Showing posts with label Varda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Varda. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 06, 2024




Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.


On February 14, Rashida Tlaib refused to support a resolution denouncing Hamas for raping and sexually violating and mutilating Jewish men, women, and children. The only member of the House of Representatives who voted present instead of voting for the resolution, Tlaib said she condemns all sexual violence, but claimed that H. Res. 966, Condemning rape and sexual violence committed by Hamas in its war against Israel, “completely ignores and erases any sexual violence and abuse committed by the Israeli forces against Palestinians, especially children.”

This, of course, is a lie. On many levels. For one thing, the resolution is broad and inclusive, condemning all rape and sexual violence as weapons of war (emphasis added):

That the House of Representatives—

(1) condemns all rape and forms of sexual violence as weapons of war, including those acts committed by Hamas terrorists on and since October 7th;

(2) calls on all nations to criminalize rape and sexual assault, and hold accountable all perpetrators of sexual violence, including state and non-state armed groups;

(3) calls on all international bodies to unequivocally condemn the barbaric murder, rape, sexual assault, and kidnapping by Hamas and other terrorists on and since October 7th, and hold accountable all perpetrators;

(4) reaffirms the United States Government’s support for independent, impartial investigations of rape and sexual violence committed by Hamas on and since October 7th; and

(5) reaffirms its commitment to supporting survivors of rape and sexual violence, including those brutalized on and since October 7.

Tlaib could have happily signed on, knowing that the resolution includes every act of rape and every act of sexual violence no matter the parties responsible for these heinous crimes. But that would not have served Tlaib’s true aims, all of which she accomplished:

She inserted a new idea: that the IDF also commits rape and sexual violence. This is a lie.

She inserted a second new idea: that IDF soldiers are pedophiles who specifically prey on and prefer to rape and commit sexual violence against Arab children. This too, is a lie.

She inserted a third new idea: The resolution does not specifically focus on children as victims of Hamas rape and sexual violence. In accusing the IDF of pedophilia, Tlaib intimates that IDF soldiers are actually worse than actual (Hamas) terrorists. Absolutely false and also repugnant.  

She created a false equivalence between perpetrator and victim—Hamas committed rape and sexual violence on October 7th, and has continued since that time to rape and violate Jewish men, women, and children. The assertion that the IDF also engages in such atrocities is false and also abhorrent, since the war on Hamas is a defensive war, a direct response to Hamas rape and sexual violence.

She inverted the truth. The oldest Arab trick in the book: she accused the Jews of doing what they, the Arabs do. There was no rape or sexual violence by the IDF. The atrocities were committed by one side alone and that one side was Hamas. 

 


The Arab enemy plays dirty. It cheats and it lies and it inverts the truth. But we know what happened. “The evidence is abundant and beyond compelling. Through survivors coming forward, witnesses, video footage and independent analysis, we know that Hamas’s use of sexual violence including rape, mutilation, and brutality was not an anomaly. It was a premeditated part of its strategy to purposefully use sexual violence as a weapon against innocent civilians,” said Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, regarding the horrific sexual crimes of Hamas.

Meanwhile, there are no credible reports that similar deeds, or worse, have been perpetrated by the IDF. But with her lies Tlaib offers up new ways to demonize the Jews, with new lines of propaganda for use by the legions of ugly-minded people siding with terrorists against the Jewish victims. Antisemites don’t care about truth or proof. In their minds, all’s fair in their hatred and envy of the Jewish people.  

The Arab tactic of inverting the truth unlike Tlaib's fake "facts" is not new. A 2007 essay by Joel Fishman goes into the history and use of the "inversion of reality" as he calls it, appropriately begins with the following (ancient) verse:

Woe unto them that call evil good, And good evil;

That change darkness into light, And light into darkness;

That change bitter into sweet, And sweet into bitter.

Isaiah 5:20

A summary of the essay appearing just below these lines makes clear that inversion of the truth is a propaganda tactic designed to be used against the Jewish people (emphasis added):

From the 1960s, inversion of truth and reality has been one the most favored propaganda methods of Israel‘s adversaries. One of its most frequent expressions has been the accusation that the Jewish people, victims of the Nazis, have now become the new Nazis, aggressors and oppressors of the Palestinian Arabs. Contemporary observers have identified this method and described it as an “inversion of reality,” an “intellectual confidence trick,” “reversing moral responsibility,” or “twisted logic.” Because Israel’s enemies have, for nearly half a century, repeated such libels without being challenged, they have gradually gained credence. Since inversion of reality constitutes the basic principle of current anti-Israeli propaganda, it is important to understand what it is and how it works. This propaganda method is a product of Nazi Germany. It is totalitarian both in its methods, particularly the use of the paranoiac myth, and in the absolute solution it advocates. It totally denies all of Israel’s claims and leaves no room for introspection and compromise.

Why is it necessary to invert the truth? Because the truth does not serve the cause of those responsible for spreading twisted logic, the desire to demonize and ultimately, to do away with the Jewish people:

One of the tactical tools of ideological warfare is propaganda, which has been defined simply “as an attempt to influence the attitudes of a specific audience through the use of facts, fiction, argument or suggestion-often supported by the suppression of inconsistent material-with the calculated purpose of instilling in the recipient a certain belief, values or convictions which will serve the interests of the source, by producing a desired line of action.”

To this definition one may add the statement of Dr. Joseph Goebbels that “propaganda as such is neither good nor evil. Its moral value is determined by the goals it seeks.” Here is the classical argument that the ends justify the means. One may ask, however, if in certain cases the very means can be morally defective.

The rise of technology and social media has made spreading lies easier than ever, making the inversion of truth the perfect tactic for modern-day antisemites, for instance Arab propagandists like Tlaib, who have infiltrated the US government. Seventeen years have passed since this essay was penned, yet the ideas and tactics outlined here remains remarkably current (emphasis added):

Inversion of reality as a tool of media war, with its paranoiac state of mind, has persisted to the present. Although contemporary observers have been able to describe its manifestations with considerable accuracy, many have not placed it in historical context. It was in this sense, for example, that the French researcher and philosopher Pierre-André Taguieff applied the term “absolute anti-Semitism” to describe the post-1967 outlook of the Palestinians. He wrote that for them, “Zionism, then, is a new ‘Nazism’ threatening to dominate and destroy the whole human species…. Thus, in a context where Western elites never tire of calling for the avoidance of ‘Islamophobic’ utterances, the head of the Islamic Center in Geneva, Hani Ramadan, coolly denounced ‘the genocide being organized against the Muslims.’”

