yes; the rational, factual, grounded secular world. The one that is currently disinviting speakers and violently attacking universities on the grounds of upholding freedom and equality. The one that is spewing unhinged lies and paranoid distortions at Israel and the Jewish people. The one that appears to be spinning off its axis into utter madness.
The reason for this is something the secular world cannot bring itself to grasp.
For in setting out to destroy the biblical basis of western civilization, the secular world is in the process of destroying reason itself. This is is how it works.
Tuvia’s travels reveal a number of interesting things. For a start, while Germany has perhaps allowed in the most refugees, Germany does not really have a good game plan after they have arrived. The refugees lived in squalid conditions, often with different enemy factions living right near each other. Night-time knife hilarity ensues.Tuvia Tenenbom: Refugees & Anti-Semitism in the US - Moderated by Melanie Phillips
Then there’s the question as to why Germany has let in the most refugees. Invariably, the answer is the same – and it rhymes with Madolf Mitler. Germany is trying to shed its past as the Dr Evil of nations, and is doing so to the extent that they are now the kindest people in the world! Or so Tuvia is told. The people telling him this also invariably add something along the lines of “unlike those inhumane Israelis who mistreat the poor palestinians.”
Yep, Tuvia encounters antisemitism among his Germans, but also among not an insignificant amount of the refugees he meets. Perhaps this is the glue that can make this marriage work!
Another interesting finding: the Right-wing Germans he meets, much reviled by the liberals, are actually not against bringing in refugees. They just want to make sure the refugees are really fleeing persecution, and not the economic refugees just wanting a better life (which often seems to include wanting to marry a beautiful blonde German girl).
Once again, Tuvia Tenenbom has delivered with an entertaining and provocative read that gets beyond mainstream media narratives.
Incidentally, I attended a Q&A with Tuvia Tenenbom earlier this week. You can view it yourself below; in it, Tuvia expands on some of the topics I have addressed in this review, in his inimitable style.
When I was in the fourth grade, my class went on a field trip to Zichron Ya’akov, to visit the home of a woman named Sarah Aaronsohn. She, we were told, was a great Jewish heroine, although the particulars were left deliberately vague. She was some sort of spy, our teacher told us cryptically, and she died for our country.The Jews Will Have to Wait
That she did, exactly one hundred years ago this week. But her bravery remains singular, and her story, sadly, too rarely told: Aaronsohn was a committed feminist, a proud Zionist, and a witness to genocide who refused to remain silent in the face of atrocity.
She was born in 1890 to Romanian immigrants who, as Zionism’s earliest adherents, helped found Zichron Ya’akov. Growing up, she learned how to farm, how to ride horses, and how to shoot guns. In 1914, she married a wealthy merchant named Haim Avraham and followed him to Turkey, where he did business. But, unsatisfied with merely being someone’s wife, she left him and set out to return home to her parents’ farm. What she saw on the way changed her life.
“In front of her very eyes, she saw the Armenians being tortured by the Turks,” her brother, Aaron, wrote in his diary. “She saw hundreds of dead Armenians, lying on the ground, unburied, devoured by wild dogs.”
These sights shook her to the core. She vowed to fight the Turks by whatever means necessary, and sought to aid the British in their war against the Ottoman Empire. Her timing was perfect: Her brother and his friends had just started an underground movement dedicated to this very idea. Entitled NILY—Hebrew acronyms for Netzach Israel Lo Yeshaker, or The Eternal One of Israel Will Not Lie—the group was a spy ring that collected information on Ottoman military movements in Palestine and delivered them to the Brits. At first the handoff was done by hand, with one of the group’s members swimming to a small yacht off the coast of Atlit, delivering his information, and receiving funds collected by American Jews to help the starving and embattled Jews in the Eretz Yisrael. Soon, however, the Turks began to suspect that something was afoot, and warned Palestine’s Jews not to meddle in the war lest they meet the same fate as the Armenians. Most were cowered by the threat, but not Aaronsohn and her fellow fighters. With the coastline now closely watched, they switched to homing pigeons. The system worked well, until it didn’t: In September of 1917, one of their birds was intercepted. (h/t Elder of Lobby)
On November 8, 1942, a full year-and-a-half before the Allies invaded Normandy, about 110,000 American and British troops invaded North Africa. They had set out in more than 850 ships from U.S. and British ports, sailed for up to 4,500 miles through treacherous Atlantic waters teeming with Nazi U-boats, and, once at their destination, put ashore in three landing zones spread across more than 900 miles of coastline, from south of Casablanca to east of Algiers.
This was Operation Torch, America’s first offensive operation in the European theater of war and, until Operation Overlord’s Normandy landings, the greatest amphibious attack in history. Today, it is all but forgotten. And yet, aside from rivaling Overlord in terms of its enormity, complexity, and peril, Torch was also vastly consequential, for it helped to determine the future course and ultimately successful conclusion of the war. If that weren’t significant enough, Torch also deserves to be remembered for the critical role it played in setting the terms of America’s long-term relationship with the rulers and peoples of the Middle East.
Among those peoples not least are the Jews, whose role in this story is central in more ways than one.
I am referring to Article 9 of the Jordan-Israel Peace Treaty.
Is that treaty not a commitment, to be honored?
Are Article 9's elements to be discarded?
