The New York Times blood libel and Hamas Rains Rockets; NY Times Rains Rebuke of Israel By Gilead Ini and Salvador Dali on "What's My Line?" and the rescheduled flag march Cabinet Decides : Jerusalem Flag Dance March Moved to Next TuesdayBy Hana Levi Julian and Happy Rosh Hodesh Tammuz
Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher, and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law. He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money, and spiritual engagement.
(June 8, 2021 / JNS) On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion made the fateful decision to declare the establishment of the State of Israel. He did so despite immense pressure opposing the move and the prophecies of doom regarding the nascent Jewish state.
Ben-Gurion passed the test that the State of Israel, 73 years later, has failed.
The Israel Police on Monday canceled the annual Jerusalem flag march celebrating the reunification of the city following the 1967 Six-Day War. Originally scheduled for Jerusalem Day, May 10, the event was canceled amid the violent disturbances in the city and the launching of rocket attacks by Hamas. It was then rescheduled for this Thursday, before being canceled again.
The police decision came in the wake of immense pressure after Hamas threatened renewed violence should the march take place. Defense Minister Benny Gantz, along with many other politicians, media outlets, and public figures, called for its cancellation.
While their fears are understandable, to prevent Jews from marching in their own capital is an abdication of our moral and national responsibility. It is taking the easy route rather than standing up for what's right.
Hamas's threat is serious and cannot be dismissed, but as history proves, appeasement is a misguided policy that sows the seeds of the next, more destructive conflict.
It's true that Hamas views the march as a provocation, but that doesn't mean that we need to follow their lead and adopt their view. To them, the mere existence of a Jewish state is a provocation—does that mean we should pack our bags and leave?
If Hamas threatens to bomb Israeli cities in the event that Jews visit the Temple Mount or Western Wall, does that mean we should bar Jews from these sites? Where do we draw the line?
The answer is that we draw it where our values dictate, and not where Hamas or any other terrorist group dictates. To quote Ze'ev Jabotinsky, "We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it or not."
Allowing law-abiding citizens to peacefully celebrate the reunification of their capital city is moral and just, on both the individual and national levels.
Furthermore, the decision to cancel the march has wider implications and is indicative of a much larger problem.
We live in a time when the Jews of Lod, Ramle, Jaffa and Akko are being called "settlers" and targeted simply for being Jews. When Israeli soldiers serving in Jaffa's Military Court of Appeals are being told not to wear their uniforms in public so as to not provoke the local Arabs. When the IDF is canceling navigation exercises in the Negev out of fear of attacks by Bedouin. And when marching in Jerusalem with an Israeli flag is considered a provocative act worthy of condemnation.
As Jews around the world are removing their kippahs and hiding signs of their Jewishness due to rising anti-Semitism, Israel needs to stand up and lead by example. It needs to send a clear message to Jews around the world that we will not cower or be ashamed of our Jewishness. Unfortunately, canceling the Jerusalem march sends the opposite message.
It is always easier to back down than to stand up for what's right. By canceling the march, we sacrificed what's right for what's easy.
What would have happened if this mindset had prevailed in 1948? Fortunately, Ben-Gurion had the courage and understood his moral responsibility to do what needed to be done, even if it wasn't an easy decision.
This is a lesson we need to internalize now more than ever.
Eytan Meir is the director of external relations and development for Im Tirtzu, Israel's largest grassroots Zionist organization and one of the organizers of the flag march. He can be reached at eytan@imti.org.il.
The Three Musketeers at the Kotel
The New York Times blood libel
THE NEW YORK TIMES' UNFORGIVABLE FRONT COVER STORY
Did the United States, England, and other allies, kill thousands of children in World War II in order to defeat their enemies? Yes. Were many of the children innocent? Absolutely. Who was responsible for the bombing of Dresden and other German cities, in which tens of thousands of German children were killed? The answer is Germany. Yes, Germany was responsible for all of the children that were killed in Germany – by Germany's enemies.