It is noteworthy that Ramadan’s story line is nearly identical to that of Nazi propagandists. Both presented themselves as targets of a Jewish conspiracy, and the potential outcome of their “logical process”-to use Hannah Arendt’s expression-was genocide. Although both have inverted the truth, their assertions contain an additional feature which is disturbing and dangerous: the inversion of morality which leads to criminal behavior and violence without constraint.

Citing Melanie Phillips as his source, Fishman now quotes Leo McKinstry, a Belfast-born author and journalist who described the inversion of reality with regard to Israel, as it plays out in British public discourse (emphasis added):

In a remarkable inversion of reality, Israel has become a pariah state because of its determination to defend itself. A grotesque double standard now operates, where murderous Arab terrorists are hailed as “freedom fighters” yet Israeli security forces are treated as fascistic thugs. No nation has been more demonized than Israel. One recent survey across Europe revealed that Israel is now regarded as “the greatest threat” to world peace, an utter absurdity given that Israel is actually the only democratic, free society in the Middle East. But such a finding reflects the strength of the hysterical anti-Israeli propaganda that fills the airwaves of Europe. No matter how much this anti-Israeli feeling is dressed up as support for Palestine, it is in fact profoundly antisemitic….

It is clear that nothing has changed since 2007, except for it being easier than ever to invert the truth and spread antisemitic lies whether in Britain or DC—or anywhere else where there are people who don’t like Jews. The Arab inversion of truth, however, really hits its stride beginning in the 1960s:

Prof. Arnold Toynbee delivered a lecture in Montreal in January 1961 in which he “compared from a moral standpoint, the attitude of Israel to the Arabs in 1947 and 1948 with the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews.” The ambassador of Israel to Canada, Yaakov Herzog, read this statement in the Montreal newspapers and challenged Toynbee to a debate which followed on 31 January 1961 at McGill University. Ambassador Herzog did well in this disputation, but it is not clear if Arnold Toynbee’s statement represented an isolated event or, in the years which followed, provided a source of inspiration to others. (Two years later, in April 1964, Arnold Toynbee came to Egypt on a twelve day visit to lecture at Egyptian universities.  It would be interesting to know, if, beyond considerations of academic scholarship, an authoritarian regime such as Nasser’s Egypt had other motives for showing Toynbee such a public sign of great favor.)

During the 1960s, and particularly after the Israeli victory in the Six Day War in 1967, the Soviet Union and its allies in the Arab world reintroduced some of the old propaganda themes. Israel’s victory represented a humiliation to the Soviet cause and posed an internal danger because it shook the foundations of authority.  Domestically, it heartened the minorities in the Soviet Union, not least the Jews. Having suffered a major reverse, the Soviet Union and the Arab countries decided to use political anti-Semitism as a means of shifting world attention from their defeat. They endeavored to delegitimize Israel, to brand Israel as the aggressor, and to bring about its isolation. Some elements of the new propaganda campaign were:

·        The accusation that Israel was the aggressor in the Six Day War and denial of its right to self-defense.

·        The passing of UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, “Zionism is racism,” on 10 November 1975 which gave the standing of international law to a proposition totally based on the inversion of reality. This resolution transformed Zionism, the Jewish national movement, into the embodiment of evil by equating it with the depravity of Nazi Germany.

·        The drafting of the PLO Covenant in its various versions of 1964, 1968, and 1974. This document claimed that justice was totally on the Palestinian side and that Israel had no standing at all.

·        The Hamas Charter of 1988.

·        The unprecedented assault on Israel at the end of August and beginning of September 2001 which took place at the UN Conference in Durban.

The UN Resolution of 1975, later overturned, declaring that “Zionism is racism,” is another prime and historic example of how truth can be stood on its head in order to demonize the Jews (emphasis added):

On 10 November 1975, the Soviet Union and its supporters passed UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, “Zionism is racism,” which transformed an anti-Semitic slogan into an internationally accepted “truth.” Rabbis Abraham Cooper and Harold Brackman explained that “the term ‘racism’ was coined in 1936 to rally scientific and political opinion against Nazi doctrines of ‘Aryan superiority’ over Jews and other alleged untermenschen.” According to the original meaning of the term, then, “racism” denotes one of the great abuses of Nazism.  Thus, to equate Zionism with racism represents a serious accusation and inversion of reality.

In considering the tactic of reality inversion, once must also look at the results. The academic in his ivory tower knows the truth, but pushes the lies that serve him. The common man on the other hand, the regular Arab Joe/Yussef on the street, actually believes the lies. He wants to believe the lies, because they put him in the right and the Jews in the wrong. Nadav Shragai describes the impact on ordinary Arab Muslims of the lie that the Jews aim to destroy the al-Aqsa mosque (emphasis added):

The Palestinians and many Muslims charge that Israel “seeks to destroy al-Aqsa” and build the Temple in its stead on a site where no Temple ever stood; that the Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount is al-miza’um, that is, “supposed,” “fraudulent,” “invented,” or “imaginary;” that the Jews have no connection to the Temple Mount or, for that matter, to the Western Wall.     

This is a libel on top of a libel, a double lie. The many Muslims who are convinced that al-Aqsa is in danger are now also convinced that “their” al-Aqsa stands on a place where “our” Temple never stood – the latter being nothing but a fabrication.

Some of the legitimacy that terrorism draws from the libel rests on that added lie. It is more legitimate to libel and murder Jews, so as “to protect the captive al-Aqsa and free it from the Jews who are plotting to destroy it,” if Israel and the Jews who “conspire to attack the site,” have only a false and concocted connection to it. Thus, the lie that undergirds the libel also bolsters the legitimacy to murder in its name. From the standpoint of the “Al-Aqsa is in danger” terrorists and their supporters, they do not murder only those who seek to wrest the Mount from their hands. As they see it, they are also murdering the falsifiers of history, who have no link to the site at all. They also want the Mount to be “liberated” psychologically so that their historical and religious narrative will prevail.

Already a decade ago, Lesley Klaff described how the Holocaust has been appropriated by the enemy, and distorted and abused to blame and demonize Israel for the condition of the Arab people (emphasis added):

What has been called ‘Holocaust Inversion’ involves an inversion of reality (the Israelis are cast as the ‘new’ Nazis and the Palestinians as the ‘new’ Jews), and an inversion of morality (the Holocaust is presented as a moral lesson for, or even a moral indictment of ‘the Jews’). More: those who object to these inversions are told [that] they are acting in bad faith, only being concerned to deflect criticism of Israel. In short, the Holocaust, an event accurately described by Dan Diner as a ‘rupture in civilisation,’ organised by a regime that, as the political philosopher Leo Strauss observed, ‘had no other clear principle except murderous hatred of the Jews,’ is now being used, instrumentally, as a means to express animosity towards the homeland of the Jews. ‘The victims have become perpetrators’ is being heard more and more. That is Holocaust Inversion.

