U.S. Vice President Mike Pence visiting Dachau death camp with his wife and daughter earlier this year. Pence stands behind the gate with the infamous lie “Work sets you free”.
THE VERY DEFINITION OF PREJUDICE
[Note by Tom Gross]
I attach three pieces, the first by one of America’s most senior diplomats, on anti-Semitism in the State Department. And the others by two prominent British columnists, on anti-Semitism in the British Labour party. The party is holding its annual conference this week, and now has a realistic chance of forming the next British government.
Writing in the New York Times, Dennis Ross discusses now the Valerie Plame affair last week has revived some memories for him about how Jews were perceived within the national security apparatus dating back to when Ross began working in the Pentagon during President Jimmy Carter’s administration, until more recent times.
Concerning certain State Department officials, Ross says: “Just like Ms. Wilson tweeting that Jews are pushing for a new war. It is the definition of prejudice. How can it not be when you label a whole group and ascribe to all those who are a part of it a particular negative trait or threatening behavior?”
“AN ATMOSPHERE THAT FELT TOO HOSTILE TO ENDURE”
Jonathan Freedland, a leading columnist for Britain’s Guardian newspaper, notes that some “Jewish activists turned away from the Labour party conference this week, describing an atmosphere that felt too hostile to endure.”
Melanie Phillips writes:
Labour will never, ever accept that demonization and delegitimization of Israel is the contemporary form of the oldest hatred.
How could it accept that? Its members overwhelmingly subscribe to it – even though many of them haven’t the faintest clue that what they believe to be the truth about the Arab-Israel conflict is in fact a pack of lies from start to finish.
In maintaining this fictitious distinction, Labour wields what it believes to be the ultimate weapon: the anti-Zionist Jews who offer themselves as human shields to protect those who they hope will destroy the State of Israel through demonization and delegitimization.
“THERE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN JEWS WHO HAVE DONE THE ANTI-SEMITES’ DIRTY WORK FOR THEM”
She continues:
The assumption is that no Jew can be an anti-Semite; so if Jews say Israel is a Nazi state, that cannot be anti-Semitism.
But that’s rubbish. Anti-Semitism has unique characteristics, including double standards applied to no-one else but the Jews, systemic lies and falsehoods, imputation of a global conspiracy to harm the world in their own interests, blame for crimes of which they are not only innocent but are the victims, and so on. All these characteristics that make anti-Semitism a unique collective derangement apply to the demonization of Israel.
[And noting that at a meeting at the Labour conference earlier this week, extreme left-wing Israeli and British Jews appeared to want to question whether the Holocaust had actually happened, Melanie Phillips adds:]
And of course, there have always been Jews who have done the anti-Semites’ dirty work for them. The fact that such a high proportion involved in this latest manifestation of the oldest hatred are people of Jewish descent merely demonstrates the tragic fact that there’s no disorder quite so pathological as when a Jew turns against his or her own identity at the deepest level. Jews are a people like no other; the hatred directed at them is a hatred like no other; and when Jews turn on their own people, they behave in a way that is replicated by no other…
Now imagine that, meanwhile, the leader of the [British] Conservative party had shared platforms with European neo-Nazi parties such as Greece’s Golden Dawn, Germany’s NDP and Belgium’s Vlaams Belang and called them “my friends”…
The (Labour) leader of Brighton and Hove council, which runs the conference centre where Labour is meeting, has said how concerned he is by the anti-Semitism on display at fringe meetings and on the conference floor – so much so that he will need “reassurances that there will be no repeat of the behaviour and actions we have seen this week before any further bookings from the Party are taken.”
***
Melanie Phillips, who is a columnist for The Times of London, tells me she is writing a variation of the piece below for Friday’s Jerusalem Post.
All three writers subscribe to this list.
CONTENTS
1. “Memories of an Anti-Semitic State Department” (By Dennis Ross, New York Times, Sept. 26, 2017)
2. “Labour’s denial of anti-Semitism in its ranks leaves the party in a dark place” (By Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, Sept. 27, 2017)
3. “The Labour Party – A Safe Space For Hate” (By Melanie Phillips, Sept. 26, 2017)
“THE VERY DEFINITION OF PREJUDICE”
Memories of an Anti-Semitic State Department
By Dennis B. Ross
New York Times
September 26, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/opinion/contributors/valerie-plame-antisemitic-state-department.html
The former C.I.A. officer Valerie Plame Wilson made news with her Twitter account last week when, on the first day of Rosh Hashana, she shared an article that said, “America’s Jews are driving America’s wars: Shouldn’t they recuse themselves when dealing with the Middle East?”
The article, which appeared on a fringe website, said that Jewish neoconservatives were pushing for a war with Iran. Ms. Wilson, whose identity as a covert operative was leaked in 2003 by members of the George W. Bush administration nettled by the opposition of her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to the Iraq war, repeated the well-worn narrative that Jewish neoconservatives promoted the invasion of Iraq – and are beating the drum for a conflict with Iran.
Of course, most Jews are not neoconservatives, and most neoconservatives are not Jewish. In any case, it was two influential non-Jews, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who played the central role with President Bush in deciding to invade Iraq in 2003. Ignoring the old saying about when you are in a hole you should stop digging, Ms. Wilson made some excuses and then mentioned that she is of Jewish descent. Finally, she apologized.
I have little interest in piling on Ms. Wilson. But the whole affair brought back some memories about how Jews were perceived within the national security apparatus for a long time. When I began working in the Pentagon during President Jimmy Carter’s administration, there was an unspoken but unmistakable assumption: If you were Jewish, you could not work on the Middle East because you would be biased.
However, if you knew about the Middle East because you came from a missionary family or from the oil industry, you were an expert. Never mind that having such a background might shape a particular view of the region, the United States’ interests in it, or Israel. People with these backgrounds were perceived to be unbiased, while Jews could not be objective and would be partial to Israel to the exclusion of American interests.
Sometimes, I would find this view expressed subtly. Other times it would be overt, including well after Secretary of State George Shultz tried to change the culture of the State Department during the early years of the Reagan’ administration. For Mr. Shultz, being Jewish was no longer a disqualification from working on Arab-Israeli issues. He was more interested in your knowledge than your identity. He made me, someone who is Jewish and was working on the National Security Council staff at the time, a member of the small team working with him on Arab-Israeli diplomacy. (Daniel Kurtzer, who is also Jewish and a career Foreign Service Officer, was on that team as well.)
When James Baker became secretary of state in 1989, he continued to help remove suspicions about Jews from the national security establishment. And yet, I remember well the time in 1990, when I was the head of the State Department’s policy planning staff, I was visited by a diplomatic security investigator who was doing a background check on someone who had listed me as a reference. This person was being considered for a senior position in the George H. W. Bush administration, not one directly involved with the Middle East.
At one point, the investigator asked me a question that is routine in these background checks: Was this person loyal to the United States? I answered yes, without a doubt. But his follow-up question was if this person had to choose between America’s interests and Israel’s, whose interests would he put first? There was nothing subtle about this presumption of dual loyalty.
“Why would you ask that question?” I asked, even though I realized I might not be helping the person using me as a reference. He answered, “Because he is Jewish.” So I went on: If he was Irish and had to work on problems related to Ireland or if he was Italian and had to work on Italy, would you ask that question? Initially, the investigator did not seem to know how to respond, but then I saw a look of recognition. He suddenly realized that I was Jewish. And, at that point, he changed the subject.
This investigator was not a rookie. And his experience with senior State Department officials led him to believe it was natural to ask this question. Like most mythologies which take on a life of their own, the idea that Jewish-Americans might have dual loyalties was not challenged or questioned, it was assumed. That made it all the more insidious.
Just like Ms. Wilson tweeting that Jews are pushing for a new war. It is the definition of prejudice. How can it not be when you label a whole group and ascribe to all those who are a part of it a particular negative trait or threatening behavior? It is the same today with those who single out all Muslims as dangerous extremists. It is just as unacceptable.
Today, surging nationalism and xenophobia promise to create even more prejudice. These attitudes foster an “us versus them” mentality. The “other” is a threat. And once you have singled out groups, the leap is small to imposing limits on them, quarantining them and rationalizing violence against them.
Rather than be worried about being mistrusted and accused of dual loyalties, Jewish American should feel proud. In uncertain times, identity can provide a source of security and comfort. And having a strong identity, being comfortable with who you are and whom you are connected to, need not come at the expense of others. As my rabbi, Jonathan Maltzman, pointed out in his Rosh Hashana sermon, the particular and the universal have always been embedded in Jewish identity.
Indeed, to live a Jewish life one must be committed to the Jewish community, but also to others. Jews have an obligation to promote justice, mercy, compassion, tolerance and peace.
In the United States, diversity of peoples and opinions is our strength as a democracy. Listening to one another, as opposed to labeling one another, can restore civil debate. It is certainly the only way to produce better policies. And it might even introduce greater care and civility to Twitter.
“DISTINGUISHED MEN OF THE LEFT ECHO THE LANGUAGE OF HOLOCAUST DENIAL”
Labour’s denial of anti-Semitism in its ranks leaves the party in a dark place
By Jonathan Freedland
The Guardian
September 27, 2017
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/27/labour-denial-antisemitism-party-dark-place
The good news is that Len, Ken and Ken all say they have experienced no anti-Semitism in the Labour party. Which must mean all is well. Surely only a pedant would point out that Ken Loach, Len McCluskey and Ken Livingstone are not Jewish – a fact that might limit their authority to speak on the matter.
Indeed, they have been fixtures on the left for so long – Loach is 81, Livingstone is 72 and McCluskey is 67 – perhaps they should sit as a panel. They could be the three wise men who arbitrate on all allegations of bigotry within Labour’s ranks. Then, if they testify that they have experienced no sexism, racism, Islamophobia or homophobia inside the party, we will know those menaces are blissfully absent from the prejudice-free nirvana that is the Labour family.
More seriously, you would like to think that this trio, as longtime leftists, would have enough self-knowledge to recognise that, when it comes to, say, bias against women, black or LGBT people, straight, white men might not be best placed to judge. Yet, oddly, no such self-restraint seems to apply when it comes to anti-Jewish racism. Those who are not targeted suddenly feel fully entitled to tell those who are exactly what is – and what isn’t – prejudice against them.
Indeed, Len and Ken Loach go much further. They don’t just tell Jewish Labour supporters that they are mistaken to detect anti-Semitism around them: they tell them they have made it all up – and that they have done so for sinister, nefarious purposes.
“I believe it was mood music that was created by people who were trying to undermine Jeremy Corbyn,” McCluskey told BBC’s Newsnight. (Again, for an avowed progressive to describe an ethnic minority’s experience of racism as “mood music” is quite a break from the usual accepted practice.)
Loach expressed his scepticism differently. “It’s funny these stories suddenly appeared when Jeremy Corbyn became leader, isn’t it?”, the filmmaker told the BBC’s Daily Politics. But he was making the same point.
Meanwhile, Livingstone was on the radio cheerfully saying that it was perfectly possible to say offensive things about Jews without being anti-Jewish. He too has long argued that this whole business is bogus and confected, and that Labour does not have any kind of anti-Semitism problem.
And yet the evidence was there in Brighton if you were willing to see it. There were the Labour party Marxists handing out a paper that repeated Livingstone’s toxic claim of ideological solidarity between the Nazis and those German Jews who sought a Jewish homeland.
There’s the testimony of John Cryer MP, who sits on Labour’s disputes panel. He says some of the anti-Jewish tweets and Facebook posts he has seen from Labour members are “redolent of the 1930s”.
There were loud calls for the expulsion of Jewish groups, one of which has been part of the Labour movement for a century. Hardly a surprise that some Jewish activists turned away from the conference, describing an atmosphere that felt too hostile to endure.
But no – for Len and the Kens and their allies, it’s all made up. Perhaps they don’t realise that that itself is a tired anti-Jewish trope: that Jews invent stories of suffering to drive a secret political agenda. Or, to put it more simply, that there is a Jewish conspiracy.
It means that a man such as Ken Loach – an artist so sensitive he is capable of making the film I, Daniel Blake – ends up lending a spurious legitimacy to Holocaust denial. Asked to react to a speaker at a Brighton fringe meeting who had said Labour supporters should feel free to debate any topic, including the veracity of the Holocaust – “did it happen or didn’t it happen”, as the BBC interviewer put it – Loach could not give a simple, unequivocal denunciation of Holocaust denial. “I think history is for all of us to discuss,” he said.
Remember, Loach had not been asked whether there should be discussion of the meaning of the Nazi slaughter of the Jews. He had been asked about the fact of it happening. And on that, he said there should be discussion – the same apparently innocuous formulation routinely advanced by hardcore Holocaust deniers.
When distinguished men of the left are echoing, even inadvertently, the language of Holocaust denial, when the leader of Britain’s biggest trade union is rehashing the age-old notion of a Jewish conspiracy, you know you have entered a dark place. It’s not impossible to navigate your way out. But first you have to admit that you’ve got badly lost.
THE LABOUR PARTY – A SAFE SPACE FOR HATE
The Labour Party – A Safe Space For Hate
By Melanie Phillips
September 26, 2017
http://www.melaniephillips.com/labour-party-safe-space-hate/
What has been revealed about the Labour party at its annual conference in Brighton should make all decent people shudder.
A fringe meeting hosted a call for Labour to debate whether the Holocaust actually happened, the libelling of Israel as a racist, Nazi, apartheid and colonialist state and a demand that Jews who supported Israel should be kicked out of the Labour party.
What was so chilling was not just that the meeting, called Free Speech on Israel (aka Safe Space for Hate) provided bigots with the opportunity to spew their bile. It cheered and applauded them.
Israeli-American author Miko Peled told it Labour members should support the freedom to “discuss every issue, whether it’s the Holocaust, yes or no, whether it’s Palestine liberation – the entire spectrum. There should be no limits on the discussion.”
Michael Kalmanovitz, a member of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, called for two pro-Israeli groups to be expelled from the party. He said: “The thing is, if you support Israel, you support apartheid. So what is the JLM (Jewish Labour Movement) and Labour Friends of Israel doing in our party? Kick them out.” The Mirror reported: “Loud cheers, applause and calls of ‘throw them out’ erupted in the room of around a hundred activists in response.” http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/labour-activists-applaud-speaker-calling-11235449
Fringe meetings are not run by the party and Labour says it isn’t responsible for their content.
Nevertheless, the event was advertised in official conference literature. It was chaired by an individual called Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi.
She was opposing the proposed rule change to make it easier to expel anti-Semites’. In addition to ranting and raving about Israel with a breathtaking stream of defamatory falsehoods, distortions and smears – including a swipe at the Balfour Declaration – she was actually booed by journalists when she claimed that Jewish groups behind the rule change had been briefing certain newspapers. She then received a ecstatic standing ovation when she stated: “I am not an anti-Semite. This party does not have a problem with Jews”.
Ah, how the conference loved that. Look at their faces on the clip. They are beside themselves with joy that they are being given permission by a Jew to hate the collective Jew in the State of Israel.
The situation could not have been clearer or more disquieting. It is Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi who is the problem with the Labour party – the problem she denies exists. And in not only giving her a platform but ecstatically applauding her bigotry, the Labour party was showing that Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi is not in fact the issue. The real problem is the Labour party itself.
Like the venomously anti-Israel Israeli professor Avi Shlaim, who was speaking at the launch of yet another groupuscule Jewish Voices for Labour, Kalmanovitz said the claims of anti-Semitism in the party were part of a right-wing effort to undermine Jeremy Corbyn and the left. But people like him ensured we could all see for ourselves this could not be the case. For anti-Semitism was on rank display at those Corbynista meetings.
Those behind “Free Speech on Israel” showed their true colours on free speech by reportedly ordering those attending not to tweet or take photographs for fear of “hostile coverage”. Meanwhile leaflets were passed around claiming that concerns about rising anti-Semitism were a “manufactured moral panic”.
Yet elsewhere, one Jewish Labour activist reported that leaflets were being passed around the conference floor demanding the expulsion of the Jewish Labour Movement from the Party; and Izzy Lenga, the Vice-President of the National Union of Students tweeted: “I didn’t think it was possible, but I feel a whole lot more unsafe, uncomfortable and upset as a Jew on [the Labour Party Conference] floor right now than I do at NUS”.
Today, the party passed the rule change making antisemitic abuse and harassment by Labour members a punishable offence. The Guardian reported:
“The rule change proposed by the Jewish Labour Movement, which has been backed by the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn and the party’s national executive committee, will tighten explicitly the party’s stance towards members who are antisemitic or use other forms of hate speech, including racism, Islamophobia, sexism and homophobia.”
Yet this change is worse than meaningless. Yes, it enables the party to expel anti-Semites’. But crucially, it leaves unresolved the definition of what anti-Semitism actually is. And you can bet your bottom dollar that Labour will never, ever accept that demonization and delegitimization of Israel is the contemporary form of the oldest hatred.
How could it accept that? Its members overwhelmingly subscribe to it – even though many of them haven’t the faintest clue that what they believe to be the truth about the Arab-Israel conflict is in fact a pack of lies from start to finish.
In maintaining this fictitious distinction, Labour wields what it believes to be the ultimate weapon: the anti-Zionist Jews who offer themselves as human shields to protect those who they hope will destroy the State of Israel through demonization and delegitimization.
The assumption is that no Jew can be an anti-Semite; so if Jews say Israel is a Nazi apartheid racist murderous colonialist state committing unspeakabke atrocities, that cannot be anti-Semitism.
But that’s rubbish. Anti-Semitism has unique characteristics, including double standards applied to no-one else but the Jews, systemic lies and falsehoods, imputation of a global conspiracy to harm the world in their own interests, blame for crimes of which they are not only innocent but are the victims, and so on. All these characteristics that make anti-Semitism a unique collective derangement apply to the demonization of Israel.
And of course, there have always been Jews who have done the anti-Semites’’ dirty work for them. The fact that such a high proportion involved in this latest manifestation of the oldest hatred are people of Jewish descent merely demonstrates the tragic fact that there’s no disorder quite so pathological as when a Jew turns against his or her own identity at the deepest level. Jews are a people like no other; the hatred directed at them is a hatred like no other; and when Jews turn on their own people, they behave in a way that is replicated by no other.
Now conduct a small thought experiment. Imagine that at the Conservative party conference someone brought the conference plenary cheering to its feet by saying there was nothing racist about regretting the end of empire, as a result of which independent rule had been granted to people who were incapable of civilised behaviour.
Now imagine there was a fringe meeting of, let’s say, Britain First, chaired by that developing-world basher; that remarks made at that meeting included calls to give the floor to proponents of eugenics; and that at a call to throw out of the Conservative party anyone opposed to restrictions on immigration on the grounds that they were traitors to Britain loud cheers, applause and calls of “throw them out” erupted in the room.
Now imagine that, meanwhile, the leader of the Conservative party had shared platforms with European neo-Nazi parties such as Greece’s Golden Dawn, Germany’s NDP and Belgium’s Vlaams Belang and called them “my friends”.
Now imagine that, under pressure, the leader had set up an inquiry into claims of rampant racism and neo-Nazi sympathies in the Conservative party, but had ensured that the inquiry was a whitewash and refused to entertain the idea that there was any racism or fascism in the party at all.
If you were a Conservative member in those circumstances, would you be telling yourself that a party rule change would make all this go away – or would you tear up your party card?
The hard-left has captured the Labour party and is remaking it in its own image. And so-called Labour moderates are just letting this happen. The party is now fundamentally corrupted intellectually, morally and philosophically – as is the left in general. No self-respecting Jew should now remain a Labour member.
There are still decent people in the Labour party. The leader of Brighton and Hove council, which runs the conference centre where Labour is meeting, has said how concerned he is by the anti-Semitism on display at fringe meetings and on the conference floor – so much so that he will need “reassurances that there will be no repeat of the behaviour and actions we have seen this week before any further bookings from the Party are taken.”
Bravo to him. But it’s all over.
* You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you “like” this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia
Israel, which has a policy of supporting pro-western pro-democratic national movements, has become the only country in the world to declare support for Kurdish independence. As a result, Kurdish Muslims have regularly been flying Israeli flags at independence rallies, such as this one in the city of Erbil.
THE WORLD UNITES – AGAINST A FREE PEOPLE
The world unites – against a free people
By Tom Gross
September 26, 2017
Yesterday millions of Iraqi Kurds voted in a free and fair process on whether to seek an independent state. The results are expected later today, and Kurds are likely to have voted overwhelmingly to approve Kurdish statehood. Kurdish leaders say they will then request that secession talks begin promptly with a view to gaining independence within a year or two.
