Heritage Theft: A Response to Dani Ishai Behan

Michael Lumish

{Also published at the Elder of Ziyon, Jews Down Under and Vlaamse Vrienden van Israël.}

"We say to him [Netanyahu], when he claims that they [Jews] have a historical right dating back to 3000 years B.C.E.—we say that the nation of Palestine upon the land of Canaan had a 7,000-year history B.C.E. This is the truth, which must be understood, and we have to note it, in order to say: 'Netanyahu, you are incidental in history. We are the people of history. We are the owners of history.'" - Mahmoud Abbas, May 14, 2011.

Dani Ishai Behan has a blog post for the Times of Israel entitled, Jesus Was Not A Palestinian, Or Even An Arab in which he argues that Jesus was not a Palestinian... or even an Arab.

He is, of course, correct and the very fact that he feels it necessary to remind us is because many Palestinian-Arabs do make ridiculous claims such as that "Jesus was the first Palestinian shaheed" and do so as part of the larger project of heritage theft against the Jewish people.

They also do so out of a not unjustified assumption concerning the idiocy and ideological blinkertude of the humanitarian racist West that enjoys blaming Jewish people for the violence against us.

This is no small matter, but it is the kind of thing that travels beneath the awareness of typical mainstream reporters.

Those who are less familiar with the Long Arab / Muslim War against the Jews of the Middle East than is Behan might wonder why he feels it necessary to acknowledge the obvious? The reason that he does so is because the war against the Jews is as much a propaganda campaign - a campaign for delegitimization - as it is a campaign of violence, terrorism, and physical intimidation for the purpose of driving Jews back into diaspora and, thus, helplessness.

The Phases of the Long Arab / Muslim War against the Jews include:

Phase 1, 1920 - 1947: Riots and Massacres

Phase 2, November 1947 - April 1948: The Civil War in Palestine

Phase 3, 1948 - 1973: Conventional Warfare

Phase 4, 1964 - Present: The Terror War

Phase 5, 1975 - Present: The Delegitimization Effort

When Palestinian-Arabs claim the Jewish historical figure of Jesus as a "Muslim martyr" they are engaged in the process of heritage theft.

The purpose of this cultural thievery is to displace the indigenous Jewish population with Arab colonists, both physically and culturally and to do so as a matter of self-righteous "social justice."

This is the insidious irony of the entire project. They are seeking to turn Palestinian-Arabs into the New Jews while transforming the Jewish people into the New Nazis. But most importantly it is to sew confusion in the minds of interested and well-meaning outsiders.

Parisian intellectuals, for example, have about as much collective knowledge of the Long Arab / Muslim War against the Jews as I have about Parisian intellectuals. That is, although such people have no idea about the conflict they are constantly encouraged to view it as one between a racist, colonialist, imperialist, apartheid, Jewish, war-machine versus a small, bunny-like, native population that wants nothing more than to be left in peace to tend their sacred olive groves.

The enemies of the Jewish people, throughout the Middle East and Europe, therefore fabricated the propagandistic illusion that the Jews are interlopers on historically Jewish land while the Arab colonists are the persecuted indigenous population.

Heritage theft is part of this process.

Although transforming the historical figure of Jesus into a Palestinian-Arab is probably the most ridiculous and audacious of such examples, it is certainly not the only one.

After all, if the Arabs can abscond with Jesus they can certainly take Anne Frank which is why we sometimes see her in a keffiyeh within circles associated with antisemitic anti-Zionism.

Another obvious example, as Behan points out, is the obscuring of Jewish history on Jewish land through the widely accepted usage of "West Bank" for Judea and Samaria. The truth is that the tiny bit of land along the eastern Mediterranean was known as Judea and Samaria for millennia.

As Behan writes:

Judaea is the Roman/Latin cognate of Judah, which is itself the Anglicized version of the Hebrew name for the land: ‘Yehudah’. We are called Jews/Yehudim because we come from Judea/Judah. The languages spoken there – Hebrew and Aramaic – formed part of the basis for diaspora tongues such as Yiddish.

Yet another example - one that I find particularly toxic and obnoxious - is the effort to equate the "Nakba" with the Holocaust.

The effort is to always balance the historical claims of the Jewish side with the ahistorical claims of their Palestinian-Arab enemies.