Klaff goes further, underlining the ways in which even the memory of the Holocaust is abused, as it places unique moral strictures on the Jewish people—the actual victims of the Holocaust—alone:

Holocaust Inversion [involves] the abuse of the Holocaust memory to issue a moral stricture aimed at Israel and ‘the Jews’, imposing upon them a uniquely onerous moral responsibility and accountability in their treatment of others.

Dr. Yechiel Shabiy, writing for BESA, elaborates on the inverted logic that portrays the Arabs as indigenous to Israel even in the face of absolute proof to the contrary (emphasis added):

The elected representatives of Israel’s Arab community claim that the Palestinians are the original owners of the land—an indigenous minority disinherited by foreign invaders. According to this notion, which is aimed at undermining the Zionist narrative about the Jewish people’s return to its historical homeland, the Arabs of the Land of Israel—like the Indians in America, the aborigines in Australia, and the Zulu tribes in South Africa—are victims of European imperialism/colonialism, which turned them into a disenfranchised and oppressed minority in their own land. From this standpoint, Zionism is a crude perversion of Judaism because the Jews do not constitute a people but only a religious community with no national attributes or aspirations, let alone any right to a state of their own in even a tiny part of the Islamic-Arab-Palestinian patrimony.

That thesis is not only baseless but a complete inversion of the historical truth.

It was Arab/Muslim invaders who came to the Land of Israel as an ascendant imperialist force in the decade after the Prophet Muhammad’s death and laid the groundwork for the colonization of this land by a long string of Muslim empires up to the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WWI. During this lengthy era, the non-Jewish and non-Christian residents of the land identified themselves as Muslims—not as Arabs, and certainly not as Palestinians—until WWI, when the idea of Arab nationalism gathered steam with the help of British imperialism.

One need only look at common family names among the Palestinians to see their colonialist origins: Hijazi, from the Hijaz in the Arabian Peninsula, from which the original invaders came; Bosniak, from Bosnia; Turk, from Turkey; Halabi, from Syria; Hindi, from India; Yemeni, from Yemen; Masarwa/Masri, from Egypt; Mughrabi, from the Maghreb, and so on.

In contrast, countless place names in the Land of Israel testify to a Jewish presence over thousands of years. Take, for example, the Narbeta River in northern Samaria. Narbeta, which is the Aramaic pronunciation of Arubot, the biblical city in which one of King Solomon’s 12 governors lived, ruled the whole region of northern Samaria. In Narbeta, as Yosef ben Matityahu (Josephus) recounts, the Romans slaughtered thousands of Jews during the Great Revolt (66-73 CE). The area teems with archaeological relics from the Second Temple, Mishnaic, and Talmudic eras.

Each year, Israel is faced with the dilemma of whether to allow Muslim worship on the Temple Mount during Ramadan. With the season upon us, concurrent with Israel’s war on Hamas, the issue was once more discussed and decided: The Arabs are to be allowed to worship on the Temple Mount, in spite of the war and the Arab propensity for violence with the Jews as their target. When Israel was confronted by the same yearly conundrum in 2022, David Weinberg took the opportunity to outline some of the more inflammable Arab rhetoric batted about in regard to Jews and the Temple Mount along with the history of how it has evolved (emphasis added):

I am infuriated by the calls of Western leaders upon Israel, all week long, to "ensure the status quo" on the Temple Mount and "respect the sanctity" of its Moslem holy sites. Often this has been accompanied by tsk-tsking about "provocative incursions" by Israeli police and so-called "excessive force" employed by police to disburse "peaceful Arab worshippers."

The inversion of truth contained in the above description of events and the perversion involved in blaming Israel for Arab rioting on the Temple Mount – is utterly galling!

The plain facts are that the so-called "status quo" on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem long has been dead. It has been violated repeatedly in recent years by radical Palestinian and Islamic actors who have turned the Mount into a base of hostile operations against Israel, instead of protecting it as zone of prayer and peace. Israel, on the other hand, has acted with utmost restraint in the face of Arab assaults. (Too much restraint, in my opinion.)

Waqf and Islamic movement provocateurs have attacked Jewish visitors to the Mount, Jewish worshipers at the Western Wall below the Mount, and Jewish worshippers on their way to the Western Wall. They have attacked Emiratis and Bahrainis praying in Al-Aqsa Mosque (because these countries signed Abraham Accord peace treaties). They have greatly restricted visitation rights to the holy Mount for all non-Moslems; and have hijacked the pulpits in the mosque on the Mount to preach hatred and violence against Israel.

Palestinian terrorists have smuggled machine guns onto the Temple Mount and killed police guarding the gates of the Mount. The terrorists launched their attack from within the Temple Mount and then fled into the shrines on the Mount. The tens of thousands of boulders and rocks stockpiled by Arabs on the Mount for their periodic, planned "outbursts" of rock-throwing violence, including repeated attacks over the past week, are no less outrageous.

The Waqf also has conducted vast, illegal construction projects on the Mount and beneath it, willfully destroying centuries of Jewish archaeological treasures.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, a supposedly "moderate" Palestinian figure, continues to roil the waters and foment violence against Israel by repeating the canard that "Al Aqsa is in danger," meaning that "the Zionists are conspiring to blow-up the mosque and Islamic shrine" on the Mount. This is a blood libel that goes all the way back to the notorious pro-Nazi Arab leader Haj Amin al-Husseini in the pre-state period.

In fact, Abbas has stoked a broad-scale campaign against the authenticity of Israel's historic rights in Jerusalem. In September 2015 he screeched about "filthy" Jewish feet that were "desecrating" holy Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem. "Al-Aksa is ours and so is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher," he bellowed. "They (the Jews) have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet. We won't allow them to do so, and we will do whatever we can to defend Jerusalem."


In 2019, Tzvi Fleischer wrote of the UN inversion of the truth in regard to the status of Arab women, be they Arab women with Israeli citizenship, or those who live under Abbas or Hamas (emphasis added):

The UN has produced another one of the anti-Israel absurdities for which it has become infamous. On July 23, the UN’s 54-nation Economic and Social Council voted 40-2, with 9 abstentions, to single out Israel as the only state in the world branded as a violator of women’s rights. Among those who voted in favour were such paragons of women’s rights as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, and Yemen (Australia is not a member).