Unlike the Palestinians, whose quest for an independent state enjoys near unanimous global support, almost the entire world has come together in recent days and weeks to oppose independence for the Kurds, the largest stateless people in the world. (For example, the Trump administration, in a statement on September 15, called the Kurdish independence ballot “particularly provocative and destabilizing.” Last Thursday, the UN Security Council voted unanimously to warn against Kurdish independence.)
Unlike an independent Palestine, which under its current leadership, would likely continue its armed struggle to destroy Israel in its entirety following independence, Kurdistan shows no signs whatsoever of attempting or wishing to destroy Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria or any other neighboring state.
Furthermore the Kurds have far more nationally cohesive historic roots than the Palestinians, whose national identity was practically indistinguishable from Jordanians and other Arabs until a few decades ago. The Kurds have their own language, their own ethnicity and many other national aspects that the Palestinian national movement lacks. Unlike most Arab states, which comprise rival ethnic, tribal and religious groups who hate each other, Kurds constitute a largely coherent nation.
Surely self-determination for all peoples, including of course the Palestinians, deserves support so long as they don’t seek to use statehood as a platform for waging war on civilians in an attempt to destroy a neighboring nation.
Perhaps if the Kurds had engaged in waves of airline hijackings across the world and pioneered the use of suicide bombing on civilians as the Palestinians have, editorial writers at news outlets such as the New York Times and Financial Times – both of which have opposed Kurdish independence in lead editorials – would be as enthusiastic for Kurdish independence as they are for Palestinian independence.
The Kurds are relatively democratic in a region of dictatorships. Women enjoy good rights there. They are tolerant of their Christian and other minorities. And they were loyal to western states, and at the forefront of western efforts to drive Isis from Raqqa and Mosul.
In return, not a single Western country (other than Israel) supports their quest for independence.
HALABJA AND AN INTERVIEW AT THE BBC
In my last year as an undergraduate at Oxford, I applied for a place on the BBC News training scheme. I recall how in a final round interview with a committee of senior BBC news editors, I was asked what the BBC might have done differently in its foreign coverage.
I raised the question of Halabja – the city that endured the worst chemical attack since the Holocaust (by Saddam Hussein) deliberately aimed at women and children.
I said I realized that the BBC didn’t have the capacity to cover every third world atrocity, but surely the large-scale use of chemical weapons on thousands of civilians warranted proper coverage? I told them that I noted at the time that the BBC had run only a very short report about Halabja, placed towards the end of their main half-hour evening TV news bulletin, whereas other news networks including the rival British news provider ITN, had run Halabja as its main news item and shown film footage of the victims. When I mentioned Halabja there was silence and then a murmur of laughter from the BBC news editors.
And the only thing the chief BBC interviewer said, in response to my question about the Kurds, before then closing the interview, was “Are you a Zionist?”
(Needless to say, I didn’t get the place on the training scheme which was at that time, a near certain route to subsequent employment as a BBC news journalist.)
***
I attach four articles on the Kurdish referendum. (All four writers are subscribers to this “Middle East dispatch” list.)
KURDISH GIRL TO THE U.S.: IS DEMOCRACY THE WRONG PATH?
First here is a link to a piece from Rudaw, the informative Kurdish website I occasionally link to, and some of whose journalists subscribe to this list:
Kurdish girl to Trump ahead of referendum: Is democracy wrong path?
Tenth-grader Waran Hawrami, whose mother is from Halabja, writes an open letter to President Trump asking why the western democracies don’t support a free and democratic Kurdistan.
ISRAEL ALONE
The support by the Israeli government for Kurdish independence – which has nothing to do with Zionism, but is a result of Israel having the foresight and courage to support pro-western pro-democratic national movements – has been welcomed at rallies by Kurds both in Kurdistan and among exiled Kurdish communities across Europe, as you can see from the Israeli flags being waved by Kurds at this photo montage.
* You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you “like” this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia
ARTICLES
THE INCONVENIENT KURDS
The inconvenient Kurds
By David P. Goldman, Spengler
Asia Times
September 25, 2017
Except for the State of Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan, there isn’t one state in Western Asia that is viable inside its present borders at a 20-year horizon. All the powers with interests in the region want to kick the problem down the road, and that is why the whole world (excepting Israel) wants to abort an independence referendum to be held by Iraq’s eight million Kurds on Sept. 25. If Iraq’s Kurds try to convert the autonomous zone they have ruled for a quarter of a century into a fully independent state, the Iraqi state probably will collapse, Turkey likely will invade northern Iraq and Syria, and Iran will join Turkey in military operations against Kurdish-led forces in Iraq.
There is no precedent in diplomatic history for the whole world closing ranks against the aspirations of a small people, let alone one that has governed itself admirably amidst regional chaos for the past generation. On Thursday, the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to warn of “potentially destabilizing effects” of the independence vote. Turkey’s parliament Sept. 23 renewed a mandate for the Turkish army to invade Syria and Iraq, and Ankara’s defense minister warned that the vote could collapse a “structure built on sensitive and fragile balances.” The White House warned, Sept. 15 that “the referendum is distracting from efforts to defeat [the Islamic State] and stabilize the liberated areas.”
Just what is the “sensitive and fragile balance” that the Kurds might up-end by substituting the word “independent” for “autonomous” in the description of their land in Northern Iraq?
Most of Turkey’s military-age men will come from Kurdish-speaking families by 2040 or so, because Turkey’s 20 million Kurds have twice as many children as ethnic Turks. Last year I reviewed Turkey’s 2015 census data, which show the trend towards Kurdish demographic preponderance accelerating (“Turkey’s Demographic Winter and Erdogan’s Duplicity”). Concentrated in Turkey’s southeast, the Turkish Kurds dominate a part of the country contiguous to the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq. After half a century of dirty war by the Turkish army against the Kurdish minority, Turkey’s Southeast might break away to join an Iraq-centered Kurdish state.
Stitched together from three Ottoman provinces by the British Colonial office, Iraq maintained a brutal sort of stability under the minority rule of Sunni Arabs who controlled the army and used it murderously against the Shi’ite Arab majority as well as the Kurdish minority. George W. Bush insisted on majority rule, namely Shi’ite domination, which pushed the Sunnis into the embrace of al-Qaeda and later ISIS, and left the Kurds to fend for themselves.
Iran faces a demographic catastrophe over the next 20 years because the present generation of Iranians were born to families of seven children, but have only one or two children. As the present generation ages, Iran’s elderly depends will comprise 30% of the total, about the same as Europe, but with about a tenth the per capita GDP. Iran will be the first country to get old before it gets rich, and its economy will implode. Like Turkey, though, Iran has huge ethnic disparities in birth rates. In Tehran province, Iranian women have less than one child apiece on average, but in the restive province of Baluchistan on the Pakistani border, women have 3.7 children.
Syria’s Sunni majority suffered long under the heel of a deviant Shi’ite (Alawite) minority, and rebelled with Obama’s encouragement in 2011. With Russian and Iranian backing, the Assad government squared off against al-Qaeda and ISIS elements, until the Kurds created a third force that could defeat ISIS on the ground while holding off Assad’s Iranian mercenaries. After the Iraq and Afghanistan wars America lacked the stomach to put boots on the ground, and the Kurds became America’s designated proxy.
The United States brawled into the region in 2003 in order to create a stable and democratic Iraq, and instead opened Pandora’s Box. That left Russia (as well as China) in a quandary: the emergence of a Sunni jihad movement claiming the legitimacy of a new caliphate threatens the security of Russia, a seventh of whose citizens are Muslims, and overwhelmingly Sunni. Suppressing the Sunni jihad was a prime objective of Russia’s intervention in Syria, and its uneasy alliance with Shi’ite Iran.
Washington is left without an appetite for a fight, and without the gumption to declare its Mesopotamian and Afghan adventures a failure. America’s military leadership of the past 20 years rose through the ranks by supporting nation-building in Iraq. Although the US military has backed and armed the Kurds, it will not support any action that undermines Iraq’s territorial integrity.
Western Europe is already reeling from the million and a half Syrian and other migrants dumped on its borders with the connivance of the Turkish government, which allowed the migrant horde to pass its borders en route to the Balkans and thence to northern Europe. It wants stability at all costs, fearing that more fighting would set more refugees in motion.
China wants everyone to shut up and join its “One Belt, One Road” infrastructure project, which envisions Iran as a key node and Turkey as a western terminus. The ruins of Middle Eastern states might be absorbed eventually into a Chinese economic empire stretching across Eurasia, what I previously dubbed a “Pax Sinica.”
That leaves the Kurds to fend for themselves. That is a pity, and not just for the Kurds, who have shown themselves capable of governing themselves and fighting effectively to suppress the likes of the Islamic State. If Washington were sufficiently guileful, it could use the Kurdish crisis to its advantage. Turkey has behaved execrably during the past several years, playing a double game with the Islamic State, violating its obligations to NATO by purchasing Russia’s air defense system, and above all by using the transit of refugees as a bludgeon against the West.
Washington’s best course of action would be to threaten Turkey with support for Kurdish independence – including the artillery, anti-tank weapons and anti-aircraft systems required to repel a Turkish invasion. Ankara would recoil in horror, but that would be a salutary exercise for the rogue Turkish capital. At the same time, it should counsel the Kurds to be patient, to bide their time, to trust to an American-led international commission on the future of Kurdish nationality, and to enjoy American largesse in a number of areas, including economic development and armaments. There are all sorts of ways for sophisticated weapons to get into Kurdish hands with plausible deniability. Without giving away the whole game, that should indicate how Washington might exploit the crisis.
Iran reportedly has put several army brigades into its own Kurdish areas in advance of the referendum. Iran’s Kurds would welcome American support, and I would advise Washington to engage the services of people like Michael Ledeen, the leading proponent of undermining the Tehran theocracy, to deal with the details – again, with plausible deniability.
Russia wouldn’t like this, to be sure, but Washington has few reasons to please Moscow at the moment. China wouldn’t like it; any sort of instability is bad for business. In diplomacy, though, everything is negotiable. What will Russia and China concede for America’s help in persuading the Kurds to be patient? In the medium term, Kurdish ascendancy is likely whether the great powers like it or not. They are tough, competent and impassioned about their own nationality, while the Turks and Iranians have become enervated and hollow, and the Arabs tribalistic and corrupt. America should cultivate the winners, and thereby gain the influence to moderate the course of Kurdish national aspirations.
But all this is like saying that if we had some ham, we could have ham-and-eggs, if we had some eggs. After two decades of promoting diplomats and military officers for doing the wrong sort of thing, Washington simply lacks people with the imagination to turn a good crisis to its advantage.
AS KURDS VOTE FOR INDEPENDENCE, AMERICANS SHOULD CHEER
As Kurds vote for independence, Americans should cheer
By Jeff Jacoby
Boston Globe
Sept. 21, 2017
In a landmark referendum next Monday, Iraqi Kurdistan will vote on whether to declare independence. The outcome is not in question. Iraq’s Kurds have been largely self-governing for 25 years, but they yearn to be sovereign in a state of their own, just like the region’s other great ethnic and linguistic groups – Arabs, Turks, Persians, Jews.
The Kurdish campaign for statehood ought to have the robust backing of the United States. Iraqi Kurds are ardently pro-American, unabashed allies in a region where the US has few true friends. The Kurds make no secret of their deep gratitude to the United States for toppling Saddam Hussein, the tyrant who waged a war of genocide against Kurdistan in the 1980s, slaughtering at least 50,000 civilians with chemical weapons and aerial assaults.
Kurdistan isn’t just a grateful ally, it’s a capable and skillful one. Kurdish soldiers, known as Peshmerga, are widely acknowledged to be America’s most effective partners in the fight against the Islamic State. They played a central role in the recent liberation of Raqqa and of Mosul from ISIS. As waves of refugees have fled the violence unleashed by the Islamic State and the Syrian civil war, nearly 2 million have found a safe haven in Kurdistan. Among them are many thousands of Christians.
Yet instead of applauding the Kurds’ bid for independence, the United States keeps dousing it with cold water.
For weeks, the Trump administration has pressed Kurdish officials to call off the scheduled plebiscite. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis worry that a vote for independence - bitterly opposed by Turkey, Iran, and the central Iraqi government in Baghdad - would imperil the coalition’s efforts to crush ISIS. On Friday, the White House spokeswoman announced flatly that the United States “does not support the Kurdistan Regional Government’s intention to hold a referendum.”
This is foolish and short-sighted. It is also reminiscent of George H.W. Bush’s notorious “Chicken Kiev” speech 25 years ago.
In the summer of 1991, when it was clear that the Soviet Union’s days were numbered, pro-independence sentiment surged in Ukraine, which had long chafed under Moscow’s rule. On Aug. 1, Bush traveled to Kiev and delivered a speech cautioning Ukrainians not to be seduced by “suicidal nationalism” - i.e., not to seek a path out of the Soviet empire. Ukrainians rightly scorned Bush’s message. Four months later, they voted overwhelmingly to approve a declaration of independence.
Iraqi Kurds will do the same next week. And if any country should be applauding, it is the United States.
It’s true that an independent Kurdistan would mean the end of Iraq as a unitary state. It’s also true that it might inspire restlessness among Kurdish minorities in other countries. So what? Iraq’s borders, an artifact of post-World War I colonialism, have never made much sense. Is it in Washington’s interest that Iraq remain indivisible? No more than it was when it came to the USSR or Czechoslovakia.
And if an independent Kurdish state discomfits Turkey, Iran, Syria - well, what of it? For decades, all three have brutally repressed the Kurds within their borders. All three today are dictatorships largely hostile to US interests. That includes Turkey, which, though formally a NATO ally, now sides regularly with America’s enemies and has moved decisively into the Islamist camp.
Kurds have earned the right to sovereignty. Like the Jews of pre-statehood Palestine, they have used their limited autonomy to prove their fitness for independence - building up the elements of democracy and civil society, developing a lively economy, choosing responsible leaders, and nourishing institutions of culture and education. A sovereign Kurdistan would advance America’s goals in the Middle East, while impeding those of Russia and Iran. It would be a force for peace, stability, and minority rights, and against terrorism, tyranny, and jihadist extremism.
A free and democratic Kurdistan will be a blessing to its people, a model for the Middle East, and a rock-solid ally of America. When Kurds go to the polls next week, it should be with our admiration and support.
THE CASE FOR KURDISTAN
The Case for Kurdistan
A boon to America, the region, and the world.
By Sohrab Ahmari
Commentary magazine
Sept. 22, 2017
The Kurds have been a people without a state for centuries. Monday’s independence referendum in northern Iraq’s Kurdish zone is an important step toward rectifying this historic injustice, and I believe the U.S. is making a grave mistake by opposing the vote.
The Trump administration announced its displeasure in a September 15 statement, noting that the referendum “is distracting from the effort to defeat ISIS and stabilize the liberated areas.” It added: “Holding the referendum in disputed areas is particularly provocative and destabilizing.” The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the White House said, should work out its differences with Baghdad through dialogue.
Not now, go away, in other words. The statement reflected the sort of rigid adherence to Washington dogma that too often prevents America from seizing the opportunities presented by the tectonic shifts in the Middle East. The Trump administration failed even to nod at Kurdish aspirations, or offer an alternative timeline if the current moment is too inconvenient. This was unnecessary slap when there are compelling moral and strategic reasons for creating a Kurdish state in northern Iraq sooner than later.
The Kurds got by far the worst treatment during the decades of Baathist rule in Iraq. Saddam Hussein ethnically cleansed tens of thousands of them in the 1970s. Then, in the closing days of the Iran-Iraq War, he set out to destroy the Kurdish community. The regime fired chemical weapons at Kurdish civilians, summarily executed men and boys, and sent entire villages to concentration camps.
President George H.W. Bush’s decision to impose a no-fly zone in 1991 granted Iraqi Kurds protection against Saddam’s depredations and a measure of autonomy. The Kurds used the opening, and the one provided by the 2003 invasion, to develop institutions of self-government. Iraqi Kurds constitute a coherent nation. They stand out in a region full of non-nation-states in various stages of disintegration. Kurds speak a common language, albeit with regional variations. Most are Sunni Muslims, though there are Christians and even a very few Jews among them, as well. They have deep historical ties to their territory. Their culture sets them apart, visibly, from their neighbors. They have distinct national institutions. And they already enjoy quasi-state recognition in the corridors of power in Europe, the Middle East, and beyond.
Iraqi Kurds, moreover, share what Douglas Feith has described as the key subjective factor in nationhood: a “type of fellow feeling” that is “an extension of the affection people tend to have for their family members.” Whatever their tribal differences–and these are real–Kurds living in Erbil or Dohuk today look upon other Kurds, not Iraqis, as their true compatriots. The bonds of Kurdish sympathy are much stronger and more enduring than those of Iraqi nationalism, if the latter means much at all.
Taken together, these factors mean that Iraqi Kurds are ripe for statehood. The Arabs have 22 states, and the Turks, Iranians, and Jews each have one–so why shouldn’t the Kurds enjoy statehood? There is no good answer to this question.
Then, too, Iraqi Kurdistan is vibrant and free. In Erbil today, within an hour’s drive from what used to be the second capital of the ISIS “caliphate,” you can enjoy a beer, surf a largely unrestricted Internet, and criticize the government without having to fear death squads. You won’t hear chants of “Death to America” or “Death to Israel” on the streets. There is corruption in the Kurdistan Regional Government, to be sure, and a degree of political nepotism that would make Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump blush. But by regional standards, KRG governance is more than acceptable.
An independent Kurdistan, moreover, will bear strategic fruit for the U.S. It could serve as a counterweight, however small, to Iranian hegemony. KRG leaders have taken a moderate, pragmatic line with all of their neighbors. That is wise policy, given the region’s size and strength relative to the likes of Iran and Turkey. Even so, the introduction of a new, fully sovereign Kurdish actor would interrupt Tehran’s so-called Shiite crescent stretching from Sanaa to Beirut. Today Iraq is trapped in the crescent. An independent Kurdistan wouldn’t be. It would irk the mullahs still more if this new state turned out to be a democratic success story. Conversely, by blocking Kurdish aspirations, the U.S. is putting itself in the same camp as Iran.
Most important, friendship should mean something. Iraqi Kurdish forces fought valiantly alongside the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition. When the jihadist army seemed invincible, it was Kurdish fighters who stopped its march across Iraq (and Syria). As Kurdish intelligence chief Masrour Barzani told me in 2015, “In this entire area the Kurds are probably the most pro-American people that you can find. Forever we will be thankful for the U.S. support since the day of toppling Saddam’s regime.”
If Washington keeps neglecting and mistreating friends, America’s credit rating in the region will suffer irreparable harm. Responsible, pro-American populations, like the Iraqi Kurds, deserve American support.
TRUMP SHOULD BET ON KURDISH INDEPENDENCE
Trump Should Bet on Kurdish Independence
By Ron Prosor
New York Times
September 24, 2017
No one likes winning more than President Trump. He has a chance to prove it on Monday, when Iraqi Kurds hold a referendum on their independence.
There is no shortage of losers in the Middle East, but anyone in the business of spotting winners should bet on an independent Kurdish state. Backing the Kurds is not only strategically smart – they are a steadfast ally in the fight against the Islamic State and Islamist extremism, doing battle alongside American soldiers – it’s also the right thing to do.
Yet the Trump administration has worked to prevent the referendum, arguing that with the war against the Islamic State yet to be won, a vote could risk further dividing an already fractious coalition. In a statement, it called the referendum “provocative and destabilizing.”
This is a serious mistake. In failing to offer full-throated support for Kurdish independence, the United States is focusing solely on the short-term volatility of the region and overlooking serious medium- and long-term opportunities.
There’s no denying that the Middle East is a mess: To truly stabilize the region, we need to defeat the Islamic State, replace the brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and contain Iran, which still threatens to go nuclear. But the best way to stamp out darkness isn’t through military might, but through light. And an independent Kurdish state would be a beacon of hope in a part of the world where hope is desperately needed.
An independent Kurdish state would be a victory for democratic values, national self-determination and the rights of women and minorities. Is there a more iconic image of the fight against the Islamic State than that of female Kurdish peshmerga fighters doing battle on the front lines against jihadists who demand the subjugation of women? An independent Kurdish state would empower these warriors in a part of the world where women and girls are typically second-class citizens.
