RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://bit.ly/3uKTBfp

According to the annual February 2021 Gallup’s country favorability rating, Israel is the 7th most favorable country among Americans, enjoying a 75% very/mostly favorability rating.

Israel’s favorability of 75% – compared to 66% in 2013, 69% in 2019 and 74% in 2020 – is above its 65% average since 2001, and just shy of its exceptional 79% favorability recorded during the 1991 Gulf War, when the US public was exposed to Iraqi missiles hitting Israel. 

According to Gallup, “In the latest poll, 85% of Republicans view it favorably, compared with 77% of independents and 64% of Democrats.”

Iran (13%) and the Palestinian Authority (30%) trail Cuba (45%), and are among the least favorable countries, along with North Korea (11%), China (20%), Iraq (21%), Afghanistan (21%) and Russia (22%).

Israel trails Canada (92% favorability), Great Britain (91%), France (87%), Japan (84%), Germany (84%) and India (77%).

However, unlike these countries, Israel’s 75% favorability is in defiance of systematic criticism (of Israel) by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other key members of the US media establishment, as well as by State Department spokespersons and the United Nations.

Israel’s high favorability rating occurs despite the spike in anti-Israel activities on US campuses, as well as the recent erosion of Israel’s stature on Capitol Hill (especially on the House side), which has been Israel’s consistent ally since 1948.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/is-israel-on-the-verge-of-a-hamas-abetted-civil-war-opinion-668148

Amid the barrages of Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets – and as young Arab citizens of Israel engaged in riots across the country – Muslim and Jewish medical personnel at the Rambam Health Care Center in Haifa issued a message of unity.

In an uplifting multi-lingual tweet on Wednesday evening, the doctors and nurses of the hospital posted a photo collage in which they are seen standing side-by-side, holding up pieces of paper spelling out the Hebrew sentences: “We overcame the coronavirus. We will all come together again now.” Some members of the team, in scrubs and surgical masks, with stethoscopes around their necks, are bearing signs with drawings of hearts accompanied by the word “peace” in Arabic.
The uplifting social-media post was both welcome and jarring. On the one hand, it served as a reminder of the dedication of Israel’s doctors and nurses of all ethnic and religious backgrounds to saving lives for months on end during the pandemic.

On the other, it constituted a stark contrast to the scenes of anti-Jewish rampages taking place in Jerusalem, Lod, Acre, Jaffa and Haifa, and retaliation by vigilantes out for vengeance against Arabs in Bat Yam, Tiberias and elsewhere.

The brewing of what is coming to resemble an actual civil war, as with the missiles from Gaza, can be attributed to Hamas, the terrorist organization that rules the Gaza Strip, and to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

https://www.opinione.it/editoriali/2021/04/29/renato-cristin_ostilit%C3%A0-israele-antisemitismo-funzionale-human-rights-watch-onu/

On one thing, the recent report by Human Rights Watch dedicated to Israel is right: “a threshold has been crossed”. Yes, one limit has been crossed, or rather two, but it is Human Rights Watch itself that has exceeded them: on the one hand, its report goes beyond the limits of the caricature and the grotesque (which is inadmissible for an organization accredited to the UN), presenting a political and social reality through the distorting lens of pro-Palestinian, pro-Islamic and anti-Zionist ideology; on the other hand, the border that divides criticism of the work of the State of Israel from antisemitism as the result of an action, an analysis or an opinion has been crossed. Yes, this relationship has introduced a new level: it cleared that form of anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish hatred that I call functional antisemitism.

We know that these organizations, protected by the UN, have no problem attacking any government not aligned with the Palace, tarnishing it with hallucinating and often spurious accusations. But towards Israel there has always been, in that Palace and in its ideologies, a special aversion, which can be explained above all by the resistance that Israel opposes to the tendency to annihilate the nations that the UN has always supported and with the refusal Israel to accept the warnings (or rather: the diktats) to behave according to criteria that the UN considers politically correct.

Today, with an apparently isolated but in reality concerted action at the highest level, because it is connected with the orientation of the UN and, as we will see, with the action of the International Criminal Court, this questionable NGO puts Israel in the dock for racism and crimes against humanity (but with what credibility, then?, with what historical heritage, with what spiritual mission, with what political authority, with what popular mandate, with what ideological neutrality?), as if it were Amin Dada’s Uganda or the Central African Republic of Bokassa. Absurd, as in a piece by Beckett or Ionesco.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/holy-war-a-perspective-of-the-arab-israeli-conflict-opinion-668131

Superficially, the conflict is about who has sovereignty in Israel: “the occupation,” “colonialism,” etc. On a deeper level, however, it is about jihad, a religious obligation in Islam that many interpret as a demand to destroy Israel. That is the core and heart of Palestinianism.

