Showing posts with label Haaretz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Haaretz. Show all posts

Sunday, August 13, 2023



Haaretz reports:

In the summer of 1942, Fritz Sendel, chief of staff of the German Order Police in occupied Poland, sent a message to the force’s commanding officers. Its subject: protecting the rights of animals that were transported on trains. “In the spirit of the Reich Animal Protection Act, I order, with immediate effect, that the officers of the stations (German and non-German) intervene immediately in cases of cruelty to animals, put a stop to it and report the offenders,” he wrote.

Sendel noted that “the majority of cases involving the cruelty to animals until now have been observed in regard to the horses used by the police forces.” On top of this, “the crowded conditions in the railway cattle cars, especially for animals being sent to slaughter, have also led to many credible complaints.” 

The document in question was found in Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance by Eliyahu Klein, a PhD candidate at Tel Aviv University, whose dissertation, under the supervision of Prof. Havi Dreifuss and Dr. David Silberklang from the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, focuses on the relationship between Jews and non-Jews under the German occupation in Poland and elsewhere.

Sendel added an appendix containing precise instructions, ordering the police officers to take action to prevent cruelty to animals and to report on any colleagues who mistreated them. The recommendations included reducing the number of animals per railcar, allowing them to have time to rest and monitoring their condition.

“The text mentions the need to oversee the conditions of the animals being transported,” Klein says. Officers were urged to ensure that the railcars were properly ventilated, to take note of the capacity of the cars and keep track of the number of animals loaded onto each one, and to make note of their physical condition, including details of injuries, respiratory problems and other symptoms. In addition, the German personnel were to see to it that the animals were not struck unnecessarily while being loaded onto the train, and asked to report on cases of sickness or death during the transport.
Klein mentions an exchange of correspondence in the summer of 1942 between two high-ranking Nazi figures. In it the deputy transport minister of Nazi Germany, Albert Ganzenmueller, updated Karl Wolff, chief of staff of Gestapo head Heinrich Himmler, about the transports to Treblinka from the Warsaw Ghetto. In response, Wolff wrote, as quoted in Kerstin von Lingen’s 2013 book “Allen Dulles, the OSS, and Nazi War Criminals”: “I note with particular pleasure after reading your communication that a train with 5,000 members of the chosen people has been running daily [to Treblinka] for 14 days and that we are accordingly in a position to continue with this population movement at an accelerated pace. ..."

Notice how Ganzenmueller sarcastically refers to Jews as the "chosen people" in a way not dissimilar to how we see the term used by today's anti-Zionists. 

The seeming contradiction between how Nazis treated Jews and how they treated animals is not a new topic. I found a very interesting 1992 article that tried to explain this dichotomy in terms of Nazi ideology and its German antecedents. 

 It would be easy to dismiss the apparently benevolent Nazi attitude toward animals as “hypocrisy,” but this would be a facile way of evading an examination of the psychological and social dynamics of Nazi thinking and behavior. Rather than questioning the authenticity of the motivations behind Nazi animal protection—a question that is unanswerable—it may be more useful to ask how such thinking was possible and what significance it had.

One motivation was the German desire to distinguish themselves morally from Jews. The practice of Jewish ritual slaughter was attacked in the 19th century by German animal rights activists and banning kosher slaughter was one of the first acts of the Nazi government. Propaganda films that attempted to show how cruel Jews were to animals were widely distributed. Moreover, Nazis framed animal experimentation as a "Jewish" practice which should be curtailed (although laws to that effect had many loopholes.) 

More interestingly, the paper argues that while there was no consistent Nazi ideology, to a large extent  Nazis regarded all humans as animals, with Aryans as the highest form of animal that had to be protected from intermixing with lower forms such as Jews (untermenschen.)  It quotes one SS document:

The subhuman—that creation of nature, which biologically is seemingly quite identical with the human, with hands, feet, and a kind of brain, with eyes and a mouth—is nevertheless a totally different and horrible creature, is merely an attempt at being man—but mentally and emotionally on a far lower level than any animal. In the inner life of that person there is a cruel chaos of wild uninhibited passions: a nameless urge to destroy, the most primitive lust, undisguised baseness… But the subhuman lived, too… He associated with his own kind. The beast called the beast… And this underworld of subhumans found its leader: the eternal Jew!   
In the hierarchy of the animal kingdom, the Jews occupied the lowest possible position:
When groups of people, most commonly Jews, were likened to specific animal species, it was usually “lower” animals or life forms, including rodents, reptiles, insects, or germs. Hitler (1938), for instance, called the Jews a “pack of rats,” and Himmler, in order to help soldiers cope with having just shot one hundred Jews, told them “bedbugs and rats have a life purpose…but this has never meant that man could not defend himself against vermin” (Hilberg 1961, 219). The propaganda film Triumph of the Will superimposed images of rats over presumed “degenerate people” such as the Jews, and the 1940 film The Eternal Jew portrayed Jews as lower than vermin, somewhat akin to the rat—filthy, corrupting, disease carrying, ugly, and group oriented (Herzstein 1978, 309). ... Jews were also likened to bacteria and “plagues” of insects (Herzstein 1978, 354).
But the Germans even regarded Aryans, in a sense, as animals. Nazis proposed ways to breed superhumans the same way that animals are bred, reducing even Aryan human beings to little more than breeding stock:

Much of Himmler’s knowledge about animal breeding practices was directly applied to plans for human breeding to further Aryan traits (Bookbinder 1989). One of Himmler’s obsessions was the breeding of many more superior Nordic offspring (Shirer 1960, 984). Financial awards were made for giving birth if the child was of biological and racial value, and potential mothers of good Aryan stock who did not give birth were branded as “unwholesome, traitors and criminals” (Deuel 1942, 164–65). Encouraging the propagation of good German blood was seen as so important that several Nazi leaders advocated free love in special recreation camps for girls with pure Aryan qualities. In one of Himmler’s schemes, he argued that if 100 such camps were established for 1000 girls, 10,000 “perfect” children would be born each year (Deuel 1942, 165). Despite the criticism of the Reich Minister of the Interior, who opposed the “idea of breeding Nordics” when it reached the point of “making a rabbit-breeding farm out of Germany” (Deuel 1942, 203), plans were developed for a series of state-run brothels, where young women certified as genetically sound would be impregnated by Nazi men. The intent was to breed Aryans as if they were pedigreed dogs (Glaser 1978).
This viewpoint of all living beings as on the same continuum where the higher animals must be protected from the lower animals is, on its own terms, a coherent moral philosophy that was twisted into a monstrous reality. 

It is all too simple to relegate Nazis to cartoonish villains as being evil for evil's sake. But the frightening part is that they justified their evil in the language of ethics. Their position towards animal rights were the most advanced in the world at the time and (unconsciously) influences animal rights activists' philosophy today. Similarly, Nazi Germany was in the forefront of medical ethics, using the same kind of logic described here to justify persecuting Jews as an ethical imperative to protect Aryans.

We see this same perverted twisting of ethics in the 21st century. 

Today, there is an unmistakable singling out of Jews as the world's worst violators of ethics, just as the Nazis positioned Jews as morally reprehensible in their treatment of animals.

 And today we see "human rights defenders" justifying murdering Jews as an ethical imperative of "resistance.".

Today's supposed "human rights" leaders believe that they have the moral high ground and cannot even see their own bigotry is being justified by their bizarre, twisted sense of ethics. Like the Nazis, they are writing long, seemingly well-researched papers to justify their foregone conclusions in the name of social justice. 

Their justifications for attempting to destroy Israel are an eerie echo of the Nazis' ethical justifications for destroying the Jewish people.




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

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Thursday, July 06, 2023



In the middle of a Haaretz article on humanitarian issues in Jenin, we see:

Another resident of the camp, who prefers to remain unnamed, refused to leave his home with his family of eight. "We will not leave our home even if it falls on our heads," he said. "Our forefathers left in 1948 and were told to come back after a week, and that week has been 75 years. We will not make the same mistake; our generation is ready to sacrifice for its homeland." 
The idea that Arab leaders had instructed the residents to flee so they would be free to enter and quickly defeat the Jews has gone out of fashion in recent decades, as many historians cannot find too much primary source material for it. And even among those who accept that it happened, there is much controversy about how many Arabs may have left at the urging of their leaders.

But here is a Palestinian "refugee" who is not ashamed to say that his own ancestors indeed fled because they were instructed to.

Given that most Palestinians are conditioned to push the narrative of being forcibly evicted even when it is provably false, and the current mindset that it would have been shameful to have voluntarily left their homes, it is significant that a Palestinian admits (without allowing his name to be used) that this was in fact what happened to his family in 1948.

(h/t kweansmom)



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

The BBC has weakly apologized for presenter Anjana Gadgil saying, as a fact, that “Israeli forces are happy to kill children” during her interview with former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett.

In a statement, the BBC said, “While this was a legitimate subject to examine in the interview, we apologise that the language used in this line of questioning was not phrased well and was inappropriate.”

But how could Gadgil have even thought that Israelis are such monsters to begin with?

The answer is almost certainly - Haaretz.

A review of news articles from the past 20 years finds that it is very rare for even the most extreme haters of Israel to accuse Israelis of happiness at killing children. 

During the 2009 Gaza war, in The Guardian, a resident of Gaza writes in an op-ed, "A short message to the pilots in the Israeli F-16s: does it make you feel happy to kill Palestinian children and women? Do you feel it's your duty? Killing every child and woman, man and teenager in Gaza? I don't know what exactly you feel, what exactly you think, but please think of your mother and sister, your son and daughter." But even for a Gaza resident seeing airstrikes, the idea that Israel wants to kill children was not stated as a flat fact.

A satirical Israeli filmmaker in 2012 prompted children visiting a war museum to say that killing Arabs makes them happy, which the Electronic Intifada promoted as if they don't understand how Borat-style filmmakers can elicit the responses they want from people eager to please an interviewer.

But outside of those contrived cases from years ago, I cannot find even the most biased news source making such a libelous claim that killing children makes Israelis happy.

Until this two months ago. 

That's when Haaretz published an op-ed by an execrable person named Yossi Klein who wrote, "Killing children is designed to cause pain, to strike the most sensitive place of all. It isn’t designed to stop terrorism; it’s designed to deter the terrorists and make us happy."

The Haaretz headline that everyone saw, since changed, was "Killing children brings Israelis together."

At the time I argued that this was the most antisemitic article ever published. Hitler never claimed Jews relish killing children. Medieval Christians and later Muslims said that the Jews murder gentile children for religious reasons, not out of sheer pleasure.  

Only Haaretz made that claim.