In addition to its commitment to gender equality, Kurdistan has also shown its commitment to minority rights. Over the past three years, Kurdistan, which is about the size of Maryland, has taken in nearly two million refugees, including Assyrians, Yazidis, Turkmen, Shabaks and Christians fleeing the Islamic State and sectarian violence in other parts of Iraq and in Syria.
Even without a formal state, the Kurds have built a society that meets many of the criteria of statehood. They are economically viable, with a well-developed energy industry. They have functioning institutions, including elections for Parliament and a relatively free media. And they’ve proved capable of defending themselves against the Islamic State without attacking others.
Kurdistan is already, in values and governance, a democratic nation in waiting. Is it a perfect Jeffersonian democracy? No. Does it have a long way to go? Yes. But in a region where tyranny is the norm, it’s on the right track.
With a state, the Kurds could become an even more valuable and constructive ally against extremism. That would be in the American interest, but just as important, it would be a fulfillment of American values. Supporting Kurdish independence means supporting the right to self-determination of a people that have overcome oppression, persecution and tyranny to build a thriving, vibrant society. That’s one of the reasons Israel supports the Kurds’ right to self-determination.
Some 30 years ago, the Kurdish people were being choked with chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein. Today they stand as a nation reborn, about to embark on an inspiring exercise in democracy. We have a moral duty to support its outcome. In a region where the flags of liberal democracies are routinely set alight, Kurdistan has chosen to embrace liberal democratic values.
Now the United States faces a critical choice. President Trump has the chance to demonstrate American leadership, promote American values and strengthen an American ally. Israel would welcome his support for the Kurds. And if handled intelligently, the pragmatic Arab states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates could follow suit, on the grounds that Kurdistan could serve as a bulwark against Iran and the Islamic State.
If we wait for the region to be perfectly stable, for Islamist extremism to disappear or for the collective blessing of Ankara, Tehran and Baghdad, we could be waiting forever. If, however, the United States wants to support a stabilizing, modernizing and democratic force, the choice is clear: Mr. Trump should bet on a winner and support an independent Kurdish state.
Yigal Guetta, an ultra-orthodox Jewish member of the Israeli parliament (the Knesset), has angered colleagues in his Shas Party after saying that he had attended his Israeli nephew’s gay wedding. There are enormous differences in social attitudes between ultra-orthodox and other Jews.
CONTENTS
1. “You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Celebrate Rosh Hashana” (By Bari Weiss, New York Times op-ed, Sept. 20, 2017)
2. “I am a secular Jew – and there’s no contradiction in that” (By Daniel Susskind, Jewish Chronicle, Sept. 20, 2017)
3. “The Myth of ultra-Orthodox Jews as the Last Survivors of ‘Original’ Judaism” (By Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz, Sept. 17, 2017)
4. “Israeli Orthodox Lawmaker in Trouble Over Gay Nephew’s Wedding” (By Isabel Kershner, New York Times, Sept. 14, 2017)
5. “London Police On High Alert In Jewish Communities Ahead Of High Holy Days” (By Yocheved Laufer, Jerusalem Post, Sept. 20, 2017)
6. “What Anti-Semitism in America Looks Like From Israel” (By Shmuel Rosner, New York Times op-ed, Sept. 15, 2017)
“YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE JEWISH TO CELEBRATE ROSH HASHANA”
[Note by Tom Gross]
This dispatch concerns Jewish matters. Most of the subscribers to this list are not Jewish, but I hope they will also find these pieces interesting. Three of the pieces are tied to coincide with the Jewish New Year, the year 5778, which started yesterday evening.
I attach six pieces below.
In the first piece, titled “You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Celebrate Rosh Hashana”, Bari Weiss, an editor on the comment section of the New York Times, writes:
“I hate New Year’s Eve. For years, I tried to rally and convince myself that the hellscape of selfies and stilettos was fun. … For me the real new year is Rosh Hashana, which begins this Wednesday night [yesterday] at sundown… you don’t need to be a member of the tribe to appreciate the existential message of this holy day. If you crave an anti-new year New Year, consider adopting Rosh Hashana as your own.
“The morning of Jan. 1 is when the counting of calories recommences: We join Weight Watchers; we splurge on gym memberships. Rosh Hashana requires a deeper kind of counting. That process is called ‘heshbon hanefesh,” literally an “accounting of the soul.’ …”
***
In the second piece below, Daniel Susskind, a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, writes in the (London) Jewish Chronicle:
“It is that time of year when ‘secular Jews’ like me descend on synagogues… This idea, that you can feel very Jewish and not root that identity in a God, puzzles non-Jews and divides Jews. To those on the outside, the idea of a ‘secular Jew’ sounds like an oxymoron; to those inside, it is often dismissed, less generously, as confused nonsense. But for me, and I suspect a great many others, it exactly describes who we are…
“There is no contradiction here, between being a devout Jew and not having faith. The Holocaust was not only an attempt to kill a Jewish God, but also to destroy a Jewish civilization – our histories and memories, songs and stories, ways of thinking and living…
“My wife, who converted to Judaism and has her feet in two faiths, once said to me that when Christians go to Church, they go to be with God, but when Jews go to synagogue, they go to be with other Jews. At first I smiled, but now I realize that she is exactly right. As Jews, we are bound together by far more than faith alone…”
***
In the third piece, Anshel Pfeffer writes in the Israeli paper Haaretz on the continuing heated debate, sometimes resulting in violent clashes, between Israeli ultra-orthodox Jews and the police, over the attempt to preserve special privileges granted to Israel’s ultra-orthodox decades ago, including army exemptions, by claiming that over the centuries Jewish men studied in yeshiva night and day.
“That never happened,” he writes. “I’ve lost count in the last few weeks how many times representatives of Shas and United Torah Judaism have said in interviews [on Israeli TV and radio], ‘The yeshiva students give everything to study Torah. Just like their grandfathers did. And your grandfather too,’ answered in a moment of respectful silence from the interviewer, in memory of our devout and studious forefathers.
“Only they weren’t. The myth that somehow a century or so ago, all Jewish men were God-fearing Orthodox Jews spending their days and nights in the study-halls of yeshivas has no basis whatsoever in history…
“There has never been in Jewish history a period where the male populations of entire Jewish communities devoted their lives to Torah. They would have starved to death.”
***
In the fifth piece, the Jerusalem Post notes that while providing heightened police presence to protect Jewish communities celebrating the Jewish new year, in a first, London’s police have sent a “L’Shana Tova” (Jewish new year greeting) message to the city’s Jews.
***
There are two additional pieces. (The authors of four of the six pieces below -- Bari Weiss, Anshel Pfeffer, Isabel Kershner and Shmuel Rosner -- are subscribers to this list and friends of mine.)
ARTICLES
“THE BIRTHDAY OF HUMANITY”
You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Celebrate Rosh Hashana
By Bari Weiss
New York Times (comment section)
September 20, 2017
I hate New Year’s Eve. For years, I tried to rally and convince myself that the hellscape of selfies and stilettos was fun. More recently I’ve wised up and fled the city to my grandparents in Florida, where I play bartender and we’re all in bed by 10 p.m.
I’ve thought a lot about why I allow Dec. 31 to terrorize me. Partly it’s the passage of time. Partly it’s the forced merriment and the inevitable disappointment. Partly it’s the reminder of my mortality, and that of those I love.
But fundamentally, it’s also the fact that the whole enterprise feels unnatural to me, like a mulligan for the real new year. For me, that is Rosh Hashana, which begins this Wednesday night at sundown.
There’s no question that I am biased toward the Hebrew calendar over the Gregorian one. I am also convinced that you don’t need to be a member of the tribe to appreciate the existential message of this holy day. If you crave an anti-new year New Year, consider adopting Rosh Hashana as your own.
Start off with the easy stuff. This is Judaism: There is food. Apples and honey symbolize our wishes for a sweet new year. The challah, typically long and braided, is round to remind us of the cycle of life. Many of us eat “new fruits” – New York City groceries stock up on lychees and star fruits and pomegranates in anticipation – to, yes, celebrate the newness of the year. There’s also my personal favorite, the fish head, a culinary pun, since Rosh Hashana literally means the head of the year. (Some Jews even eat the head of a lamb; let’s just say that custom never made it to Pittsburgh, where I grew up.) O.K., so the menu is slightly more humble than caviar and Dom Pérignon. But Christopher Hitchens was right about Champagne anyway.
Second, there’s the season. December feels like the year’s nadir. Everything about September – the season change, the sweater weather, the new school year – feels like a new beginning, though a wise friend pointed out to me that September is actually the time when everything in nature begins the process of dying. That the Jewish year begins at a time of decay is an audacious assertion of hope, a reminder of the possibility of renewal.
And renew we have. This year we’ll ring in the year 5778 – as in 5,778 years since the mythical creation of Adam and Eve, the birthday of humanity. As Louis C. K. pointed out in a recent bit, “The Christians won everything.” Exhibit A: “What year is it according to the entire human race?” Rosh Hashana is a reminder that there is a radically different way of keeping time.
We mark the start of the secular new year by huddling around a TV to watch a disco ball plummet while we blow on plastic kazoos. That bleating sounds rather pathetic next to the primal wail that issues from the ram’s horn, or shofar, that we blow to begin Rosh Hashana. The shofar is meant to awaken us from our figurative slumber – a startling reminder that we are often sleepwalking through our lives. I have heard the shofar blown in so many different synagogues before Jews of wildly different levels of religious of observance. Rarely have I seen an adult without tears in their eyes upon hearing that ancient sound, a prayer beyond words. Jew or gentile, who among us doesn’t need this kind of spiritual alarm?
The morning of Jan. 1 is when the counting of calories recommences: We join Weight Watchers; we splurge on gym memberships. Rosh Hashana requires a deeper kind of counting. That process is called “heshbon hanefesh,” literally an “accounting of the soul.”
The stocktaking requires serious reflection on the past year, which is why Rosh Hashana is also referred to as Yom Hazikaron, or the Day of Remembrance. The remembering is not just a private act: We are required to ask for forgiveness for those we have hurt during the past year. Some rely on mass emails, but we are meant to be as specific as possible, to make the apologies personal and precise. It’s like the ninth step of A.A. But every year.
The idea here is that you can’t just ask God for forgiveness; you aren’t saved by belief. God can’t make a broken relationship whole. For that, you need to meet another person face to face. This is the essence of Judaism – a religion focused on this life, rather than the next, on this world rather than the world to come.
The unburdening is cathartic. To see it enacted more literally, on Rosh Hashana afternoon, stop by your local river. There you’ll see Jews performing the ritual of “tashlich,” in which we empty our pockets of crumbs and throw them into the water – a symbol of emptying our souls of sin.
Another name for Rosh Hashana is Yom Hadin, the Day of Judgment, and the metaphor, repeated in prayer after prayer, could not be clearer. God is the judge and jury. We are all, every one of us, on death row. And God alone decides whether or not we get written in the Book of Life.
The liturgists who wrote many of the prayers we recite talk of trembling before God – and for me, around the age of 10, when my Hebrew finally got good enough to understand what we were saying, that verb couldn’t have been more apt. If I wasn’t sincere enough, if I didn’t sufficiently ask for forgiveness, if I didn’t genuinely change my ways, I believed I wouldn’t live to see the next year.
I no longer believe that I’m going to be struck down by a punishing God. But as I’ve gotten older and more aware of the fragility of life, the metaphor has only become more urgent, even as the question of who is really doing the writing in that Book remains unanswered. Yehuda Amichai, Israel’s former national poet, helped me reimagine it: “I want to be written again/in the Book of Life,” he writes, “to be written every single day/till the writing hand hurts.”
Amen.
“I AM A SECULAR JEW - AND THERE’S NO CONTRADICTION IN THAT”
“I am a secular Jew - and there’s no contradiction in that”
By Daniel Susskind
(London) Jewish Chronicle
September 20, 2017
It is that time of year when ‘secular Jews’ like me descend on synagogues, filling the backbenches and over-flowing into neighbouring rented buildings. We stand out with our pristine prayer-books and our bright-white uncreased tallit, struggling to tell the difference between our Musaf and Maariv, stumbling to our feet to mumble incorrectly at the wrong moments. But we will be there, as Jewish as everyone else.
This idea, that you can feel very Jewish and not root that identity in a God, puzzles non-Jews and divides Jews. To those on the outside, the idea of a ‘secular Jew’ sounds like an oxymoron; to those inside, it is often dismissed, less generously, as confused nonsense. But for me, and I suspect a great many others, it exactly describes who we are.
There is a line in an interview with Primo Levi where he says, “There is Auschwitz, and so there cannot be God”. Levi had survived that camp, and his testimony would make him one of the great modern writers. That remark captured the sense in which, for so many Jews, the Holocaust had murdered their faith, along with their family and friends.
I consider myself part of that group, deeply agnostic, and unable to reconcile any serious sense of faith with what happened in the first half of the 20th century (though my scepticism has roots elsewhere, too.) And yet, at the same time, I try to live a secular Jewish life – partly because of what happened in the past. To me, there is Auschwitz, and so we must make sure that there are always Jews.
There is no contradiction here, between being a devout Jew and not having faith. The Holocaust was not only an attempt to kill a Jewish God, but also to destroy a Jewish civilisation – our histories and memories, songs and stories, ways of thinking and living.
The Nazis never asked our ancestors how observant they were before they murdered them; only whether their parents or grandparents were Jews, whether they could claim to be part of our four-thousand-year-old story that they wanted to bring to an end. They knew that much more mattered than faith alone.
I know that when I take my first High Holiday steps into the synagogue in the coming weeks, I should expect the same familiar glare from the observant old-guard, the front-benched regulars, who no doubt think of me and my fellow-travellers as irreligious riff-raff, distracting them from one of the most important days of their year.
But to secular Jews, I say – do not be deterred. Think of this article as a secular call to prayer. Take some Jewish stories along with your siddur, carry a biography of a Jewish hero and put it proudly on the bench in front of you, take a piece of Hebrew and try to make sense of it, take a secular Jewish philosopher and try to interpret it. Go to synagogue, not necessarily in search of religious revelation but for secular contemplation, and know that is okay.
My wife, who converted to Judaism and has her feet in two faiths, once said to me that when Christians go to Church, they go to be with God, but when Jews go to synagogue, they go to be with other Jews. At first I smiled, but now I realise that she is exactly right. As Jews, we are bound together by far more than faith alone.
And as you walk home, in the coming weeks, perhaps after a prayerless day in synagogue, be happy because you have contributed, in your own way, to that ongoing Jewish story, of which we are all part.
(Daniel Susskind is a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.)
“NO BASIS IN HISTORY”
The Myth of ultra-Orthodox Jews as the Last Survivors of ‘Original’ Judaism
By Anshel Pfeffer
Haaretz (opinion pages)
September 17, 2017
Israel’s haredi politicians defend their draft exemption by referencing millennia of Jewish men who studied in yeshiva night and day. That never happened.
No one would seriously accuse Israeli interviewers of lacking in aggressiveness. Especially when confronted with an ultra-Orthodox [Haredi] politician explaining why the young men of his community have to be exempted from compulsory national service.
But Haredi MKs do have one advantage in these situations – ignorance. Not their own, of course.
I’ve lost count in the last few weeks how many times representatives of Shas and United Torah Judaism have said in an interview, “The yeshiva students give everything to study Torah. Just like their grandfathers did. And your grandfather too,” answered in a moment of respectful silence from the interviewer, in memory of our devout and studious forefathers.
Only they weren’t. The myth that somehow a century or so ago, all Jewish men were God-fearing Orthodox Jews spending their days and nights in the study-halls of yeshivas has no basis whatsoever in history.
True, going back a couple of centuries, to the days before emancipation and the emergence of large numbers of Jews who were secular or members of non-Orthodox communities, the overwhelming majority could indeed be loosely defined as Orthodox, or at least somehow affiliated with the stream of Judaism that evolved from prushim – the Pharisees of the late Second Temple period, who emphasized worship through synagogue, prayer and an adherence to the Oral Law encapsulated in the Talmud and its tributaries. But even then, only a tiny handful of young men actually spent their days in study.
Nostalgic pictures of boys in side-curls and elderly caftaned men carrying volumes of Talmud down snowy streets in some shtetl aside, most Jews during any period of history weren’t particularly devout or pious. Most were simply too busy trying to survive, making a living in agriculture or trade.
There were yeshivas, usually small local affairs and in a few periods, also a handful of large famous ones to which students came from afar, but those studying there were always a tiny elite of privileged young men: sons of rabbis, particularly gifted iluyim with some form of stipend or scions of wealthy families.
There has never been in Jewish history a period where the male populations of entire Jewish communities devoted their lives to Torah. They would have starved to death.
And besides the majority weren’t interested, and the rabbis and community leaders never thought they needed more than a small group of students who be the next generation of rabbis and keep Jewish literacy alive. It’s true that most Jews could read and write, though the absence of illiteracy among Jews is another myth. But most had some kind of cheder-style primary education, and could at least pray in Hebrew.
Limmud Torah, the study of Jewish religious texts, is a commandment which had no clear definition and can be fulfilled by reciting a few words once a day. Anything beyond that was aspirational.
The hallowed universal principle of everyone being obliged to study Torah day and night for as long as possible is a modern concept, which only truly came in to being four decades ago when Agudath Yisrael, the forerunner of today’s United Torah Judaism, joined the first Begin government as coalition partners and sufficient government funds to subsidize tens, and by now hundreds of thousands of Torah students, became an integral part of Israel’s state budget. Which is also when the number of yeshiva students receiving the exemption from military service began to grow exponentially.
The original exemption, granted by David Ben-Gurion in 1948 for a few hundred students had been at the request of the Haredi rabbis to “rebuild” the yeshivas of Eastern Europe, decimated in the Holocaust. That has been achieved long ago tenfold – there are more men (and women of course) studying Torah today than at any point in history.
And there’s nothing wrong with that. We live in a period where in the western world, many young people do not have to rush off and make a living until well in to their twenties and have the time and leisure to study. But there is nothing similar between the way Israeli politics and economy have allowed so many yeshiva students to study their Talmud for years and some mythical Jewish past. And there is nothing in Jewish law which would exempt them from compulsory military service – actually, there are religious commandments declaring the exact opposite.
Instead of admitting how fortunate they are to live in the modern State of Israel, the only place in the world and in history to subsidise wholesale Torah-study, the Haredi leadership insists they are merely recreating what our grandfathers had and should therefore be theirs by rights.
They cannot admit that because the invention of “our grandfathers who all studied Talmud all day” is part of an even greater myth – that the Haredi way of life of increasingly shutting off entire communities from the outside world and enforcing ever-more stringent ritual strictures, is original Judaism.
Of course it isn’t. No one lives according to original Judaism. All Jews evolved, and in the Haredi case they are relatively recent evolution of the last two centuries in reaction to enlightenment, emancipation and secular Zionism. The Haredim need this myth because if they are not the original brand of Judaism, then why should anyone choose theirs over so many other ways of being Jewish, which are open about how they have adapted to the changes and challenges of time.
The government, the Knesset and the Supreme Court will never be able to force the rabbis to agree to allow their students to enlist in the army, because it would mean admitting that not all of them have to study Torah all the time. It would mean confirming that there are other ways of being Jewish, and that the mass exemption and subsidizing of hundreds of thousands of students is not the natural state of the Jews but an unprecedented and unsustainable situation.
But there is no need for them to agree either.
Like all other hollow and unsustainable myths, the myth of Haredi authenticity is also destined to collapse in on itself. More and more young Haredim are beginning to figure out for themselves that the real way of following in their forefathers’ footsteps is to do what humans have always done: To evolve.
ISRAELI ORTHODOX LAWMAKER IN TROUBLE OVER GAY NEPHEW’S WEDDING
Israeli Orthodox Lawmaker in Trouble Over Gay Nephew’s Wedding
By Isabel Kershner
New York Times (news pages)
September 14, 2017
JERUSALEM – The Israeli lawmaker had gone on the radio to promote a new single by his daughter, a singer, and to show a more liberal and hipper face of his party, the ultra-Orthodox Shas.
But after the lawmaker, Yigal Guetta, revealed in the radio interview that he had attended the wedding of a gay nephew, his chatty appeal to a broader audience of potential Shas voters appeared to backfire. Rabbis and party activists revolted and demanded that he resign.
Under pressure from the critics, Mr. Guetta, 51, told Aryeh Deri, the party leader, this week that he was resigning, and Mr. Deri agreed. But many Israelis have since expressed outrage that the rabbis and the party would put strict adherence to Jewish law and prejudice above family unity.