Why is that? Shouldn't FDR have ordered the United States military to only shoot at military installations in Germany and not to target cities at all? The answer is no. FDR did the right thing. And Truman did the right thing when he bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And the burning of Tokyo by allied bombers, with tens of thousands of innocent children – a horrible calamity – was also the right thing to do. Why? Because it was either going to be American children being killed by German and Japanese soldiers, or German and Japanese children being killed by US soldiers.
A reasonable question is "Why must things be so binary?" Why couldn't America have been more proportional in the way it fought it's war? The answer is that one side in the war does not value human life at all and one side does. The United States, Britain, and their allies – except for the Soviet Union – valued freedom and human life. The German soldiers and Japanese soldiers and their allies simply did not. Nobody was more responsible for more death in World War II than Germany and Japan. They were responsible for all of the allied soldiers and civilians that were killed, and for all of their own soldiers and civilians too. Japan killed more Chinese civilians in one month than were killed in Hiroshima. Germany mechanized their killing machine to the point where in one day, they were systematically killing tens of thousands of civilians.
Of course, the world has changed much since then. Germany and Japan have undergone major reforms and are both largely freedom-filled countries that have shed their totalitarian past. But, there are other countries that have clearly not thrown in the towel on totalitarianism. North Korea, Syria, and Iran – and it's satellites, have not stopped dreaming of a world in which they are major nuclear powers that dominate their regions and can threaten world stability. China is probably the greatest threat of all. Let us not forget that these and any other totalitarian countries mean what they say when they say out loud that they want to have rivers of blood from Jewish children in Israel. Hamas, Syria, and Israel's other enemies want to kill Israeli men, women and children by the tens of thousands. They are even willing to sacrifice their own children to do this. In so doing, they are a direct continuation of the totalitarian countries that endangered the world in World War II. The New York Times has allied with Hamas and ISIS – yes, they are the same thing – totalitarian Muslim killers – to delegitimize Israel as child killers. The New York Times has joined in the blood libel against Israel instead of siding with the beacon of freedom in the Middle East. A new low has been reached by the legendary newspaper.
Salvador Dali on "What's My Line?"
This ten minute clip is drawn from the famous 1950s game show, and it's quite surreal. I don't use the word surreal loosely: the special guest is Salvador Dali.
Hamas Rains Rockets; NY Times Rains Rebuke of Israel
It's all Israel's fault. It's all Israel's fault. It's all Israel's fault.
One way to get people to believe what you want them to believe is to tell them only what you want them to hear.
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It's all Israel's fault. It's all Israel's fault. It's all Israel's fault.
Repeatedly.
It's all Israel's fault. It's all Israel's fault. It's all monstrous Israel's fault.
So there can be little doubt about the message New York Times Opinion editors were intent on sending, or the conclusion they wanted readers to reach over the past few weeks, as Israeli civilians were under attack by Hamas rockets and Jews around the world were being harassed and assaulted. From the day Hamas first opened fire on Israel on May 10 until today, when a Florida Holocaust museum was defaced with the phrase "Jews are guilty," the newspaper published nine anti-Israel Guest Essays about the alleged misbehavior of Israeli Jews; three evenhanded Guest Essays that criticized and empathized with both Israeli Jews and Arabs; and not even a single Guest Essay that was primarily critical of Hamas or Palestinian behavior in the conflict.
Already during the first five days of fighting, the paper published four Guest Essays about the conflict. Each promoted Palestinian narratives or demands. On May 11, editors ran an Op-Ed by Rula Salameh who described herself as someone who for years has been "part of the Palestinian struggle," and who wrote her essay accordingly. The piece was titled, "Palestinians Under Siege."
TimesOpinion editors are guilty of curating a lack of empathy for Israeli Jews.
On May 12, they published an essay by Peter Beinart charging Israel with crimes and promoting the Palestinian demand for a so-called "right of return" — a demand for the influx of millions of Palestinians to Israel rather than to a future Palestinian state, which is broadly understood as a call for the elimination of the Jewish state. The piece was titled "Palestinians Deserve to Return, Too."
