Nancy Pelosi Loves Israel

Doodad

No matter what you think of Nancy Pelosi or her politics, one thing is sure. She came through big time for Israel at AIPAC recently.

“Israel and America are connected now and forever. We will never allow anyone to make Israel a wedge issue....That pledge is proudly honored in this Congress, where support for Israel remains ironclad and bipartisan...... In our democratic societies, we should welcome legitimate debate at how best to honor our values and to advance our priorities without questioning loyalty or patriotism....we must also be vigilant against bigoted or dangerous ideologies masquerading as policy, and that includes BDS," referring to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement."

Unsurprisingly,  Ilhan Omar defended antisemites like herself who promote BDS:

"A condemnation for people that want to exercise their First Amendment rights is beneath any leader, and I hope that we find a better use of language when we are trying to speak as members of Congress that are sworn to protect the Constitution."

So far I'm not seeing any strong condemnation of Pelosi at dKos or other such sites although Chuck Schumer is taking tons of flak. Schumer is Jewish while Pelosi is not but that can't mean anything can it?

At any rate, kudos to Pelosi for her remarks and support. I suspect the new wave of Dems will get rid of her first chance they get.

The Mueller Report Is Out

Doodad

After a long and trying wait, the Mueller report is finally out. We don't know the specifics yet although Barr has said he should be releasing info as soon as this weekend within the parameters of what the law allows. This could mean we only receive a smidgen of what is in the report although
Dems are insisting we hear it all. And, of course, there are bound to be leaks.

What is most glaring is the news that no new indictments are forthcoming. This is huge in terms of the hopes and dreams of Dems that Trump and family and associates would be found guilty of something. It probably means that there are no findings of collusion although many Dems are saying that there may be sealed indictments or that Mueller has offloaded fuether indictments to other law enforcement agencies. hope springs eternal for the Trump is a Russian agent crackpots.

And those crackpots are numerous among Dems, the complicit media and the spook community. How many of them have assured us that Trump and those around him were going down big time? Doesn't look that way to me.

A question that needs to be addressed is how can now trust anything that crowd has told us. Certainly, they seem as kooky as flat earthers and the moon landing was a hoax crowd. Hopefully the American electorate will keep that in mind as 2020 approaches and make them pay politically. Personally, I would like to see them in other ways for the time and resources that have been wasted; the lives and careers that have been ruined and the horrible divisiveness this has caused.

FLASH: Dem leak of actual Mueller Report

Faces of Barbarism

Doodad

People worldwide are reacting to the terror attacks in NZ as good, moral civilized people do. Meanwhile in Palestine, death worshipping terror supporting monsters are celebrating the murder of one  and injury of two Israelis. Here are a few screenshots. Israellycool has a lot more, including videos.

Palestinians are not like the rest of the world but the rest of the world loves them while hating other murderous terrorists. These celebrations will not likely see any media coverage and we know why. The newest Dems will not condemn it and we know why. Linda Sarsour will not cry any crocodile tears and we know why. dKos will not condemn it and we know why. We always know why.

The Jerusalem Post also has an article.

Innoculating our children against the Cult of Occupation

Sar Shalom

With measles being in the news, I'll offer a few words on the disease. In order to avoid measles, the key is not to avoid any form of the pathogen. If the disease abounds, then doing so is fruitless battle. What is needed instead is to be exposed to a version of the pathogen, typically dead though attenuated for other diseases, that is unable to cause the disease. Doing so trains the immune system to recognize the pathogen so that if it does encounter a version capable of causing disease in the future, it would be ready to neutralize before it can do so.

A similar approach can be take to the Cult of Occupation. For the most part, the Israel portion of Jewish education tends to focus on the Jews' travails in Europe in the 19th century and the efforts of the pioneers to build the state from desert and swamps while ignoring the suffering of the Palestinians affected by Israel's presence. Two such Jews raised with such education are New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg and Simone Zimmerman of IfNotNow and now at B'Tselem. According to one of the essays in Anti-Zionism on Campus, Zimmerman became an ardent Palestinianist when she went to college at UC Berkeley and first learned about the plight of the Palestinians. Similarly, Goldberg has written about how she first learned about the Palestinian's suffering after she had finished her Jewish education, leading to her becoming part of the cesspool of describing the Palestinians as innocent, defenseless victims of the so-called regional bully.