As Bashir Bashir, professor of Political Science at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and co-editor, along with Amos Goldberg of The Holocaust and the Nakba: Memory, National Identity and Jewish-Arab Partnership tells us concerning their edited volume:

Zionism tries to treat the Holocaust as both universal and particular: it is supposed to be significance to all of humanity, but it is also the patrimony of Zionism, which has the right to decide how it is invoked and understood. Putting the Holocaust and the Nakba together in a common frame disrupts this exceptionalism and is meant to provoke new thinking that exceeds the rigid, dichotomous, and oppositional boundaries of ethno-nationalism.

To be clear, neither Bashir, nor Goldberg, seek equivalence between the slaughter of the millions of Jews in Europe and the fact that some Arabs fled Israel, and some were driven from Israel, after launching a war against the Jews in November of 1947.

But, nonetheless, they are walking an exceedingly tight rope and it is not the least bit obvious that "putting the Holocaust and the Nakba together in a common frame" does anything other than draw an ethical equivalence, despite their suggestions otherwise.

What Dani Ishai Behan very well understands, but what most observers of the conflict do not, is that there is not the slightest ethical correspondence between the Nazi slaughter of the Jews in Europe and the efforts among Jewish Holocaust survivors to save themselves and their families from the Long Arab / Muslim War that well preceded the existence of Nazis and that continues to this day.

Following the death of Muhammad in the seventh-century, the Muslims of the Arabian Peninsula conquered the Byzantine Empire and almost went forward to conquer the entirety of Europe.

I am afraid that in doing so they do not also get to conquer either Jewish or Christian history.

Jesus was a Jew and everyone knows it.

When Palestinian-Arabs claim otherwise they make themselves look like fools.

Antisemitic anti-Zionism and the Racist Left

Michael Lumish

{Also published at the Elder of Ziyon, Jews Down Under, The Jewish Press, Vlaamse Vrienden Van Israel and Listy z naszego sadu.}

The western-left is the most racist political movement in the West today outside of political Islam.

The categories of contemporary progressive-left racism include:

1) Anti-White Racism

2) Antisemitic Anti-Zionism

and

3) Humanitarian Racism

While left-leaning politicos in the United States are searching for Nazis and Klansmen and White Supremacists and White Nationalists and the "Alt-Right" - whatever that is, exactly - hiding beneath every bed, they remain childishly oblivious to the toxic and divisive racism that is eating its way through the core of their own political movement.

Up until about the election of Barack Obama - who I voted for in 2008 - the United States made highly significant strides in ethnic relations over many decades, which was a major factor in Obama's electoral success.

Since then, the United States is regressing on issues of race even as the inheritors of the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. urinate on that legacy while calling it "social justice."

There has not been this much racial discord in the United States since 1968 and it is largely due to the fact that the progressive-left has beat it into the heads of poor "black" kids that they are oppressed and that poor "white" kids are the oppressors.

What kind of social results did they expect would emerge from incessant left-leaning racial hatred in the United States?

Anti-White Racism

Although nobody on the left ever wants to discuss it, the most prominent form of publically acceptable racism in the United States, today, is anti-white racism.

Hundreds of articles and other forms of media have been published in left-leaning venues decrying how horrible and racist and brutal - yet, somehow, fragile - "white" people are.

As an American Jew - and since the word "white" has become a racist perjorative - I am not even certain that I know what a "white" person is. I do know that I am constantly mistaken for one despite the fact that my ancestry, along with almost all non-converted Jews, goes to the Levant.

The fundamental point, of course, is that people do not get to pick-and-choose who it is acceptable to be racist towards. Either you oppose racism or you do not. If you claim that certain ethnicities, for historical and socio-economic reasons around power relations, are incapable of racism then - guess what? - you are being racist.

That is, you are holding some groups of people to different ethical standards based on their ethnic background.

Excuse me, but that is the very definition of racism.

Western-left identity politics is both racist and noxious because it indoctrinates young people into a political point of view which places individuals upon an ethnic and gendered Hierarchy of Victimhood wherein one's political significance, if not one's humanity, itself, depends upon where one falls within the hierarchy.

Contemporary left identity politics, therefore, in distinction from old-timey interest group politics, is the most prominent racist and illiberal political movement in the United States today.

It is what I call "identity politics overreach."

It is also one significant reason, among others, that Donald J. Trump happily sits in the Oval Office.

Antisemitic Anti-Zionism

This one, naturally, is my favorite.

