Image 01 Image 03
Sign In or RegisterLogout

Israel Tag

Posted by David Gerstman on February 16, 2016 6 Comments
We hear from critics of Israel that Israel needs a two-state solution to be  legitimate. Without a Palestinian state, the argument goes, Israel will rule over millions of resentful Palestinians to whom it will have to deny their basic rights in order to maintain its Jewish nature. Or if Israel enfranchises the Palestinians, they could overwhelm the Jews with their votes and then Israel would cease to be a Jewish state. So the reasoning goes, without a separate Palestinian state, Israel will either cease being Jewish or democratic. But there was already a separation achieved in 1993, with the signing of the Oslo Accords. By the end of 1995 Israel had withdrawn from the major population areas in the West Bank, leaving over 90% of Palestinians under the political control of the Palestinian Authority. In 2005, Israel "disengaged" from Gaza ending the occupation of that territory.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on February 16, 2016 0 Comments
British Prime Minister David Cameron’s government has proposed new directives to combat anti-Israel boycott in the United Kingdom. Under the proposed regulations, universities, city councils, state-run health services and other government-funded public organisation will be not be allowed to discriminate against products made in Israel. The announcement comes on the heels of a bill introduced in the US congress to combat anti-Israel boycott campaign. “The Combating BDS Act of 2016" wants to give more power to the states to act against businesses that boycot or divest from Israel. According to the reports in British media, Cabinet Office Minister Matthew Hancock is expected to announce the details during his trip to Israel in coming days, citing concerns that such campaigns directed towards Israel fuel antisemitism. The London-based newspaper The Indepedent reports:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 15, 2016 2 Comments
Bernie Sanders is Jewish and worked on a kibbutz in Israel in the 1960s. Bernie supports Israel's right to exist, though he's decidedly more into the "balanced" approach compared to other candidates, and has questionable Middle East advisors. Bernie doesn't wear either his Judaism or Zionism on his sleeve, unlike his socialism. To the contrary, when given the perfect opportunity at the last Democratic PBS debate Thursday night, February, 2016. Gwen Ifill asked Bernie if his candidacy would "thwart" history by denying the opportunity for Hillary to become the first female president. It was a perfect opportunity for Bernie to make the point that he also would be a first -- the first Jewish president. But Bernie didn't go there, instead he danced around the issue and said that it would be historic for "someone of my background and views" to be president:

Posted by Jonathan Levin on February 12, 2016 2 Comments
There has been quite a bit of BDS-related legislative activity in the several weeks, with two anti-BDS measures moving through Congress, and activity in several state legislatures.  While the legislatures universally oppose BDS, President Obama has weighed in in opposition to Congress's pro-Israel legislation.

Federal Anti-BDS Legislation

First, Wednesday afternoon Senators Mark Kirk (R. - IL) and Joe Manchin (D. - WV) and Representatives Bob Dold (R. - IL) and Juan Vargas (D. - CA) filed a bill to help states divest from BDS-supporting companies.  According to Adam Kredo of the Washington Free Beacon:
The new bill, which was filed Wednesday afternoon, marks an aggressive push by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to combat the growing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, otherwise known as BDS, which advocates in favor of economic war against the Jewish state. The bill would provide legal shelter to states seeking to divest taxpayer funds from any company that has backed the BDS movement. It also would set a legal precedent granting safe harbor for private investment companies to do the same.

Posted by Jonathan Levin on February 08, 2016 3 Comments
Bernie Sanders gave a glimpse at his potential foreign policy on Sunday, and his choices of BDS supporter James Zogby and left-wing J Street raise serious questions. Sanders, the Jewish Senator from Vermont, is infamous for his avowed socialism.  On foreign policy, he is more or less a blank slate, making his choice of foreign policy advisers a valuable window into his mindsight and the least-worst predictor of a President Sanders's policy. On Sunday, two of the three advisers Sanders chose to identify were vehemently anti-Israel.  Sanders told Meet The Press he met recently with Larry Korb, Jim Zogby and J Street.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 06, 2016 3 Comments
Consider this a follow-up to our prior reporting on the Regressive Left: https://twitter.com/LegInsurrection/status/690402640929411073 The concept of masochists defending sadists came from this article, The Masochists Who Defend Sadists: The Regressive Left in Theory and Practice:
I think they hated the idea of the West and of Empire, so they made a practical and intellectual alliance with people who shared their hatred. It must be remembered, too, that the resistance and its fighters and ideas served as the forerunner of the Islamic State. The Western Left’s solidarity with Islamism and fascism is, I would argue, the Western Left’s greatest shame, at least in my lifetime….