Western news professionals rely heavily on Haaretz to inform themselves of the alleged Israeli zeitgeist. It cannot be a coincidence that Gadgil's libelous accusation comes on the heels of Klein's own blood libel. No one would have dared to say something so outlandishly false unless they felt that it was backed up by facts - and Haaretz gave the antisemites of the world the ammunition they need to go even beyond the classic blood libel accusation. 

When the Haaretz article was published, I wrote that Klein's words "will be used by antisemites forever as proof that Jews admit their happiness at murdering Arab children." 

That is exactly what happened here. 

And it will keep happening - because what would be unthinkable to say out loud gets a kosher stamp of approval when a Jew says it. 

(Interestingly, as of this writing, Haaretz has not reported on the BBC interview nor on the apology. Could it be that they do not want people to make this connection between their own libel and that of Anjana Gadgil?)

(h/t Benjamin)



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Monday, July 03, 2023




Atidna describes itself this way:

Atidna is a coalition of educators and social entrepreneurs, Arab citizens of Israel together with Jews from the State-Zionist Camp in Israel.

We, Israeli educators, society and entrepreneurship, believe that true integration will only begin when all of us, Arabs and Jews alike, will see the Arab Israeli public as an equal partner in a Jewish and democratic state.

The vision:
An Arab-Jewish partnership based on mutual respect and full civil equality in the State of Israel as a Jewish-democratic state. A strong Arab community, proud of its culture and heritage, which is integrated into Israeli society.

Atidna's mission:
Building a young and courageous leadership of Arabs and Jews, who have equal rights and duties, and who are proud of their identity and culture and are committed to the challenge of the successful integration of the Arab minority in the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. The movement works to create a critical human mass connected to Atidna values by developing and leading child, youth and student empowerment programs. Atidna is committed to supporting the building of a trusting, optimistic, independent and integrated Arab-Jewish community at the decision-making centers and throughout Israeli society. Atidna is committed to building a young Arab leadership avenue, which has an optimistic but practical outlook on life, which recognizes the challenge and the importance of the task and is ready to mobilize them into action in the spirit of Atidna’s values.

What makes Atidna special?
Atidna is a coalition of educators and social entrepreneurs, Arab citizens of Israel together with Jews from the State-Zionist Camp who joined together to work for successful integration in the State of Israel.
Atidna builds a community! All of Atidna’s programs are interconnected and create a multi-generational leadership community that creates change.

Addressing a diverse target audience from elementary school, students and adults.

Building a critical mass to create social change.
In short, Atidna wants to build a proud Arab society in Israel that embraces Zionist values and which will benefit everyone.

And therefore, the anti-Zionists are screaming bloody murder.




We may be at a pivotal moment. If we wake up in a few years and discover that a right-wing Zionist youth movement is flourishing in Arab society and is slowly crowding out the old movements, we will not be able to say that we did not know. You don't have to go far to identify the long-term vision: the realization of the dream of Netanyahu and his friends on the deep right: the emergence of a significant right-wing Arab current in Israeli society.

 In fact, Atidna admits it themselves. "In the long run, we hope that the social movement will become a political movement and be part of the coalition and part of the government," said Dr. Dalia Padilla, a co-director of the movement, in an interview with the "Jerusalem Post". A source in Atidna who left the movement with a slammed door was impressed that the targets are more focused. "The talk was about a Jewish-Arab party that would cut off from the territory the existing leaders of the Arab public in the Knesset," said the source, "a party that would weaken the left."


Al Quds al Arabi summarizes the Haaretz piece::
A new journalistic investigation, this time published by Hebrew-language Haaretz, revealed a project to obliterate the identity of the rising generations of the Palestinians of the interior in cunning ways and by building Zionist Arab youth movements. The talk is not only about an Israeli initiative aimed at corruption, but rather an unprecedented strategic right-wing governmental project whose malicious goal is to produce a “new Arab citizen” in Israel, i.e. a “good Arab” whose identity is a hybrid without a backbone and who has no demands inconsistent with a long-term vision sponsored by the Zionist right.  
The Hebrew newspaper, which published an extensive investigation on the matter last Friday, confirms that this project will explode in the face of its sponsors as soon as the Arab youth discover that the Jews only intend to use them as "Shabbos goys,"  i.e. a mere means to Judaize the country.
I have no idea how much traction Atidna has made in the Israeli Arab community, but the anger from the Left on an initiative from the Right to tackle systemic inequalities between Jews and Arabs in Israel feels so much like the reaction from "progressives" in the US to hearing an intelligent Black conservative. They feel betrayed that members of their pet causes might disagree with their own philosophy - which proves that their own pretense as being the only champions of minority rights is a sham. 

A Zionist Arab, like a Black conservative, indicates that some minorities do not want to be treated as if they cannot think on their own. And the "progressives" cannot handle that. 

Haaretz' article is, to put it bluntly, racist. Arabs are free to go shopping in the marketplace of ideas; if some of them choose to become Zionist, that is their right. If the Israeli Left is so convinced that Atidna holds no benefit for Arabs then Atidna is not a threat to them and they can make jokes about it, not panicked articles about waking up in a world where an Arab party is part of a right-wing government. 

The fear permeating this article is that a significant number of Arabs just might become Zionists if given a chance to learn what Zionism really is. This is a community that the Left felt that they have in their pockets and they are alarmed at even the possibility that many Arabs might be more attracted to the Right than the Left when they are exposed to real Zionism, not the racist caricature of Zionism that fills Haaretz articles. 