One of the astonishing things about antisemitism is that, like an ideological virus, it has the ability to mutate according to the changing nature of its political environment. If in previous generations antisemitism was justified by notions such as the Jews killed Jesus or the Jews killed Mohammad or the Jews invented capitalism or the Jews invented socialism or the Jews represented an inferior and parasitic race, today we are to understand that the Jews are inhumane to the allegedly indigenous "Palestinian" population.

kIf you were to question your average U.S. Democrat they would likely agree that the historical persecution of the Jewish people was entirely unjustified. The western-left despises Nazism and racism and fascism, even as they unthinkingly embrace certain aspects of it. They would absolutely agree that the European persecution of the Jews was a great injustice in the past, even as they also embrace the western-left antisemitic anti-Zionism of the present.

Unfortunately, polling data also shows that a majority of self-identified "liberal Democrats" favor the Palestinians-Arabs over the Jews of Israel by a plurality of 40 percent over 33 percent.

In other words, in the imaginations of "liberal Democrats" - by which they actually mean "progressives" or, as some would say, the "regressive left" - every previous generation the Jews were innocent and did not deserve harassment or persecution... except for this one.

By some mysterious happenstance the Jewish people, today, both Israeli and diaspora, are, in fact, guilty. We were not in the past, but we are today.

Thus, who can really blame "Palestinians" if they perpetually seek to murder Jews in the very heartland of the tiny Jewish nation?

If the international community despises the Jewish State of Israel it is, therefore, because of the Jews, themselves, who generally insist upon supporting the allegedly racist, militaristic state of Israel. What this suggests, within the western-left mind, about the morality of diaspora Jewry which supports Israel is not very pretty.

Humanitarian Racism

In Manfred Gerstenfeld's introduction to Behind The Humanitarian Mask: The Nordic Countries, Israel, and the Jews, which is a scholarly compilation of articles published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) and the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, Gerstenfeld writes:

Behind the Nordic countries’ righteous appearance and oft-proclaimed concern for human rights often lurk darker attitudes. This volume’s main purpose is to lift their humanitarian mask as far as Israel and Jews are concerned. This disguise hides many ugly characteristics, including the financing of demonizers of Israel, a false morality, invented moral superiority, and “humanitarian racism.”

The condescension and imperial superiority of contemporary leftists toward those of non-European descent, with the exception of Jews, is unfathomable. The progressive-left, as a group, treats all non-Europeans, other than Jews, like little children in need of a pat on the head and a chocolate chip cookie.

It is, at least in my estimation, the current iteration of nineteenth-century western imperial notions of "white man's burden" and it takes the form of holding non-Europeans to the ethical standards of inferiors.

In this way, European historical guilt around issues of race trump feminism, and even regular human decency, in how much of the guilt-riddent "white" middle-class judge people who in an earlier generation they would have called "our little brown brothers."

Until the western-left moves beyond anti-white racism, antisemitic anti-Zionism, and humanitarian racism, it will remain riddled with hypocrisy and acting in cross-purposes toward its own supposed values.

It is very sad that over fifty years after Martin Luther King, Jr's famous I Have A Dream speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. that the western-left has flung King's admonitions into the gutter.

The most important thing that King stood for was this:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!

Martin Luther King, Jr. stood for anti-racism.

The contemporary left does not.

Nikki Haley

Michael Lumish

Remarks by US Ambassador Nikki Haley, Permanent Representative to the United Nations, before a UN Security Council briefing on the situation in the Middle East, December 18, 2017:

Thank you, Mr. President. In this meeting, I will not use Council’s time to address where a sovereign nation might decide to put its embassy, and why we have every right to do so. I will address a more appropriate and urgent concern.

This week marks the one-year anniversary of the passage of Resolution 2334. On that day, in this Council, in December 2016, the United States elected to abstain, allowing the measure to pass. Now it’s one year and a new administration later. Given the chance to vote again on Resolution 2334, I can say with complete confidence that the United States would vote “no.” We would exercise our veto power. The reasons why are very relevant to the cause of peace in the Middle East.

On the surface, Resolution 2334 described Israeli settlements as impediments to peace. Reasonable people can disagree about that, and in fact, over the years the United States has expressed criticism of Israeli settlement policies many times.

But in truth, it was Resolution 2334 itself that was an impediment to peace. This Security Council put the negotiations between Israelis and the Palestinians further out of reach by injecting itself, yet again, in between the two parties to the conflict.

