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Israel Tag

Posted by David Gerstman on January 23, 2014 11 Comments
It was reported yesterday that Israel's internal security agency, the Shin Bet broke up an al Qaeda cell operating in Jerusalem. According to the report, three men in Jerusalem were recruited by an al Qaeda operative in Gaza to carry out three attacks: targeting the Jerusalem-Maale Adumim bus line, the Jerusalem convention center and the American embassy in Tel Aviv. (Last year, in an apparently unrelated case, Israel arrested an Iranian national photographing the embassy.) The Jerusalem Post notes:
The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) said an al-Qaida operative in Gaza, named as Ariv al-Sham, recruited the men separately as three independent terrorist cells. Senior Shin Bet sources said they believed Sham received his orders directly from the head of al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Using Skype and Facebook, Sham was able to recruit Iyad Khalil Abu-Sara, 23, of Ras Hamis of east Jerusalem, who has an Israeli ID card. During questioning, Abu-Sara, who was arrested on December 25, admitted to volunteering to carry out a “sacrifice attack” on an Israeli bus traveling between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim. In the planned attack, terrorists would shoot out the bus’s tires, causing it to overturn, before gunning down passengers at close range and firing on emergency responders.
One of them was planning to arrange to bring foreign terrorists to Israel posing as Russian tourists to aid in the execution of his plans. The report in USA Today explained why this discovery is a big deal:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 22, 2014 4 Comments
Everyone knows that Israel's Knesset is a particularly contentious place, where views are shouted out with great emotion.  I don't believe they have the floor brawls that take place elsewhere, but it's not a place where rhetoric is held back. But when foreign dignitaries visit, that's a different matter entirely. I noted the other day Stephen Harper's wonderful speech before the Knesset, the first ever by a Canadian Prime Minister, Canadian PM Harper: Academic boycott part of “mutation of the old disease of anti-Semitism”. Unfortunately, two Arab members of the Knesset heckled him and walked out when he addressed the academic Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement and the malicious propaganda line -- repeated endlessly on campuses and among some academics -- that Israel is an Apartheid state. I think it's relevant that the heckling and walkout erupted at that moment of the speech.  It shows how important the BDS movement, born as a tactic at the openly anti-Semitic 2001 Durban NGO conference, is to the anti-Israel movement internationally and at home. The Blaze has details:
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was heckled by an Arab Israeli member of parliament during a speech in which he slammed those who call Israel an “apartheid” state. Knesset member Ahmed Tibi later stomped out of the room as Harper was speaking.... He criticized those who support a boycott of Israel, equating it with historical anti-Semitism. On some campuses, intellectualized arguments against Israeli policies thinly mask the underlying realities, such as the shunning of Israeli academics and the harassment of Jewish students. Most disgracefully of all, some openly call Israel an apartheid state,” Harper said during his Monday evening address.

Posted by David Gerstman on January 21, 2014 7 Comments
According to numerous press reports, the Palestinians have refused any meaningful concessions in the John Kerry-led peace talks.  No compromise on recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, on refugees, on borders, on security arrangements, on anything meaningful.  Instead, they are planning a diplomatic intifada to try to isolate Israel when the talks break down. But, the Palestinians are happy to pocket the dozens of convicted killers released as part of the inducement to get them the negotiating table. More important, they make their uncompromising positions as the baseline for future negotiations. This tactic of pocketing concessions while conceding nothing has a recent history. In May 2011, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave Barack Obama a now famous talking-to in front of the cameras about the Middle East and the peace process: Columnist Jeffrey Goldberg would describe the incident like this:
It was an extraordinary scene: President Barack Obama, sitting impassively in the Oval Office in May as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lectured him, at considerable length and at times condescendingly, on Jewish history, Arab perfidy and the existential challenges facing his country.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 19, 2014 2 Comments
Because we focus so much on the Boycott, Divest, Sanction movement on campuses, it's easy to get the impression that such anti-Israeli students are the majority. They are not. They are just the loud mouths, who scream, call people names, and built idiotic mock walls and checkpoints -- for which they never include mock suicide bombers or shrapnel backpack bombs for context. While it is true that anti-Israel sentiment has grown among some sectors of the student body, students remain mostly pro-Israel or -- like students tend to be -- apathetic. A case in point to debunk the myth would be The University of Pennsylvania, which has seen some of the worst of the anti-Israel BDS movement, as detailed in my post in February 2012, Anti-Israel sickness on display at U. Penn:
Israel Matzavand JWeekly have good write-ups of the anti-Israel derangement at the University of Pennsylvania, which hosted a Boycott Divest Sanction conference.  Not Boycott Divest Sanction Syria, or Saudi Arabia, or Iran … just Israel. We have featured these anti-Semitic — yes that’s what they are by their actions – before, but they are far more vicious and devious than most people understand, and one of their primary goals is the indoctrination of college students into the anti-Israel movement. This audio shows a U. Penn. professor discussing how to work anti-Israel agitation into classes that have nothing to do with Israel:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 17, 2014 11 Comments
A total of 134 Members of the House of Representatives have signed a letter, organized by the offices of Reps. Peter Roksam (R) and Ted Deutch (D) condeming the academic boycott of Israel passed by the American Studies Assoction. The effort was truly bipartisan, with 65 Republicans and 69 Democrarts signing.  The full list of signatories is at the bottom of this post. As previously reported, the congressional organizers were hoping for 50 signatures, so the response was better than expected. Gathering signatures on short notice was difficult, one of the staffers explained to me, because of the press of House business before members left today on break. In a Press Release by the Office of Rep. Peter Roksam, the background of the letter was explained:
Today, a bipartisan coalition of House lawmakers condemned the American Studies Association’s (ASA) academic boycott of Israel. 134 Members of Congress, led by Reps. Peter Roskam (R-IL), Ted Deutch (D-FL), Doug Collins (R-GA), and Brad Schneider (D-IL), sent a letter to ASA President Curtis Marez opposing ASA’s boycott as bigoted and an affront to academic freedom. “We come together—Democrats and Republicans alike—to strongly condemn the ASA boycott, which undermines academic freedom and exhibits flagrant prejudice against the Jewish State of Israel,” said the House lawmakers. “This boycott doesn’t advance peace between Israelis and Palestinians, but only reinforces dangerous stereotypes that limit mutual understanding and cooperation—two things that should be at the very heart of our academic endeavors. We therefore cannot tolerate these ignorant smear campaigns to isolate Israel and deteriorate the historic U.S.-Israel relationship.”
The letter reads, in full:

Posted by David Gerstman on January 15, 2014 10 Comments
The columnist Michael Kinsley is reputed to have said that "a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth." Earlier this week  an Israeli newspaper leaked private comments that Israel's Defense Minister, Moshe (Bogie) Ya'alon made critical of Secretary of State John Kerry and expressing skepticism towards security guarantees proposed by Kerry:
"The American security plan presented to us is not worth the paper it's written on," Ya'alon said. "It contains no peace and no security. Only our continued presence in Judea and Samaria and the River Jordan will endure that Ben-Gurion Airport and Netanya don't become targets for rockets from every direction."
The description of Kerry by Ya'alon as "... determined and acting out of misplaced obsession and messianic fervor..." has caused a diplomatic row, even though the comments were made privately. The State Department expressed offense at Ya'alon's reputed remarks:
The remarks of the Defense Minister if accurate are offensive and inappropriate especially given all that the United States is doing to support Israel's security needs," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement.
Given the heat he was taking, Ya'alon issued an apology asserting that he intended no offense. (My Right Word reminds us that President Obama, a few years ago, affirmed an ad hominem attack on Prime Minister Netanyahu made by then French-President Nicholas Sarkozy.)

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 15, 2014 10 Comments
For background, see my prior posts: The letter will be finalized tomorrow morning as the House goes into recess Friday and many members leave tomorrow afternoon.  The letter is being coordinated through the offices of Representatives Peter Roksam (R) and Ted Deutch (D). With the crush of business before the recess, it's hard to get the attention of Representatives. Is your House Representative on the list of signatories? If not, now is the time to reach out to their offices and find out why not TODAY. You can find your Representative and office contact information here: Find Your Representative. Here is the current list: UPDATE, list closes 9 a.m. Eastern, Thursday, so if your Rep has not signed by then, too late.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 14, 2014 6 Comments
Based on its Quarterly publication, the American Studies Association as of last year had 80 Institutional Members. Since ASA announced its academic boycott of Israel, we have confirmed that 6 universities have dropped their Institutional Memberships, while 11 more have denied being Institutional Members despite being so listed. The updated list appears at the very bottom of this post. While over 190 university presidents have denounced the ASA academic boycott of Israel, many have decided either to keep the membership or to leave the decision to individual American Studies Departments.  Some others are switching the membership listing to their American Studies Departments, rather than the full University name. Anything other than a full termination of Institutional Membership, however, opens up the universities to legal liability for national origin discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That potential liability is explained in a recent article by two attorneys at the Seyfarth Shaw law firm. Seyfarth Shaw is an 800+ international law firm with a 380+ attorney labor and employment law practice. On January 7, 2014, two Seyfarth Shaw attorneys published an article regarding the potential liability of university employers arising out of the ASA academic boycott. In their article, they make points similar to those I made in my challenge to ASA's tax-exempt status: The boycott constitutes national origin discrimination. While I approached it from the angle of whether such discrimination is a valid tax exempt purpose (it's not), the Seyfarth Shaw lawyers approached the problem from the perspective of employer liability under Title VII. Here are relevant portions of the Seyfarth Shaw analysis (emphasis added), including the recommendations of dropping institutional membership in ASA and evaluating whether boycott advocates can serve on hiring and tenure committees.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 14, 2014 10 Comments
I reported last Friday on the draft Bipartisan Congressional letter to denounce academic boycott of Israel. The letter reads, in part:
We write in strong opposition to the American Studies Association’s (ASA) recent decision to boycott Israeli universities and academic institutions. While ASA has every right to express its views on policies pursued by any nation or government, we believe that the decision to blacklist Israeli academic institutions for Israeli government policies with which ASA disagrees demonstrates a blatant disregard for academic freedom.... Even more concerning is the singular targeting of Israel for boycott. Like all democracies, Israel is not perfect. But to single out Israel, while leaving relationships with universities in autocratic and repressive countries intact, suggests thinly-veiled bigotry and bias against the Jewish State.
As of Friday, there were 36 signatories. As of yesterday, the number had risen to 57.  [Update - see list at bottom of post for most current numbers and signatories] The final signature list should be released later this week. American civil society has been heard loud and clear, with major academic organizations and 190 University Presidents (as of this writing) rejecting the academic boycott. Now it is the time for American political society to be heard against the anti-Israel academic boycotters, as well. Is your House Representative on the list of signatories? If not, now is the time to reach out to their offices and find out why not. You can find your Representative and office contact information here: Find Your Representative. Tell them the letter is being coordinated through the offices of Representatives Peter Roksam and Ted Deutch.  Give them the link to this post if you send an email. Pick up the phone or send an email right now.  (I emailed my Rep. last night.)