If some Arabs want to embrace Zionism - and certainly some do - then no one should infantilize them and tell them that they cannot. 

Because that is racist. 

(h/t YMedad)



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

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Monday, June 26, 2023

Haaretz reports:

A Reform synagogue in the southern U.S. state of Georgia hasn't experienced an antisemitic incident in its nearly 165-year history – until this weekend, when it was one of two congregations targeted by a neo-Nazi hate group.

“This is a congregation has been around since 1859,” said Rabbi Elizabeth Bahar, the spiritual leader of Temple Beth Israel in Macon, Georgia, in a phone conversation with Haaretz. ...

On Friday morning, she said, members of the congregation living in the nearby city of Warner Robins found antisemitic flyers outside their homes. They had been distributed by an organization called the Goyim Defense League, a white supremacist hate group active mainly on social media. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the GDL's main objective is “to cast aspersions on Jews and spread antisemitic myths and conspiracy theories.”

Later in the day, 15 members of the hate group held a demonstration outside the synagogue, where they had hung a life-sized doll in effigy from a street sign, wrapped in a rainbow flag, with a kippa on its head. According to Bahar, at least one of the demonstrators was wearing a t-shirt with a Nazi insignia on it and another had an Israeli flag tied around his foot.

Police arrived at the scene not long thereafter and arrested GDL leader Jon Minadeo II on charges of disorderly conduct and public disturbance after he continued shouting obscenities through a bullhorn despite being ordered to stop. He was released the following day.

On Saturday, a group of about 150 residents of Macon gathered outside the Reform synagogue, and in a show of solidarity and support, they held hands and surrounded Temple Beth Israel. “It was an impromptu gathering,” recounted Bahar, who said she was deeply moved. “We did not organize it.”

The GDL group showed up once again and tried to hold its own demonstration, which was soon broken up by police. From there, the group headed to the Atlanta suburb of Marietta, where it held another demonstration, brandishing Nazi flags, outside the local Chabad synagogue.
One reason it is important to define antisemitism accurately is because to combat it, one must understand the motivations of the antisemites and respond only in ways that dissuade them

In this case, nothing happened that would stop the Goyim Defense League. On the contrary, the community holding hands outside the synagogue, the police releasing their leader after less than a day, the outrage from the community, the media coverage, and the police breaking up the second demonstration on Saturday morning might have made the Jewish community feel somewhat better but it didn't do a damned thing to make the antisemites think twice about driving to a Chabad and resuming their public hate. 

If anything, the GDL is enthusiastic over the media coverage - they only have a handful of followers yet they have made international news, again. More antisemites would want to join the GDL after the events of this weekend. 

The responses are well meaning but ultimately they are counterproductive.

The GDL delights in using laws that protect free speech to spread their hate. They dance close to the line of legality and mock those who try to use those same laws to silence them. They know that, at worst, they might spend a night in jail - and as a result they will recruit many new members who are itching to publicly scream obscenities at Jews. 

In 1938, Nazis in America were way ahead of where the GDL is today. Also using freedom of speech, they held huge public marches and rallies, spouting off against Jews. 


A judge named Nathan David Perlman realized that the law was not an impediment to this incitement. So he decided to go outside the law.

Perlman called Meyer Lansky, New York’s famous Jewish gangster. 

“You got some boys who might want to punch a Nazi?” he asked.  

“I do, Judge,” Lansky replied. “Respectfully, you understand we can do better than punch? I know just the crew — in Brownsville. The boys in the press call them Murder, Inc.”

“I want you to do anything but kill them,” Perlman said. 

And that's what the mobsters did. Baseball bats, pool cues, throwing them out of windows - whatever was needed short of killing them. And the Jewish mobsters spread their campaign throughout the US, wherever the Nazis gathered.

The American Nazis cowered in fear and the attendance at their rallies evaporated (for the most part - they managed to have thousands of New York police protect them in their 1939 Madison Square Garden rally.)

Right now, the GDL is laughing at any legal efforts to stop them and residents holding hands in solidarity with Jews. They know that they are winning. 

But if they are beaten up, they won't be laughing. And more importantly, they won't attract more members.

Let the Jews attacking them be arrested. Let there be arguments in court as to whether someone screaming "Sieg Heil" into a microphone is tantamount to assault and reacting with violence is self-defense. There is even scientific evidence that hatemongering is more harmful than actual assault in the victim's brain - let them battle that out. 

Whether they win or lose is immaterial. The results are the important thing. And like their American Nazi forebears, these GDL thugs are cowards at heart. 

Find out where the GDL is planning to spread their antisemitic flyers and get ready for them beforehand, beating them up and chasing them out of the neighborhoods they are polluting. Let them call the police.

Beating up the neo-Nazis gives them a direct message that they will pay a real price for intimidating Jews. And doing it now ensures that we will not see them strengthen enough to hold mass marches down the streets of major cities in five years. 

Some things are worth literally fighting for. 



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Thursday, June 22, 2023

Pottery that contained the argaman dye found at Shikmona


Haaretz publishes a fascinating theory:

Israeli archaeologists are rethinking the history of an ancient factory that, thousands of years ago, was one of the largest sites for the production of “royal purple,” a dye that adorned the robes of the rich and powerful across the Mediterranean.