Mr. Guetta is now in negotiations with the Shas Party’s council of sages who are said to be less upset about his attendance at the wedding than his disclosure of that information in the radio interview.
A compromise appears to be emerging in which Mr. Guetta would apologize for giving the interview, though not for attending the wedding, and would retain his place in the party and his seat in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.
To formally resign he would have to write to the Knesset chairman, a step he has not taken yet.
Mr. Guetta did not answer his cellphone or respond to text messages on Thursday, and the Shas Party was not commenting on the episode publicly. But Shas officials said privately that they hoped the compromise would happen and put an end to the story.
The wedding took place two years ago, before Mr. Guetta had entered Parliament.
Same-sex marriage is not officially recognized in Israel, nor is any mechanism of civil marriage, with the strictly Orthodox-controlled state rabbinate maintaining a monopoly on Jewish weddings. But some Israelis bypass the restrictions by holding ceremonies of their choice and formalizing their civil union with lawyers, or by marrying abroad.
Gays are welcomed in the Israeli military and are open about their sexual orientation in politics and other spheres. Tel Aviv, in particular, has a reputation as a gay-friendly destination and Israel has often promoted its tolerance toward the L.G.B.T. community as a beacon of pluralism and tolerance compared with some of its enemies, like Iran.
Two biblical verses, Leviticus 18 and 20, prohibit sexual relations between men, describing them as an abomination punishable by death. But rabbis have long debated the correct approach to homosexuality, and more liberal streams of Judaism, arguing that ancient laws need to allow room for new understandings, have embraced gay members and perform gay weddings.
But some sectors of Israeli society, including the ultra-Orthodox, view homosexuality as sinful. One Shas lawmaker, Shlomo Benizri, once blamed a minor earthquake that was felt across Israel on “homosexual activity practiced in the country.”
So it came as a bit of a bombshell when Mr. Guetta told Army Radio on Aug. 29, “Here’s a scoop, hold on tight.” He went on to relate that he had declined his gay nephew’s request for a blessing under the chuppa, or marriage canopy, but continued, “We all went to the wedding, me, my wife and all my children.” He told his children their attendance was mandatory, he said, though he also emphasized to them that such a wedding was forbidden under Jewish law.
The scandal has been brewing since. In a Sept. 6 post on his Facebook page, Mr. Guetta wrote: “I would like to clarify that a handful of people are trying to spread some twisted things in my name, as if I gave legitimacy to forbidden acts. This is a lie and a distortion.” He wrote that he had declared in the interview, and was declaring again, that such things – without naming them – were an “abomination” according to the Torah.
The uproar has engendered a debate among Shas supporters over whether strict adherence to the letter of Jewish law should supersede other traditional Jewish values, including the sanctity of the family. Many Shas voters are traditional Mizrahi, eastern Jews whose families came from Arab countries, and who are not as strictly Orthodox as their party leaders. They have voted Shas over the years for social and economic reasons, believing that the party best represents the interests of the Mizrahi portion of Israel’s Jewish population against the old-guard Ashkenazi elite from Europe.
The religious culture embraced by Mizrahi Jews “opens its doors not only to a chosen few but also to the masses of people, each of whom seeks to be observant according to their own capabilities,” Roi Lachmanovich, a former strategic adviser and spokesman for Shas, wrote in the Maariv newspaper on Thursday. “The party turned its back on a huge sector of the public that does not at all wish to concede on the importance of family.”
Others pointed to what they called the hypocrisy of the Shas leadership, given that Mr. Deri, the party leader, and Mr. Benizri, who no longer sits in Parliament but who criticized Mr. Guetta, have both served prison terms for financial corruption.
“They were in prison and got out and all of a sudden they are OK?” Suzy Ben Zvi, Mr. Guetta’s sister and the mother of the groom, told Maariv. She said Mr. Guetta had arrived after the ceremony and stayed an hour, out of respect for the family.
“God will repay all the Shas saints for what they did to him,” Mrs. Ben Zvi continued. Describing her brother as a wise man who did something noble, she added, “The tradition of family is the holiest tradition in Judaism.”
LONDON POLICE ON HIGH ALERT IN JEWISH COMMUNITIES AHEAD OF HIGH HOLY DAYS
London Police On High Alert In Jewish Communities Ahead Of High Holy Days
By Yocheved Laufer
Jerusalem Post
September 20, 2017
* London police have a special “L’Shanah Tovah” message for the Jewish community.
London’s Metropolitan Police is on higher alert in the Jewish communities ahead of the High Holy Days, a Jewish volunteer community group posted on Wednesday.
Shomrim UK, a Jewish volunteer community safety patrol organization based in England, tweeted a letter they received by Metropolitan Police saying that London police will be working closely with the Jewish community in the coming weeks “to provide an extra level of visibility and vigilance.”
This comes after Metropolitan Police arrested two more suspects on Wednesday in the investigation of the September 15 terror attack at London’s Parsons Green train station, that Islamic State claimed responsibility for.
A home-made bomb on a packed rush-hour commuter train in London engulfed a carriage in flames, but apparently failed to fully explode, injuring 22 people in the attack.
However, the letter to Shomrim UK stated that this raise in security is “not in response to a raised threat.” The British police added that it is an opportunity to work closer with London’s Jewish community and to ensure a “happy and safe holy day period.”
WHAT ANTI-SEMITISM IN AMERICA LOOKS LIKE FROM ISRAEL
What Anti-Semitism in America Looks Like From Israel
By Shmuel Rosner
New York Times op-ed
September 15, 2017
TEL AVIV – The first meeting between an Israeli prime minister and a German chancellor took place in 1960 in New York. At this meeting, David Ben-Gurion of Israel explained to Konrad Adenauer of West Germany that there were three types of Jews in the world before Israel was established: the Jews who lived among Muslims, who adopted Muslim customs; the Jews of Europe, who never considered themselves a part of the society in which they lived; and the Jews of America, who live in a country of immigrants and so see themselves as Americans like all other Americans.
Ben-Gurion, who was born in modern-day Poland, understood European Jews. But he never really understood the Jews of the Arab world or the Jews of America. The truth is, even now many of us Israelis still don’t. And nowhere is this clearer than in how Israel responds to anti-Semitism in America today.
Generally, Jewish Israelis are not personally familiar with anti-Semitism. When they hear “anti-Semitism” they think about Jewish history – the Nazis’ Holocaust, the pogroms in czarist Russia – not our own experiences. At the same time, after looking at history, Jewish Israelis never fully believe that it’s possible for a non-Jewish country to be free of anti-Semitism. A 2016 poll found that 99 percent of Israelis believe that anti-Semitism is “very” or “somewhat common” around the world. Thus, for many Israelis the next disaster in the diaspora is just a matter of time.
Jewish Israelis are also not acquainted with Jewish assertiveness outside of Israel. The story they know – the Zionist narrative – is of powerless Jews in the diaspora who became politically assertive only in the Jewish state. This is, to use Ben-Gurion’s formulation, the story of European Jews.
Because of Israel’s circumstances and assumptions, Israeli Jews haven’t developed the same sensitivity and ear for anti-Semitism that Jews elsewhere have. For example, this week Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 26-year-old son, Yair, posted a meme on Twitter that featured George Soros, a Jewish billionaire, dangling the earth on a fishing rod, a lizard-person and a hooknosed figure who resembles the worst kinds of anti-Semitic depictions. The younger Netanyahu hasn’t yet explained himself, but I have no doubt that he’s not an anti-Semite. His lapse was probably an extreme case of a tin-eared Israeli using the wrong tools to make a point about his father’s enemies.
This gap between Israel and the diaspora is also why Israel and its leaders have struggled to find an appropriate response to the fear that has engulfed much of the American Jewish community since the rise of Donald Trump, and even more so following the events in Charlottesville, Va., last month, when neo-Nazis marched down the street chanting anti-Semitic slogans. Many people – especially the prime minister’s usual opponents and detractors – criticized Mr. Netanyahu for being slow to condemn the neo-Nazis and for being insufficient in his denunciations.
In Israel’s defense, the response of American Jewish organizations, leaders and pundits to the neo-Nazi show of hatred in Charlottesville was confusing. Many Jews seemed to react to these events as if anti-Semitism – an existing but fringe sentiment within a country that generally has warm feelings toward its Jews – poses an immediate danger. But at the same time, by raising their voices to demand clearer condemnation, these Jewish leaders were acting assertive and self-confident. They hardly seem to be living in fear.
Since the only anti-Semitism Israelis understand is one of violence, blood and brutal intimidation, it is hard for many of them to appreciate the panic over a few hundred marchers and the ineloquent condemnation of the president. Since the only remedy for anti-Semitism they know is a Jewish state (and its Jewish army), it is hard for many of them to appreciate fears about anti-Semitism that are not followed by immigration to Israel.
But most of all, what should Israel do? Just consider some of the options:
Assist American Jews in some material way? They seem to be doing fine. In fact, they seem to feel confident enough to fight their own fight. Any attempt by Israel to intervene in this crisis would suggest that the Jews of America are not as integrated as they claim to be.
Join the chorus of condemnation? Israel doesn’t need to prove that it dislikes neo-Nazis. But as a country, it has other interests. First and foremost is its need for good relations with the American administration – the same administration that many American Jews blame for the crisis. Moreover, Israel has an aversion to leftist radicals like the ones who clashed with the white supremacists in Charlottesville because many of these radicals are associated with groups highly critical of Israel’s policies, who often support boycott of Israel – a stance that most Israelis believe is as anti-Semitic as the anti-Semitism of the right.
Refrain from responding? When Israel attempted that, many American Jewish leaders (and some Israelis) condemned its silence. “Any Jew, anywhere, who does not act to oppose President Donald Trump and his administration acts in favor of anti-Semitism,” wrote the Jewish novelists Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, asking Israel to “wise up.”
The only thing that Israel can really offer in response to anti-Semitism is something tried and true: its existence. Israel can and must continue to be a Jewish safe haven, ready to accept Jews in distress from anywhere in the world. Israel’s law of return enables every Jew who feels the need to flee persecution to find a home in the Jewish state and become a citizen.
There is a sense of disappointment among many Jews in America at what they perceive as Israeli indifference to anti-Semitism in the United States, whether it appears at neo-Nazi demonstrations or in memes on Twitter. But in fact, this is just another case of Jews talking past one another. Israelis see frightened American Jews rejecting what they consider the only solution for anti-Semitism. American Jews see cocky Israelis clinging to a solution that doesn’t address what they consider most important: an America free of anti-Semitism.
The cure for this misunderstanding is knowledge that both communities lack. American Jews need to better understand that Israel’s stance on anti-Semitism in America reflects Israel’s circumstances. Israelis need to better understand the Jews of America and accept that for once, they shouldn’t offer the ready-made and oftentimes valuable solution of a safe haven, but rather extend their empathy to another great Jewish community waging its own battle.
* You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you “like” this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia
President Trump speaks with his UN ambassador Nikki Haley before his forceful speech to the UN General Assembly today, in which he didn’t mince his words.
FORCEFUL WORDS ON HUMAN RIGHTS
[Note by Tom Gross]
Another dispatch will follow later concerning speculation over President Donald Trump’s approach to Israeli-Palestinian peace prospects.
But before that, mindful that most of you are working in offices and were thus unable to watch it in full, I would recommend watching the speech that Trump has just given to the world’s leaders – including some of the world’s dictators present in person – at the UN General Assembly.
I would recommend watching the full speech rather than listening to or reading one or two lines that some media may understandably choose to draw attention to in their reports (Trump’s very harsh threats to North Korea and so on). (You may also wish to skip the opening couple of minutes in which Trump discusses domestic issues.)
In his speech, Trump made what were (in my view at any rate) important remarks about human rights, democracy and socialism; about Syria, and Assad’s use of chemical weapons; about the depravity of the UN Human Rights Council; about the Iranian regime (while paying great credit to the Iranian people); about Islamic terrorism; and about the Maduro regime in Venezuela – subjects covered in these dispatches over the years. Rarely have I heard any western leader make them with such force and clarity.
I’m also glad that Trump mentioned Otto Warmbier, the Jewish-American student who was sent home in a coma to die by the North Korean regime earlier this year. (Some of Otto’s family and friends are subscribers to this email list.)
While, of course, I don’t agree with everything Trump said (or indeed many of his domestic policies), his remarks in his UN speech today on migration and refugees were noteworthy.
The speech is also worth watching to observe the facial reactions of the Syrian, Iranian and other ambassadors to which he directed his remarks.
* You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you “like” this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia
Pictured above: A German art installation in 2012 showed 100 Barbie dolls with burkas. Now “Muslim Barbie” dolls that are able to recite the Koran aloud to children, are going on sale
* Mahmoud Abbas sends flowers to North Korean dictator – on five occasions
* Palestinian Authority arrests man for inviting a Jew to dinner
* Liberal literary critic Leon Wieseltier: “Shame on the Holocaust Museum for releasing an allegedly scientific study that justifies Obama’s bystanderism [in allowing Syrians to be gassed and bombed]. If I had the time I would gin up a parody version of this that will give us the computational-modeling algorithmic counterfactual analysis of John J McCloy’s decision not to bomb the Auschwitz ovens in 1944. I’m sure we could concoct the fucking algorithms for that, too.”
* The Holocaust Museum in Washington abruptly pulls the new study, which was due to be released with much fanfare today (9/11), following a wave of criticism from both liberal and conservative Jewish leaders that it was trying to “absolve the Obama Administration for inaction in face of Syrian genocide”.
* On leaving office, Obama appointed several key aides to be directors of the Holocaust Museum -- including Ben Rhodes, the architect of Obama’s appeasement policy to the Iranian and Syrian regimes.
* In the 1990s, the Clinton administration pressured the Holocaust Museum to invite Croatian leader and notorious anti-Semite Franjo Tudjman, as well as Yasser Arafat, to the museum (“not to educate them, but to burnish their image) leading the museum’s director to resign in protest. A subsequent enquiry slammed the Clinton administration for its “inappropriate” politicization of the taxpayer-funded museum and said this should never happen again. Now Obama is being criticized for doing something similar.
CONTENTS
1. “Muslim Barbie” recites the Koran
2. Mahmoud Abbas sends flowers to North Korean dictator (on five occasions)
3. Palestinian Authority arrests man for inviting a Jew to dinner
4. Governor of Ramallah glorifies Martyrs’ “perfumed blood”
5. “Holocaust Museum Pulls Study Absolving Obama Administration for Inaction in Face of Syrian Genocide” (By Armin Rosen, Tablet, Sept. 5, 2017)
6. “Playing politics with the Holocaust Museum” (New York Post Editorial, Sept. 9, 2017)
7. “The Hard Right and Hard Left Pose Different Dangers” (By Alan Dershowitz, Wall St Journal, Sept. 11, 2017)
8. “British conductor sacked by US music festival after ‘innocent’ joke with his African-American friend was labelled racist” (UK Sunday Telegraph, Sept. 10, 2017)
[Notes by Tom Gross]
“MUSLIM BARBIE” RECITES THE KORAN
A new Barbie-style doll, complete with a Muslim “hijab” head covering, has gone on sale in the Middle East. It was designed by a French Muslim mother, but manufactured in China.
Whereas Barbies on sale in the West asks questions aloud such as, “Which clothes shall I wear?” and “Do you want to go to a pizza party?”, the “Muslim Barbie” recites four different verses from the Koran. Promotional videos advertising the new doll say the doll’s ability to teach young girls to repeat Koranic verses is a prime selling point for the doll.
Currently, the “Muslim Barbie” is on sale in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman and Kuwait, but there are plans to export it to Europe.
MAHMOUD ABBAS SENDS MORE FLOWERS TO NORTH KOREAN DICTATOR
The Associated Press reported last month that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had wished North Korean leader Kim Jong-un “health and happiness” in a message in honor of North Korea’s “Liberation Day.” The message also lauded North Korea’s “stability and prosperity.”
Now the Palestinian Authority’s official western-funded Wafa news agency reports that on Thursday Abbas received a cable back, thanking him from (to give him his full title) “the Secretary-General of the Korean Workers’ Party, First Commander of the National Defense Committee of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Commander-in-Chief Kim Jong-un,” warmly praising Abbas’s leadership.
North Korean media report that Abbas has also sent Kim Jong-un big bouquets of flowers for his birthday, for the new year and on at least three other occasions in the last 12 months.
The Palestinian Authority continues to be one of the most generously funded regimes in history by Western taxpayers.
(H/T Algemeiner)
PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY ARRESTS MAN FOR INVITING A JEW TO DINNER
The Palestinian Ma’an news agency reported yesterday that Palestinian security forces have arrested a Hebron man, Muhammad Jabir, for hosting Yehudah Glick, an Israeli Likud MK who enjoys good relations with many Palestinians, for dinner at his home for the Eid al-Adha holiday.
The PA’s General Intelligence agency acted after photos of the two men eating and laughing together appeared on twitter alongside greetings for a “Happy Eid.”
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas retains a dictatorial grip on his security forces and has done everything possible to thwart peace efforts with Israel since assuming the Palestinian leadership in 2004.
GOVERNOR OF RAMALLAH GLORIFIES MARTYRS’ “PERFUMED BLOOD”
The governor of the de facto capital of the Palestinian Authority, Ramallah, who is a senior loyalist to President Abbas has praised Palestinian terrorists who murdered Israeli civilians including young children, as having “perfumed the ground with the beautiful scent and fragrance of their blood”.
District Governor of Ramallah Laila Ghannam made the remarks in a speech to mark the Muslim holiday Eid Al-Adha, reports the official PA news agency, WAFA, on Sept. 1, 2017. (Translation courtesy of PMW.)
On numerous occasions after knife and vehicle attacks over recent years, Ghannam posted glorifications of the attackers on her Facebook page, calling for others to also slit the throats of Israelis and ram their cars into them.
***
I attach four pieces below. The one by Alan Dershowitz is particularly interesting.
-- Tom Gross
ARTICLES
HOLOCAUST MUSEUM PULLS STUDY ABSOLVING OBAMA ADMINISTRATION FOR INACTION IN FACE OF SYRIAN GENOCIDE
Holocaust Museum Pulls Study Absolving Obama Administration for Inaction in Face of Syrian Genocide
Abrupt decision comes in wake of sharp rebukes, bafflement, and concern about politicization of Shoah memory
By Armin Rosen
Tablet
September 5, 2017
A major United States Holocaust Memorial Museum study of the Obama Administration’s Syria policy was put on hold last night after portions of the study given to Tablet were greeted with shock and harsh criticism by prominent Jewish communal leaders and thinkers.
According to a publicity email sent by the Museum, the study was set to be launched at an event at the US Institute for Peace in Washington, D.C., on September 11 and was overseen by a former US intelligence and national security official under Obama, Cameron Hudson, now director of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide. The paper argued that “a variety of factors, which were more or less fixed, made it very difficult from the beginning for the US government to take effective action to prevent atrocities in Syria, even compared with other challenging policy contexts.” Using computational modeling and game theory methods, as well as interviews with experts and policymakers, the report asserted that greater support for the anti-Assad rebels and US strikes on the Assad regime after the August 2013 Ghouta chemical weapons attack would not have reduced atrocities in the country, and might conceivably have contributed to them.
The intervention of the Holocaust Museum in a hot-button political dispute – and the apparent excuse of official US government inaction in the face of large-scale mass murder, complete with the gassing of civilians and government-run crematoria – alarmed many Jewish communal figures. “The first thing I have to say is: Shame on the Holocaust Museum,” said Leon Wieseltier, the literary critic and fellow at the Brookings Institution, who slammed the Museum for “releasing an allegedly scientific study that justifies bystanderism.”
The Museum’s exercise in counter-factual history, he suggested, was inherently absurd. “If I had the time I would gin up a parody version of this that will give us the computational-modeling algorithmic counterfactual analysis of John J McCloy’s decision not to bomb the Auschwitz ovens in 1944. I’m sure we could concoct the fucking algorithms for that, too.”
While examining the US’s response to the conflict arguably falls within the Museum’s stated purpose of “inspiring citizens and leaders to confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity,” it is unclear how producing work that could be used to justify or excuse official inaction in the face of war crimes committed by Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria squares with that mission. Since the outbreak of civil war early 2011, the Syrian dictator has repeatedly attacked civilians with poison gas, maintaining a network of prison camps where as many as 60,000 people have been tortured, murdered, and disappeared, with their bodies dumped into crematoria and mass graves.