Most of the long resolution said nothing about women but simply parroted generic UN anti-Israel rhetoric, accusing the Jewish state of numerous crimes, but the key clause condemned Israel and the “occupation” as “a major obstacle for Palestinian women and girls with regard to the fulfilment of their rights, and their advancement, self-reliance and integration in the development of their society.”

Of course, the resolution did not mention how Palestinian women’s rights are impacted by their own governing authorities—the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. These surely have the primary responsibility for progressing the “advancement, self-reliance and integration” of the Palestinian women of the West Bank and Gaza respectively.

Yet with regard to the situation of the Palestinian women who are citizens of Israel, recent years have seen achievements which make a mockery of the UN’s claims. A decade ago only 22% of Israeli Arab women were working outside their homes. Today, that number is more than 40% (admittedly, this is still way below the workforce participation rate of Jewish Israeli women, who have one of the highest participation rates in the OECD).

The jump in employment rates among Israeli Arab women is in part the result of deliberate Israeli Government policy. The Israeli Government has set a target of 54% employment for Arab women by 2030. To help achieve that goal, they have been improving public transport to Arab villages so women can reach jobs, building industrial zones in large Arab towns like Nazareth that can offer employment closer to Arab villages and have set up 22 employment centres specifically for Arab women to help match them with available jobs.


The UN is still busy inverting the truth when it comes to Israel and the Jews. CNN reports that UN is investigating “credible reports” that IDF soldiers did to Arabs the disgusting things that Arabs did to Jews (emphasis added):

United Nations experts have called for an investigation into what they described as “credible allegations of egregious human rights violations” against Palestinian women and girls in Gaza and the West Bank by Israeli forces.

The allegations include extrajudicial killing, arbitrary detention, degrading treatment, rape and sexual violence, according to a statement by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights released on Monday. It did not detail how they did their fact-finding, but they referred to photos of female detainees in degrading circumstances reportedly taken by Israeli troops and uploaded online.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) denied the accusations and said it adheres to international law. “Without precise details or proof of individual cases it is not possible for us to examine them in depth,” the IDF said in a statement to CNN.

 i24 News further elaborates (emphasis added):

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has accused the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of raping Palestinian women and girls in detention, sparking a contentious dispute as Israel vehemently denies the claims.

In a report by Sky News, the UN Human Rights Office a few reports of Israeli officers allegedly sexually assaulting Palestinian women and girls while in detention.

Allegations include strip searches conducted by male soldiers and alleged instances of sexual violence against detainees.

“We are particularly disturbed by reports that Palestinian women and girls in detention have been subjected to several forms of sexual assault,” accused the UN agency, affirming that “they had been stripped naked and searched by male soldiers.” “At least two Palestinian detainees were raped, while others were threatened with rape and sexual violence,” the agency said, adding that “photos of detention in humiliating circumstances were taken by the IDF and uploaded on the Internet".

Naturally, no proof is provided. Because there is none. Yet, Reem Alsalem, she of the Muslim Arab-friendly first and surname insists that Israeli violence against Arab women has been “normalized,” and that anyway, the women don’t speak out because they’re afraid of “reprisals” (emphasis added):

The panel of experts said there was evidence of [at] least two cases of rape, alongside other cases of sexual humiliation and threats of rape. Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, said the true extent of sexual violence could be significantly higher.

“We might not know for a long time what the actual number of victims are,” said Alsalem, who was appointed special rapporteur by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in 2021.

She noted that reticence in reporting sexual assault was common because of the fear of reprisals against victims. She said that in a wave of detentions of Palestinian women and girls after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war on 7 October, there was an increasingly permissive attitude towards sexual assault in Israeli detention centres.

“I would say that, on the whole, violence and dehumanisation of Palestinian women and children and civilians has been normalised throughout this war,” Alsalem said.

Interestingly, Alsalem claimed to be unaware of any rocket attacks against Israel. In spite of actual evidence, something she does not have in regard to imagined Israeli crimes against Arab women.

Perhaps the most galling part of this concerted effort to invert reality was the insertion of a supposed need to investigate reports of imagined Israeli crimes against Arab women, in a UN investigation of actual Hamas sexual crimes against Jewish women (and men and children).

In a piece called UN Investigator: ‘Convincing Information’ of Rape and Torture, But Check the Jews Too Just In Case, the Jewish Press, author David Israel tells us that while "Pramila Patten, the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict reported on Monday that she and a team of experts had found 'clear and convincing information' of rape and sexualized torture being committed against hostages seized during the October 7 terror attacks.”

Based on reports in the media, when Patten arrived in Israel, I was encouraged that even though, as a UN representative, Patten was unlikely to be sympathetic to Israel, she would be fair in her investigation. And she was. Up to a point. That point being the one where Arab guilt must be balanced by the presumption of Jewish guilt, even in the absence of proof (emphasis added):

The NY Times report on Patten’s report points out that it “also cited allegations that Palestinians detained by Israel have also been sexually abused.” No need to provide citations, of course, because it’s a known thing that Jews rape Arab women all the time. The fact is that from 1950 to this day there hasn’t been a single rape complaint of an Arab woman against Israeli soldiers. Several academic researchers have actually argued that this phenomenon is an expression of Israeli racism…

According to Israel Police data, between 2007 and 2014, Arab men committed 533 sexual offenses against Jewish women, of which 70 were outright rapes. In many cases, the rapists called their victims “dirty Jews,” later explaining that “Jews are subhuman,” and “Jewish girls have no honor.”

Oh, and the Patten report for some reason noted deep suspicion among Israelis toward the United Nations.

Shocking.

The Patten report was disheartening, because my expectations had been higher than they should have been. By now, I should know better. Where there is proof of Arab malfeasance and no proof of Jewish malfeasance, the idea of Jewish malfeasance will be inserted to minimize that of the Arabs. It’s just the way it is.

Since October 7, world Jewry has woken up to the fact that there is overwhelming Jew-hatred everywhere. It doesn’t matter what we’ve done or haven’t done. It doesn’t matter what we do or don’t do. We Jews live in a time where the truth doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t serve our enemy, which is most of the world. 



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!

 

 

Wednesday, February 28, 2024



Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

Contrary to popular antisemitic belief, Jews are not “white Europeans” who so rudely colonized land where “Palestinian” Arabs had lived for thousands of years. First of all, Jews are neither European nor white. Secondly, one cannot colonize one’s own land. Thirdly, “Palestinian” Arabs did not live in pre-state Israel for thousands of years.

It’s all a big, fat lie.