By misplacing the blame for the failure of peace efforts squarely on the Israeli settlements, the resolution gave a pass to Palestinian leaders who for many years rejected one peace proposal after another. It also gave them encouragement to avoid negotiations in the future. It refused to acknowledge the legacy of failed negotiations unrelated to settlements. And the Council passed judgment on issues that must be decided in direct negotiations between the parties.

If the United Nations’ history in the peace efforts proves anything, it is that talking in New York cannot take the place of face-to-face negotiations between the regional parties. It only sets back the cause of peace, not advance it.

As if to make this very point, Resolution 2334 demanded a halt to all Israeli settlement activity in East Jerusalem – even in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. This is something that no responsible person or country would ever expect Israel would do. And in this way, Resolution 2334 did what President Trump’s announcement on Jerusalem as the capital of Israel did not do: It prejudged issues that should be left in final status negotiations.

Given the chance today, the United States would veto Resolution 2334 for another reason. It gave new life to an ugly creation of the Human Rights Council: the database of companies operating in Jewish communities. This is an effort to create a blacklist, plain and simple. It is yet another obstacle to a negotiated peace. It is a stain on America’s conscience that we gave the so-called BDS movement momentum by allowing the passage of Resolution 2334.

To the United Nations’ shame, this has been a disproportionately hostile place for the Middle East’s most enduring democracy.

The United States refuses to accept the double standard that says we are not impartial when we stand by the will of the American people by moving our US embassy, but somehow the United Nations is a neutral party when it consistently singles out Israel for condemnation.

For decades, Israel has withstood wave after wave of bias in the UN and its agencies. The United States has often stood beside Israel. We did not on December 23, 2016. We will not make that mistake again.

This week marks the one year anniversary of a significant setback for Middle East peace. But the United States has an undiminished commitment to helping bring about final status negotiations that will lead to lasting peace.

Our hand remains extended to both parties. We call on all countries that share this commitment to learn the hard lessons of the past and work to bring Israel and the Palestinian people in good faith to the peace table.

Thank you, very much.

Bush, Sharon, Trump, Jerusalem - Update

Sar Shalom

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump formally recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital. This is unequivocally something to celebrate. However, a look back at history should guide what we do going forward. I refer to President George W. Bush's letter to Ariel Sharon around the time of the disengagement from Gaza. In that letter, which was endorsed by Congress, the United States committed that on the heels of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza that the U.S. would refrain from raising an issue about the settlements close to the Green Line. Like Trump's later recognition of Jerusalem, Bush's acquiescing to the near settlements was an unambiguous positive while it was in force.

One would expect that congressional endorsement would give the Sharon letter some degree of permanence, but that was not to be. As soon as Bush's presidency ended, his successor ignored it and went on a messianic crusade against the settlements, treating the Ramat Shlomo section of Jerusalem no differently than Elon Moreh on the outskirts of Nablus. The question now is, what can we do so that Trump's recognition will not meet the same fate as the Sharon letter? Does anyone not think that if Bernie Sanders were chas v'shalom to become president in 2021, barring changes from current circumstances, that he would rescind Trump's recognition of Jerusalem?

One change that would complicate any successor's attempt to rescind the Jerusalem recognition would be to create facts on the ground. That would mean getting the embassy moved during Trump's current term. Going from recognizing Jerusalem is Israel's capital while the embassy remains in Tel Aviv to reverting back to recognizing Tel Aviv as Israel's capital is a fairly simple move for a potential future president with an Obama-like or worse mindset. Changing the status of a functioning embassy in Jerusalem would be more complicated. Tillerson must not be allowed to drag his feet on this issue.

A further change that would complicate a move to rescind the Jerusalem recognition would be to change the narrative surrounding it from one of a sop to the Israeli and American Christian rights to one of a blow against injustice. Unfortunately, Trump's lack of credibility on any other issue would not facilitate this. Nonetheless, we must try to advance this alternative narrative in order to increase the likelihood that the Jerusalem recognition outlives Trump's administration.

One possible approach to do so would be put forward a more compelling explanation of what is needed in order to achieve peace. Previously, I have written what would be needed to demonstrate that the Palestinians are genuinely interested in peace. What is needed is for the Palestinians to declare three things:

• The Jews are a people
• The Jewish people are deeply connected to the Land of Israel in general and Jerusalem in particular
• The Pact of Umar has no place in the modern world (modified from the original list)

For the moral narcissist-peace processors, attacking that list of demands would require one of two things. Either they could contradict one or more of the items in the list or they could argue that even if they are true, the Palestinians' refusal to abide by them should be inconsequential compared to their eventual commitment to live in peace. As to the former, it is a straightforward declaration of being an anti-Semite. The latter requires more of a response.