“I assume the leadership understands that it made a misstep,” said Abraham Foxman, the director of the Center of the Study of Anti-Semitism at the Museum of Jewish Heritage-A Living Memorial to the History. “I served three times on the Holocaust Commission. The institution is very dear to my heart. And I believe that it’s appropriate – indeed, it’s imperative – for the Museum deal with questions of genocide in contemporary current events. But in this case, several things are happening that are problematic. First, the genocide isn’t over. In the case of Rwanda and Bosnia, for example, the genocides were over and the Museum was able to offer its assessment in hindsight. Two, more broadly I just don’t think it’s appropriate for the Museum to issue this kind of judgement – that’s beyond its mandate. This should be a place where one meets to discuss, to debate, to question, to challenge: Could more have been done? Where? How? Not to issue judgment, especially not in this politicized atmosphere.”
Some Jewish communal leaders suggested both privately to Tablet, and in conversations with board members and staff at the Holocaust Museum, that the Museum’s moral authority had been hijacked for a partisan re-writing of recent history, and alleged that the museum had absolved the Obama administration of any moral or political error in its response to mass atrocities in Syria. At least one of the architects of the Obama administration policy in Syria, former deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes, was appointed to the museum’s Memorial Council during the closing days of the Obama administration. The Council also includes Obama NSC alumni Grant Harris and Daniel Benjamin. Other Obama NSC alumni, including Hudson and Anna Cave, have joined the Museum’s staff.
The Museum apparently undertook its Syria project without the usual degree of input from Washington’s community of Syrian activists who had worked with the Holocaust Museum to bring the Ceasar files and video from the besieged city of Aleppo to light. Given that the Museum had previously worked hard to expose Syrian government atrocities, members of the anti-Assad community found the counterfactuals report to be curiously out of character for the museum, and objected to the report’s seeming vindication of US policy.
“If the reports are saying that nothing could have been done for Syria, this is something that every Syrian American I know considers grossly incorrect,” Shlomo Bolts, a policy and advocacy officer with the Syrian American Council noted to me. “There was a lot that could have been done and that can still be done to stop the mass atrocities in Syria. There are still thousands of civilians in Syria who are being tortured in Assad’s jails or fear imminent attacks by Assad forces and there is much that can be done to help them.”
On Monday and Tuesday, Tablet reached out to over 20 members of the Museum’s Memorial Council. Daniel Benjamin said that the Syria project predated his appointment to the board in January of 2017, and added he had not been briefed on the report’s background. No one else on the board, including multiple other Obama-era administration foreign policy officials, was willing to discuss the report, with several members saying that they had little specific familiarity with the study or the issues it discussed.
Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz, co-founder of Jews for Human Rights in Syria, who has worked with the Holocaust Museum and the Syrian community, said he was baffled by the report. “When the presidential commission on the Holocaust decided the Museum should also include a committee on conscience, the idea was that they should not merely preserve Holocaust memory but be a force to helping prevent future genocides and mass atrocities,” he explained. “To merely say no intervention could have made a difference strikes me as a strange conclusion if I understand it correctly…. I don’t think we have the right to choose inaction when we know the reality on the ground.”
As of around 6 p.m. on Tuesday, anyone who wants to read the study is now greeted with this message: “Last week the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide released a research study that examined several decision points during the Syrian conflict. Since its release, a number of people with whom we have worked closely on Syria since the conflict’s outbreak have expressed concerns with the study. The Museum has decided to remove the study from its website as we evaluate this feedback.”
PLAYING POLITICS WITH THE HOLOCAUST MUSEUM
Playing politics with the Holocaust Museum
By Post Editorial Board
New York Post
September 9, 2017
What will it take to keep the United States Holocaust Museum free of political interference and manipulation?
The problem first popped up soon after its founding a quarter-century ago, then faded – until now, it appears.
The museum, in conjunction with the US Institute for Peace, was set to unveil a study on Syrian war crimes on Monday. The report claims it was near-impossible for then-President Barack Obama to “take effective action to prevent atrocities.”
In other words, the study – which relies on “computational modeling and game theory methods” – is basically a whitewash of Obama’s abandoning of his self-proclaimed “red line” against Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad.
Oh, and the study was overseen by a former Obama intelligence and national-security official.
Happily, Tablet magazine published advance excerpts of the report, and the reactions were so strongly negative that the museum quickly pulled it from its Web site.
It’s not hard to see why: The museum’s mission extends beyond just the Nazi genocide of Jews. But, as literary critic Leon Wieseltier notes, that mission hardly includes rewriting history to “justify or excuse official inaction” in an ongoing genocide.
Making this report even more blatantly partisan is the fact that several Obama administration officials – including Ben Rhodes, an architect of his Syria policy – are members of the museum’s board.
In 1993, shortly after the Holocaust Museum opened, President Bill Clinton’s State Department pressured the museum to invite Croatian leader Franjo Tudjman, despite his anti-Jewish writings.
Five years later, State similarly pushed the museum to invite PLO leader Yasser Arafat – not to educate him, but to burnish his image. When the museum’s director objected (and was overruled by White House pressure), he quit.
The National Academy of Public Administration, at Congress’ request, later issued a report decrying the “inappropriate” politicization of the taxpayer-funded museum and calling for reforms.
That report said the Holocaust Museum in particular “should not be used as a tool to achieve particular political purposes.” Too bad that sage advice has been forgotten.
A museum of conscience, as this one purports to be, should never abandon it – or allow it to be hijacked.
THE HARD RIGHT AND HARD LEFT POSE DIFFERENT DANGERS
The Hard Right and Hard Left Pose Different Dangers
By affirming benign goals, Antifa and its comrades make intolerance and even violence seductive.
By Alan Dershowitz
Wall Street Journal
Sept. 11, 2017
The extreme right – neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and other assorted racists and anti-Semites – and the extreme left – anti-American and anti-Israel zealots, intolerant censors, violent anarchists such as Antifa, and other assorted radicals – both pose a danger in the U.S. and abroad.
Which group poses a greater threat? The question resists a quantitative answer, because much may depend on time and place. It may also be in the eye of the beholder: For many on the center left, the greater danger is posed by the hard right, and vice versa. Yet the most important reason for this lack of a definitive quantitative answer is that they pose qualitatively different dangers.
History has set limits on how far to the extremes of the hard right reasonable right-wingers are prepared to go. Following the horrors of the Holocaust and Southern lynchings, no one claiming the mantle of conservative is willing to be associated with Nazi anti-Semitism or the KKK. Neo-Nazi and Klan speakers are not invited to university campuses.
The hard left lacks comparable limits. Despite what Stalin, Mao, the Castros, Pol Pot, Hugo Chavez and North Korea’s Kims have done in the name of communism, there are still those on the left – including some university professors and students – who do not shrink from declaring themselves communists, or even Stalinists or Maoists. Their numbers are not high, but the mere fact that it is acceptable on campuses, even if not praiseworthy, to be identified with hard-left mass murderers, but not hard-right mass murderers, is telling.
The ultimate goals of the hard right are different, and far less commendable, than those of the hard left. The hard-right utopia might be a fascist society modeled on the Italy or Germany of the 1930s, or the segregationist post-Reconstruction American South.
The hard-left utopia would be a socialist or communist state-regulated economy aiming for economic and racial equality. The means for achieving these important goals might be similar to those of the hard right. Hitler, Stalin and Mao all killed millions of innocent people in an effort to achieve their goals.
For the vast majority of reasonable people, including centrist conservatives, the hard-right utopia would be a dystopia to be avoided at all costs. The hard-left utopia would be somewhat more acceptable to many on the center left, so long as it was achieved nonviolently.
The danger posed by the extreme left is directly related to its more benign goals, which seduce some people, including university students and faculty. Believing that noble ends justify ignoble means, they are willing to accept the antidemocratic, intolerant and sometimes violent censorship policies and actions of Antifa and its radical cohorts.
For that reason, the most extreme left zealots are welcomed today on many campuses to express their radical views. That is not true of the most extreme neo-Nazi or KKK zealots, such as David Duke and Richard Spencer. Former White House aide Steve Bannon recently told “60 Minutes” that “the neo-Nazis and neo-Confederates and the Klan, who by the way are absolutely awful – there’s no room in American politics for that.” In contrast, prominent American leftists, such as Noam Chomsky and even Bernie Sanders, supported the candidacy of British hard-left extremist Jeremy Corbyn, despite his flirtation with anti-Semitism.
The hard right is dangerous largely for what it has done in the past. For those who believe that past is prologue, the danger persists. It also persists for those who look to Europe for hints of what may be in store for us: Neofascism is on the rise in Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Greece, Lithuania and even France. Some of this rise may be attributable to regional issues, such as the mass migration of Muslims from Syria and other parts of the Middle East. But some may also be a function of growing nationalism and nostalgia for the “glory” days of Europe – or, as evidenced in our last election, of America.
The danger posed by the extreme hard left is more about the future. Leaders of tomorrow are being educated today on campus. The tolerance for censorship and even violence to suppress dissenting voices may be a foretaste of things to come. The growing influence of “intersectionality” – which creates alliances among “oppressed” groups – has led to a strange acceptance by much of the extreme left of the far-from-progressive goals and violent means of radical Islamic terrorist groups that are sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic and anti-Western. This combination of hard-left secular views and extreme Islamic theological views is toxic.
We must recognize the different dangers posed by different extremist groups that preach and practice violence, if we are to combat them effectively in the marketplace of ideas, and perhaps more importantly, on the campuses and streets.
BRITISH CONDUCTOR SACKED BY US MUSIC FESTIVAL AFTER ‘INNOCENT’ JOKE WITH HIS AFRICAN-AMERICAN FRIEND WAS LABELLED RACIST BY WHITE PASSERBY
British conductor sacked by US music festival after ‘innocent’ joke with his African-American friend was labelled racist
By Patrick Sawer
Sunday Telegraph
September 10, 2017
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/09/british-conductor-sacked-us-music-festival-joke-labelled-racist/
An acclaimed British conductor has been fired from a prestigious American music festival after a seemingly innocent joke he made to a black friend was labelled racist.
Matthew Halls was removed as artistic director of the Oregon Bach Festival following an incident in which he imitated a southern American accent while talking to his longstanding friend, the African-American classical singer Reginald Mobley.
It is understood a white woman who overheard the joke reported it to officials at the University of Oregon, which runs the festival, claiming it amounted to a racial slur.
Shortly after Halls, who has worked with orchestras and opera houses across Europe and the US, was told by a university official his four year contract, which was to have run until 2020, was being terminated.
Mobley, a countertenor who regularly performs in the UK, has now spoken out to defend his friend, saying there was nothing racist about the joke and describing the university’s apparent treatment of Halls as deeply unjust.
“He has been victimised and I’m very upset about it,” he told The Sunday Telegraph. “It was an innocent joke that has been entirely taken out of context.”
The incident comes amid heightened sensitivity over race in the US, with renewed protest over police brutality, institutional racism and the re-emergence of white supremacists.
It also coincides with the rise of what some have dubbed ‘the snowflake generation’ and the debate over whether the demand for ‘safe spaces’ on campus stifles debate and free speech or simply protects minorities from abuse and discrimination.
But Mobley maintains that while racism should be challenged and ethnic groups made aware of each other’s sensitivities, his friend has been the victim of misunderstanding and overreaction.
Halls and Mobley had been chatting at a reception held last month during this year’s Oregon Bach Festival, when the subject turned to a concert in London in which Mobley had performed.
The singer, who was born and raised in the southern state of Florida, said the concert had an “antebellum” feel to it, of the sort associated with Gone With the Wind and other rose-tinted representations of the pre-Civil War south.
In response Mobley says that Halls “apologised on behalf of England”, before putting on an exaggerated southern accent and joking: “Do you want some grits?”, in a reference to the ground corn dish popular in the south.
“I’m from the deep south and Matthew often makes fun of the southern accent just as I often make fun of his British accent,” said Mobley. “Race was not an issue. He was imitating a southern accent, not putting on a black accent, and there was nothing racist or malicious about it.”
But the singer suspects that a white woman who overheard their conversation and spoke to him moments later went on to report it to the university, alleging Halls had made a racist joke.
An internal inquiry into the incident is understood to have been held as a result of the complaint.
However, Mobley was not invited to give evidence and he says there is a deep irony in the fact the authorities appear to have assumed on his behalf that he would have objected to the joke.
“I’m the subject of a falsified story, without having the chance to have my say,” he said. “My voice has been taken away in a conversation about race that involved me, and technically that’s racist.”
Pressure on the festival organisers to reinstate Halls is growing, with from others musicians coming to his support.
Meanwhile Mobley fears his friend’s career will suffer after being tarnished with the incendiary label of racism.
“Matthew is obviously upset, and part of his anger would have to come from the fact he’s been accused of saying something so insensitive to a close friend,” said Mobley.
The singer, who will perform in Purcell’s King Arthur with the Academy of Ancient Music at London’s Barbican next month, says that while he appreciates the efforts of some white people to confront racism, he warns it can lead to wrong headed assumptions.
“A lot of our allies have become so eager to help the race and fix the scars they almost go too far,” said Mobley. “They think they are at the point where they understand racism more than those who have really encountered it in their lives and they make assumptions on our behalf about how we might feel, as if we don’t understand when something said to us or done to use is racist.
“It’s well meaning, but the path to hell is paved with good intentions.
“It also demeans and cheapens the very serious work done by civil rights activists and abolitionists to have the difficult nuances of racism and microaggressions taken seriously.”
Responding to the claims a spokesman for Oregon Bach Festival, said: “The University considers many factors when deciding whether to continue a contract. Regarding Reggie Mobley, it doesn’t appear he was involved in the University’s decision. Having said that, it would be inappropriate for the University to disclose details about a personnel matter.
“While I anticipate that more information will be available soon, I’m afraid that’s all I can say on the matter right now.”
* You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you “like” this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia
Pictured above: A German art installation in 2012 showed 100 Barbie dolls with burkas. Now “Muslim Barbie” dolls that are able to recite the Koran aloud to children, are going on sale
* Mahmoud Abbas sends flowers to North Korean dictator – on five occasions
* Palestinian Authority arrests man for inviting a Jew to dinner
* Liberal literary critic Leon Wieseltier: “Shame on the Holocaust Museum for releasing an allegedly scientific study that justifies Obama’s bystanderism [in allowing Syrians to be gassed and bombed]. If I had the time I would gin up a parody version of this that will give us the computational-modeling algorithmic counterfactual analysis of John J McCloy’s decision not to bomb the Auschwitz ovens in 1944. I’m sure we could concoct the fucking algorithms for that, too.”
* The Holocaust Museum in Washington abruptly pulls the new study, which was due to be released with much fanfare today (9/11), following a wave of criticism from both liberal and conservative Jewish leaders that it was trying to “absolve the Obama Administration for inaction in face of Syrian genocide”.
* On leaving office, Obama appointed several key aides to be directors of the Holocaust Museum -- including Ben Rhodes, the architect of Obama’s appeasement policy to the Iranian and Syrian regimes.
* In the 1990s, the Clinton administration pressured the Holocaust Museum to invite Croatian leader and notorious anti-Semite Franjo Tudjman, as well as Yasser Arafat, to the museum (“not to educate them, but to burnish their image) leading the museum’s director to resign in protest. A subsequent enquiry slammed the Clinton administration for its “inappropriate” politicization of the taxpayer-funded museum and said this should never happen again. Now Obama is being criticized for doing something similar.
CONTENTS
1. “Muslim Barbie” recites the Koran
2. Mahmoud Abbas sends flowers to North Korean dictator (on five occasions)
3. Palestinian Authority arrests man for inviting a Jew to dinner
4. Governor of Ramallah glorifies Martyrs’ “perfumed blood”
5. “Holocaust Museum Pulls Study Absolving Obama Administration for Inaction in Face of Syrian Genocide” (By Armin Rosen, Tablet, Sept. 5, 2017)
6. “Playing politics with the Holocaust Museum” (New York Post Editorial, Sept. 9, 2017)
7. “The Hard Right and Hard Left Pose Different Dangers” (By Alan Dershowitz, Wall St Journal, Sept. 11, 2017)
8. “British conductor sacked by US music festival after ‘innocent’ joke with his African-American friend was labelled racist” (UK Sunday Telegraph, Sept. 10, 2017)
[Notes by Tom Gross]
“MUSLIM BARBIE” RECITES THE KORAN
A new Barbie-style doll, complete with a Muslim “hijab” head covering, has gone on sale in the Middle East. It was designed by a French Muslim mother, but manufactured in China.
Whereas Barbies on sale in the West asks questions aloud such as, “Which clothes shall I wear?” and “Do you want to go to a pizza party?”, the “Muslim Barbie” recites four different verses from the Koran. Promotional videos advertising the new doll say the doll’s ability to teach young girls to repeat Koranic verses is a prime selling point for the doll.
Currently, the “Muslim Barbie” is on sale in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman and Kuwait, but there are plans to export it to Europe.
MAHMOUD ABBAS SENDS MORE FLOWERS TO NORTH KOREAN DICTATOR
The Associated Press reported last month that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had wished North Korean leader Kim Jong-un “health and happiness” in a message in honor of North Korea’s “Liberation Day.” The message also lauded North Korea’s “stability and prosperity.”
Now the Palestinian Authority’s official western-funded Wafa news agency reports that on Thursday Abbas received a cable back, thanking him from (to give him his full title) “the Secretary-General of the Korean Workers’ Party, First Commander of the National Defense Committee of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Commander-in-Chief Kim Jong-un,” warmly praising Abbas’s leadership.
North Korean media report that Abbas has also sent Kim Jong-un big bouquets of flowers for his birthday, for the new year and on at least three other occasions in the last 12 months.
The Palestinian Authority continues to be one of the most generously funded regimes in history by Western taxpayers.
(H/T Algemeiner)
PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY ARRESTS MAN FOR INVITING A JEW TO DINNER
The Palestinian Ma’an news agency reported yesterday that Palestinian security forces have arrested a Hebron man, Muhammad Jabir, for hosting Yehudah Glick, an Israeli Likud MK who enjoys good relations with many Palestinians, for dinner at his home for the Eid al-Adha holiday.
The PA’s General Intelligence agency acted after photos of the two men eating and laughing together appeared on twitter alongside greetings for a “Happy Eid.”
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas retains a dictatorial grip on his security forces and has done everything possible to thwart peace efforts with Israel since assuming the Palestinian leadership in 2004.
GOVERNOR OF RAMALLAH GLORIFIES MARTYRS’ “PERFUMED BLOOD”
The governor of the de facto capital of the Palestinian Authority, Ramallah, who is a senior loyalist to President Abbas has praised Palestinian terrorists who murdered Israeli civilians including young children, as having “perfumed the ground with the beautiful scent and fragrance of their blood”.
District Governor of Ramallah Laila Ghannam made the remarks in a speech to mark the Muslim holiday Eid Al-Adha, reports the official PA news agency, WAFA, on Sept. 1, 2017. (Translation courtesy of PMW.)
On numerous occasions after knife and vehicle attacks over recent years, Ghannam posted glorifications of the attackers on her Facebook page, calling for others to also slit the throats of Israelis and ram their cars into them.
***
I attach four pieces below. The one by Alan Dershowitz is particularly interesting.
-- Tom Gross
ARTICLES
HOLOCAUST MUSEUM PULLS STUDY ABSOLVING OBAMA ADMINISTRATION FOR INACTION IN FACE OF SYRIAN GENOCIDE
Holocaust Museum Pulls Study Absolving Obama Administration for Inaction in Face of Syrian Genocide
Abrupt decision comes in wake of sharp rebukes, bafflement, and concern about politicization of Shoah memory
By Armin Rosen
Tablet
September 5, 2017
A major United States Holocaust Memorial Museum study of the Obama Administration’s Syria policy was put on hold last night after portions of the study given to Tablet were greeted with shock and harsh criticism by prominent Jewish communal leaders and thinkers.
According to a publicity email sent by the Museum, the study was set to be launched at an event at the US Institute for Peace in Washington, D.C., on September 11 and was overseen by a former US intelligence and national security official under Obama, Cameron Hudson, now director of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide. The paper argued that “a variety of factors, which were more or less fixed, made it very difficult from the beginning for the US government to take effective action to prevent atrocities in Syria, even compared with other challenging policy contexts.” Using computational modeling and game theory methods, as well as interviews with experts and policymakers, the report asserted that greater support for the anti-Assad rebels and US strikes on the Assad regime after the August 2013 Ghouta chemical weapons attack would not have reduced atrocities in the country, and might conceivably have contributed to them.