Middle Eastern Political and Religious History Analyst Joseph E. Katz, citing a 1937 Palestine Royal Commission Report out of London, writes:

“The Jewish presence in ‘the Holy Land’ -- at times tenuous -- persisted throughout its bloody history. In fact, the Jewish claim -- whether Arab-born or European-born Jew -- to the land now called Palestine does not depend on a two-thousand-year-old promise. Buried beneath the propaganda -- which has it that Jews ‘returned’ to the Holy Land after two thousand years of separation, where they found crowds of ‘indigenous Palestinian Arabs’ -- is the bald fact that the Jews are indigenous people on that land who never left, but who have continuously stayed on their ‘Holy Land.’ Not only were there the little-known Oriental Jewish communities in adjacent Arab lands, but there had been an unceasing strain of ‘Oriental’ or ‘Palestinian’ Jews in ‘Palestine’ for millennia.”

Katz goes on to cite Reverend James Parkes, an authority on relations between Jews and non-Jews in the Middle East. In 1949, Parkes assessed what he called the Jews’ “real title deeds” censuring the Zionist movement for its failure to stress that the Land of Israel has NEVER been without Jews.

It was, perhaps, inevitable that Zionists should look back to the heroic period of the Maccabees and Bar-Cochba, but their real title deeds were written by the less dramatic but equally heroic endurance of those who had maintained the Jewish presence in The Land all through the centuries, and in spite of every discouragement. This page of Jewish history found no place in the constant flood of Zionist propaganda.... The omission allowed the anti-Zionists, whether Jewish, Arab, or European, to paint an entirely false picture of the wickedness of Jewry trying to re-establish a two thousand-year-old claim to the country, indifferent to everything that had happened in the intervening period. It allowed a picture of The Land as a territory which had once been "Jewish," but which for many centuries had been "Arab." In point of fact any picture of a total change of population is false....

It seems possible, even probable, that the failure of Zionist Movement to depict the Jewish presence in the Land in its proper context, is what led to the myth à la mode that Jews are “white” Europeans who up and stole “Palestine” from poor peaceful Arabs who’d lived there for “centuries.” The fact is that there has been a continual Jewish presence in the Land of Israel. There was never a time when there were no Jews living in the Land of Israel, and in fact there is robust evidence that there were significant numbers of Jews living in the Land, throughout time.

Katz tells us that despite physical violence against Jews in the Holy Land by post-Roman Christians, there were over forty Jewish communities that could be traced to the 6th century, comprising "twelve towns on the coast, in the Negev, and east of the Jordan, and thirty-one villages in Galilee and in the Jordan Valley.”

In 438 CE, says Katz, Galilean Jews declared an end to the exile when Empress Eudocia allowed Jews to once again pray on the Temple Mount. Archaeological findings, Katz tells us, bear testimony that in 614 CE, the Jews fought alongside invading Persians to overwhelm the Byzantine garrison in Jerusalem. Yet when the Arabs seized Jerusalem two decades later, they found a city with a strong Jewish identity. The prevailing culture of Jerusalem was Jewish. Despite all the foreigners who had come and gone, raping and pillaging Jewish land, the Holy City remained Jewish in everybody’s minds. Because it was, is, and always will be.

Katz goes on to describe the tragedy that was life for the Jews under Arab Muslim invaders and occupiers. Spoiler Alert: it wasn’t good for the Jews. And still, the Jews, as stiff-necked as their reputation, clung on to the Holy Land, however they could. Sometimes they couldn’t, against their will. So they wandered the earth, and some of them settled in Europe, praying to return.

Other Jews however, never left but stayed in the Land of Israel. They stayed and stayed. It was hard. But they stayed in the Land, their indigenous territory. Only here could they fulfil the commandments.

And here is where people get stuck. They don’t understand or don’t want to understand that Jews and the Land of Israel are indivisible. The Jews have to be in Israel. This is commanded of them by God.

We pray “Shema Yisrael!” Listen Israel! The Jews are called “Israel.” The Land of Israel literally means "Land of the Jews."

Even in faraway non-Jewish lands, the Jewish people are synonymous with the Land. They read the same prayers with variations related specifically to living outside the Land, outside the place where Land and Jews are one. And still, these exiled Jews are tied to the Land in ways that can never be undone. All Jews are. We all have that holy connection.

When a European minyan, a quorum of ten, prays for rain, they are praying for rain in Israel. When a Jew in Cleveland eats bread, he says an after-blessing, thanking God for giving him the Land of Israel, and praying for the Temple to be rebuilt in Jerusalem, speedily in our time.

The enemy in Gaza and under the PA has none of this weighty history, and no valid claim to any land at all. They are but an odd admixture of people who call themselves “Palestinian” while claiming Jewish land—it’s right out of the Roman playbook. But there are censuses. And people with brains can think for themselves. The enemy is a liar and a thief, or rather a wannabe thief, because the land will never be theirs. 

The Land will always be Jewish land, and there’s nothing they can do about it. Even after October 7, even now, there is nothing that can ever change this singular fact: The Land of Israel belongs to the Jews, forever.



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

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Wednesday, February 21, 2024



Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

The whole world blames Israel for the loss of life and devastation in Gaza. But the people of Gaza are having none of it. The president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, went so far as to compare Israel’s actions in Gaza to those of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler against the Jews and the president of Colombia, President Gustavo Petro, agreed with him. And still, the Gazan people know better. They know who bears the fault for laying waste to Gaza, and it's not Israel. The body responsible for destroying Gaza is Hamas. 

But try telling that to the Zionist- Jew-hating, Israel-hating world, and they’ll only double down. UN Relief Chief Martin Griffiths, for example, said that he did not consider Hamas to be a terrorist group. In spite of the clamor from regular Gazans.

Michelle O’Neill, the recently elected First Minister of Northern Ireland, also does not care what the people of Gaza think, going so far as to claim that Hamas will come to be regarded as the future partner for peace in the Middle East! The people of Gaza, however, vehemently disagree with this naïve assessment, and now that Hamas is on the way to extinction, have begun to lose their fear of speaking out. They know that Israel not to blame for their suffering, and they’re pointing their collective finger at the real culprit, Hamas. 

The IDF, for example, posted a video compilation of Gazans speaking out against Hamas on December 15. One of the most striking moments in this video occurs during a news reporter’s interview of a Gazan man: “And if I told you that Hamas ruined Gaza? What would you respond?”

“Obviously. It’s obvious,” said the interview subject, “The reason of this destruction is Hamas.”

 


Here’s another IDF clip of a Gazan blaming Hamas for the war.