From this perspective, the Arab-Israeli conflict is not only national, the desire for a state; it is fundamentally a religious conflict. Islamists consider “Palestine” to be part of the house of Islam and Jews as “dhimmis,” a subject religious community, not a nation.

Violence waged by Islamists against Israel, therefore, is not only over enclaves, neighborhoods or territory; it is also a struggle over ideology – Zionism (Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people) and Palestinianism, which advocates Israel’s destruction. As long as Israel denies Palestinianism, there will be violence, promoted by the PLO, Hamas and most Islamist groups as “resistance” or “intifada.” The struggle, therefore, is not only about who has sovereignty, or even about Palestinian statehood; it is about Israel’s existence.

The resurgence of Palestinian violence is inevitable because Islamists have a long-term strategic goal to eliminate Israel. Every move by Israel to assert its authority and sovereignty is a threat to Palestinianism. This is based on the PLO Covenant and Hamas Charter, both of which define the problem as Israel’s existence.

Any recognition of Israel’s right to exist and its sovereignty is seen as a defeat of the fundamental Palestinian narrative, the Nakba (“catastrophe”) – Israel’s creation in 1948, the failure of Arab armies to destroy it, and the flight of Arabs who became refugees. It is also interpreted as a violation of Islamic law. This explains why efforts to resolve the conflict always fail.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/rashida-tlaib-falsely-charges-settlers-setting-hugh-fitzgerald/

Rashida Tlaib (D-West Bank) has gone on a rampage again. She’s accused Israel of “apartheid” and “stealing Palestinian homes” – so far so predictable, but now she’s added a new charge – that Israel has deliberately been setting fires to Palestinian land. A report on her latest outburst is here: “Top US Jewish Group Calls for Rashida Tlaib to Remove ‘Falsehood’ About Israelis Setting Fire to Palestinian Fields,” Algemeiner, May 6, 2021

A leading US Jewish group called on Congressman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) to remove a tweet that accused Israel of “apartheid” and “stealing Palestinian homes and burning their lands” as she shared an account of Israelis setting fires to Palestinian fields that was retracted by the Israeli NGO that originated it.

“.@RashidaTlaib, you shared a falsehood about Israeli Jews setting fire to Palestinian fields. This ugly claim has been retracted. You’re a member of Congress. Take down your tweet. Or is it okay to perpetuate untruths when they fit your policy agenda?” the American Jewish Committee (AJC) tweeted Thursday.

On Wednesday, Tlaib retweeted an article about fires near the Palestinian village of Burin, drawing from a Palestinian media sources and a May 4 tweet by the left-wing NGO B’Tselem, which shared a photo of the flames and blamed Israeli “settlers.”

“Stealing Palestinian homes and burning their lands. The actions of an apartheid state. We cannot stand by and watch this happen,” Tlaib wrote, tagging the account of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “Billions of US taxpayers dollars support Netanyahu’s government and this racist violence. We must condemn this swiftly.”

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2021/05/12/palestinian-miscalculations-have

Things tend to run together in the Middle East. Right now, Sheikh Jarrah, Palestinian elections, the Hamas-Fatah civil war, the Abraham Accords, U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Iran sanctions, Jerusalem Day, the Meron tragedy, Israel’s electoral issues and American money and diplomacy are all tangled.

If you aren’t willing to untangle them, it’s probably a good idea not to say much, whether you are the Biden administration, a member of Congress or just a journalist attuned to press releases that suit your vision.

Sheikh Jarrah is not the issue, and the underlying land is not “Palestinian.” It was purchased by Jews from Ottoman authorities in the 19th century and was taken from its owners when Jordan illegally occupied the eastern part of Jerusalem in 1948. The Jordanian government’s “Custodian of Enemy Property” took possession, and the Jewish owners reclaimed it by title after 1967. The current lawsuits are between “the owners holding Israeli title and trespassers, squatters and overstaying tenants whose residency began between 20 and 70 years ago.” A final hearing has been postponed because of the violence, but in any event, the Israeli government is not involved and is not expelling Palestinians from “their property.”

So, why now?

Enter the Biden administration. Unable to openly “diss” the Trump administration’s key policy changes or the Abraham Accords, the State Department needed a Palestinian-oriented success to turn Israel’s regional positives into negatives. This was not necessarily intended to result in the horrific violence that it did in fact engender, but was rather intended to lessen Israel’s value as an ally for the U.S. and the Gulf States while Biden simultaneously pursued diplomacy with Iran.

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/sharpe/210512

“It is not from 1947 or 1967 that the relentless aggression against Israel by the Arab and Muslim world and the so-called Palestinians began. To fully understand its origins, we must go back to the early years of the 20th century.”