The intervention of the Holocaust Museum in a hot-button political dispute – and the apparent excuse of official US government inaction in the face of large-scale mass murder, complete with the gassing of civilians and government-run crematoria – alarmed many Jewish communal figures. “The first thing I have to say is: Shame on the Holocaust Museum,” said Leon Wieseltier, the literary critic and fellow at the Brookings Institution, who slammed the Museum for “releasing an allegedly scientific study that justifies bystanderism.”
The Museum’s exercise in counter-factual history, he suggested, was inherently absurd. “If I had the time I would gin up a parody version of this that will give us the computational-modeling algorithmic counterfactual analysis of John J McCloy’s decision not to bomb the Auschwitz ovens in 1944. I’m sure we could concoct the fucking algorithms for that, too.”
While examining the US’s response to the conflict arguably falls within the Museum’s stated purpose of “inspiring citizens and leaders to confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity,” it is unclear how producing work that could be used to justify or excuse official inaction in the face of war crimes committed by Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria squares with that mission. Since the outbreak of civil war early 2011, the Syrian dictator has repeatedly attacked civilians with poison gas, maintaining a network of prison camps where as many as 60,000 people have been tortured, murdered, and disappeared, with their bodies dumped into crematoria and mass graves.
“I assume the leadership understands that it made a misstep,” said Abraham Foxman, the director of the Center of the Study of Anti-Semitism at the Museum of Jewish Heritage-A Living Memorial to the History. “I served three times on the Holocaust Commission. The institution is very dear to my heart. And I believe that it’s appropriate – indeed, it’s imperative – for the Museum deal with questions of genocide in contemporary current events. But in this case, several things are happening that are problematic. First, the genocide isn’t over. In the case of Rwanda and Bosnia, for example, the genocides were over and the Museum was able to offer its assessment in hindsight. Two, more broadly I just don’t think it’s appropriate for the Museum to issue this kind of judgement – that’s beyond its mandate. This should be a place where one meets to discuss, to debate, to question, to challenge: Could more have been done? Where? How? Not to issue judgment, especially not in this politicized atmosphere.”
Some Jewish communal leaders suggested both privately to Tablet, and in conversations with board members and staff at the Holocaust Museum, that the Museum’s moral authority had been hijacked for a partisan re-writing of recent history, and alleged that the museum had absolved the Obama administration of any moral or political error in its response to mass atrocities in Syria. At least one of the architects of the Obama administration policy in Syria, former deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes, was appointed to the museum’s Memorial Council during the closing days of the Obama administration. The Council also includes Obama NSC alumni Grant Harris and Daniel Benjamin. Other Obama NSC alumni, including Hudson and Anna Cave, have joined the Museum’s staff.
The Museum apparently undertook its Syria project without the usual degree of input from Washington’s community of Syrian activists who had worked with the Holocaust Museum to bring the Ceasar files and video from the besieged city of Aleppo to light. Given that the Museum had previously worked hard to expose Syrian government atrocities, members of the anti-Assad community found the counterfactuals report to be curiously out of character for the museum, and objected to the report’s seeming vindication of US policy.
“If the reports are saying that nothing could have been done for Syria, this is something that every Syrian American I know considers grossly incorrect,” Shlomo Bolts, a policy and advocacy officer with the Syrian American Council noted to me. “There was a lot that could have been done and that can still be done to stop the mass atrocities in Syria. There are still thousands of civilians in Syria who are being tortured in Assad’s jails or fear imminent attacks by Assad forces and there is much that can be done to help them.”
On Monday and Tuesday, Tablet reached out to over 20 members of the Museum’s Memorial Council. Daniel Benjamin said that the Syria project predated his appointment to the board in January of 2017, and added he had not been briefed on the report’s background. No one else on the board, including multiple other Obama-era administration foreign policy officials, was willing to discuss the report, with several members saying that they had little specific familiarity with the study or the issues it discussed.
Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz, co-founder of Jews for Human Rights in Syria, who has worked with the Holocaust Museum and the Syrian community, said he was baffled by the report. “When the presidential commission on the Holocaust decided the Museum should also include a committee on conscience, the idea was that they should not merely preserve Holocaust memory but be a force to helping prevent future genocides and mass atrocities,” he explained. “To merely say no intervention could have made a difference strikes me as a strange conclusion if I understand it correctly…. I don’t think we have the right to choose inaction when we know the reality on the ground.”
As of around 6 p.m. on Tuesday, anyone who wants to read the study is now greeted with this message: “Last week the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide released a research study that examined several decision points during the Syrian conflict. Since its release, a number of people with whom we have worked closely on Syria since the conflict’s outbreak have expressed concerns with the study. The Museum has decided to remove the study from its website as we evaluate this feedback.”
PLAYING POLITICS WITH THE HOLOCAUST MUSEUM
Playing politics with the Holocaust Museum
By Post Editorial Board
New York Post
September 9, 2017
What will it take to keep the United States Holocaust Museum free of political interference and manipulation?
The problem first popped up soon after its founding a quarter-century ago, then faded – until now, it appears.
The museum, in conjunction with the US Institute for Peace, was set to unveil a study on Syrian war crimes on Monday. The report claims it was near-impossible for then-President Barack Obama to “take effective action to prevent atrocities.”
In other words, the study – which relies on “computational modeling and game theory methods” – is basically a whitewash of Obama’s abandoning of his self-proclaimed “red line” against Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad.
Oh, and the study was overseen by a former Obama intelligence and national-security official.
Happily, Tablet magazine published advance excerpts of the report, and the reactions were so strongly negative that the museum quickly pulled it from its Web site.
It’s not hard to see why: The museum’s mission extends beyond just the Nazi genocide of Jews. But, as literary critic Leon Wieseltier notes, that mission hardly includes rewriting history to “justify or excuse official inaction” in an ongoing genocide.
Making this report even more blatantly partisan is the fact that several Obama administration officials – including Ben Rhodes, an architect of his Syria policy – are members of the museum’s board.
In 1993, shortly after the Holocaust Museum opened, President Bill Clinton’s State Department pressured the museum to invite Croatian leader Franjo Tudjman, despite his anti-Jewish writings.
Five years later, State similarly pushed the museum to invite PLO leader Yasser Arafat – not to educate him, but to burnish his image. When the museum’s director objected (and was overruled by White House pressure), he quit.
The National Academy of Public Administration, at Congress’ request, later issued a report decrying the “inappropriate” politicization of the taxpayer-funded museum and calling for reforms.
That report said the Holocaust Museum in particular “should not be used as a tool to achieve particular political purposes.” Too bad that sage advice has been forgotten.
A museum of conscience, as this one purports to be, should never abandon it – or allow it to be hijacked.
THE HARD RIGHT AND HARD LEFT POSE DIFFERENT DANGERS
The Hard Right and Hard Left Pose Different Dangers
By affirming benign goals, Antifa and its comrades make intolerance and even violence seductive.
By Alan Dershowitz
Wall Street Journal
Sept. 11, 2017
The extreme right – neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and other assorted racists and anti-Semites – and the extreme left – anti-American and anti-Israel zealots, intolerant censors, violent anarchists such as Antifa, and other assorted radicals – both pose a danger in the U.S. and abroad.
Which group poses a greater threat? The question resists a quantitative answer, because much may depend on time and place. It may also be in the eye of the beholder: For many on the center left, the greater danger is posed by the hard right, and vice versa. Yet the most important reason for this lack of a definitive quantitative answer is that they pose qualitatively different dangers.
History has set limits on how far to the extremes of the hard right reasonable right-wingers are prepared to go. Following the horrors of the Holocaust and Southern lynchings, no one claiming the mantle of conservative is willing to be associated with Nazi anti-Semitism or the KKK. Neo-Nazi and Klan speakers are not invited to university campuses.
The hard left lacks comparable limits. Despite what Stalin, Mao, the Castros, Pol Pot, Hugo Chavez and North Korea’s Kims have done in the name of communism, there are still those on the left – including some university professors and students – who do not shrink from declaring themselves communists, or even Stalinists or Maoists. Their numbers are not high, but the mere fact that it is acceptable on campuses, even if not praiseworthy, to be identified with hard-left mass murderers, but not hard-right mass murderers, is telling.
The ultimate goals of the hard right are different, and far less commendable, than those of the hard left. The hard-right utopia might be a fascist society modeled on the Italy or Germany of the 1930s, or the segregationist post-Reconstruction American South.
The hard-left utopia would be a socialist or communist state-regulated economy aiming for economic and racial equality. The means for achieving these important goals might be similar to those of the hard right. Hitler, Stalin and Mao all killed millions of innocent people in an effort to achieve their goals.
For the vast majority of reasonable people, including centrist conservatives, the hard-right utopia would be a dystopia to be avoided at all costs. The hard-left utopia would be somewhat more acceptable to many on the center left, so long as it was achieved nonviolently.
The danger posed by the extreme left is directly related to its more benign goals, which seduce some people, including university students and faculty. Believing that noble ends justify ignoble means, they are willing to accept the antidemocratic, intolerant and sometimes violent censorship policies and actions of Antifa and its radical cohorts.
For that reason, the most extreme left zealots are welcomed today on many campuses to express their radical views. That is not true of the most extreme neo-Nazi or KKK zealots, such as David Duke and Richard Spencer. Former White House aide Steve Bannon recently told “60 Minutes” that “the neo-Nazis and neo-Confederates and the Klan, who by the way are absolutely awful – there’s no room in American politics for that.” In contrast, prominent American leftists, such as Noam Chomsky and even Bernie Sanders, supported the candidacy of British hard-left extremist Jeremy Corbyn, despite his flirtation with anti-Semitism.
The hard right is dangerous largely for what it has done in the past. For those who believe that past is prologue, the danger persists. It also persists for those who look to Europe for hints of what may be in store for us: Neofascism is on the rise in Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Greece, Lithuania and even France. Some of this rise may be attributable to regional issues, such as the mass migration of Muslims from Syria and other parts of the Middle East. But some may also be a function of growing nationalism and nostalgia for the “glory” days of Europe – or, as evidenced in our last election, of America.
The danger posed by the extreme hard left is more about the future. Leaders of tomorrow are being educated today on campus. The tolerance for censorship and even violence to suppress dissenting voices may be a foretaste of things to come. The growing influence of “intersectionality” – which creates alliances among “oppressed” groups – has led to a strange acceptance by much of the extreme left of the far-from-progressive goals and violent means of radical Islamic terrorist groups that are sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic and anti-Western. This combination of hard-left secular views and extreme Islamic theological views is toxic.
We must recognize the different dangers posed by different extremist groups that preach and practice violence, if we are to combat them effectively in the marketplace of ideas, and perhaps more importantly, on the campuses and streets.
BRITISH CONDUCTOR SACKED BY US MUSIC FESTIVAL AFTER ‘INNOCENT’ JOKE WITH HIS AFRICAN-AMERICAN FRIEND WAS LABELLED RACIST BY WHITE PASSERBY
British conductor sacked by US music festival after ‘innocent’ joke with his African-American friend was labelled racist
By Patrick Sawer
Sunday Telegraph
September 10, 2017
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/09/british-conductor-sacked-us-music-festival-joke-labelled-racist/
An acclaimed British conductor has been fired from a prestigious American music festival after a seemingly innocent joke he made to a black friend was labelled racist.
Matthew Halls was removed as artistic director of the Oregon Bach Festival following an incident in which he imitated a southern American accent while talking to his longstanding friend, the African-American classical singer Reginald Mobley.
It is understood a white woman who overheard the joke reported it to officials at the University of Oregon, which runs the festival, claiming it amounted to a racial slur.
Shortly after Halls, who has worked with orchestras and opera houses across Europe and the US, was told by a university official his four year contract, which was to have run until 2020, was being terminated.
Mobley, a countertenor who regularly performs in the UK, has now spoken out to defend his friend, saying there was nothing racist about the joke and describing the university’s apparent treatment of Halls as deeply unjust.
“He has been victimised and I’m very upset about it,” he told The Sunday Telegraph. “It was an innocent joke that has been entirely taken out of context.”
The incident comes amid heightened sensitivity over race in the US, with renewed protest over police brutality, institutional racism and the re-emergence of white supremacists.
It also coincides with the rise of what some have dubbed ‘the snowflake generation’ and the debate over whether the demand for ‘safe spaces’ on campus stifles debate and free speech or simply protects minorities from abuse and discrimination.
But Mobley maintains that while racism should be challenged and ethnic groups made aware of each other’s sensitivities, his friend has been the victim of misunderstanding and overreaction.
Halls and Mobley had been chatting at a reception held last month during this year’s Oregon Bach Festival, when the subject turned to a concert in London in which Mobley had performed.
The singer, who was born and raised in the southern state of Florida, said the concert had an “antebellum” feel to it, of the sort associated with Gone With the Wind and other rose-tinted representations of the pre-Civil War south.
In response Mobley says that Halls “apologised on behalf of England”, before putting on an exaggerated southern accent and joking: “Do you want some grits?”, in a reference to the ground corn dish popular in the south.
“I’m from the deep south and Matthew often makes fun of the southern accent just as I often make fun of his British accent,” said Mobley. “Race was not an issue. He was imitating a southern accent, not putting on a black accent, and there was nothing racist or malicious about it.”
But the singer suspects that a white woman who overheard their conversation and spoke to him moments later went on to report it to the university, alleging Halls had made a racist joke.
An internal inquiry into the incident is understood to have been held as a result of the complaint.
However, Mobley was not invited to give evidence and he says there is a deep irony in the fact the authorities appear to have assumed on his behalf that he would have objected to the joke.
“I’m the subject of a falsified story, without having the chance to have my say,” he said. “My voice has been taken away in a conversation about race that involved me, and technically that’s racist.”
Pressure on the festival organisers to reinstate Halls is growing, with from others musicians coming to his support.
Meanwhile Mobley fears his friend’s career will suffer after being tarnished with the incendiary label of racism.
“Matthew is obviously upset, and part of his anger would have to come from the fact he’s been accused of saying something so insensitive to a close friend,” said Mobley.
The singer, who will perform in Purcell’s King Arthur with the Academy of Ancient Music at London’s Barbican next month, says that while he appreciates the efforts of some white people to confront racism, he warns it can lead to wrong headed assumptions.
“A lot of our allies have become so eager to help the race and fix the scars they almost go too far,” said Mobley. “They think they are at the point where they understand racism more than those who have really encountered it in their lives and they make assumptions on our behalf about how we might feel, as if we don’t understand when something said to us or done to use is racist.
“It’s well meaning, but the path to hell is paved with good intentions.
“It also demeans and cheapens the very serious work done by civil rights activists and abolitionists to have the difficult nuances of racism and microaggressions taken seriously.”
Responding to the claims a spokesman for Oregon Bach Festival, said: “The University considers many factors when deciding whether to continue a contract. Regarding Reggie Mobley, it doesn’t appear he was involved in the University’s decision. Having said that, it would be inappropriate for the University to disclose details about a personnel matter.
“While I anticipate that more information will be available soon, I’m afraid that’s all I can say on the matter right now.”
* You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you “like” this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia
Syrians trying to identify the bodies of children after a chemical weapons attack. On Thursday, after years of pleading by ordinary Syrians to the US and Europe to intervene, Israel destroyed a facility at which Assad and the Iranian regime are continuing to manufacture chemical weapons and barrel bombs
PRO-DEMOCRACY SYRIANS ECSTATIC
[Note by Tom Gross]
I attach several pieces below on the Israeli air strike, carried out early Thursday morning, that hit Syrian President Assad’s key chemical weapons and barrel bomb manufacturing plant at Masyaf. The plant was reportedly built by Iran for Assad, and manned by Iranian and Syrian scientists.
Syrian exiles and pro-democracy forces have ecstatically welcomed the Israeli strike on Masyaf, one of the principle facilities at which the Syrian and Iranian regimes have been manufacturing and continue to manufacture the deadly chemical agents and barrel bombs that have killed tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians.
In one such gas attack on a Damascus suburb in 2013, more than 1,400 civilians including at least 426 children were murdered by the Assad regime. President Obama promised and then declined to act against Masyaf and other plants, and since then thousands more Syrian civilians have been killed by weapons built there. Assad paid a visit to the plant as recently as late June. (Israeli intelligence says the 2013 attack, as I reported at the time, was ordered by Assad’s sadistic brother Maher.)
It appears that Russia, which now controls the air space around Masyaf, may have tacitly allowed Israel to hit the plant. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accompanied by the head of the Mossad held talks with President Putin last month about thwarting the increasing Iranian take-over of Syria.
“A MORAL ACT”
Thursday’s attack comes exactly ten years after the Israeli air force destroyed Syria’s Al Kibar reactor, at which the Assad regime was attempting to produce nuclear weapons – a raid condemned at the time by almost everybody in world, but since widely recognized as the right thing to do.
The first piece below is by Amos Yadlin, the former chief of Israeli military intelligence, and before that a fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force’s successful raid to destroy Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor in Osirak in 1981 (another highly significant act criticized by the rest of the world at the time, including the Reagan administration, but since welcomed).
In a tweet, Yadlin called Thursday’s act against the Masyaf facility “a commendable and moral action by Israel against the slaughter in Syria.”
THE SUDDEN SILENCE OF KEN ROTH
It has also been noted that Ken Roth, the head of Human Rights Watch, has in a series of over 500 tweets during the last few years repeatedly called for the world to take action against Syria’s chemical weapons attacks, singling out the Masyaf facility by name in at least one tweet.
Now that Israel has hit the facility, the famously anti-Israel Roth is suddenly silent on the matter, even though Syrian human rights activists say thousands of Syrian lives have been saved by Israel’s intervention.
I attach six articles below.
CONTENTS
1. “How to understand Israel’s strike on Syria” (By Amos Yadlin, NY Times, Sept. 8, 2017)
2 “Israel just showed what a ‘red line’ is really supposed to mean” (By Benny Avni, NY Post, Sept. 7, 2017)
3. “Israel may have struck the Syrian weapons facility before Hezbollah could take over” (By Anna Ahronheim, Jerusalem Post, Sept. 7, 2017)
4. “The Next Middle East War” (Wall St Journal Editorial, Sept. 8, 2017)
5. “Israel dare not allow Hezbollah to strike first” (By Amos Harel, Haaretz, Sept. 7, 2017)
6. “U.N. report blames Syrian regime for April gas attack” (By Raja Abdulrahim, Wall St Journal, Sept. 6, 2017
HOW TO UNDERSTAND ISRAEL’S STRIKE ON SYRIA
How to Understand Israel’s Strike on Syria
By Amos Yadlin
New York Times (op-ed)
Sept. 8, 2017
In the early hours of Thursday night, according to the Syrian Army, the Israeli Air Force attacked a military site in the Syrian town of Masyaf that produces advanced missiles. Though the attack does not compare in strategic value to Syria’s Al Kibar nuclear reactor, which the Israeli Air Force destroyed a decade ago, it represents a major step in the right direction for Israel’s policy toward Syria. This strike sent five key messages – messages that point toward Israel adopting a more proactive strategy in confronting the threats posed by the Assad regime and its partners, Iran and Hezbollah.
The first message is strategic. Throughout the Syrian civil war, Israel has avoided taking sides and has largely limited its role in the conflict to targeting weapons shipments en route to Hezbollah. Now, it seems, Israel is broadening the scope of its action to prevent its key adversaries from producing or acquiring advanced weaponry in the first place. This is essentially an extension of the Begin Doctrine, pioneered by Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1981, which insisted that Israel carry out preemptive strikes to stop its enemies from constructing nuclear-enrichment plants as well as production facilities for advanced conventional weapons.
The second message is political. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already notified Moscow and Washington that the agreement they reached in July, which reportedly stipulated that Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed forces must keep 10 to 20 kilometers away from Israel’s northern border, is unacceptable. If it is not feasible to oust these Tehran-backed groups, then at the very least they must be pushed significantly further away from Israel’s border. Israel, which in August sent a delegation headed by Mossad chief Yossi Cohen to the White House while Prime Minister Netanyahu himself went to Sochi, Russia, to meet with President Putin to discuss the ceasefire, is now clarifying that if the great powers fail to take its critical interests into account when deciding on the future of Syria, it will act independently to protect itself.