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on February 04, 2016 2 Comments
With the high-tech sector making up about half of its total industrial exports, Israel is forging strong trade ties with the emerging economies of Asia. Leading nations of Far-East Asia -- namely Japan, China and Singapore -- have launched series of efforts to court Israeli technology sector. In the age of global competition where technological edge makes all the difference, no significant players in Asia wants to miss out on the disruptive and game-changing innovation going on in Israel. The recent big ticket acquisition of Israeli start ups by Asian multi-nationals is just part of this growing cooperation. Asian players want to build long-term partnerships with Israeli businesses, entrepreneurs, start ups and universities to jointly develop the next generation of high-tech products and solutions. Countries like India, China and Japan; which in past have been hesitant of openly engaging with Israel -- to avoid offend oil-supplying Arab countries -- are changing their long-held adverse stance and strengthening commercial and diplomatic ties with the Jewish State. Leading technology news website TechCrunch reports:
China and Japan are forging deeper ties with Israel’s burgeoning tech industry. While China has been active in the Israeli market for some time, Japan, too, has launched a series of efforts to court the Israeli tech scene.

Posted by Jonathan Levin on February 02, 2016 4 Comments
As negotiations to negotiate an end to the Syrian civil war plod along, the UN has admitted, internally, that it is powerless to enforce any Syria peace deal. According to Foreign Policy, the UN knows it cannot enforce or even monitor any peace deal it brokers:
In a confidential strategy paper exclusively obtained by Foreign Policy, the office of the United Nations’ top envoy to Syria warns that the U.N. would be unable to monitor or enforce any peace deal that might emerge from landmark political talks underway in Geneva. The paper raised concerns the world might harbor unrealistic expectations about the U.N.’s ability to oversee and verify a cease-fire in a civil war beset by a dizzying array of armed factions and terrorist groups. “The current international and national political context and the current operational environment strongly suggest that a U.N. peacekeeping response relying on international troops or military observers would be an unsuitable modality for ceasefire monitoring,” according to the “Draft Ceasefire Modalities Concept Paper” by U.N. envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura’s team. In plain English, that means Syria will be far too dangerous for some time for traditional U.N. peacekeepers to handle.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 01, 2016 7 Comments
The NY Times, as most of Western media, always is looking for a "reason" for the current Palestinian wave of terror that is unrelated to Palestinian responsibility. It's always a search for a way to excuse the terror, including the knifings by Palestinian teens of Israelis, particularly targeting Israeli women. A January 19, 2016, NYT article by Steven Erlinger typifies the genre, Anger in a Palestinian Town Feeds a Cycle of Violence
Raed Jaradat was 22, an accounting student from a well-to-do family here, already working part time with his father in his stone quarry and construction business. After Dania Ersheid, 17, was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers who said she had pulled a knife at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, a version disputed by Palestinians, Mr. Jaradat wrote an angry post on Facebook: “Imagine if this were your sister!”
Stephen Flatow takes apart both the Erlinger article and the genre, Let’s play the ‘blame Israel game’ with The New York Times:

Posted by David Gerstman on February 01, 2016 4 Comments
In the middle of January, I dissected Vox video purporting to distill the Arab-Israeli conflict into 10 minutes. But those ten  minutes were littered with countless errors and omissions. I wasn' t the only one weighing in, of course. Elder of Ziyon, one of the longest running pro-Israel bloggers has taken the criticism to a new level, in a video critique of the Vox video. This is no easy task - and I admire his patience and cool - as his critique of the first three minutes clocked in at 17 minutes. As Elder put it:
I'm not certain I will create parts 2 and 3, because I don't know who will want to spend maybe 45 minutes listening to a critique of a ten minute video. Literally every ten seconds I nI ceeded to stop to respond to another distortion or lie.
I certainly had that feeling reviewing the video:

Posted by Miriam Elman on January 31, 2016 9 Comments
In November 2015, The Nation, a prominent progressive magazine, published an essay by controversial professor Steven Salaita which raised complaints from a prominent Rabbi that the essay crossed the line from legitimate criticism of Israeli policy to anti-Semitism. As we noted in many prior posts, Salaita is a virulently anti-Israel academic who had a contingent offer at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign rejected in 2014. He sued and got a money settlement, but not the job. Salaita's since become “enshrined as a symbol” in the American academy of the trouncing of academic freedom and the trampling of shared governance protocols. Salaita's essay in The Nation brought harsh criticism from a Professor of Jewish thought and culture:
Apparently it’s Zionism that ails the neoliberal university, along with everything else amiss in the world. You can read here his goodbye at the Nation. What reads like it was taken straight out from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the complaint that Zionism occupies the American mind and the American university expands as a logical next step on the basic view from the tweets and the book that “Zionists” are enemies of humanity, supporters of war crimes, adorn themselves with the teeth of Palestinian babies, etc, etc. Don’t be surprised when the next stage in on-campus Palestinian solidarity activism takes aim at purging U.S. academe of “Zionism,” namely Birthright, Hillel, study abroad in Israel, Israel Studies, and Jewish Studies.
The essay also prompted Rabbi Jill Jacobs, a leading voice in American Jewish Conservative circles, to write in complaint. In a Letter to the Editor sent to The Nation in November, Jacobs contended that Salaita’s article contained a series of disturbing anti-Semitic statements.