Posted by David Gerstman on January 12, 2014 16 Comments

Exhibit A:

In June, 1999, shortly after Ehud Barak had defeated Benjamin Netanyahu to become Israel's new prime minister, Charles Krauthammer wrote a column title, Clinton Should Have Targeted Arafat Instead. Krauthammer noted that Arafat was going around the world to lobby support for accepting UN General Assembly resolution 181 as a basis for any peace deal.
What is that? An obsolete, defunct resolution passed by the General Assembly (unlike 242 and 338, not by the Security Council, and thus not even binding) . . . in 1947! It partitioned British Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. At the time, every single Arab state and the Palestinian Arab Higher Committee totally rejected 181. In fact, they invaded the area given to the Jews with the express purpose of wiping it off the map. They failed. And now 50 years later, the Palestinians are converts to 181. What's wrong with that?

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 11, 2014 3 Comments
The Modern Language Association House Delegates voted on two anti-Israel Resolutions today. (The Resolutions are at the bottom of this post.) The main resolution, asking for the State Department to contest Israeli denials of entry visas to traveling academics: "Be it resolved that the MLA urges the US Dept of State to contest Israel's denials of entry to the West Bank by US academics...." The language was amended at the last minute to take out the word "arbitrarily" and to delete reference to Gaza. A House of Delegates vote is NOT a binding resolution that commits the organization to action. A resolution, if it passes the House of Delegates, then goes to the Executive Committee, which can reject the resolution for a variety of reasons, including that the resolution would jeopardize tax-exempt status). I would be surprised if the Executive Committee rejected it, since the operative language is so weak. We will have a post later from someone who was in the room. For now, I will post some of the Tweets from those in the room. Notice that there was significant pushback, and that the supporters of the resolution basically said take our word for it, when challenged as to the proof. That apparently was enough. The actual operative language of the resolution is not particularly damaging, and was watered down. But the "wherefore" clauses were highly anti-Israel and pretty-much propaganda. Those "wherefore" clauses will be the main victory for the anti-Israel group. The second resolution was an "Emergency" Resolution asking the MLA to denounce supposed attacks on the supporters of the American Studies Association boycott resolution. That Emergency Motion, which actually was explicitly pro-boycott, was rejected. 

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 11, 2014 10 Comments
Ariel Sharon has died, after almost 8 years in a coma. He led a life that was complicated, and defined by the insatiable Arab desire to destroy Israel. [caption id="attachment_75543" align="alignnone" width="539"](1953 - Commando Unit 101 - Ariel Sharon Second from Left, Second Row)(source: (1953 - Commando Unit 101 - Ariel Sharon Second from Left, Second Row)(source: YouTube [/caption] Sharon, among many others, didn't let it happen, and in the course of defending Israel made some errors of judgment that are easy for historians and politicians to criticize with the benefit of hindsight. Sharon's crossing of the Suez canal during the 1973 War to trap the Egyptian Third Army is legendary. [caption id="attachment_74807" align="alignnone" width="448"]Ariel Sharon Moshe Dayan 1973 Sinai (Ariel Sharon and Moshe Dayan, Sinai 1973)[/caption]
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