In the 11th hour and 59th minute of his last term in the White House, Barack Hussein Obama struck his knife deep into the heart of the embattled Jewish state.

With the appalling anti-Israel passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334, engineered by President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry on December 23, 2016, the blame for the Israel-Palestinian conflict was falsely imparted upon the easy target: Israel and the so-called “settlements.”

There were no “settlements” before the June, 1967 Six-Day War, when the Jewish state survived yet another Arab war of genocide launched against it and freed the embattled nation from the existing 1947 nine to fifteen mile-wide armistice lines, which Israel’s earlier minister of foreign affairs, Abba Eban, appropriately called the Auschwitz lines. These were the lines that existed after the fledgling Israeli forces in 1948 had pushed back the invading Egyptian, Jordanian, Syrian, Iraqi, and Lebanese armies.

It is not from 1947 or 1967 that the relentless aggression against Israel by the Arab and Muslim world and the so-called Palestinians began. To fully understand its origins, we must go back to the early years of the 20th century.

In 1920, Great Britain was given the responsibility by the League of Nations to oversee the Palestine Mandate after the ending of the 400 year old Ottoman Turkish Empire’s occupation of much of the Middle East. Britain was to uphold the League’s express intention of reconstituting within the Mandatory territory a reborn Jewish national home.

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-bad-optics-of-fighting-for-your?token=eyJ1c2Vy

I am weeping.

It appears that standing up for the right of innocent people to protect themselves from a genocidal terrorist organization has become extremely risky to one’s “brand.” And so lies have replaced truth. Memes have replaced morality. Hashtags have replaced history.

I’m speaking, of course, about Israel. 

In the past 48 hours, according to the Israel Defense Forces, more than 1,500 rockets have rained down on Israeli cities. Those rockets are being launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad and by Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since Israel unilaterally withdrew from it and forcibly evacuated every last Jewish resident from  the territory in 2005.

Israelis have gotten used to living life in a kind of perpetual war. On Tuesday, Nellie was on a call with a journalist in Tel Aviv who abruptly hung up because the sirens started wailing. A friend sent a photo of his mother crouched in a bomb shelter. All ok, he said. Friends across the country told me about huddling with their crying children in safe rooms. It’s fine, they insisted.

But living like this is not fine:

Israel Under Fire @israelunderfire
Moments of horror in Israel. A rocket hits directly an Israeli bus. #IsraelUnderFire #IsraelUnderAttack

May 11th 2021

15 Retweets21 Likes

It will never be fine to have children killed by terrorists whose explicit aim is to kill them:

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/05/12/why-wont-israelis-let-themselves-be-killed/

“There is nothing positive in contemporary Israel-bashing. In its naivety, it assists the rise of Hamas. In its arrogance it empowers the West to determine the fate of the Middle East. All of this stores up more conflict and hatred for the future.”

Two weeks ago Turkish forces launched a military assault in the Duhok region of Iraqi Kurdistan. Villagers were forced to ‘flee in terror’ from raining bombs. It was only the latest bombardment of the beleaguered Kurds by Turkey, NATO member and Western ally. It did not trend online. There were no noisy protests in London or New York. The Turks weren’t talked about in woke circles as crazed, bloodthirsty killers. Tweeters didn’t dream out loud about Turks burning in hell. The Onion didn’t do any close-to-the-bone satire about how Turkish soldiers just love killing children. No, the Duhok attack passed pretty much without comment.

But when Israel engages in military action, that’s a different story. Always. Every time. Anti-Israel fury in the West has intensified to an extraordinary degree following an escalation of violence in the Middle East in recent days. Protests were instant and inflammatory. Israeli flags were burned on the streets of London. Social media was awash with condemnation. ‘IDF Soldier Recounts Harrowing, Heroic War Story Of Killing 8-Month-Old Child’, tweeted The Onion, to tens of thousands of likes. Israel must be boycotted, isolated, cast out of the international community, leftists cried. Western politicians, including Keir Starmer, rushed to pass judgement. ‘What’s the difference?’, said a placard at a march in Washington, DC showing the Israeli flag next to the Nazi flag. The Jews are the Nazis now, you see. Ironic, isn’t it?

This is the question anti-Israel campaigners have never been able to answer: why do they treat Israel so differently to every other nation on Earth? Why is it child-killing bloodlust when Israel takes military action but not when Turkey or India do? Why must we rush to the streets to set light to the Israel flag but never the Saudi flag, despite Saudi Arabia’s unconscionable war on Yemen? Why is it only ‘wrong’ or at worst ‘horrific’ when Britain or America drop bombs in the Middle East but Nazism when Israel fires missiles into Gaza? Why do you merely oppose the military action of some states but you hate Israel, viscerally, publicly, loudly?