Let's read the official Jordanian news agency Petra:
300 extremist settlers storm Al-Aqsa Mosque
Ramallah, Oct.10 (Petra)-- Some 300 extremist settlers early Tuesday stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque/Haram Al Sharif, according to a Palestinian source.
The General Director of the Islamic Awqaf and Al-Aqsa Affairs, Sheikh Azzam Al-Khatib, told Petra's reporter in Ramallah that Israeli settlers broke into the holy shrine from the Bab Al-Magharbeh gate under heavy protection of Israeli special forces and police.
Al-Khatib said that the settlers provocatively toured the Al-Aqsa yards.
Okay, that's Jordan's bad behavior.
But is there ever an Israeli protest?
Israeli intelligence officials monitoring Russian government hackers found they were using Kaspersky Lab antivirus software that is also used by 400 million people globally, including U.S. government agencies, media reports said Tuesday.Palestinian Normalization -- With Hamas, Not Israel
The Israeli officials who hacked into Kaspersky's network over two years ago had, at the time, warned their U.S. counterparts of the Russian intrusion, The New York Times reported.
That led to a decision in Washington only last month to order Kaspersky software removed from all government computers.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Israeli officials also found in Kaspersky's network hacking tools that could only have come from the U.S. National Security Agency.
Upon this discovery, the consequent NSA investigation found that these tools had been obtained by the Russian government, the report said.
Late last month, the U.S. National Intelligence Council completed a classified report that it shared with NATO allies concluding that Russia's FSB intelligence service had "probable access" to Kaspersky customer databases and source code.
That access, the council concluded, could help enable cyberattacks against U.S. government, commercial and industrial control networks, The Washington Post reported.
The New York Times said the Russian operation, according to multiple people briefed on the matter, is known to have stolen classified documents from an NSA employee who had improperly stored them on his home computer, which had Kaspersky antivirus software installed on it.
It is not yet publicly known what other U.S. secrets the Russian hackers may have discovered by turning the Kaspersky software into a sort of Google search for sensitive information, the report said. (h/t Dave4321)
The most widespread conspiracy theory, which has been floating around for decades and can be heard in almost every coffee shop on the streets of Cairo, Amman, Ramallah and Beirut, is that Zionist Jews, together with American capitalists and imperialists, have a secret plan to take control over the Arab and Islamic countries and their resources.Gatestone Institute: NOTICE
How exactly are the "Zionists and imperialists" trying to "undermine" the Palestinian "national project"? And what, precisely, is this project? Is it the project of Hamas and many other Palestinians that seeks the destruction of Israel?
The corrupt Arab and Palestinian leaders spread such rumors to divert attention from problems at home, such as corruption and dictatorship. These leaders want their people too busy hating Jews and Westerners to demand reform, democracy and transparency from their leaders. Those valuables, of course, are what Arab and Palestinian leaders still refuse to offer their people.
Why do many Palestinians prefer peace with Hamas? Because they identify with Hamas's dream of destroying Israel and killing Jews. It may be an unpleasant a truth, but that is the bottom line.
Gatestone Institute, its President and Board of Directors strongly condemn the defamatory campaign waged by Mudar Zahran (under his own name and through various fictitious accounts and names) against Gatestone Institute's Distinguished Senior Fellow Khaled Abu Toameh. Gatestone Institute wishes to note that it has warned Mudar Zahran in the past a number of times to stop his obsessive campaign. Although he promised and apologized, he had persisted with his campaign, and continues to make false and defamatory accusations and insinuations against one of our esteemed Fellows.
Gatestone Institute wishes to clarify that it terminated all ties with Mudar Zahran four years ago. Accordingly, he does not speak on behalf of Gatestone or any of its affiliates, constituents or participants.
Wednesday, October 11, 2017Elder of ZiyonAlthough my ex-husband formally converted in Al-Azhar, he did not take a Muslim name. That was enough to render his faith as “questionable”. Shortly before midnight, after touring Damascus, we were interrupted in our hostel room by a rude wake up call – literally. An aggressive voice at the door said, “We are the night staff, we need to check your marriage certificate.” Although we had shown the precious certificate to the afternoon staff earlier, the night staffs were not convinced. They wanted to check it one more time – at around midnight. “This is a Muslim country, and you claim to be Muslim,” one of them said. The two hostel staff looked bemused and offended when I responded angrily, “Yes, I am Muslim, and I have the right to choose my husband.”
Even in my native country Egypt, officials, hotel employees and others we met on tour questioned his Islamic credential.
We had, however, a particularly challenging encounter at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. To enter the Dome of the Rock, my ex-husband was asked to perform ablutions (the ritual of washing before prayers), apparently to prove he was not a Jew. According to one of the guards, this was a necessary ritual because “Jews occasionally want to break into the sacred site.”
In England, the challenges and grilling continued. One night was particularly distressing when a well-educated, senior medical colleague of mine (a doctor) volunteered, “to educate me” about how God would punish me if my husband stopped performing his Islamic duties. This colleague then said, with no small degree of condescension: “I know a girl who made your stupid mistake; she was eventually punished by God who cursed her with a rare skin disease.”
Wednesday, October 11, 2017Elder of ZiyonSimchat Torah
Buy EoZ's book, PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