Denial of any one of those three would mean Jewish sovereignty on so much as a postage stamp-sized plot of the hallowed Dar-al-Islam is an injustice. It is possible to recognize an inability to address that particular injustice. Abu Yehuda likened this to recognizing an alligator lying across the sidewalk, you can't ignore it, but you wouldn't recognize its right to be there and you would call the game commission to have it removed ASAP. Combine the saying "no justice, no peace" with denial of any of my three points meaning Israel's existence in any borders is an injustice and the result is that there can be no peace with both Israel existing and a Palestinian entity clinging to denial of any of those three.

Returning to the Jerusalem declaration, part of acknowledging the bond between the Jewish people and Jerusalem is accepting that Jerusalem is the Jews' capital. Opposing that recognition is ipso facto proof of denial of point 2 and thus an inability to have anything more than a truce with Israel to be used to build up their forces to finally impose their concept of "justice."

UPDATE: Abbas recently announced that in the wake of the Jerusalem announcement, he will no longer listen to any American peace plan. If the current narrative persists, this will provide Trump's successor the perfect excuse to revoke his recognition of Jerusalem. The task ahead is to attack that narrative and replace it with one in which Abbas' tantrum in response to the recognition of Jerusalem is proof-positive that he is unwilling to accept any peace in which Israel remains. I do not have answers as to what would change the narrative, but I can say that resting on our laurels that we have the power for now to preserve the Jerusalem recognition will not do so.

This Week on Nothing Left

Michael Lumish

3 min Editorial: Morgan poll of Australians on Jerusalem

9 min Noor Dahri, Pakistani Muslim Zionist

38 min Discussion: interfaith scandal

52 min Daniel Mandel, Zionist Organisation of America ZOA [ LIVE Monday 18 th Dec USA }

1 hr 13 min Daniel Markind, lawyer and commentator

1 hr 34 min Isi Leibler in Jerusalem

The podcast can also be found on the J-Air website.

Or its Facebook page.

NOTHING LEFT can be heard live each Tuesday 9-11am on FM 87.8 in the Caulfield area, or via the J-Air website www.j-air.com.au

Contact Michael and Alan at Nothing Left:

michael@nothingleft.com.au

alan@nothingleft.com.au

Yours truly this week on Nothing Left

Michael Lumish

This week Michael Burd and Alan Freedman have an exclusive interview with incoming Israeli ambassador to Australia, Mark Sofer and then hear from yours truly in the San Francisco Bay area.

Burd and Freedman have an interview with the Elder of Ziyon and hear from Swedish film maker Bo Persson who made a film about antisemitism that the public Swedish TV channel refused to broadcast.

And Isi Leibler shares his thoughts on President Donald Trump's announcements of last week.

3 min Editorial:  Pres Trump’s Jerusalem statements

11 min Mark Sofer, new Israeli Ambassador to Australia

29 min Mike Lumish, San Francisco blogger

51 min Elder of Ziyon, blogger

1 hr 14 min Bo Persson, Swedish film maker

1 hr 32 min Isi Leibler in Jerusalem SPEAKS HIS MIND ON UN VOTING  & TRUMPS JERUSALEM STANCE

The podcast can also be found on the J-Air website.

Or its Facebook page.

NOTHING LEFT can be heard live each Tuesday 9-11am on FM 87.8 in the Caulfield area, or via the J-Air website www.j-air.com.au

Contact Michael and Alan at Nothing Left:

michael@nothingleft.com.au

alan@nothingleft.com.au

The Trump Nudge

Michael Lumish

{Also published at Elder of Ziyon, Jews Down Under, and The Jewish Press.}

Perhaps Donald Trump gave the Arab-Israel conflict the nudge that it needs.

It is fascinating to see the various objections that many pro-Israel Jews have for United States recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Some people oppose the move primarily out of disdain for Trump or because they consider Trump so toxic that he will inevitably poison what otherwise might be a good move. Many Israelis, needless to say, find the whole thing insulting. They know where their own capital is, for chrissake, and they don't need anyone else to affirm it. And everyone, of course, is concerned about violence and one Palestinian-Arab has been killed as I write during this first "Day of Rage."

