Displaying posts categorized under

ISRAEL

How alumni are revolutionizing the Israel debate on campus Alumni can become the missing piece in countering bigotry, bringing years of practical and professional experience to the table. by Avi D. Gordon

https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/how-alumni-are-revolutionizing-the-israel-debate-on-campus/

College might be the place where you found your career, met your significant other or forged friendships that would last a lifetime. One way or another, your alma mater likely played a significant role in making you the person you’ve become today.

Now, imagine that your alma mater’s faculty sought to end the school’s study-abroad program with an Israeli university. Suddenly, the institution you felt embodied your values has instead gone down the path of exclusion and discrimination.

That exact scenario played out this semester when the Pitzer College Council voted to suspend the school’s study-abroad exchange with the University of Haifa. If you were a Pitzer alumnus how would you react?

The marginalization of Jewish students and the de-legitimization of Israel on campuses nationwide have alumni searching for answers on how to counter the surge of bigotry at their alma maters. Some of the most recent incidents include anti-Semitic flyers and posters at University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of North Carolina; New York University honoring Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a group with a long history of anti-Semitism; and Jewish students at Emory University waking up to eviction notices on their doors.

This is why Alums for Campus Fairness (ACF) is galvanizing alumni like never before to tackle the unprecedented challenges facing Jewish and Zionist students and faculty. Until now, no organization has harnessed the untapped power of alumni to defend campus communities from discrimination. We are taking alumni off the sidelines, mobilizing them across the country to speak out against anti-Semitism at their alma maters.

Israel’s Best-Kept Secret: This Food City on the Mediterranean Acre, an ancient seaport in northern Israel, serves up mouthwatering meals with zero fanfare. From dueling hummus shops to bragworthy seafood restaurants, here’s where to dig in By Debra Kamin

https://www.wsj.com/articles/israels-best-kept-secret-this-food-city-on-the-mediterranean-11557850111

““We don’t have Gucci Shmucci or any of those fashion shops [in Acre]. In fact, you won’t find one fashionable shop in the whole Old City market, because it’s just meant for all the locals who still come here to buy,” he said. “It’s all local food, with none of the plastic fantastic of the major global chains. And this is what makes Acre special.”

IT’S A STRETCH to call Maadali, a postage-stamp-size eatery in the northern Israeli city of Acre, a restaurant. This little stall, tucked inside the city’s Old Turkish Bazaar and featuring a single stovetop and three tightly packed tables, is no bigger than many home kitchens. You won’t find a set menu, or set operating hours, either.

But Adnan Daher, Maadali’s chef and owner, shrugs off the limitations of space and scope. A trip to Maadali is a trip to a mouthwatering one-man show, and Mr. Daher, who also serves as waiter, manager and short-order cook, turns out his own spins on hraime (spicy fish cooked in a simmering pickled mango sauce); fresh calamari with hyssop and tangy homemade yogurt; and roasted eggplant with smoky tahini and harissa.

Producing such big flavors in such a tiny space seems unlikely, but he does it. And in Acre (or Akko in Hebrew and pronounced Ah-koh), a 5,000-year-old port city that serves as the capital of Israel’s fertile Western Galilee, he is just one culinary magician among many.

Some of the best seafood in the Holy Land hides inside this creaking ancient town, where frothy, fish-packed waves beat against original Crusader-built sea walls and a Technicolor market teems with produce and spices. There’s Uri Buri, the now world-famous seafood restaurant beloved by Phil Rosenthal from the Netflix food series “Somebody Feed Phil”; there’s El Marsa, where homegrown chef Alaa Musa combines his Palestinian recipes with techniques he picked up in Sweden’s Michelin-starred kitchens; and there are endless hummus stands, fresh grills and salad bars. All anonymous and humble, they serve enough hyperlocal, slow food to wake up even the most jaded foodies.

Jonathan S. Tobin Can academia make room for honest scholarship on Israel?

https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/can-academia-make-room-for-hone

The smearing of scholars for publishing a journal that examined misleading attacks on the Jewish state exposes the intellectual dishonesty of academic Israel-bashers.

The old joke about academia is that the arguments in the faculty lounges are so nasty because the stakes involved are so small. That’s often true about most things that go on in the narrow world of intellectual specialists, who guard their university department fiefdoms with jealous ferocity. They conduct their scholarly wars with publications that are written in academic jargon that is virtually indecipherable to the general reader. Their feuds are epic in their bitterness, but happily of little concern to the rest of society, which can easily ignore the doings of this tribe of underpaid and generally disgruntled people who have earned the right to have the letters Ph.D. after their names.

But there are some academic arguments about which the rest of us would do well to pay attention. One such is the brawl that has started among the members of the Association for Israel Studies, in which a number of members are outraged that some AIS scholars have published a journal devoted to the topic of how language is used to delegitimize Zionism and the State of Israel. The special issue of the Summer 2019 edition of Israel Studies was titled “Word Crimes: Reclaiming the Language of the Israel-Palestinian Conflict.”