The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center on December 13, published bulleted lists of Gazans criticizing Hamas in the media and on social networks. Some excerpts:

Criticism of Hamas in the media

·        The Palestinian Authority’s Wafa TV interviewed residents and evacuees from Khan Yunis who left the city for the Rafah area. One of them angrily claimed that they had been forced to evacuate Rafah to a place where there was no water, food or showers. He wondered why “they” [Hamas] were doing it to them. “Hamas, protect the people!” he said. Another resident who was riding in a horse-drawn cart, shouted “May Allah  disgrace the honor of Hamas and al-Sinwar” (Wafa YouTube channel, December 6, 2023).

·        Radio Alam, which broadcasts from Hebron, aired an interview with residents of the Gaza Strip who criticized Hamas and its leadership. One of the interviewees cursed Yahya al-Sinwar and claimed, “You destroyed us.” He said, “the Palestinian civilians speak without fear because they now know that death is everywhere, the leaders of Hamas must pay attention to the Gazans to protect what is left of the Gazan people and end the useless war.” He spoke of the civilians’ difficulties after they moved from Khan Yunis to Rafah, and emphasized that the Hamas leadership did not care. Another interviewee appealed to Yahya al-Sinwar in distress, saying there was no food or water and the number of evacuees was increasing, while there are 20,000 people in one school. He called for help for the children and expressed fear of epidemics spreading among the citizens (Assaf Mustafa’s X account, December 6, 2023).

Hamas rats hide in tunnels while Gazan civilians suffer (Issa Alris X account, November 23, 2023)

·        Al-Hadath TV, an Arab channel, played a recording of a Palestinian evacuee, which was originally broadcast on the local radio, who claimed Hamas had destroyed them and that everything happened because of al-Sinwar. He said they had gone from Gaza City to Khan Yunis and from there to Rafah. He said Hamas stole humanitarian aid meant for the Palestinian public, adding that the Hamas leadership, including al-Sinwar and Muhammad Deif, were underground and did not care about what was happening [to the Gazans above ground]. He also appealed to al-Sinwar to release the hostages (al-Hadath TV, December 6, 2023).

·        Ahmed Rifat Muheisen, an evacuee, was interviewed by QudsN channel TV, a Palestinian TV channel, from the tent camp of the evacuees in western Rafah, and complained that at night it rained on them. He complained there was no [central] entity in the Gaza Strip, not even a governmental entity [i.e., the Hamas administration] taking care of them. No one, he said, gave them answers about their situation (QudsN X account, December 6, 2023).

·        The American satellite Alhurra network broadcast a video of a Palestinian sheltering in al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah, after members of her family were injured in an IDF attack. She shouts [at Hamas] to end the war in Gaza, stating that enough is enough, they do not want more destruction or a prisoner exchange deal (Alhurra TV X account, December 4, 2023).

A Palestinian woman calls for the end of the war in Gaza (Alhurra TV X account, December 4, 2023)


Criticism of Hamas on social networks

·        Kareem Jodha (4,300 followers) posted a quote from senior Hamas terrorist Osama Hamdan, which read, “Gaza was and will continue to be a cemetery for invaders and occupiers.” Jodha replied, “True, it was, but people like you turned it into a cemetery for its residents and genocide” (Kareem Jouda’s Facebook page, December 4, 2023).

·        Ghattas (1,012 followers) wrote, “When the war is futile and the defeats taste like massacres, retreat is courage, admitting defeat is chivalry, and the one who preserves the blood, honor and livelihood of the innocent is the winner. That is of course part of the morality of “the knights,” however, insane al-Sinwar and the other leaders of the tunnels and the Hamas Muslim Brothers who live in fancy hotels are not among them” (@Moraqeb2020 X account, December 4, 2023). He attached a photo of Yahya al-Sinwar.

·        Ghattas also retweeted a tweet by a Saudi journalist, who wrote, “With all the destruction and killing, where are Yahya al-Sinwar, Mashaal and Haniyeh, where is their offer of protection for their people? Maybe they enjoy the torture and bloodshed, as is the custom of the Muslim Brotherhood? Where is the wisdom of the leader and his compassion for his people? The world will not stand with you, because on October 7 you foolishly gave your enemy the chance to go down in history. So be brave and take action to stop the killing of your children and women Are the lives of some Israelis you bargain for more valuable than the lives of your own civilians?” After that he added, “Hamas is not only an armed movement, but a movement of seats [of power], rule and money. History has taught us that the Muslim Brotherhood does not leave the seat of power unless they and those who rule them are [forcibly removed], and Gaza will be no exception” (@Moraqeb2020’s X account, December 4, 2023).

·        Naama Hassan (7,431 followers) wrote that “Displacement and death will not stop unless the war stopped. The war in Gaza has to stop. The lives of the people of Gaza are more important than all your negotiations and demands. Share our demands, we have the right to choose life” (Naama Hassan’s Facebook page, December 2, 2023).

·        Amjad Abu Kush (6,387 followers) wrote, I hope that in a future prisoner exchange deal we will not see another dog being carried by an Israeli captive. It will hurt our hearts that he and the dogs that protect him are safe underground, while their people are being destroyed now. #Open_the_shelters, #Open_the_tunels, and #lead us to al-Sinwar, take our children somewhere safe, as the released hostage was told” (Abu Kush’ Facebook page, December 1, 2023). He added that whoever wants to create a flood must first build a ship to save his people, and not a submarine to save himself (Amjad Abu Kush’s Facebook page, December 5, 2023).

·        Marwan Abu Sharia wrote: “Protect us! If Hamas sees itself as the ruler, it must protect the homes of the displaced from thieves. The dogs stole from us” (@elthwrah X account, November 27, 2023).

·        Hani al-Hassan posted a video of a man wearing a yellow vest putting a tray of food in front of a child and then walking away with the tray in his hand. Alhassan wrote that Hamas members are seen in a shelter for the displaced, photographing a child they offer a meal to and then take it from him even though he reaches out to take it (@Hanialhasn1999 X account, November 27, 2023).

Hamas operatives beat civilians in the Shejaiya neighborhood and steal their food (IDF spokesperson in Arabic, Dec 9, 2023)

A Wall Street Journal piece from December 21 cites a survey from a Ramallah-based think tank, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, which found that one in five Gazans blames Hamas for their suffering as a result of the war. The article quotes a 56-year-old Gaza businessman, “People are dying every minute. Hamas is the one that dragged us into this terrible vortex.”

A hairdresser from Gaza City, now taking refuge in Rafah was also quoted, “Damn Hamas. If I see Ismail Haniyeh, I will hit him with my slippers,” she said. In the Arab world, throwing shoes at a person is a serious insult.