One of my favorite arguments, however, represented only by a deranged minority, actually considers Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as antisemitic. Imagine that. The idea is that Trump only made this move as a cynical gesture to the Christian Evangelical base. American Evangelicals - or so goes the story - merely appreciate Israel as a vehicle for some crazed eschatological, End-of-Days scenario wherein Jesus will return and show Adolph Hitler and the Catholic Church just how best to deal with the Jews.

It is pure nonsense, of course, but interesting to ponder in a warped kind of way.

And, finally, there is the prominent idea among the politicians and intelligentsia - and the EU and the PA and the UN and the US Department of State and, say, Swedish people - that this will kill the "peace process." I do not know about you, but I increasingly have come to suspect that the purpose of the "peace process" is not so much about peace as it is about the "peace process."

We are coming on twenty-five years since Yitzhak Rabin foolishly shook the hand of that rotten old bastard, Yassir Arafat, and somehow it did not fall off.

In any case, the Arabs are going bonkers, as we are seeing in the streets of eastern Jerusalem and elsewhere, and people will be killed out of Koranically-based religious mania.

{And make no mistake, the entire conflict is grounded in Koranically-based religious mania. Does anyone believe for a single second that if somehow Israel was an Islamic country that the rest of the Islamic world would be so perpetually vexed at its existence? Of course, not.}

But, so long as the Arabs believe that they have a reasonable claim to the City of David they will never stop pushing and they will not stop sending their children into the streets with knives. So long as they believe that Jerusalem is up-for-grabs then they will consider the whole shebang up-for-grabs.

Two of the biggest mistakes that Israel made, historically, were giving up control of the Temple Mount to the Waqf and inviting Arafat back from Tunis for that insidious handshake. The stupidity on both counts was monumental.

Most Democrats and progressives now believe that the Arabs are fighting for "social justice."

They are not.

Jews lived as second and third-class non-citizens under the boot of Arab-Muslim imperial rule for thirteen centuries. It was never better than Jim Crow was at its worst, but lasted far longer. And when Jewish people finally gained their freedom, the Arab world waged bloody war against Israel, in various forms, from 1948 to the present.

The Arabs are not fighting for social justice. They are not fighting for a Palestinian-Arab state.

They are seeking to repair the historical continuance of theocratic-imperial domination over the despised Jewish minority, who many believe murdered their prophet.

This is about religious bigotry, not land.

This is about the crudest form of Koranically-based race hatred imaginable and it has been ongoing since the time of Muhammad.

Arab-Muslim kids in the Middle East far too often receive fear and loathing toward Jews with their mother's milk.

Anti-Defamation League statistics on antisemitism in the Middle East show that the most liberal countries are hateful toward Jews into the 70th percentile, while in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority that number rises into the 90th percentile.

And what this means - as the Palestinian-Arabs never cease to remind us - is that we are facing an implacable foe with the very worst intentions and with what they believe is a divine calling to wrench Jewish control from historically Jewish land... and to do so even within living memory of the Holocaust.

Now, that is quite some brew.

Given the ugly truth above, I increasingly lean in the direction of Daniel Pipes on this question.

I believe it is necessary for Israel to decisively defeat their Palestinian-Arab enemies. And what that means is making it very clear to them that continued efforts to ruin Jewish lives will be met with very sincere consequences.

As for just what those consequences should be, I can only leave to the Israelis.

In Response to Rioting Arabs in Israel

Gav Kostonov

{This is another guest post from a Facebook acquaintance who holds a strong and interesting perspective directly in the aftermath of the Trump acknowledgment of Jerusalem and at the very start of the so-called Jerusalem Intifada. This was merely a comment under another post which is why it has no actual introductory paragraph. Nonetheless, this man is on it. - ML}

Palestinians completely trashed ancient synagogues in Jericho and in Shechem and they regularly desecrate Jewish holy sites under their control. You know how many times Jews rioted about it or went on stabbing sprees over It?

That would be none.

You want me to break the difference between us and the Palestinians down for You? We hold ourselves and are held by the world to a standard of civility that actually exceeds that of a common baboon.

Now stop infantilizing them. They've had since 1937 to accept any one of half a dozen offers of statehood offered to them, offers not offered to any other people that actively sided with the Axis in WW2. It's about time the rest of the world joined us in telling them to get their act together.

There are dozens of stateless peoples that deserve solidarity but none of them have their own exclusive UN agency or non voting UN membership or an international day of solidarity like the Palestinians do. Do you know why? Tibetans and Catalonians never stooped to terrorism to get their message to the world stage. At this point Puerto Rico is more deserving of independence. At least they actually had independence at one time unlike these transplanted Arabians that reinvented themselves halfway through the 20th Century.