On May 13, they published a piece by Refaat Alareer, a Gaza resident, in which he gave an emotional account of the impact of the fighting on his children, and called on readers to picture Israeli military commanders drawing straws or rolling dice to decide which city block to destroy, for no other reason, we're told, than their "annoyance" at the existence of Palestinian homes full of family stories. He concludes by stating, "Israel presumably will go on destroying our buildings until there is nothing left."
On May 14, they published a piece by Bernie Sanders downplaying Hamas's responsibility for the fighting, ignoring the group's extremist ideology, and excoriating the Israeli government. "Palestinian lives matter," he concluded.
After four anti-Israel essays in a row, the newspaper paused for the weekend. And the following week, the pattern was briefly broken. On May 17, Yossi Klein Halevi focused on cooperation between, and extremism by, both Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel. He gave voice to the concerns of both parties, and highlighted bad behavior by both parties, in precisely equal measure. "Arab mobs and Jewish mobs roamed the streets, beating and lynching, destroying 'Jewish' shops and 'Arab' shops, destroying a fragile but enduring equilibrium."
On May 18, a piece by Israeli trauma surgeon Adam Lee Goldstein talked about casualties from "rockets headed our way"— he took care not to mention the source of the rockets—before focusing, like Halevy, on cooperation and extremism among Israel's Arabs and Jews. Rioting in Israel saw "Jewish extremists pulling Arabs from their cars and Arabs doing the same to their Jewish neighbors," while in the hospital Jews tended to Arabs and Arabs tended to Jews. The evenhanded precision was worthy of a surgeon.
From left to right: Primarily anti-Israel Guest Essays, balanced Guest Essays, and Guest Essays primarily critical of Hamas or other Palestinian factions. (Click to enlarge)
After these cautious pieces by Israeli moderates, which focused neither on extremism by Gaza's terrorist groups nor on the trauma of Israel's children living under fire, the paper reverted to its familiar pattern. On May 19, anti-Israel activist Yousef Munayyer, charging Israel with "oppression," "apartheid," and "brutality," called for no less than wiping the Jewish state off the map.
On May 20, Al Jazeera reporter Laila Al-Arian gave a personal account from the perspective of her late grandfather. From that view, every war since 1948, every battle in Gaza, involved only one party: Israel. Israeli planes over Gaza in 1948 weren't firing at the Egyptian army—the Egyptian army is excised from her picture—but rather at her grandfather. In 1967, Israel occupied Gaza for no apparent reason. In 2009 and 2014, there were again only Israeli planes and her grandfather, and none of the Hamas rockets that preceded Israel's counterattack. The one-sided, anti-Israel message is summed up by her concluding sentence: "We build, they destroy, and we build again."
That same day, editors also turned to an Israeli, Dahlia Scheindlin, for an essay. It wasn't a counterpoint to Al-Arian, though, but rather a criticism of Israel from a different angle. The newspaper's own summary of the piece reads: "Our politics are stalled. Our democracy is in tatters. Blame the occupation."
It was nothing less than a call to support the murder of Jews, published in the pages of the New York Times.
With seven lopsided anti-Israel essays now published, it was time for another carefully calibrated Op-Ed. Congressman Jerry Nadler weighed in to state that "both Jewish and Palestinian people have the right to self-determination and security," and to support "the humanity on both parties in the conflict." He unequivocally condemned Hamas terrorism. He even less equivocally condemned Benjamin Netanyahu. And he concluded by calling on citizens to "simultaneously reject the transgressions of Mr. Netanyahu's government, validate Palestinian suffering and support their right to self-governance, all while opposing efforts meant to challenge Israel's right to exist."