Tel Shikmona, located on the shore of the modern-day city of Haifa, was interpreted as a Phoenician settlement that produced royal purple from sea-snails. The dye was one of the most sought-after luxuries of the ancient world. But a new paper, putting together information from archaeological digs there over 50 years, reached a new conclusion.

For about two centuries, Shikmona was something of a joint venture: an industrial site controlled by the biblical Kingdom of Israel and run by skilled Phoenician workers, say Prof. Ayelet Gilboa, an archaeologist at the University of Haifa and Dr. Golan Shalvi, formerly also at Haifa and now a postdoctoral researcher at Ben-Gurion University.

Their study, published in June in Tel Aviv: Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, offers rare insight into the closeness of the ties between the ancient Israelites and the Phoenicians. It also sheds light on the economical background behind the expansion of the Kingdom of Israel, which would rise to become a major regional power during the middle of the Iron Age (or the First Temple Period, if one prefers references to the biblical chronology).
The theory, backed up by archaeology, is that the Israelite kingdom expanded to encompass the already existing Phoenician dye factory. It built fortifications to protect it, indicating that the Israelites employed the Phoenician experts to control the export market for both royal purple (argaman) and royal blue (techelet), very expensive dyes used not only by royalty but also in the Jewish Temples in Jerusalem.  Tekhelet was also used (and some still use it) in tzitzit, the Biblical commandment to put a tekhelet string on the corners of square garments including prayer shawls.

The archaeologists point to proof that there was a large export trade in argaman, with pottery from Cyprus at the site. They theorize that this site, the only known such factory in that time period, was a major source of the Northern Kingdom's revenue with a near monopoly on the valued dyes. 

The paper can be read here.



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Tuesday, June 20, 2023

Haaretz reported about the clashes in Jenin yesterday, and fully accepted the idea that unseen snipers shooting towards the journalists were Israeli and not Palestinian. 

Abu Ahmed, a long-time camp resident, said he had the impression that the army was planning to undertake a large-scale operation in the city and its environs. Residents say that when the presence of Israeli forces was detected, calls went out from muezzins for armed militias to come out and confront them, which ultimately led to the heavy fire that followed
“I was in Al-Awdah Square on the edge of the Jenin refugee camp,” said Hafez, a journalist who was covering the raid. “I was in my car. They shot at random while I was photographing the clashes and the Palestinian fighters.” At a certain point, he said, three bullets were fired at his car. “Two of them I heard flying past me, but the third hit the car door on the driver’s side.”

He claims that the shots were not fired at him accidentally. “Our car is a marked journalist’s car and I was wearing a vest identifying me as press.”

Hafez said he was shot at a second time even though he was wearing clothing indicating he was a journalist. “We were about a kilometer away, on Haifa Street, on the road that leads to the Salam army checkpoint. We were eight journalists from the international and Arab media and we came under direct fire from a sniper in one of the buildings,” he recalled. “We were trapped there for 20 minutes and could only leave when it was all over.”

Jasmin – another journalist who was with a colleague of hers who was shot – confirmed the account. “We’re journalists and we were wearing clothing that identified us as such, [even donning] helmets,” she said. “They started shooting at us. We hadn’t done anything, we were only taking pictures. We fled but they kept shooting at us.”

She said that in the area the raid occurred there were no armed Palestinians, “just civilians, children and journalists.” Like Hafez, she said she and her colleagues were fired on “more than once on the same day.”
The journalists are implying that the snipers were Israeli and the story is being reported that way in Arab media. 

The Telegraph has video of journalists taking cover on a rooftop, although some are crouching opposite others, so there is no way to know from which direction the fire is coming. 


There appears to be some play-acting in this video - some journalists taking cover behind a wall while others stand around where they'd be seen by snipers, apparently unconcerned. But the gunfire is real, and the journalists certainly are not in a position to identify the source. 

While they are careful when speaking to The Telegraph not to claim they know the identity of the snipers, being that they are all Palestinian journalists, they of course will blame Israel when speaking to friendlier media. 

What is certain is that trained, professional soldiers do not fire wildly and randomly. They might mistake a target but they fire at targets. The random fire described in the Haaretz article is far more likely from Jenin terrorists, whom we know will fire without even looking at their target.





Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Monday, June 12, 2023

Armenian Quarter parking lot



Last week, AP wrote a long article about a planned land sale in the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem to become a luxury hotel that is sending residents into a panic:

A real estate deal in Jerusalem's Old City, the latest epicenter over the battle over the Judaization of the city, has sent the historic Armenian community there into a panic as residents search for answers about the feared loss of their homes to a mysterious investor.

The 99-year lease of some 25 percent of the Old City's Armenian Quarter has touched sensitive nerves in the Holy Land and sparked a controversy extending far beyond the Old City walls. The fallout has forced the highest authority of the Armenian Orthodox Church to cloister himself in a convent and prompted a disgraced priest who is allegedly behind the deal to flee to a Los Angeles suburb.

...Alarm over the lease spread in April, following a surprise visit by Israeli land surveyors. Word got around that an Australian-Israeli investor, whose company sign appeared on the site, planned to transform the parking lot and limestone fortress of Armenian apartments and shops into an ultra-luxury hotel.

 As anger, confusion and fears of possible evictions mounted, the Armenian patriarchate — the body managing the community’s civil and religious affairs — acknowledged that the church had signed away the patch of land.  