Al Jazeera Pulls Video Claiming Holocaust Was ‘Different From How the Jews Tell It’

https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/al-jazeera-pulls-video-claiming-holocaust-was-different-from-how-the-jews-tell-it-1.7255111

Video posted to AJ+ Arabic’s social media pages says Jews skewed Holocaust facts and statistics to get reparations from Germany, and that the establishment of Israel was derived from Nazi ideology.

Al-Jazeera’s AJ+ Arabic channel pulled a video it posted to its social media channels Friday night that claimed Jews exploit the Holocaust and that Israel is the genocide’s “greatest beneficiary.”The seven minute-long, Arabic-language video asserted that though the Holocaust did occur, “it’s different from how the Jews tell it,” Israeli media reported.

AJ+ Arabic, the youth-focused, online current-events channel of Qatar’s official Al Jazeera Media Network, posted the video on its social media platforms with the caption “The gas chambers killed millions of Jews…So the story says. How true is the #Holocaust and how did the Zionists benefit from it?”Before its removal from the platforms on Saturday, the post reportedly gained 1.1 million views on Facebook and Twitter. After it was deleted, Al Jazeera said the piece violated the network’s editorial standards.

The Jews Who Became like Arabs: The Early Days of Israeli IntelligenceBy Janet Levy

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/05/the_jews_who_became_like_arabs__the_early_days_of_israeli_intelligence.html

When Israel was still a dream, an idea far from plausible reality, Jews from the Arab world risked their lives for the nascent state and went undercover in enemy territory: Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan. This special Palmach unit, dubbed the “Arab Section” or the “Ones Who Become Like Arabs,” received cursory training in spycraft, intelligence gathering, and sabotage. Resources — cars, cameras and radios — were in short supply, as was money to cover ordinary expenses and even salaries. Yet, the Arab Section infiltrated Arab communities, gathering useful intelligence and radio reports, carrying out acts of sabotage and even attempting an assassination. 

The exploits of this elite unit of the Haganah, the Jewish underground army in Palestine, are told through the lives of four of its Arab-Jewish recruits in Spies of No Country:  Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2019). Author Matti Friedman uses material from interviews, Israeli military archives, unclassified Haganah documents, published histories and unpublished testimonies from participants to tell the story of four of the men who helped establish what would become Israel’s intelligence services.

These young men, Jews born in Middle Eastern communities, could easily navigate between two worlds, but were, for the most part, amateur spies who survived mainly by their wits. They paid close attention to Arab morale, their opponents’ military strength and schemes, any potential subterfuge plans, and most importantly, what was happening around them.

The True Lies of Zionophobia Daryl McCann

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2019/04/the-true-lies-of-zionophobia/

It was my mistake to post a piece on Facebook by the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies about Amnesty International having “lost its moral way with regard to Israel”. A social media friend fired back with alacrity: “Have you seen how evil Israel has been to Palestinians trying to survive—cut off all their water and cut down their olive trees. Not an ounce of humanity in their evil hearts.” Evil hearts, I reflected, is very strong language. It so commonly occurs that liberal-minded thinkers—of the armchair variety—believe themselves to be non-discriminatory and well-informed without reading critically or with the open mind they purportedly prize. There’s no incentive to read more broadly if you believe you already have “the truth” and, fortified with that truth, you can scorn any sympathy for Israel as heartless or stupid.

he expression “Zionophobia” was first coined by Judea Pearl, father of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal journalist kidnapped and beheaded by Salafi jihadists in 2002. Judea Pearl agrees that classical anti-Semitism played a role in the slaying of his son. After all, the self-identified executioner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, while an inmate at Guantánamo Bay, made the following confession during a military tribunal hearing: “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl in the city of Karachi, Pakistan.” However, the enmity directed specifically at the Jewish state, rather than at Jewish people per se, requires a separate term:

Denying Jewish people the right for nationhood is straight racism, not anti-Semitism. Jews fight Zionophobia by labelling it anti-Semitism, which is a mistake. It is so easily deflected by saying “My best friends are Jewish” or “I’ll go to prison to defend a Jew’s right to wear a yarmulke or eat kosher food” but still want Israel abolished.

The Reason Why the Gaza Wars Continue By Fred Maroun

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-reason-why-the-gaza-wars-continue/?fbclid=IwAR2TuleWPf_lOGlqg3kBpyqELHYeIBzpOPu8tJADF_OnbVI0tKOvRffO8TA

Fred Maroun, a Canadian of Arab origin who lived in Lebanon until 1984 (including during 10 years of civil war), says it in a nutshell…thanks to KRD Daily…..Pretty much all the mainstream reporting on Gaza’s conflict with Israel misses the most important fact, leading the general public that relies on the mainstream media to totally misunderstand the situation: The reason why the conflict continues is because Israel does not hit Gaza hard enough to end it. Once it is said, the statement sounds obvious, yet journalists rarely say it.

