A senior staffer at the State Department told then-U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman in 2017, “Don’t be so Jewish.”
Friedman reveals the antisemitic episode in his explosive new memoir, Sledgehammer: How Breaking with the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East, set to be released on February 8 by HarperCollins. In the book, Friedman tells the story behind President Donald Trump’s diplomatic success in the Middle East — and how achieving it required smashing old prejudices.
The latest grotesque exhibition of anti-Israel vitriol among NGOs is this week’s publication of a report by Amnesty International that recycles tired, repeatedly disproven yet deliberately provocative antisemitic tropes and accusations of racism. This from an organization that was itself last year branded as “systemically racist”.
The title of the report, “Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: a cruel system of domination and crime against humanity”, is not only a blatant and unsubstantiated lie but also an insult to black South Africans who suffered so horrifically under a genuinely apartheid regime. Few will read this 200+ page diatribe of falsehoods, distortions and half-truths, but many will see and absorb its title, which has already been plastered greedily across left-leaning newspapers and disseminated to millions in social media. The BBC, for example, trumpeted “Israel’s policies against Palestinians amount to apartheid” in an online article, giving full weight to Amnesty’s claims, quoting several people who support them, but allowing only the briefest opposing view from the Israeli government at the end.
I’m not sure Israel will win this battle. A concerted effort on multiple fronts is being made to label it an “Apartheid” state.
The Jerusalem Post website was hacked by pro-Iranian hackers in the early hours of Monday morning, with a photo of a model Dimona nuclear facility being blown up and the text “we are close to you where you do not think about it” in English and Hebrew placed on the Twitter and website.
The photo also showed a ballistic missile falling from what appears to be a representation of the hand of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani. Sunday night marked the second anniversary of the US assassination of Soleimani in Baghdad in 2020.
At the U.N. General Assembly last month, a large majority of member nations voted to lavishly fund a permanent inquisition against the Jewish state. The member states funded the operation of an “ongoing independent, international commission of inquiry” against Israel.
The commission, run by outspoken haters of Israel with long records of demonizing it and its people, was formed by the U.N. Human Rights Council in a special session in May. Its purpose is to deny and reject Israel’s right to exist, its right to self-defense, its right to enforce its laws and its citizens’ rights to their properties and to their very lives.
Kudos to the Heritage Foundation workers who pinned down crystal-clear evidence of ugly bias among those pushing “diversity, equity and inclusion,” or DEI.
Specifically, proof that US university DEI staffers are overwhelmingly anti-Israel — and pro the government of China.
They identified 741 DEI officials at 65 different campuses, then examined each one’s Twitter feed for statements on Israel and China.
It is beginning to dawn on the Israelis that when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program, the Jewish state stands alone.
Something is changing in the assessment of the Iranian nuclear threat among Israel’s military brass. Evidence is growing that members of the IDF General Staff and Mossad are beginning to realize that the United States doesn’t share Israel’s goal of preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Last week, for instance, Michael Makovsky, head of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), a Washington-based group that cultivates ties between Israeli and U.S. generals, published an article in the New York Post in which he described their rude awakening.
Biden’s handlers are Obama 2.0.
On May 2018, when the United States Embassy in Jerusalem was inaugurated on the 70th anniversary of the State of Israel’s founding, the US consulate in Jerusalem became useless and quickly shut its gates. Now, in 2021, the current US Biden administration wants to reopen the consulate, “for the Palestinians”, Arabs ruled by the Palestinian Authority.
Seeing this proposal as a threat to Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett declined the request.
President Joe Biden attempted to illustrate his support for Israel by touting a supposed wartime meeting with former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir during a time when he was in law school and the former PM had not yet been elected.
h/t Marvin
NSO Group has been placed on a US blacklist by the Biden administration after it determined the Israeli spyware maker has acted “contrary to the foreign policy and national security interests of the US”.
The finding by the commerce department represents a blow to the Israeli company and reveals a deep undercurrent of concern by the US about the impact of spyware on national security interests.
It comes three months after a consortium of journalists working with the French non-profit group Forbidden Stories, including the Guardian, revealed multiple cases of journalists and activists who were hacked by foreign governments using the spyware.
As the U.S. Food and Drug Administration discusses administering COVID-19 vaccines to young children, an independent group of Israeli physicians, lawyers, scientists and researchers is advising the FDA of their “severe concerns” regarding the reliability and legality of official Israeli vaccine data.
The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) paid $16,000 for four learning sessions with self-described anti-racism activist Desmond Cole during which he attacked Israel using typical anti-Semitic tropes.
Despite an apology by education director Colleen Russell-Rawlins to concerned participants – mostly board principals – Cole was permitted to continue with his talks on Sept. 23 after the board brass was made aware of his hateful rhetoric during the first two talks on Sept. 20.
At the risk of putting a target on my back, it has occurred to me that the proper response for much of the anti-Israel activity on and off campus should be a combination of derision, counter-attack and neglect. I’ve been dealing with anti-Semitism, Israel denial and Middle East issues since my college days and, after more than 40 years, I have concluded that too much time, money, and energy is being spent responding to the latter.
Instead, we should simply say, “who cares?”
h/t Waffle
What would lead a man to become so monstrous as to murder his own mother? Islam. The death penalty for apostasy is part of Islamic law.
The IDF is addicted to credits for shiny new American weapons. But the strategic price may be too high.
” … The aid comes in the form of foreign military funding (FMF) designed to facilitate the foreign military sales (FMS) of American military equipment. This means that nearly three-quarters of the aid is spent in the United States, as a subsidy for the domestic arms industry, creating tens of thousands of jobs. Thanks to that money, the Israel Defense Forces have become the world’s most American-equipped army, with the largest fleets of F-16 and F-35 jets outside of the United States. For companies such as General Dynamics and Lockheed-Martin, there can be no better advertisement for their fighters than their use by Israel’s famed air force. And while Israel’s critics in the United States often claim that it receives the greatest amount of American aid, in fact Germany, Japan, and South Korea get many times more. Their allotments, though, are not characterized as aid but as items in the U.S. defense budget.
Never ending booster shots are being introduced in Israel, where citizens must either accept the injection or have their vaccine passport revoked.
We’d like to take this opportunity to let everyone know that from here forward anti-Semitism and misogyny will not be tolerated. We’re sorry this step had to be taken but a few people are out of hand; we hope they will tone down their comments so further action won’t be neccessary. Thank you all for participating and contributing to Blazingcatfur – it’s the readers and commenters who make this blog a success.