The entire article goes on and on about the fear of residents of being displaced, before paragraph 21:

 Renowned Israeli architect Moshe Safdie told the AP that Rothman would fund the project and that he would design it. Construction, he said, would start following excavations at the parking lot. It is unclear whether residents will be evicted, but the patriarchate has promised to assist any residents who are displaced.   

As far as anyone knows, nothing was sold beyond the parking lot, which is a significant part of the Armenian Quarter. As Media Line reported last month:

A large portion of the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City has been sold to a Jewish developer in a move that could erase the centuries-old Armenian presence in the city and further squeeze the Christian minority in Israel.

Though details of the deal remain unclear, the Armenian Quarter parking lot was taken over two weeks ago by a private company, Xana Capital.
The parking lot is a significant portion of the Armenian Quarter, on the southwest corner of the Old City:




There is no evidence at all in any of the articles about this sale that any land beyond the parking lot was purchased or that a single person will be displaced. Rumors about sale (actually, lease) to someone Jewish (even though the property will be managed by a Dubai-based group) have spun into a huge conspiracy to evict Jerusalem Armenians. 

As bad as the AP story is, Haaretz made it even worse. Haaretz' subhead for this story doesn't even include the very few caveats that AP wrote:


Haaretz falsely claims, as fact, that the community's "apartments and shops" will be torn down and turned into an "ultra luxury hotel." You have to read the entire article very carefully to realize that all the hubbub is about the sale of a parking lot.

Even then you wouldn't know that the parking lot takes up a lot of the sparse open Old City space, and is probably the largest section of the Old City that has not been developed outside of the Temple Mount.. It is even larger than the Western Wall plaza. 

The parking lot has plenty of room for a hotel without any need for any other land or buildings. Why would an investor even want to have the headache and PR problems of evicting businesses and families when the parking lot itself is very large? The entire story is based on rumors that have no basis.

Instead of emphasizing the facts and providing context, AP and especially Haaretz are making up a story about evil, shadowy Jews slyly buying land to Judaize Jerusalem and make innocent non-Jews homeless. That is the narrative that the world believes about Israel and it is the only narrative that is acceptable to be reported in international media. 

A businessman buying a parking lot is not news. 

(h/t Tomer Ilan)



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Monday, May 01, 2023

Last week, Haaretz published a supposed expose of Regavim, an NGO that insists that the Israeli government adhere to its own laws in Area C of Judea and Samaria.

The article didn't dig up any dirt. Regavim is quite open about its aims. But now the government has some former Regavim officials, and that is scary to Haaretz:


Haaretz is upset.

The article shows Regavim members documenting the huge amount of illegal Palestinian construction and painting their activities as being immoral. Yet they are doing exactly the same thing that Peace Now does with Jewish construction, something Haaretz heartily approves.

Given these facts, it seems Regavim’s operations are a factor in the government’s agenda. One example is a document entitled “The Plow Line – A Plan to Halt the Palestinian Takeover of the Open Territories in Judea and Samaria,” which was distributed to politicians ahead of the most recent election and outlined the organization’s strategy in the West Bank.

The document included a range of recommendations for the next government, some of which found their way into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition agreement with Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party, such as launching “the campaign for the open areas,” a euphemism for Area C, the roughly 60 percent of the West Bank that contains Israel’s settlements and a large Palestinian rural population.
Area C was created to ensure the vast majority of Palestinians would remain under PLO political control. Since then, tens of thousands of Palestinians have illegally moved into Area C, with the cooperation of the EU, specifically to frustrate any Jewish building there. This isn't natural growth of the Palestinians who lived in Area C - this is having them move deliberately into areas they weren't supposed to be. 

Regavim attempts to combat that. And it uses the law to do that. I don't have statistics, but usually the Supreme Court rules in Regavim's favor, and the "right wing" government under Netanyahu attempts to avoid implementing the Supreme Court rulings.

For example, just today, the Supreme Court heard arguments concerning Regavim's petition to implement demolition orders at the illegal Khan al-Ahmar outpost  -which the court had ruled must be evacuated back in 2009! The state has been dragging its feet for 14 years, and is now claiming that it really wants to demolish the illegal outpost but it wants to choose an unspecified time to do it. 

This one case shows that things in Israel are not the simplistic black and white that Haaretz and other media claim. Here, the very government that Haaretz is worried is overrun by Regavim veterans is arguing against Regavim, and the Supreme Court that the media says is the only opposition to the right-wing government is taking the right wing position while the government is arguing against it. 

There seems to be a distinct unease that a right-wing NGO is doing what hundreds of left-wing NGOs are doing - and it is being effective. 



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Tuesday, April 25, 2023




Something happened this week that completely contradicts everything you've been reading about the current Israeli government - and the High Court.

From Haaretz
:The Supreme Court should reject a petition demanding the eviction of residents of the Palestinian village of Khan al-Ahmar, because the eviction involves “diplomatic and security considerations” that should be made by the Israeli government, according to a brief filed on Monday by Israel.

The government explained that it does eventually plan to carry out the demolition orders issued against the village, but wants to decide for itself when and how to do so.

Hold on.  Isn't this the "most right wing government in Israeli history"? Isn't the Supreme Court the last liberal holdout against total right-wing dictatorship?

As far as I can tell, over the years the Supreme Court has upheld the legality and importance of evacuating the illegal squatters on Area C land that was part of a military firing zone. And the governments of Israel have been trying to avoid that evacuation.