Day of Stupidity # 1

Michael Lumish

Trump's speech

Sar Shalom

Maps

Sar Shalom

One of the comments from my previous post on unilaterally drawing lines a map showing what I described. I managed to produce crude maps of the areas north and south of Route 55 with a rough line showing the division between what I would annex and where I would withdraw. I am not hard set on the exact location of those lines. However, one thing that is clear is that inside of those two perimeters, there are many places with Arabic names, and outside there are just a handful.

One of the justifications for calling for Israel to eventually withdraw from the settlements is that aside from the settlements west of the security barrier, the settlements are surrounded by Arabs. As these maps show, that is true inside the perimeters, but not for the Jordan Valley and not as clear for Route 5 corridor.

Trump Speech

Say what you will.

I know that I am going to. - ML

A parable

Sar Shalom

Imagine a couple that has a daughter. The husband does not wish to have the burden of raising this daughter weigh down on the rest of his life. He would never read to her at night. Whenever there is any event in his daughter's life, say a birthday party, school play, graduation or anything else, if his golf buddies want to go for an outing he joins them for their outing.

After a few years, the wife has enough of these antics and files for divorce. The husband is insulted by her objection to his lifestyle and decides to retaliate by getting their daughter taken away from her. As the case proceeds through court, what are the chances that the husband would tell the judge that his wife is arrogant in impinging on his lifestyle and thus their daughter should be removed from her.

The answer is close to zero. It might be an accurate description of his motives, but unless he is a total moron, he would realize that no judge sympathizes with that argument. Instead, he would wax poetic about how important his daughter is in his life. Possibly, he would get some of his golfing buddies to provide affidavits to the judge about her importance to him. All in order to provide a reason that the daughter to be awarded to him, and thus denied to his wife.

Such is the Palestinian attachment to Jerusalem.

On Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital

Sar Shalom

So it looks like President Trump will actually do something positive and recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Predictably, every Palestinian and Arab potentate is complaining that doing so will prejudice the peace negotiations and threatens Islam's holy sites. Also predictably, most of the West's chattering class is taking the Arabs' claimed reason for their objection at face value.

What we need to do is repeat more often the actual reason that the Arabs are so enraged by the impending recognition. It is the same reason why the Arabs responded to a group of Jews sitting down in front of the Western Wall on Tisha B'Av in 1929 with a pogrom in Hebron. In both cases, the "provocations" are attacks on one more manifestation of Islam's supremacy of Judaism. They have accepted the loss of many such manifestations. However, each time a new loss looms, they threaten to, or actually do, erupt in rage.

The pundits could invoke Occam's razor to say that the simplest explanation for why the Arabs claim their sentiment for Jerusalem is the reason for their rage is that their sentiment for Jerusalem is the reason for their rage. To demonstrate that the real reason for that claim is because western do-gooders would have more sympathy for that claim than for their real motivation of lording Islam's supremacy over Judaism, some history is needed. Islam's veneration of Jerusalem started in 682 when a rebellion cut off the Umayyad Caliphate of Damascus from Mecca. In order to maintain the ability to fulfill the requirement of Haj while cut off from Mecca, Umayyads built the mosques in Jerusalem and invented the story of Muhammed's travel there to justifying substituting Jerusalem for Mecca as the destination for the Haj. Within a few decades, the Islamic world was reunified, allowing all Muslims to go to Mecca, and Jerusalem was ignored until the Crusades. During the Crusades, the reconquering Muslims revived the tale of Muhammed's travel in order to rile up their population to join the effort to retake Jerusalem. Once the Crusades were ended, the Muslims ignored Jerusalem again until the British took Palestine following World War I until Jordan's conquest of eastern Jerusalem during the Independence War. Following Jordan's conquest of eastern Jerusalem, Jerusalem was again ignored by the Islamic world until Israel conquered it from Jordan, at which point Jerusalem became of "supreme importance" to the Islamic world until today.

What this timeline shows is that when Islam's ability to lord its supremacy over Judaism and Christianity by excluding them from Jerusalem is not challenged, Jerusalem was ignored. However, when that ability is challenged, the Muslim world waxes poetic about how important Jerusalem is to their faith.