Israel withdrew its military and its settlements from Gaza in 2005, and left it 100% in the hands of the Palestinians. At first, there was no blockade. The blockade by Egypt and Israel developed later, after terrorists started attacking Israel from Gaza, as even the anti-Israel Al Jazeera recognizes. The only purpose of the blockade, which is backed by the United Nations, is to limit the supply of weapons to Gaza terrorists.

Yet Gaza terrorists keep attacking Israel, knowing that the attacks result in a blockade. The terrorists themselves tell us why they make that choice, by using expressions such as the “Great March of Return” and “Raising the banner of Allah on every inch of Palestine [Israel]”. Their clearly stated objective is to invade Israel.

The Gaza terrorists are not a resistance force because there is nothing for them to resist. Israel would gladly leave Gaza alone if it could. The Gaza terrorists are an invasion force, regardless of the fact that they are not capable of invading Israel at this time, and while they cannot invade, they can kill and terrorize, and they do it at will.

When Gaza terrorists attack Israel, they are attacking a sovereign nation that they have no legal right and no moral justification to attack, and Israel’s duty is to protect its citizens and the integrity of its borders. As was written in the National Review, “The actual law of war would allow Israel to invade Gaza, utterly destroy Hamas, and occupy Gaza City until Israel’s safety is ensured, even if it [Gaza City] burned in the fight”. Yet, Israel chooses to only manage the attacks and not to stop them. It chooses to not burn down Gaza City.

International Law Backs The Trump Golan Policy For decades Syria has defied a U.N. mandate to negotiate with Israel. By Michael R. Pompeo and David Friedman

https://www.wsj.com/articles/international-law-backs-the-trump-golan-policy-11557875474

Mr. Pompeo is U.S. secretary of state. Mr. Friedman is U.S. ambassador to Israel.

President Trump’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights was met with condemnation from the European Union and others. Leaders called the move “invalid,” “illegitimate” and “absolutely worthless.” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called Israel’s 1981 annexation of the Golan “null and void and without international legal effect.” These assertions are baseless.

Virtually every nation cited U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which outlined a framework for achieving peace in the Middle East. The preamble speaks of “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.” Yet President Trump’s Golan proclamation is entirely consistent with Resolution 242.

Resolution 242 was heavily negotiated and agreed to in 1967 by all but one of the warring parties in the Six-Day War—Syria, which controlled the Golan before the conflict. Damascus stayed on the sidelines until 1973 when, with its Arab allies, it launched and lost the Yom Kippur War. After that defeat, Syria signed on to Resolution 338, which made 242 applicable to all—the only substantive resolution to which all combatants have agreed.

No, Rashida Tlaib, Palestinians Aren’t Israel’s Victims By P. David Hornik ****

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/no-rashida-tlaib-palestinians-arent-israels-victims/

The Palestinian rage and victimhood machine has been running in high gear this week. First, there were Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s semi-coherent, counterfactual words basically crediting Palestinians for saving Jews from the Holocaust while portraying Palestinians as its ultimate victims. And on Wednesday, on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank, there was another Nakba—or “Catastrophe”—Day, an annual negative commemoration of Israel’s establishment in 1948 and the failure of Palestinian forces and five Arab armies to strangle it at its birth.

“In Gaza,” The Times of Israel reported,

[A]t least 10,000 people flocked to the border between Israel and the coastal enclave…. “The rioters are setting tires on fire and hurling rocks,” the army said. “A number of explosive devices have been hurled within the Gaza Strip, as well, and a number of attempts have been made to damage the security fence. IDF troops are responding with riot dispersal means.”

…Several balloon-borne incendiary devices landed in southern Israel, where they sparked at least nine blazes, according to area firefighters.

…In a speech at the border area, senior Hamas official Fathi Hamad…warned Israel that “The day of your slaughter, extermination and demise is approaching.”

As for the West Bank: “In Ramallah…, hundreds of people marched from the grave of the late Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat to a rally downtown, calling for the return of Palestinian refugees to lands that are now a part of Israel.”

But was Israel’s creation really a nakba, a catastrophe, for the Palestinian Arabs?

Palestinians: No Freedom of Expression Under New Government by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14226/palestinians-freedom-of-expression

As far as many Palestinians are concerned, there is no difference between Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority and Hamas when it comes to their people being able to tell the truth as they see it.

The two rival parties may disagree on many matters, but they share considerable common ground in their efforts to silence their critics and prevent the emergence of new voices seeking a better life for the Palestinians.

While this muzzling of Palestinian mouths is perfectly visible to the naked eye, the jaundiced eye of the international community and media sees flaws only in Israel.

The first promise the new Palestinian Authority (PA) government made after it was sworn in last month was that it would honor public freedoms, particularly freedom of the media and freedom of expression.

Ibrahim Milhem, the new spokesman for the PA government, headed by Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh, said in a radio interview that no Palestinian journalist would be arrested for expressing his or her views. Milhem promised that his government would allow the press to play its role as a watchdog over the performance of the ministers and their ministries.

Palestinian journalists living and working in PA-controlled territories in the West Bank welcomed Milhem’s statement and expressed hope that it would mark the beginning of a new era between the media and the government.