The third message has to do with credibility. In a world where threats are cheap and plentiful – recall President Trump’s recent promise of “fire and fury” against North Korea – it is much more meaningful when a nation delivers on tough rhetoric. In this specific case, the complex that was attacked was a research and production center belonging to the CERS Institute. The institute is funded mostly by Iran, utilizes Iranian technology and produces advanced long-range missiles and chemical weapons for the Syrian Arab Army and Hezbollah. The strike should indicate to both Tehran and Damascus that Israel is willing to take decisive action to prevent the development of long-term strategic threats.
The fourth message is about Israel’s freedom of military operations, and the Russian strategy in Syria. The strike rebuts those claims that the Israeli Air Force was negatively affected by the deployment of powerful Russian air defenses in Syria. That the targeted facility is located in an area under the Russian air shield points to one of two possibilities: either Russia understands the level of Israeli concern of Iran taking over Syria, or the Israeli Air Force has again proved that no air defense system is perfect.
The final message – and perhaps the most important – is the moral one. With the exception of its humanitarian assistance to Syria, which includes treating thousands of wounded Syrians in Israeli hospitals, Israel has all but ignored the war crimes that the Assad regime, the Iranians and Hezbollah are committing against the Syrian people. As Israelis and especially as Jews, we must not stand as spectators as a genocide is being carried out via chemical weapons, mass executions, bombings, starvation and displacement. The facility that was hit produces chemical weapons, barrel bombs and a variety of other weapons that the Assad regime has used to massacre innocents. Destroying it could save countless lives.
So what happens now? Israel should prepare for a possible response from Syria or even Iran. Militarily, Israel is ready – tens of thousands of troops have been called up for the largest exercise in decades. However, it is important to avoid being dragged into war along the northern border; any such confrontation would be costly to both sides in terms of blood and treasure. On the diplomatic side, Israel must return to Washington and Moscow and once more clarify that it will not accept the ongoing Iranian takeover of Syria. They may now find much more attentive audiences.
Israel knows the bitter truth of the phrase “an ounce of cure is worth a pound of prevention.” Deciding to take action before it is absolutely necessary is not easy, but Israel’s experience proves that it is far better in the long-term to confront budding threats rather than nuclear ones.
Israel just showed what a ‘red line’ is really supposed to mean
By Benny Avni
New York Post
September 7, 2017
A red line’s a red line. That was Israel’s message when it struck a major Syrian arms facility from the air.
Jerusalem officials declined to comment for the record, but Syrian and Lebanese media reported that the Israeli Defense Force struck a major missile and military research facility at Masyaf, Syria, that’s controlled by President Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian co-conspirators.
The daring attack carried all the hallmarks of Israel’s unique brand of non-proliferation enforcement. In an age of major proliferation crises, that method should be studied carefully and emulated when possible.
The strike was “not routine,” tweeted Amos Yadlin, the director of Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies. “It targeted a Syrian military-scientific center for the development and manufacture of precision missiles” that also “produces the chemical weapons and barrel bombs that have killed thousands of Syrian civilians.”
Yadlin, who once commanded the IDF intelligence unit, knows a thing or two about combatting proliferation: He was one of the pilots who took part in Israel’s 1981 “Operation Opera” to destroy Iraq’s Osirak nuclear plant.
The hit on the Syrian factory was reminiscent of another IDF feat, which occurred 10 years before, to the day: “Operation Orchard,” the mission that leveled a nascent Syrian nuclear facility, built with the help of Iran and North Korea.
Israel has told everyone (including UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres last week) that it wouldn’t allow into Syria and Lebanon certain arms, including precision-guided missiles, that can change the face of future wars against it. Wednesday’s operation made clear it means it.
It also dealt a major blow to Syria’s chemical-arms capabilities. Washington had fingered the bombed facility as one of Syria’s three chemical-arms factories.
And as it happens, just hours before the Israeli attack, the United Nations confirmed Assad’s responsibility for a horrific chemical strike on the town Khan Sheikhun last April. Some 83 people, mostly civilians, were confirmed killed in that strike.
In response, President Trump authorized the firing of US Tomahawks on a Syrian air base, in a symbolic departure from President Obama’s failure to enforce his own red line against Assad’s use of chemical weapons.
Recall that Obama, back in 2013, instead agreed to a Russian scheme for Assad to sign the international chemical-arms convention, vow to never use those weapons again and destroy all his chemical stockpiles.
It’s a familiar tale: We negotiate with bad actors and proliferators of banned weapons in the hope of avoiding military action, get them to promise not to do it again and, presto, problem solved. Without firing a shot.
Obama signed a nuclear deal with Iran that was also based on promises. A decade from now, that may well look as ineffective as the deal Bill Clinton signed with North Korea in the 1990s, when Kim Jong-un’s father agreed to end his nuclear program. Kim on Sunday conducted his sixth test of a nuclear bomb, his most powerful yet.
Such non-proliferation agreements are typically applauded worldwide, because they involve no acts of violence and pose no major immediate risk of a wider war. They’re hailed as effective at the moment they’re signed – well before any time has passed to prove them the shams they are.
Now we know Assad’s promise to Obama that he’d not use chemical arms didn’t work. Would Israel’s much-maligned method be more successful?
A while back, one of the most admired diplomats in the non-proliferation arena, Hans Blix, told me Israel’s attack on Iraq’s Osirak facility was a major mistake, as it gave Saddam Hussein a huge incentive to rebuild his nuclear program.
Maybe, but Saddam never again managed to get close to possessing a nuke. Imagine if he had one in the two wars America fought in Iraq. Or if Assad possessed the ultimate weapon during these last six years of war.
As the Syrian war appears to be winding up in victory for Assad, Iran and Hezbollah, Israel is acting to prevent them from fulfilling their vow to erase it off the map, and prevent proliferation of banned arms in the process.
Israel now must “prepare for a Syrian-Iranian-Hezbollah response,” Yadlin tweeted, adding that Russia too may be in “opposition” to Israel’s strike. But Jerusalem has long made its red lines clear to all, including Moscow.
This week’s lesson for the knee-jerk “no military solution” crowd is clear: Daring, well-planned surgical attacks are a non-proliferation tool that should be considered where practical – especially when the alternative is a meaningless pact with an unreliable dictator.
‘ISRAEL MAY HAVE STRUCK THE SYRIAN WEAPONS FACILITY BEFORE HEZBOLLAH COULD TAKE OVER’
‘Israel may have struck the Syrian weapons facility before Hezbollah could take over’
By Anna Ahronheim
Jerusalem Post
September 7, 2017
A top Israeli security expert says that there’s a strong chance Hezbollah leader Hassan Nassrallah was planning on taking over the chemical weapons facility Israel targeted.
There’s a strong probability that the Syrian military research center allegedly struck by Israeli warplanes on Thursday morning was targeted because of concerns that Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nassrallah had asked Damascus to hand over the facility to the Lebanon-based Shi’ite terror group.
This assessment comes from the former national security adviser, Maj.-Gen (ret.) Yaakov Amidror, who now serves as an analyst at Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. According to him, the strike on the al-Talai Scientific Studies and Research Center may have been a consequence of Nasrallah’s visit to Damascus last week.
Nasrallah boasted of his visit to the Syrian capital in a live speech, but according Amidror, who was speaking on a conference call organized by The Israel Project, the facility may not only have been producing weapon systems for Hezbollah but was actually going to be taken over by the group as per Nassrallah’s demand.
The facility has been known for many years as a center for research and development for weapons systems, including chemical weapons.
Noting that the strike came almost 10 years to the day of the Israeli strike on the Syrian nuclear reactor in Deir Ezzor, Amidror stated that it should be clear for Syria that Israel will not allow Iran or Hezbollah to build their capabilities because of the “chaotic mess in Syria.”
“Just imagine if such a regime had nuclear capabilities,” he said.
While the IDF did not comment on the strike as it does not comment on foreign reports, it would not be the first time Israeli jets have hit Assad regime and Hezbollah targets in Syria. Jerusalem has repeatedly said that while there is no interest by Israel to enter into Syria’s seven year civil war, there are red lines that Jerusalem has set including the smuggling of sophisticated weaponry to Hezbollah and an Iranian presence on its borders.
In a recent interview with Haaretz, former Israel Air Force Head Maj.-Gen. Amir Eshel stated that Israel carried out at least 100 strikes in the past five years against the transfer of advanced weaponry from the Assad regime to Hezbollah, including the transfer of chemical weapons.
According to Amidror, while this strike would follow the same policy of destroying advanced weapon systems destined for Hezbollah, Israel actually prevented them from being produced in the first place.
“It’s another level of interfering,” Amidror stated, adding that it was the first time that the target which was attacked is a formal Syrian facility, not just a warehouse but one responsible for producing chemical weapons, rockets and missiles.
Michael Horowitz, Director of Intelligence at Prime Source, a Middle East-based geopolitical consultancy firm, told The Jerusalem Post that this Israeli strike is significant due to its location which is close to both a Russian air defense base as well a suspected Iranian missile production facility.
Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence and Executive Director of Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) took to Twitter to state that the strike sent three important messages, namely that Israel intends to enforce its redlines “despite the fact that the great powers are ignoring them.”
Yadlin stated that it was now important to keep the escalation in check and to prepare for a Syrian-Iranian-Hezbollah response.
Following the strike, the Syrian army warned against the “dangerous repercussions of this aggressive action to the security and stability of the region.”
But according to Horowitz, it is likely that any response by the Assad regime or Hezbollah would be limited.
“Thus far both the Syrian regime and Hezbollah have failed to respond to the Israeli effort to smuggle weapons from Syria and build new missile production facilities in the country,” he told the Post.
“Beyond symbolic attacks coming from Syria, which remain quite risky in the current context with both Assad and Nasrallah busy in Eastern Syria, I think the main response will be an acceleration of Iranian efforts to entrench itself in Syria. As long as none of the “great powers” commit to countering Iranian influence in the country, Israeli can only delay what seems inevitable - namely an Iranian militarization of Syria.”
THE NEXT MIDDLE EAST WAR
The Next Middle East War
Israel and Iran are heading for conflict over southern Syria
Wall Street Journal
Editorial
Sept. 8, 2017
Israel launched airstrikes on a military compound in Syria on Thursday, and the bombing should alert the Trump Administration as much as the Syrians. They carry a warning about the next war in the Middle East that could draw in the U.S.
Israel doesn’t confirm or deny its military strikes, but former officials said they were aimed at a base for training and a warehouse for short- and midrange missiles. The strikes also hit a facility that the U.S. cited this year for involvement in making chemical weapons.
The larger context is the confrontation that is building between Israel and Iran as the war against Islamic State moves to a conclusion in Syria and Iraq. Iran is using Syria’s civil war, and the battle against ISIS, as cause to gain a permanent military foothold in Syria that can threaten Israel either directly or via its proxies in Syria and Lebanon.
Tehran has helped Hezbollah stockpile tens of thousands of missiles that will be launched against Israel in the next inevitable conflict. If it can also dominate southern Syria, Iran can establish a second front on the border near the Golan Heights that would further stretch Israel’s ability to defend itself.
Israel may have to make more such strikes in Syria because Iran isn’t likely to give up on this strategic opening. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards know they have Russia’s backing in Syria, and the U.S. is signaling that it is loathe to do anything to change that once Islamic State is routed from Raqqa.
“As far as Syria is concerned, we have very little to do with Syria other than killing ISIS,” President Trump said Thursday at a White House press conference with the emir of Kuwait. “What we do is we kill ISIS. And we have succeeded in that respect. We have done better in eight months of my Presidency than the previous eight years against ISIS.”
Great, but the problem is that the end of ISIS won’t bring stability to Syria, and American interests in the Middle East don’t end with ISIS. The danger of a proxy war or even a direct war between Iran and Israel is growing, and it will increase as Iran’s presence builds in Syria. Mr. Trump may not like it, but he needs a strategy for post-ISIS Syria that contains Iran if he doesn’t want the U.S. to be pulled back into another Middle East war.
ISRAEL DARE NOT ALLOW HEZBOLLAH TO STRIKE FIRST
Israel Dare Not Allow Hezbollah to Strike First
By Amos Harel
Haaretz
September 7, 2017
The question is whether the army will receive orders to strike first – before Iran-Hezbollah demolishes our cities while destroying defense and economic infrastructure
There’s a reason why some people call Israel’s army the “Israel Containment Forces.” For many years, including (or especially) the Second Lebanon War, the IDF did not truly aspire, as an army going to war must aspire, to defeat the enemy once and for all, in other words to neutralize its capacity to further endanger the lives of Israel’s citizens, soldiers and infrastructure.
This week, “unconnected to the threats issued by Hezbollah,” the army began conducting wide-scale and widely reverberating maneuvers, the objective being to preparing the army to contend with the Lebanese terrorist organization. This time, the military commentators wrote and broadcast, the “intention” is clear: to finish (the word expressly used by the exercise’s commander) the enemy.
Are we really facing a strategic turning point? In other words, will the next round bring the enemy to the point that it can no longer endanger Israel (an achievable goal with regard to this terrorist organization), or will we make do, as in earlier rounds in Lebanon and Gaza, with a “finishing” that brings temporary relief without neutralizing the enemy’s ability to go on the attack again.
The main question is: When will the army set forth on this decisive campaign? Before Iran-Hezbollah launch missiles at Israeli population centers and infrastructure, as threatened recently by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah – in another words, with a preemptive strike? (This used to be the doctrine of the IDF, which was victorious so long as it adhered to it.) Or will it strike only in response to an enemy attack, which will cause numerous deaths among civilians and soldiers, wreaking great destruction and chaos?
No one doubts the IDF’s capability of devastating Hezbollah. But since the enemy is equipped with thousands of accurate missiles, some of which cover the entire country, the question is whether the army will receive orders to strike first – before Iran-Hezbollah demolishes our cities while destroying defense and economic infrastructure. People in the know say that even though these issues have been discussed in the relevant forums, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was vague in addressing this crucial question. Based on the statements of Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, he should not be expected to recommend such a move, either.
If that’s how things stand – with Israel’s battle doctrine for the last generation conceding the first strike option to the enemy – an extensive reorganization is required. The Home Front Command and civilian organizations must be newly empowered to deal with the mass casualties and chaos that will ensue before the army recovers from the initial blow and sets out to “finish” the enemy.
As long as we haven’t crossed the psychological hurdle and understood that we have a duty to strike first to prevent mass civilian casualties, much of the preparation for the battle threatened by Nasrallah should focus on providing maximal protection to the home front, much better than was given in the past.
The IDF claims it has learned the lessons of the Second Lebanon War. One certainly hopes so. But in places where missiles landed, the civilian population – and this subject is not much discussed – also failed, along with their elected officials and other public figures. Civilians cannot be trained like an army. If the IDF allows the enemy to launch its missiles first, it is reasonable to assume that the flight and abandonment in the north in the Second Lebanon War, and the Negev in Operation Protective Edge, will be repeated.
This time, due to the significant improvement in the enemy’s capabilities, there will be more panic and hysteria. This is one more reason – the main one – why the government should instruct the army to use it’s acknowledged ability to prevent the enemy from firing the first, decisive salvo of missiles.
U.N. REPORT BLAMES SYRIAN REGIME FOR APRIL GAS ATTACK
U.N. Report Blames Syrian Regime for April Gas Attack
Chemical-bomb attack on town of Khan Sheikhoun released a cloud which spread and killed at least 83 persons
By Raja Abdulrahim
Wall Street Journal
Sept. 6, 2017
A United Nations report released Wednesday blamed the Syrian regime for a sarin gas attack on an opposition-held town that killed at least 83 people – many of them women and children – and called it a war crime.
The U.S. and other Western nations immediately blamed Bashar al-Assad’s regime for the April 4 attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib province. But this was the first time the U.N. echoed the allegation.
“The chemical bomb released a cloud which spread over a distance between 300 and 600 metres from the impact point and killed at least 83 persons, including 28 children and 23 women,” the U.N. said. “Some of the victims died in bed and their bodies weren’t found until later on 4 April. A single mother who was out farming returned home to find all her four children dead.”
The attack was carried out by a Sukhoi 22 warplane, an aircraft that only the regime operates. It conducted four airstrikes on Khan Sheikhoun, dropping three conventional bombs and one chemical bomb, according to the report by the U.N.’s independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria.
The commission has been gathering evidence of war crimes committed by the various parties involved in Syria’s conflict, now in its seventh year, and issues regular reports on its findings.
In the hours after the sarin gas attack, a warplane carried out at least three airstrikes on the only hospital in Khan Sheikhoun, which was treating sarin gas victims. The attack destroyed the hospital and forced doctors to send patients elsewhere. The U.N. commission said the attacks on the hospital were likely carried out by either the regime or its key military ally Russia.
Three days later, the U.S. launched dozens of cruise missiles on a Syrian air base directly linked to the chemical attack. The U.S. leads a coalition that battles Islamic State in Syria but this was the first intentional and direct American attack on the regime during the course of the war. It was meant to cripple the base’s aircraft, hangars, ammunition bunkers and air defense and radar systems.
Mr. Assad and ally Russia have denied responsibility for the chemical attack, instead claiming that an airstrike hit a terrorist chemical weapons depot. The U.N. commission said that explanation was extremely unlikely.
The commission requested information from the Syrian government during its investigation but said it never received a response. The commission has been routinely denied access to Syria to carry out its investigations.
The report is based on satellite imagery, interviews with victims, first responders and medical workers as well as an investigation by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which earlier concluded that sarin gas had been used.
The attack on Khan Sheikhoun was the deadliest such assault in Syria since the 2013 sarin gas attack on a Damascus suburb, which killed more than 1,400 civilians including at least 426 children.
In the wake of the 2013 attack, the Assad regime joined the Chemical Weapons Convention and pledged to relinquish its chemical arsenal as part of a deal to avert U.S. military action against it. But since then the government has repeatedly been accused of deploying chemical weapons, with a U.N.-led investigation blaming it for at least three chlorine attacks in 2014 and 2015.
Though chlorine isn’t a banned substance under the convention, its use as a weapon is banned.
A Rohingya family flees across the Naf River into Bangladesh, carrying whatever possessions they could
ETHNIC CLEANSING AND MASS MURDER
[Note by Tom Gross]
This dispatch concerns the Rohingya Muslims of Burma (a country also known as Myanmar).
In many conflicts around the world today, Muslims are the aggressors – especially in several African countries where Christians are being targeted.
For instance, in Kenya yesterday, four people – including one man who had just gone out to cut wood – were beheaded by al-Shabab Islamist terrorists; nine other Kenyans have been beheaded over the summer.
Almost every day in Africa (as well as elsewhere in the world) there are suicide and other attacks by various Islamist groups. As I have pointed out before, even patients and staff at a leprosy hospital in Nigeria were targeted for death by an Islamist bomber.
THE BBC AND FAKE NEWS
But in Burma today it is undoubtedly the case that it is Muslims who are the victims, of Buddhist violence. I say “undoubtedly” because the BBC World Service this morning tried to cast doubt on what is happening, even using the phrase “fake news” in regard to reports of the massacres of Rohingya Muslims. (To those who have said that countries with Buddhist backgrounds don’t produce mass murderers, I would suggest they read about what happened in Cambodia under Pol Pot.)
There is in fact no evidence whatsoever that the 130,000 Rohingya refugees who have fled into Bangladesh since August 25th – walking for days, hiding in the jungle and crossing mountains and rivers, some arriving with bullet wounds – are lying.
(As I have pointed out on several occasions, it is the BBC itself that sometimes likes to spread inaccurate news – particularly when reporting Israel. When an internal BBC report -- the Balen report – reached the same conclusion about the BBC’s Israel coverage, the BBC then spent hundreds of thousands of pounds of British taxpayers’ money using legal measures to suppress the report.)
“TERRORISTS”
The BBC World Service this morning also used the term “terrorists” when referring to the “Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army” even though they have never engaged in bombing, and their attacks against the Burmese military have been few and far between – certainly nothing compared to what the BBC refers to as the “resistance” movement of Hamas, which has overwhelmingly targeted civilians.
As for the BBC’s domestic flagship “Today” program, this morning instead of more thoroughly covering the plight of the Rohingya, it again devoted considerable time to the question of “Israel and Palestine” (discussing the 1993 Oslo agreement) even though very little is happening in regard to the “peace process” at present – and certainty not compared to what is happening in Burma, Yemen and elsewhere.