In other words, the exact opposite of what the narrative is. Not once since this whole thing went to court over the past ten years has the Supreme Court ruled that the residents have the legal right to remain there or that the State of Israel does not have the right to evict them from their illegally built homes. 

And the State of Israel has always petitioned to delay the demolition, at least until a plan is agreed to for the residents to move  - knowing quite well that the illegal squatters will never agree to move anywhere.

Meaning that Netanyahu is more left wing than the Supreme Court, and those who support the Supreme Court's independence should be supporting the demolition of Khan al-Ahmar - if they are being consistent, that it. 

Reality is a lot different from the simplistic narratives in the media. And politics beats out supposed "principles" every time.

 



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Monday, April 10, 2023



Back in January, Haaretz published "The American Billionaires Behind the Far-right Attempt to Destroy Liberal Israel." It highlighted the fact that the Kohelet Forum, a think tank that has influenced the judicial reform plan in Israel, is heavily funded by right-wing American billionaires which, of course, taints the entire organization. 

After all, why should Americans influence Israeli policy? Clearly something isn't kosher here.

Today, Haaretz has an article about another Israeli think tank, the Israel Democracy Institute, which it calls "The Think Tank on the Front Lines of the Battle for Israel's Democracy." It admiringly describes how the IDI has been working hard to fight judicial reform.

It doesn't mention that the Israel Democracy Institute's main funder and international chairman is also an American billionaire, Bernard Marcus. In fact, his Marcus Foundation and an anonymous American entity are listed as the organization's founders, and the majority of its major funders are from the USA, not Israel.



Where are the outraged articles that the think tank behind fighting judicial reform is founded and funded by American billionaires? Where are the intrepid reporters who are working to identify who the anonymous wealthy American co-founders of IDI is and paint them as nefarious opponents of all that is good and right? 

I have nothing against the IDI. It is an important part of the debate. It is an undeniably Zionist organization. Its funding sources are exactly as important as Kohelet's. Its budget is roughly the same as Kohelet's. And in both cases, the funders are American Zionists who care deeply about Israel's future.

Neither Kohelet nor IDI are anti-democracy. Neither of them are an enemy of Israel. 

Those who demonize either one of these are the real enemies of Israel's democracy. To them, partisanship and division are more important than having a fair debate about a crucial topic. Instead of encouraging people to read the articles authored by each think tank, they want to drown the opposing voices out. They want to replace reasoned debate with drama and protests. 

There is plenty of blame on both sides, but the stark difference between how the media treats Kohelet and how it treats IDI show that the media itself is often part of the problem, when its primary job should be to be part of the solution. 





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Friday, March 24, 2023




Israeli and Jewish media reported on Monday:

Israel is the fourth happiest country in the world, according to the 2023 World Happiness Report (WHR), which was released on Monday.

The publication ranks happiness on a national level each year. This year, Israel earned the fourth spot out of 109 ranked countries, an improvement over last year’s ranking of ninth.
Well, most of Israeli and Jewish media, that is.

Haaretz, which pretends to be Israel's leading newspaper to Western audiences, ignored the story.

You can argue that the World Happiness Report is a meaningless index, but surely a jump from ninth to fourth place is newsworthy, isn't it?

In previous years, Haaretz did cover the release of the report. And more than once it would go out of its way to disparage  and ridicule the results - for example, this insane 2018 article by Rogel Alpher:


The only op-ed I could find that said anything positive about Israel's rankings in the annual poll was written in the wake of the Israeli election that Netanyahu lost, listing it as one of the positive signs that things are looking up in Israel. And that year, Israel was in 12th place!

Haaretz' pages are filled with how terrible Israel is and how miserable its far-Left bubble is. From just this week:

When Secular Israelis Stand Up to Their ultra-Orthodox Overlords
Is Germany and Israel's 'Special Relationship' About to Blow Up?
Netanyahu’s Insane Government Faces Crises on All Fronts
Israelis Know That True Democracy Will Spell the End of Zionism
Israel's Democracy Commandos Stand Up to the Despicable Destroyers in Power
Will Netanyahu Destroy the Israel I Left America For?
Israelis Who Moved to the UAE: 'The Smartest Decision I’ve Made'
Obviously, Haaretz can stress the bad and write op-eds about its perspective that Israel is unparalleled evil - bad news sells newspapers, after all.  But to withhold news that contradicts its editorial policy is an entirely different matter.

Not reporting a story that Haaretz considered newsworthy every other year is trying to shape the news, not report it.

This is one reason why Haaretz cannot be considered a newspaper anymore. It is a propaganda outlet.



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Sunday, March 19, 2023

The shooting of David Stern as he drove with his family today resulted, as always, with great celebrations by Palestinians. 

Here a crowd goes to his house to celebrate.


And here are the obligatory fireworks celebrating the shooting of a Jew.



But, you may say, these are only the extremists. Certainly normal, sober Palestinians support shooting random Jewish civilians.

Well, Muhammed Shehada - who has bylines in Haaretz, Newsweek, Vice and elsewhere, and is a columnist for the Forward, and who also has a job working for a "human rights" NGO - went out of his way to justify Stern being shot twenty times:

The settler wounded in today's shooting near Huwara is David Stern, a former US Marine soldier who provides combat & weapon training to #Israeli settlers.

He's Israeli-American & lives in the Itamar settlement, built on land confiscated from 5 Palestinian villages.
Under international law, Stern is a civilian. His job and where he lives does not affect that designation. So this celebrated writer who pretends to be a human rights professional is justifying a war crime.