Guest Piece by Justin Amler

Justin Amler 

{Editor's note - this piece was written by Mr. Amler on Facebook and seems to me that he has a nice, concise grasp of the matter. In any case, as soon as I read this I said to myself, "I want it." He was kind enough to agree to its publication here. btw, I do not know if the link above will work on all browsers. It may be dependent on one's Facebook settings. - ML}

So it looks like the United States might finally recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital... something we Jews have known already for the last 3000 years. This is definitely welcome news, but it's more for world consumption than for the Jewish people themselves. At least President Trump had the courage to do it - more than any other previous US president. I just hope it's not contingent on Israel giving into some hidden demand somewhere...

But meanwhile the reaction to this news has been predictable.

The palestinians have threatened violence which hasn't happened since... oh... what... maybe 5 minutes ago? And it must surely be a nightmare being Abbas's secretary, because undoubtedly there'll be a 'Day Of Rage' scheduled. How does the secretary do it, because there are more 'Days of Rage' scheduled than days in a year!!

The Jordanians will huff and puff about international law and human rights (2 concepts completely foreign to them), even as their own fake country is built on the foundations of smoke and feathers. Maybe the louder they huff, it will stop people from asking on what legal basis do THEY even exist at all?

Turkey has threatened to break off diplomatic ties, still struggling with the fact that the Ottoman Empire is long gone and they don't get to threaten or dictate to Jews anymore. Perhaps they're suffering from Post-Colonial Stress Disorder...? They've got Hamas on speed-dial so maybe they can organise a dictatorship support group along with all the others countries and entities in the world having a heart attack about this.

The EU is having a fit - even as their countries become subject to more Islamic violence. While they are discussing more boycotts, maybe they can start off by boycotting all the security help they get from Israel??

Sadly, there will undoubtedly be violence, but it is not because of the rather obvious recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. The violence would have come anyway and inevitably. It's because across the entire Arab world, there remains a single dot which isn't Arabic, but Jewish.

Small and proud and forever.

"Trump tells Abbas, Jordan king of ‘intention’ to move embassy to Jerusalem"

Michael Lumish

That is the headline for the Times of Israel written by AFP and Dov Lieber.

Well, my my my.

I am bit shocked, but happy.

I cannot know the extent to which this is shadow-boxing and bullshit, but presuming that it is true, it is a very big deal.

If Donald Trump got Mahmoud A. and Abdullah # II on the phone and said, "Sorry, fellahs, we're moving the embassy to Jerusalem" that is a very positive game-changer.

In fact, I would argue that so long as Jerusalem is up-for-grabs the conflict will continue and many more Jews and Arabs - not to mention Christians and others - will die in this Koranically-grounded conflict. The misery will go on and on. Israeli Jews will continue to come under rocket attack and twelve-year-old Palestinian-Arab know-nothings will ceaselessly throw rocks at automobiles on the highway or stab Jewish grandmothers in the throat.

This miserable thing will only be resolved at such a time when there is a clear-cut winner and a loser. So long as the "international community" - whatever that is, exactly - continues to insist upon a never-ending "peace process" then, by definition, there can never be peace.

The West, particularly the EU, gives no indication that it is interested in ending the Long Arab War against the Jews of the Middle East. On the contrary, what it seems to want is for the "peace process" to continue ad infinitum.

So long as the naive and passive-aggressive West continues to believe, against all evidence, that what the Palestinian-Arabs actually want is a state for themselves in peace next to Israel then there will never be resolution.

As this graphic from our friends at "Prager U" clearly states:

That is historically accurate, without any question.

If the Palestinian-Arabs wanted a state for themselves beside the Jewish one they could have had that long ago, but that was never the goal and it still is not.

Let us hope that Trump actually does move the embassy.

This Week on Nothing Left

Michael Lumish

The participant that they have this week who most catches my interest is Judith Berman. I often read her material at the Gatestone Institute. She's tough as nails.


3 min Editorial: Milo Yiannopoulos event in Melbourne

9 min Sharren Haskel, MK in Australia

32 min Judith Bergman, commentator and blogger

51 min Julie Nathan, ECAJ on anti-Semitism in Australia

1 hr 5 min Matthew Hausman MD, trial attorney and writer on antisemitsm

1 hr 28 min Danny Lamm, ZFA on Australia voting at UN

The podcast can also be found on the J-Air website.

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NOTHING LEFT can be heard live each Tuesday 9-11am on FM 87.8 in the Caulfield area, or via the J-Air website www.j-air.com.au

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