The Rohingya who have fled in recent days follow the 87,000 Rohingya who were driven out of Burma last October – out of a total population of 1.1 million Rohingya. Another 400,000 Rohingya are thought to be currently trapped and hiding in the jungle and in the mountains, and to be running out of food. The Burmese government has blocked all UN and international aid to Rohingya civilians in the country.
THE COMPLICITY OF A NOBEL PEACE LAUREATE
Much of the media coverage hasn’t focused on the massacres themselves, but on the complicity of the Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.
She has not only defended the violence, but she has denied the very identity of the people being attacked, asking the U.S. ambassador not to use the term “Rohingya”.
There have been some good pieces on the situation in Burma, for example in Tuesday’s Financial Times. However, it was buried inside the paper and included no photos of victims to accompany it. (Contrast this with the many occasions that the Financial Times ran stories about the Palestinians, using the most graphic photos, often on page 1.)
There have been few if any demonstrations outside Burmese embassies in the West. There has been no flood of angry letters to newspapers, calling for a boycott of the Burmese people.
In this week’s Economist magazine, there is a story about the Rohingya massacre, but it is buried on page 41, and included no photos, and The Economist thinks it is appropriate to headline its article “Gory Days”.
As for the international edition of The New York Times on Tuesday (when other papers had reports on the situation in Burma), it didn’t cover Burma. But it did finally cover Congo that day (on its front page and on all of page 4) – not a story about the 5.6 million Congolese people who have been killed in the war there, but a very long story about gorillas, accompanied by four photos.
I attach three articles below.
-- Tom Gross
UPDATE, October 9, 2017
In the month since this dispatch was sent and posted, as tens of thousands more Rohingya fled, the media coverage by the BBC and others has improved, in the sense that they are highlighting this story, and doing so without parroting obvious lies by Burmese officials about the Rohingya burning their own homes.
I have spoken to senior BBC news producers who subscribe to this “Middle East dispatch” list and they have acknowledged that they had it wrong before and the story deserves more prominence.
And this morning, after a crowded refugee boat capsized last night with over 100 mainly women and children on board (the boats have to cross very dangerously in the dark to avoid being shot by Burmese forces), BBC World TV news initially only reported this 18 minutes into a 25 minute news, sport and weather bulletin, but later the BBC moved it up to their second international news story after I sent a senior executive there this dispatch again this morning.
ARTICLES
“TAKE AWAY AUNG SAN SUU KYI’S NOBEL PEACE PRIZE”
Take away Aung San Suu Kyi’s Nobel peace prize. She no longer deserves it
Once she was an inspiration. Now, silent on the plight of the Rohingya in Myanmar, she is complicit in crimes against humanity
By George Monbiot
The Guardian
September 6, 2017
Few of us expect much from political leaders: to do otherwise is to invite despair. But to Aung San Suu Kyi we entrusted our hopes. To mention her name was to invoke patience and resilience in the face of suffering, courage and determination in the unyielding struggle for freedom. She was an inspiration to us all.
Friends of mine devoted their working lives to the campaign for her release from the many years of detention imposed by the military dictatorship of Myanmar, and for the restoration of democracy. We celebrated when she was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1991; when she was finally released from house arrest in 2010; and when she won the general election in 2015.
None of this is forgotten. Nor are the many cruelties she suffered, including isolation, physical attacks and the junta’s curtailment of her family life. But it is hard to think of any recent political leader by whom such high hopes have been so cruelly betrayed.
By any standards, the treatment of the Rohingya people, a Muslim minority in Myanmar, is repugnant. By the standards Aung San Suu Kyi came to symbolise, it is grotesque. They have been described by the UN as “the world’s most persecuted minority”, a status that has not changed since she took office.
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide describes five acts, any one of which, when “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”, amounts to genocide. With the obvious and often explicit purpose of destroying this group, four of them have been practised more or less continuously by Myanmar’s armed forces since Aung San Suu Kyi became de facto political leader.
I recognise that the armed forces retain great power in Myanmar, and that Aung San Suu Kyi does not exercise effective control over them. I recognise that the scope of her actions is limited. But, as well as a number of practical and legal measures that she could use directly to restrain these atrocities, she possesses one power in abundance: the power to speak out. Rather than deploying it, her response amounts to a mixture of silence, the denial of well-documented evidence, and the obstruction of humanitarian aid.
I doubt she has read the UN human rights report on the treatment of the Rohingyas, released in February. The crimes it revealed were horrific.
It documents the mass rape of women and girls, some of whom died as a result of the sexual injuries they suffered. It shows how children and adults had their throats slit in front of their families.
It reports the summary executions of teachers, elders and community leaders; helicopter gunships randomly spraying villages with gunfire; people shut in their homes and burnt alive; a woman in labour beaten by soldiers, her baby stamped to death as it was born.
It details the deliberate destruction of crops and the burning of villages to drive entire populations out of their homes; people trying to flee gunned down in their boats.
And this is just one report. Amnesty International published a similar dossier last year. There is a mountain of evidence suggesting that these actions are an attempt to eliminate this ethnic group from Myanmar.
Hard as it is to imagine, this campaign of terror has escalated in recent days. Refugees arriving in Bangladesh report widespread massacres. Malnutrition ravages the Rohingya, afflicting 80,000 children.
In response Aung San Suu Kyi has blamed these atrocities, in a chillingly remote interview, on insurgents, and expressed astonishment that anyone would wish to fight the army when the government has done so much for them. Perhaps this astonishment comes easily to someone who has never visited northern Rakhine state, where most of this is happening.
It is true that some Rohingya people have taken up arms, and that the latest massacres were triggered by the killing of 12 members of the security forces last month, attributed to a group that calls itself the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army. But the military response has been to attack entire populations, regardless of any possible involvement in the insurgency, and to spread such terror that 120,000 people have been forced to flee in the past fortnight.
In her Nobel lecture, Aung San Suu Kyi remarked: “Wherever suffering is ignored, there will be the seeds of conflict, for suffering degrades and embitters and enrages.” The rage of those Rohingya people who have taken up arms has been used as an excuse to accelerate an existing programme of ethnic cleansing.
She has not only denied the atrocities, attempting to shield the armed forces from criticism; she has also denied the very identity of the people being attacked, asking the US ambassador not to use the term Rohingya. This is in line with the government’s policy of disavowing their existence as an ethnic group, and classifying them – though they have lived in Myanmar for centuries – as interlopers. She has upheld the 1982 Citizenship Law, which denies these people their rights.
When a Rohingya woman provided detailed allegations about her gang rape and associated injuries by Myanmar soldiers, Aung San Suu Kyi’s office posted a banner on its Facebook page reading “Fake Rape”. Given her reputation for micromanagement, it seems unlikely that such action would have been taken without her approval.
Not only has she snubbed and obstructed UN officials who have sought to investigate the treatment of the Rohingya, but her government has prevented aid agencies from distributing food, water and medicines to people displaced or isolated by the violence. Her office has accused aid workers of helping “terrorists”, putting them at risk of attack, further impeding their attempts to help people who face starvation.
So far Aung San Suu Kyi has been insulated by the apologetics of those who refuse to believe she could so radically abandon the principles to which she once appealed. A list of excuses is proffered: that she didn’t want to jeopardise her prospects of election; that she doesn’t want to offer the armed forces a pretext to tighten their grip on power; that she has to keep China happy.
None of them stand up. As a great democracy campaigner once remarked: “It is not power that corrupts, but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it.” Who was this person? Aung San Suu Kyi. But now, whether out of prejudice or out of fear, she denies to others the freedoms she rightly claimed for herself. Her regime excludes – and in some cases seeks to silence – the very activists who helped to ensure her own rights were recognised.
This week, to my own astonishment, I found myself signing a petition for the revocation of her Nobel peace prize. I believe the Nobel committee should retain responsibility for the prizes it awards, and withdraw them if its laureates later violate the principles for which they were recognised. There are two cases in which this appears to be appropriate. One is Barack Obama, who, bafflingly, was given the prize before he was tested in office. His programme of drone strikes, which slaughtered large numbers of civilians, should disqualify him from this honour. The other is Aung San Suu Kyi.
MYANMAR ARMY “BEHEADING CHILDREN AND BURNING PEOPLE ALIVE”
Myanmar army ‘beheading children and burning people alive’ according to eyewitnesses
By Fiona MacGregor, Yangon
Daily Telegraph (London)
September 2, 2017
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/02/rohingya-minority-beheaded-burned-alive-burma-army/
Fears of mass atrocities against Rohingya civilians in Myanmar were growing after eyewitness accounts emerged of children being beheaded and people burned alive.
The reports followed a week of violence and “inflammatory” government statements that led the UK’s ambassador to the UN to urge Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto head of Myanmar’s government, to “set the right tone”.
The Nobel peace laureate has faced international condemnation for failing to address ongoing rights abuses of the Muslim minority and for online statements by her “information committee” that have been accused of inflaming public sentiment against the wider Rohingya population and aid workers in the country.
“Aung San Suu Kyi hits a new low with this potentially deadly inflammatory propaganda. Leadership failure,” Phelim Kine, a deputy director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, said on Twitter.
The government of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, has condemned the international community and foreign media for focusing on the plight of the Rohingya while ignoring the impact of the violence on ethnic-Rakhine Buddhist and other non-Muslims in the state.
Northern Rakhine state erupted into fresh violence on August 25 when the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (Arsa) – since declared a terrorist organisation by the government - launched deadly attacks on 30 security posts.
The attacks came just hours after a commission appointed by Aung San Suu Kyi and led by Kofi Annan delivered its recommendations on how to end long-running ethno-religious tensions in Rakhine. The assaults by Arsa were widely condemned by the UK and the international community.
On Friday Bangkok-based rights group Fortify Rights published harrowing eye-witness accounts from Rohingya who escaped the village of Chut Pyin in Rathedaung township.
They claimed around 200 Rohingya men, women and children had been killed by Myanmar’s security forces and local ethnic-Rakhine villagers.
Soldiers reportedly arrested a large group of Rohingya men, marched them into a nearby bamboo hut, and set it on fire, burning them to death, the group said.
“My brother was killed - [Myanmar Army soldiers] burned him with the group,” Fortify Rights quoted 41-year-old Abdul Rahman of Chut Pyin as saying.
“We found [my other family members] in the fields. They had marks on their bodies from bullets and some had cuts. My two nephews, their heads were off. One was six years old and the other was nine years old. My sister-in-law was shot with a gun.”
On Friday the Myanmar military reported that some 400 people - around 370 Rohingya insurgents, 13 security forces, two government officials and 14 civilians had died in the violence since August 25.
The military and government have previously said security forces find it difficult to distinguish between insurgents and civilians. On August 30, a request by British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft, prompted the 15-member UN security council to discuss the situation during a closed-doors meeting.
Mr Rycroft said the members had condemned the violence and called on all parties, including Ms Suu Kyi, to de-escalate the situation in Rakhine.
“We look to her to set the right tone and to find the compromises and the de-escalation necessary in order to resolve the conflict for the good of all the people in Burma,” Mr Rycroft said.
A spokesman for the government could not be reached yesterday, but previously told The Telegraph that the information committee represented the views of the entire government – not just those of Ms Suu Kyi.
He also said that the government was aware of the need to protect “innocent Muslims” while tackling Arsa.
Mark Farmaner, director of London based NGO Burma Campaign UK, welcomed the security council discussion but called on the British Government to go further in its objections to the current situation in Rakhine.
“Supporting Aung San Suu Kyi and reforms in Myanmar doesn’t mean the British government has to stand by and do nothing as hundreds of Rohingya are slaughtered by the military,” he said.
A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY
A crime against humanity
The brutal, bloody, and ultimately pointless mistreatment of a Muslim minority shames Aung San Suu Kyi
The Guardian (Editorial)
September 4, 2017
The Rohingya are a Muslim people living in the north-west of predominantly Buddhist Myanmar, which borders mainly Muslim Bangladesh. In Myanmar they are seen as Muslims, and in Bangladesh as foreigners. Neither country claims or even wants them. Neither will allow them citizenship, though these families have lived in Burma for centuries at least. Now the military in Myanmar will not even tolerate their existence, and in recent weeks the almost genocidal pressure on their villages has greatly increased, sending tens of thousands trying to flee across a guarded border into an uncertain future. The army appears to be trying to starve out the population from areas where the armed resistance is most active, sending an unprecedented flood of refugees across the border. It has blocked UN agencies from delivering food, water or medicine to the affected areas, leaving an estimated 250,000 people without regular access to food.
There is very little for the refugees if they do get out alive. The Bangladeshi authorities are extremely reluctant to recognise that they are fleeing from persecution, even if local people have responded with great generosity.
For years Myanmar government forces have descended on villages to slaughter or drive out their inhabitants. Amnesty International has accused the regime of crimes against humanity. One of Myanmar’s most influential Buddhist preachers, Ashin Wirathu, preaches compassion towards mosquitoes but death for Muslims. Although he has served time in prison for earlier sermons, he is now more popular than ever, and widely believed to have the support of the army, which ruled the country openly for years and is still a powerful force behind the scenes.
The persecution has, predictably, led to an armed resistance, which, just as predictably, has provoked greater repression and cruelty. The Buddha had something to say about such chains of violence and revenge but it appears that the Myanmar’s Buddhists would rather use chains as weapons, the way Hells Angels did, than be freed from them. This story would be tragic and an outrage to the conscience of the world if it ended there. But there is every chance it will not. There is no repression savage enough to empty the whole of Rakhine state of its inhabitants and finally crush the resistance. Neither can the armed resistance movement hope for any final victory. But it can hope to enlarge the scope of the conflict, and present it as a religious one in which Muslims are being persecuted for their faith. That is at least half true, but it is a destructive as well as a powerful narrative. It adds Myanmar to the long list of countries where Islam appears to be the religion of the persecuted and the outcast, and to frame the justification for their own violent and intolerant revenge. There are already insurgencies of that sort – all of them building on existing ethnic divides and antagonisms – in many parts of south-east Asia, from Thailand to the Philippines.
There is a horrible irony in the involvement here of Aung San Suu Kyi, who appeared to be bringing to Myanmar the message of universal human rights – which would transcend or at least set limits to the brutalities of the old world. The Nobel prize winner, who appeared for decades as the epitome of principled and unflinching defence of human rights, now appears as the unfeeling figurehead of a vicious regime.
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French anti-Semitic “comedian” Dieudonné, above performing the “quenelle” (a neo-Nazi salute he helped invent), will travel to North Korea this week with another notorious French anti-Semite, to give a “private performance” at a regime-sponsored “Peace Festival”.
This dispatch concerns extremists in Europe, and attempts to outlaw them.
CONTENTS
1. Convicted in France, anti-Semitic comedian heads to perform in North Korea
2. Suspended prison sentence
3. British Labour agitators use Zionist smear to go on witch-hunt against MP who demanded justice for child abuse victims
4. Terror group permitted to run for parliament in German elections
5. A provocative foreign minister
6. Dutch Jews demand police take action over threats to kill Jews at Rotterdam BDS rally
7. Invoking 7th century massacres as Islam was founded
[Notes by Tom Gross]
CONVICTED IN FRANCE, ANTI-SEMITIC COMEDIAN HEADS TO PERFORM IN NORTH KOREA
The North Korean news website NK News reports that the popular French Muslim anti-Semitic “comedian” Dieudonné will travel to North Korea to perform at what is being dubbed a “peace festival” to be held next Saturday, September 9.
He will travel there with Alain Soral, a notorious former leading communist and anti-Semitic agitator who then joined the French far-right party, the National Front.
The event will not be open to the media. At previous events, Dieudonné made vicious anti-Semitic remarks, and has been convicted on several occasions for breaching France’s hate speech laws.
SUSPENDED PRISON SENTENCE
As I reported on this list at the time, in 2013 Dieudonné called for a French Jewish journalist to be sent to the “gas chamber”. And in 2015, he was given a seven-year suspended prison sentence by a French court after he praised the terrorist who murdered four Jews in a kosher supermarket in Paris hours after the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
His songs and performances frequently contain jokes connected to the word “Shoah,” the Hebrew for “The Holocaust”.
Dieudonné is banned from entering several counties, including Canada, Britain and Belgium, as posing a threat to public order.
As for Soral, last year a French court fined him 10,000 euros and handed him a six-month suspended prison sentence for his Facebook post saying “Hitler should have finished the job” in regard to the Holocaust.
Soral also has many previous convictions for minimizing or mocking the Holocaust.
BRITISH LABOUR AGITATORS USE ZIONIST SMEAR TO GO ON WITCH HUNT AGAINST MP WHO DEMANDED JUSTICE FOR CHILD VICTIMS
After British Labour MP Jess Phillips spoke out about the British-Pakistani-led gang who had sexually abused, and in many cases raped, 1400 white women and girls in and around the British town of Rotherham, party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s far-left supporters are launching a campaign of harassment against her to try and have her thrown out of parliament.
One of the smears they are using is to denounce her as a “Zionist” (for example, in the poster above) as if that were a negative thing. To my knowledge Phillips has no particular connections to Jews or Israel.
Last month Corbyn fired Sarah Champion, the Labour MP for Rotherham, from his shadow cabinet after she made outspoken remarks defending the abuse victims.
Corbyn’s supporters have been denounced as “the Fascist left” by many in Britain.
***
Here is a short interview with me from June on Corbyn’s views on foreign policy and Zionism. After his strong performance in June’s British general election, Corbyn has a realistic chance of becoming Britain’s prime minister after the next general election.
TERROR GROUP PERMITTED TO RUN FOR PARLIAMENT IN GERMAN ELECTIONS
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which has been banned as a terror organization in the US, EU and elsewhere, is to be allowed to field candidates in September’s national election to Germany’s Bundestag.
The PFLP will run on a joint list with the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany. The PFLP believes it has substantial support among German Muslims, including some newly arrived migrants to the country.
The PFLP has murdered dozens of Israelis in terrorist attacks and was a pioneer in the hijacking of airplanes.
Volker Beck, a Green Party Bundestag MP is among those calling for the PFLP to be banned from the election. Beck criticized Germany’s Interior Ministry for refusing to outlaw the party. Critics point out that Germans also elected the Nazis through democratic elections.
A PROVOCATIVE FOREIGN MINISTER
Earlier this year, Germany’s Foreign Minister, Sigmar Gabriel, was criticized in Israel for downplaying the Jewish centrality of the Holocaust.
After returning from a visit to Israel in April in which he was criticized for using Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day to meet with representatives of Breaking the Silence and B’tselem (two far-left NGOs which in the views of many Israelis are more interested in defaming Israel than in promoting a genuine Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement), Gabriel gave a provocative interview to the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper in which he said that the Social Democrats, his own party, were “the first victims of the Holocaust”.
(He later changed this to say to claim that they were “the first victims of the Nazis”.)
Hundreds of demonstrators outside Rotterdam Central Train Station. Some threatened Jews with death.
DUTCH JEWS DEMAND POLICE TAKE ACTION OVER THREATS TO KILL JEWS AT BDS ROTTERDAM RALLY
The Dutch Central Jewish Board made a formal complaint last Wednesday to Dutch police, demanding that they take action over the previous month’s (July 22) rally outside Rotterdam’s Central Train Station, which contained mass chanting for the murder of Jews.
The Netherlands has one of the worst records in Europe in relation to the murder of local Jews during the Holocaust.
The July 22 rally, called to protest the temporary placing of metal detectors to protect worshippers at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, was hosted by the Rotterdam branch of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and promoted on Facebook.
INVOKING 7th CENTURY MASSACRES AS ISLAM WAS FOUNDED
Participants at the rally shouted in Arabic, “Jews, remember Khaybar, the army of Mohammed is returning for you,” referring to the seventh century massacre of Jews by Muslims in the town of Khaybar, located in modern-day Saudi Arabia.
(There was a substantial Jewish presence for many centuries in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Arab world before Islam was founded in the seventh century.)
The Rotterdam rally, which included other anti-Semitic chants, was broadcast live by the Shebab News Agency, an agency banned by the Palestinian Authority because of its ties to Hamas, but permitted to operate in Holland.
Dutch Jewish leaders are requesting that the police enforce laws against incitement to racist violence. Earlier this year, a Belgian court convicted a Belgium Muslim who shouted the same words about Mohammed and Khaybar in 2014 in Antwerp.
The conservative faction on Rotterdam City Council, has demanded the mayor of Rotterdam prevent such anti-Semitic events occurring in future in their city.
The heads of BDS Rotterdam have released a statement condemning the chanting by those at the rally.
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