And he is considered moderate enough to write for Jewish-owned media. 

If this is the best example of morality from Palestinian society, then Palestinian society is rotten to the core.

(h/t Adam Albilya)




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Wednesday, March 15, 2023



Haaretz has a truly bizarre op-ed from a prominent rabbi, Daniel Landes, who should know better.
Some sort of compromise might be offered at some point by the Israeli government coalition’s minions to stop the unprecedented upheaval we in Israel are living through: mass streets protests, the hemorrhaging of high-tech investment money and pilots and other military reservists refusing on moral grounds to show up for reserve duty.

While over half of the country yearns for an end to our ever-growing, overwhelming existential anxiety, compromise offers must be greeted with skepticism.

Such admonition can seem surprising since we are used to compromise – pesharah – as a Jewish response to legal conflict.

But pay attention, the Talmudic enterprise also contains a warning: compromise is often not the answer.

...But then the question remained as to whether the court itself should invite a judicially mediated pesharah.

Many rabbis not only rejected that idea, but they explicitly forbade it. Evidently, the court was reserved for attempting to achieve absolute truth and was not the place for getting people to “just agree,” which would imply a tampering with rectitude to solve the situation.

Pesharah, compromise, was labeled as bitzu'a, signaling a truncated judgment, or even connoting a kind of swindle or profit. And thus they applied the verse (Ps. 10:3): "One who praises the compromiser despises God."
Clearly, Landes knows the Jewish arguments for compromise, but he argues that in some cases it is absolutely wrong. And somehow he determines that a compromise on judicial reform is in that category, seemingly because there is "profit" to the Israeli Right by such a compromise and profit, he claims, invalidates the reasons to want compromise.

The profit he defines is not monetary, but social - Haredim will continue to avoid army service, as they have since Israel was led by Labor; religious Zionists can build more communities in Judea and Samaria (ditto), and so forth.

For some reason he doesn't mention the "profit" to the Left of keeping the High Court as powerful as it is. Nor does he admit that pretty much everyone agrees that the judicial system in Israel has too much power, the only disagreement is how much it should have.

The crazy part is that this is not an issue for halacha (Jewish law) to begin with. It is political. Both sides have good points, neither has the monopoly on truth. The biggest danger to Israel isn't judicial reform, but the insane political split that this fairly complex argument that perhaps only 5% of Israelis (and far fewer American Jews) understand had prompted. 

Both sides have used this issue as an excuse for hardening their positions, for demonizing their opponents, and for splitting the nation. 

And this rabbi - who surely knows more about Judaism than I do - is arguing that such a split is Judaically preferable to any victory, even a partial victory, by his political opponents!

No, that is not the Judaism that I know.  

Moment Magazine asked a question of various rabbis recently: "Is Political Compromise a Jewish Value?" Nearly al the rabbis agreed, of course, political compromise is indeed a Jewish value!

Rabbi Yitz Greenberg (Modern Orthodox)

Political (also economic and social) compromise is prized in Jewish tradition. The Talmud states that a mediated settlement—that is, one in which both sides feel they have gotten some of their just due—is a better outcome than a strict judgment that hands a victory to one side (Sanhedrin 6b). Without compromise, the overruled side may feel alienated and left out. This undermines the will to live together that enables a stable, functioning, productive society (just as the breakdown of bipartisanship and mutual respect between liberals and conservatives in America today threatens the viability of our democracy)....Over the course of history, the covenantal halacha often prescribed not the ideal behavior but the best possible policy that kept people working together. 
Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein (Orthodox):

There are times when compromise or appeasement is a desecration of God’s name, and other cases where a refusal to compromise brings disaster. There’s no formula, other than blunt honesty as to whether the decision to compromise reflects the honor of heaven rather than a personal agenda.
Rabbi Haim Ovadia (Sephardic):
I personally believe that compromise in any field, not just political, is a Jewish virtue, though any proof I provide could be contested. Many classic sources suggest that compromise is the ideal path when there is a dispute. ...When we insist on doing things our way against others’ will, we may win, but the others will be left with a sense of bitterness and animosity which could easily be later aroused. When we compromise, we may make more people happy, and that, I believe, is a Jewish virtue.
Rabbi Levi Shemtov (Chabad):
Political compromise, unlike religious compromise, is usually a wonderful thing.

While compromising halachic standards—even to address pressing needs—has almost always led to adoption of the more lax standard, and must therefore be avoided whenever possible, personal or political compromise, especially for the sake of peace, has always been lauded by the Torah and even by G-d.
...
Lately, conviviality is in short supply, particularly in the political arena. Whether in public policy, business, marriage or relationships generally, calming down and taking a respectful look at the other side is virtuous, even if you continue to disagree.

The country, the world and all of us would significantly benefit from seeing our leaders talk to instead of at each other, as was prevalent only a few decades ago. Don’t compromise who you are, but let who you are be one who is open to appropriate dialogue and compromise. It ultimately brings you greater strength.
Is Rabbi Daniel Landes motivated by what is best for the Jewish people and Israel, or by narrow political considerations?

The fact that he calls the people who are discussing compromise from the Right "minions" seems to indicate the latter. And that is very disappointing from a person who founded an institution, YASHRUT, that is  meant to "build civil discourse through a theology of integrity, justice, and tolerance."





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