On May 24, it was time for another extreme anti-Israel essay. Basma Ghalayini's piece, titled "A Gazan's View on Hamas: It's Not Complicated," was indeed not complicated. It told readers that "resistance"—violent resistance, she made clear—is legitimate. Yes, there was a throwaway line about Hamas's mistreatment of Gazans (not of Israelis), but the author's central point was that Hamas's attacks on Israelis (with what she dismissed as "rickety rockets" despite their heavy payloads, and long range, and deadly effect) are appropriate.
The author scolded those who might think Hamas's war crimes are a problem: "Legitimate resistance cannot be a right only for those Palestinians who believe exclusively in nonviolent self-defense," she said. It was nothing less than a call to support the murder of Jews, published in the pages of the New York Times.
But this wasn't enough. The very next day, editors turned to Diana Buttu, a former advisor for the Palestine Liberation Organization, to continue their Op-Ed assault on Israel. The veteran anti-Israel activist came through with a litany of accusations and falsehoods, including the absurd charge that Israel has "enacted more than 60" laws that discriminate against its Arab population.
The list of laws that purportedly discriminate (but in fact do not) includes, for example, a law to encourage vaccinations; a law describing Israel's flag; an anti-terrorism law; a law that requires foreign funded NGOs to detail their funding sources; a law that strips payments to parliamentarians who flee justice when charged with a crime; a law that states that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel; a 1939 British law that bars people from commerce with foreign countries at war with Britain; and other such mundane laws.
These are not the only distortions in Buttu's essay. She claims, to highlight one of several examples, that "the expulsions in Sheikh Jarrah are part of the broader expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland," as if the few Palestinian families in question, who may be evicted from their apartment for non-payment of rent, are actually being shipped across the border to some foreign country. (They are not.)
Nor are Buttu's distortions the only ones in the series of anti-Israel Op-Eds. Salamah's piece, for example, wrongly describes Gazans killed by a misfired Palestinian rocket on the first day of fighting as having actually been killed by Israeli airstrikes.
Times opinion editors didn't merely allow their contributors to mislead readers. They actively took part in the distortions by accompanying Buttu's article with an illustration of a widelydebunkedseries of maps that purport to show disappearing Palestinian land. A Times opinion editor defended the paper's reuse of the disinformation maps by insisting they were merely "art," and that they weren't meant to represent "a literal, factual map."
In communication with CAMERA, another opinion editor defended the egregious skew of the Guest Essays, suggesting that the somewhat broader range of opinions among staff columnists somehow justifies the onslaught of extreme anti-Israel Op-Eds. But the pieces by the newspaper's columnists, whom the current set of Opinion editors did not hire and whose content they have little control over, hardly necessitate the avalanche of anti-Israel Op-Eds, any more than they would justify an endless stream of anti-Palestinian pieces.
At any rate, Times columnists, too, skew anti-Israel. One column the editor pointed to as supposedly providing balance, a piece by Michelle Goldberg, expressed opposition to antisemitic assaults in the U.S. but was distinctly anti-Israel in tone. The editor also suggested that because Ghalayini's essay included a passing reference to Hamas's mistreatment of Palestinians in Gaza, it somehow qualifies her piece as an anti-Hamas Op-Ed. But as noted above, the central point of the essay is that we shouldn't pay too much attention to Hamas, because the anti-Israel violence advocated by the author is also supported by other Palestinian groups.
The assault on Israel from the Opinion pages over the past few weeks may possibly be the most flagrant display of anti-Israel bias we've seen from those pages. But the idea of stacking the deck to steer readers to a conclusion isn't new, and isn't limited to the Opinion pages. A December 2017 news story about American recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, for example, quoted eleven critics of the U.S. policy and only one supporter. Likewise, a feature about the 25th anniversary of the Oslo Accords quoted eleven Palestinians and only two Israelis. A story about Palestinian payments to anti-Israel terrorists similarly minimized and downplayed Israeli views. This is what the paper does.