The use of civilians as human shields, has not helped to endear Hamas to the people of Gaza. On February 12, for example, Gaza-based journalist Jehad Saftawi said that Hamas had sacrificed his family members and neighbors as cannon fodder in its war against Israel.  

"Hamas terrorists used my family and hundreds of our neighbors as human shields. Hamas continues to hold the people of Gaza captive," Saftawi wrote on X. "There should be no reconstruction of my family's home while a stockpile of weapons lies underneath.

"Goals rather than causes are what is behind Hamas's masterminds' wars. The case for removing Hamas is not to fuel escalation but to prevent it, which is why they should never be allowed to retake control of Gaza.”

The journalist also said that this was the first time in over 10 years that he felt “able to speak about this publicly,” adding that it’s "a cry for realignment for our Palestinian society as well as an appeal to the international community."

Saftawi further related that while his family home was being built, there were masked men who built a tunnel below. "In the years since my family or their neighbors heard sounds or movements from time to time. They wondered sometimes if there really were tunnels, if they were active. My family was too afraid to speak about this with anyone, so it was our secret. It felt shameful even though we knew we were deeply opposed to whatever Hamas had done on the other side of that cement slab."

Just after October 7, Saftawi and his family evacuated to southern Gaza, and his home and neighborhood are now reduced to rubble. "I may never know if the house was destroyed by Israeli strikes or fighting between Hamas and Israel. But the result is the same. Our home, and far too many in our community, were flattened alongside priceless history and memories.

"This is the legacy of Hamas. They began destroying my family home in 2013 when they built tunnels beneath it. They continued to threaten our safety for a decade—we always knew we might have to vacate at a moment’s notice. We always feared violence. Gazans deserve a true Palestinian government, which supports its citizens’ interests, not terrorists carrying out their own plans. Hamas is not fighting Israel. They’re destroying Gaza," concluded Saftawi.

The Gazan voices crying out against Hamas injustice grow louder by the day. Only yesterday, on the night of February 20, residents from Jabaliya in northern Gaza, and from Rafah in the south, took to the streets in protest against the leaders of Hamas, in particular calling out the head of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, and Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh, who is living in the lap of luxury in Qatar. The people of Gaza protested against these Hamas leaders first and foremost for stealing the humanitarian aid meant for them, "We need food, we need flour, Sinwar and Haniyeh, stay away from us, you thieves.”

The Gazan protesters were also heard to condemn Hamas’ representative in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, "Hamdan, leave Lebanon; the people are the victims. With spirit and blood, we will redeem you, Gaza."

Even as the voices of the people of Gaza swell to ear-piercing decibels, the academics in their ivory towers continue to stick their fingers in the ears. They want to put the onus on Israel and the Zionists Jews for the leveling of Gaza. This is because like Hamas, these antisemites are two-legged beasts with black hearts of stone.

Someday the people of Gaza will curse not only Hamas, but these Jew-haters too, for misleading the world and pointing it in the wrong direction as so many Gazans lost their homes and died.

Not because of the Jews. But because of Hamas. Something the world would rather not know.



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!

 

 





Wednesday, February 14, 2024




Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

Joe Biden is on the prowl, looking for “violent settlers” in the “West Bank,” the latter a made-up name comprising part of a city, and two distinct territories lumped together for administrative purposes. Neither the city (Jerusalem), nor the territories (Judea and Samaria) are located on a river bank, while actual “settler violence,” is a rare bird, indeed, and is handled by Israel itself, which has no problem meting out severe punishment when it deems such actions necessary. Not that Joe cares.

For Joe, the geographic distinctions don’t matter a whit. Nor does the fact that “settler violence” is so uncommon as to be almost nonexistent, and that it’s not America’s place to punish the supposed criminals of a sovereign ally, an insult of the highest magnitude.

No, Joe doesn’t care about the facts. He cares only about doing the bidding of the Squad, the anti-Israel protesters, the State Department, the UN, his handlers, and of course, the voters. It is, after all, an election year. And if the people hate Israel, and by extension, the Jews, by gum, Joe is going after them. His excuse? “Violent settlers” or more to the point, violent Israeli settlers (cough cough Jews) threaten the United States.

This is no hyperbole, Biden’s “Executive Order on Imposing Certain Sanctions on Persons Undermining Peace, Security, and Stability in the West Bank” issued February 1, declares “settler violence” a “national emergency.” (emphasis added)

 I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, find that the situation in the West Bank — in particular high levels of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages, and property destruction — has reached intolerable levels and constitutes a serious threat to the peace, security, and stability of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, and the broader Middle East region.  These actions undermine the foreign policy objectives of the United States, including the viability of a two-state solution and ensuring Israelis and Palestinians can attain equal measures of security, prosperity, and freedom.  They also undermine the security of Israel and have the potential to lead to broader regional destabilization across the Middle East, threatening United States personnel and interests.  For these reasons, these actions constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.  I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.

How many of the people who read Biden’s executive order were completely unaware of the fact that the “West Bank” includes part of Jerusalem? For that matter, how many people who read Biden’s executive order are cognizant of the fact that not only is “East Jerusalem” not on a river bank, it is also not separate from the rest of Jerusalem.

From Proofread Now:

When words like northern, southern, eastern, and western precede a place name, they are not ordinarily capitalized, because they merely indicate general location within a region. However, when these words are actually part of the place name, they must be capitalized.

The city of Jerusalem is a single, unified city under Israeli sovereignty, and it is Israel’s capital. Hence there is no such thing as “East” Jerusalem. But the Arabs say there is and that it belongs to them, and so it has become another invented paradigm forced down the throat of a sovereign nation and American ally by the enemy who threatens that sovereign nation (Israel) from within and without, with American support.

Here it bears mention that the Western Wall is located in this part of Jerusalem, as is of course, the Temple Mount, the holiest of holy Jewish sites. Just as a dog marks his territory by urinating there, so too the Arabs marked this holy Jewish territory “Muslim,” by building a mosque on a site holy only to the Jewish people. The world is only too happy to fall in with the idea of dispossessing the hated Jews from their holy sites, their holy city, and the Holy Land. So too, the world is content to go along with the fiction of an “East Jerusalem” “occupied” by "European" Jews.

Despite the alarmist rhetoric employed by Biden in his executive order, there are no “high levels of extremist settler violence.” Biden, in fact, could only locate an initial four Jews to punish—that is to say, four Jews that match his personal definition of “violent settlers.” Many Israelis are now wondering if they are next on the chopping block.