Posted by Jonathan Levin on January 29, 2016 3 Comments
The National Labor Relations Board ("NLRB") decided earlier this month that unions may "endorse" the boycott, divest and sanction ("BDS") campaign against Israel without running afoul of the National Labor Relations Act's (the "Act") ban on so-called "secondary boycotts." But the case did not affirm that unions actually could engage in the boycott, since that issue was not before the Board. Nonetheless, some people inaccurately are spinning the decision as the NLRB giving BDS a green light. The issue arose when the the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (the "Union") passed a resolution endorsing BDS in August, 2015.  The Union is self-consciously radical - its website calls for "aggressive struggle," blames "bosses and bankers," and promises that it is "Fighting for Workers' Rights in the New World Order."  In addition to a slew of posts about BDS and "build[ing] solidarity" with Palestinians, the Union's Political Action update opposes the TransPacific Partnership, defends Venezuela's farcical "democracy" and effectively endorses Bernie Sanders:

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on January 28, 2016 8 Comments
With the recent wave of terrorism unleashed on Israeli civilians, Prime Minister Netanyahu's government is investing in technology to pre-empt “lone wolf” attacks. Since September 2015, more than 100 stabbings attacks have taken place and 29 Israelis have died, including an American teenager. The terror attacks in Israel are not limited to knife attacks alone, about 40 shootings and 20 car ramming incidents have also taken place during the same period. Hamas and PLO-affiliated terrorist group are increasingly using Facebook and other social media platforms to recruit and direct attacks against unsuspecting Israeli civilians. And Israel is doing what Israel does best -- using cutting-edge technology to fight back terrorism. Speaking at a Cyber Technology conference in Tel Aviv, Israel's Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said that the country is studying the modus operandi of these “lone wolf” terrorists, and devising tools to monitor social media and pre-empt such attacks. Jerusalem Post reports:
Israel will invest more in technology enabling it to gather intelligence on social media about potential “lone wolf” terrorists, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said on Wednesday.  (…)

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 25, 2016 7 Comments
Terror attacks in and against Israeli Jews now are daily occurrences. Most don't make their way into the U.S. media. Two recent examples are twin 18-year old sisters arrested for bomb making, and at stabbing attack which left two Israeli women injured but could have been much worse. The Times of Israel reports:
Iraeli security forces arrested 18-year-old bomb-making twin sisters from Shwaika, outside the Palestinian city of Tulkarem in the West Bank last month, the Shin Bet security service announced Monday. Israel Defense Forces soldiers and Shin Bet officers discovered pipe bombs and other explosive materials in the home of Diana and Nadia Hawila in late December 2015, officials said.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 24, 2016 14 Comments
A Wider Bridge is an Israeli group that promotes not only LGBTQ rights, it does so in the context of promoting cooperation across religious and ethnic lines. When A Wider Bridge was scheduled to hold a Sabbath event at the Creating Change conference in Chicago, the invitation initially was revoked under pressure from Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions groups, as A Wider Bridge described in this Press Release:
A group of American and Israeli LGBTQ Jews that was scheduled to appear at the largest conference of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer activists in the United States this week has been booted from the event because of pressure by anti-Israeli activists, the group says. U.S. nonprofit A Wider Bridge, which builds connections between American and Israeli LGBTQ Jews, was set to host a reception with leaders of Jerusalem’s Open House at the Creating Change conference, which is scheduled to take place in Chicago January 20 – 22. Last year the gathering, which is convened by the National LGBTQ Task Force, had 3,800 people attend.

Posted by David Gerstman on January 21, 2016 10 Comments
Vox.com, which purports to "explain" things, has turned its attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The results are not pretty. Truth takes a backseat to revisionism and a combination of ignorance and propaganda forces out knowledge. Here's the video, but be sure to read the explanation below as to how it misleads: In general the content can be divided in two: anything that makes Israel look bad or the Palestinians sympathetic is described in (often incorrect) detail; anything that makes the Palestinians (or Arabs generally) look bad is described only generally. Israel is active; Palestinians are passive.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on January 21, 2016 9 Comments
Shocked by the wave of violent anti-Semitism in Germany following the Gaza conflict of 2014, the Central Council of Jews, apex body of Jewish organisations in Germany in called for the rally “Stand up! Never again anti-Semitism!” on September 14, 2014. The event was attended by German Chancellor Merkel, President Joachim Gauck and other senior government ministers. Speaking under the banner of “Never Again”, leader of the Jewish community, Dr. Dieter Graumann said, “enough is enough” and “we do not want to be compelled to gather here again in two or three years’ time.” The state ceremony graced by Chancellor Merkel and her entire cabinet is barely an year only and here we are again. 70 years after the end of Nazi Germany, the small Jewish community in Germany doesn't feel safe in Germany anymore. In recent months, prominent community leaders in Germany have urged Jews to avoid wearing religious symbols in public and to avid “districts with strong Muslim populations.”

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 19, 2016 3 Comments
We reported recently on the murder of Israeli fertility nurse and mother of six Dafna Meir by a Palestinian. Dafna Meir Israeli Mother Stabbed to death Meir fought back but was stabbed to death in front of her children, as one child tried to help her:
A tear-choked Renana Meir, 17, apologized over her mother’s body on Monday for not preventing the Palestinian terrorist from stabbing her to death. “I am sorry that in your most difficult moments I was not able to help you,” Renana said, as she looked out at the hundreds of mourners.
Accessibility by WAH