By publishing one anti-Israel essay after another after another, New York Times editors were taking advantage of a persuasion technique. The "mere-exposure effect" describes how people develop preferences for ideas that they're more exposed to. By repeating anti-Israel messages, newspaper also manufactures "social proof" — the persuasive phenomenon in which people tend to drift toward positions or behaviors that they believe many others are also engaged in. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman wrote that "a reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition." And as a trio of German researchers recently noted, although "information repetitions constitute redundancy and, hence, should not affect the recipient's decision," in practice repeating information helps persuade people to change their minds in favor of what's being repeated.
Beyond trying to steer people toward the Palestinian narrative, though, Times Opinion editors are guilty of curating a lack of empathy for Israeli Jews. Even as Israeli families were traumatized by emergency runs to bomb shelters as Hamas strove to kill them, their experiences and emotions were largely missing from the Opinion pages.
To wit: In the twelve Guest Essays about the conflict published since the start of the rocket attacks, readers got to know to Refaat Alareer's wife, Nusayba, and their children, including 6-year-old Amal and 8-year-old Lina. They were intimately introduced to Laila Al-Arian's grandfather, Abdul Kareem, and her grandmother, Inaam. They were told of Diana Buttu's 82-year-old father and her 7-year-old son.
Israelis, on the other hand, had no ages and no faces. No brothers or sisters. No Holocaust-surviving grandparents. They were doctors for a moment. Nameless victims for a paragraph or two. But mostly oppressors, attackers, shooters, racists—and generally heartless. While a Palestinian told readers not to pay attention to Hamas, an Israeli told them (wrongly) that Israelis are adept at coping with rocket fire.
That the newspaper encourages lack of empathy for Israeli Jews is bad enough. Their safety, their children, matter. But the empathy deficit doesn't stop at Israel's border. A majority of Jews across the world care about Israel. They are more inclined, then, to care about the Hamas rockets, which readers of the country's most influential paper learn are "legitimate"; or to support Israel's efforts to stop that rocket fire, which readers are told isn't really an effort to stop the attacks, but rather to arbitrarily oppress Palestinians. Their opposition to terrorism by Hamas and other antisemitic groups in Gaza is also being demonized on the pages of the New York Times.
So vocal supporters of Israel are bullied online. And worse. As the New York Times news section noted this week, the recent surge in antisemitic violence in the U.S. has mostly been at the hands of "perpetrators expressing support for the Palestinian cause." Opinion editors might consider what their role is in cultivating an atmosphere in which attacks on innocent Israeli Jews, and on innocent American Jews, are viewed as justified.
{Reposted from the Camera wesbite}
Cabinet Decides : Jerusalem Flag Dance March Moved to Next Tuesday
After hours of debate, Israel's political and security cabinet reached a decision to postpone the Jerusalem Flag Dance March — again — to a new date, this time next Tuesday, June 15, rather than allow it to proceed as scheduled this coming Thursday.
The march was "canceled" on Monday by Israel Police in response to immense pressure from Blue and White Defense Minister Benny Gantz, Meretz leader Nitzan Horowitz, Arab Joint List leader Ahmad Tibi and Yesh Atid MK Ram Ben Barak, among others.
Gaza's ruling Hamas terrorist organization and its allied Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist organization vowed to resume its attacks if the march were to proceed.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposed the move, saying "Israel cannot surrender to Hamas," and convened the cabinet Tuesday evening to discuss the issue.
Netanyahu's office said the prime minister "ascribed great importance to reaching a broad agreement on the holding of the march," which originally was set to pass through the Damascus Gate entrance to the Old City of Jerusalem, near the city's incendiary Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.
As the cabinet continued to try and resolve a deadlock on the issue, Netanyahu called a recess in the Security Cabinet meeting and turned to Defense Minister Benny Gantz in order to reach an agreement, his office said.
"The Prime Minister and the Defense Minister submitted the following decision, which was approved by the Cabinet: The march will be held on Tuesday, 15 June 2021, in a format to be agreed upon by the police and the organizers of the march," Netanyahu's office said.