What is meant by “forced displacement of people and villages and property destruction?” Does “forced displacement of people and villages” refer to Arabs who fled of their own volition in 1948 or 1967, or perhaps to the Arab squatter evicted by a Jewish landlord for nonpayment of rent? Does the building of the Western Wall plaza or the public restrooms placed there by Israeli authorities for the convenience of visitors of all faiths who come to pray at the Wall, “property destruction?” Or is that it the little corner market in the Jewish Quarter where people buy eggs and milk?

Where are these “high levels of extremist settler violence,” and for that matter, what constitutes “settler violence?” The better question is what doesn’t? For one thing, the Biden administration relies on the UN for its facts and figures in this regard, a body not known for its philosemitism. What sort of facts and figures have been disseminated by this “august” body?

From Amit Segal at Ynet:

 [When] the details on settler violence are examined thoroughly it seems like there isn’t much violence, nor much settlers. Dr. Michael Wolfowicz, a criminology researcher at the Hebrew University’s Faculty of Law, received the data from the UN.

At first glance, it's horrifying: between 2016 and 2022, there were no less than 5,656 incidents of settler violence against Palestinians. But delving into the numbers reveals that 1,600 of them took place in Jerusalem, with almost all of them involving Jews entering the Temple Mount or clashes between the police and Muslims who acted violently in the area.

After further filtering, there were 2,500 incidents that describe property damage or assault, but they include, for example, a terror attack in which a Palestinian terrorist attacked Jews and was neutralized. On April 8, 2018, Mahmoud Abedel Karim Marshoud attempted to stab Israeli civilians near Ma’ale Adumim. He was neutralized and succumbed to his injuries the next day. The UN reported two violent incidents following this: on April 8, a shooting at a Palestinian, and on April 9, a killing.

On July 26, 2018, Yotam Ovadia, 30, was murdered by a 17-year-old Palestinian terrorist who stabbed him. Here too, according to the UN, the fact Ovadia neutralized the terrorists was classified as settler violence. The same goes for a stabbing attack in Mount Hebron, another one in Yitzhar, and an incident where Arab rioters clashed with security forces at Joseph's Tomb.

Even a car accident in which a settler hit a Palestinian was classified as violence. After filtering all of these, we’re left with about 20 violent incidents in a month, most of them being cases of mutual violence, and some reported only by Palestinian sources without being verified.

Even if all of them are accurate, here's a relevant comparison: according to the IDF, in 2019-2022 alone, there were 25,257 incidents of Palestinian attacks against Jewish settlers . . .

. . . The exaggeration of settler violence from a limited phenomenon to a widespread issue is designed to appease the world's conscience, in a strange symmetry, for the assistance it provides Israel in its war against Hamas terrorists.

In Israel, this is intended to serve the goal of expelling Jewish settlers from the West Bank and establishing a Palestinian state.

But there’s worse. It seems that the UN has compiled a list of Jews who have visited the Temple Mount, which as noted above, is located in fictitious “East Jerusalem” within the fictitious “West Bank." The Jewish Press has the report:

Hakol Hayehudi reporter Elchanan Groner on Thursday presented a UN Excel sheet depicting Jewish visits to the Temple Mount as violent incidents.

As can clearly be seen for this batch from 2019, the Incident Description is always, “Israeli settlers and other groups, accompanied by Israeli forces, entered and toured the yards of Al Aqsa Mosque compound.” The source is always “other” or UNRWA, and the region is described as “West Bank.”

Further down, the Jewish Press elaborates on the Wolfowicz report:

According to the IDF, between 2019 and 2022, there were 25,257 instances of PA Arab assaults on Jewish settlers in Judea and Samaria (without Jerusalem), with more than 20,000 incidents of stone-throwing, about 4,000 Molotov cocktails, about 400 shooting attacks, and more than 50 stabbing attacks. And the annual figure rose much higher in 2023. However, according to the UN reports on the same period, there were only 1,935 Arab-on-Jew assaults in Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem.

It turns out that many of these Arab-on-Jew attacks were recorded by the UN as… “settler violence” . . . 

 . . . It can be cautiously estimated that only about 35% of the reported incidents actually describe events in which there are settlers and violence, and they too have not been examined, and include questionable descriptions such as car accidents (a settler ran over a PA Arab child), or Arabs who “ran away from settlers” and fell and hurt themselves while running.

When word of the executive order came out, like many other Israelis, I wondered whether and/or how this might apply to me and to my family members. I’ve written here about my one-time trip to the Temple Mount in 2017, during a brief Arab boycott of the site. The Arabs had attacked and killed two (Bedouin) policemen and wounded a third. Israel installed metal detectors, and the Arabs decided that this was some kind of violation of their “sovereignty” over the Mount.

As a result, I seized the chance to go while there were no Arabs to curse, spit, and throw garbage at me. I took a quick tour—Jews aren’t allowed to linger or pray—and left. But when Jews visit the Mount, they are taken to a waiting area, and are required to turn in their ID booklets. There’s a wait, while security takes down your info and likely runs it through a computer to make sure you’re not a threat. Only then are you allowed up.

Did the UN access this information? Will I now be deemed by the Biden administration, a “violent settler,” my ability to visit relatives in the States, curtailed?

Can my bank accounts be frozen? I’m employed by an Israeli company. But my bank account has branches in the US.

What about mein son the (IDF) officer and my other soldier sons who served in Judea and Samaria?

From a second Jewish Press report:

According to an internal report of Israel’s foreign ministry, the Biden administration is preparing to impose sanctions on IDF officers and soldiers who serve in Judea and Samaria, Kan11 News reported Friday night. The report cites a series of claims that have been submitted to the administration against the conduct of IDF units in the area.

The report cites a US warning that if the military attorney’s office does not submit answers to the administration’s inquiries in less than 60 days, sanctions would be imposed against IDF soldiers, including commanders. In addition, the report shows that the Biden administration warned Israel many times about the lack of enforcement against “settler violence,” and Israel’s answers have been unsatisfactory.

In addition to all my other supposed sins, I live (and work) in Judea. Will my mere presence in the “West Bank” that isn’t even a river bank at some point be deemed “settler violence?” Is residing in my rented apartment considered displacement, dispossession, and destruction? 

If you ask the UN, the Red Cross, Hamas, Abbas, Qatar, et al., it most definitely is, which makes me a horrible person just for waking up in my bed, getting dressed, and washing the breakfast dishes at the sink each morning, even though no Arab ever lived here in this home or on the property on which it stands. To the Biden administration, I’m an extremist and violent criminal who should be kept from my own money and isolated from my family abroad.

But on the bright side of things, here's how much I care:





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!

 

 

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