As with diseases like measles, preventing exposure to the Palestinians' suffering is a fools errand. However, it is possible to expose those receiving a Jewish education to a version of Palestinian that would not induce them Cultists of Occupation and prepare them with responses for when those who are more interested in waging information war against Israel than in presenting the truth present their version of that suffering. For instance, the Palestinianists are great at presenting sob stories about the indignities of crossing the security barrier, but they never present any information about why the security barrier, and the checkpoint to cross it, is present. We have to present that information as Matti Friedman has done. The Palestinianists will eventually foist on our youth how Israel has destroyed homes and schools in Gaza. We need to beat them in presenting that information to our youth and provide the context of how Hamas launches rockets from schools and crowded urban squares giving Israel a choice between allowing those rockets to be launched at Israel's cities or taking out those rockets and destroying the homes and schools next to them. The Palestinianists will get the message out about all the things the Palestinians lack. We need to beat them at teaching our youth about that situation, and provide the context of what Israel has tried to do to alleviate that situation without cooperation from the PA that is more interested in perpetuating a grievance than addressing any grievance without building capacity to eliminate Israel and how both the PA and Hamas divert the lion's share of any development aid to the effort for eliminating Israel. Including such material in our Jewish education would mean that when our youth hear the sob stories from the Palestinianists, nothing would be new and they will know how to respond.

IQ Tests For Congresscritters?

Doodad

Oops, she did it again. Ilhan Omar, that is. Fresh on the heels of "it's all about the Benjamins," she talked about dual loyalties. allegiance to a foreign country. That's two antisemitic tropes in quick succession in addition to the many other gaffes she has made previously. A pattern seems obvious. The woman is an antisemite to the bone. Even Pelosi and other high ranking members are getting ready to bring a resolution condemning antisemitism although it looks as if Omar will not be mentioned specifically. Obviously though, the resolution is in response to Omar's loose lips. Dems cannot afford to be seen as the party of antisemitism prior to 2020.

Generally, Progressives are supporting her; certainly her fellow newly elected peers AOC and Tlaib, Linda Sarsour, and most Kossacks. They give the usual suspect reasons; criticism of Israel is not antisemitism, etc. The most amusing rationale is that being a Somali Muslim immigrant, she does not understand what is wrong with what she is saying. Also, she is new to Congress and politics so she should be cut some slack. Hence my question: IQ Tests For Congresscritters? Or perhaps some minimum knowledge/training in what constitutes criticism of Israel and what constitutes antisemitism. I believe it is possible to criticize Israel without being antisemitic but I don't believe Omar and her cronies do that.

In fact, looking at how this has tracked in relation to the Labour Party's mess in the UK, I believe that what is really happening is a deliberate attempt to normalize antisemitism in the guise of AntiZionism. There is just too much evidence that this is what has happened in the UK and elsewhere. AntiZionist groups are rife with antisemitism and disingenuous defence of the perps.

Sooner or later, Omar and others must be censured before the Dems indeed become the party of antisemitism to an even greater extent than they already are. The ball is in their court and Pelosi's response while welcome is a dollat short and many days late.

Legitimate criticism of Israel

Sar Shalom

Invariably, the BDS-holes, and less fanatical anti-Zionist anti-Semites, deflect accusations of Jew-baiting by complaining that defenders of Israel label any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic. Israel-supporters retort that criticism of Israel is legitimate, but what these self-proclaimed critics engage in crosses the line into anti-Semitism. However, other than to say that Israelis criticize their country every day, no examples of legitimate criticism are provided. Without such examples, our enemies could ask if it would be legitimate to point out that Israel is indiscriminately killing Palestinians if Israel was in fact doing so? Would it be legitimate to point out that Israel is arbitrarily restricting Palestinian movement if Israel was in fact doing so? This should be subject to the shoe on the other foot test, is it legitimate or Islamophobic to point out that Muslims do those things when Muslims actually do them?

While I don't have recent examples of Israel-criticism that qualify as legitimate, it would be helpful to look at the work of Bassem Eid who worked for B'Tselem before they ceased to care about the bona fides of the abuses they reported.

In one incident that Eid covered, a group of soldiers punished a group of Arabs for throwing stones by burying them up to their chests. However, Eid did not simply report that this had happened. He asked the alleged victims if they could corroborate. One of the Arabs added that he had lost a shoe in the sand as he was being pulled out. An excavation of where the incident supposedly happened revealed the lost shoe, supporting the allegation.

In another incident, Eid advocated on behalf of an Arab whose donkey was confiscated by the IDF. When he went public about that case, he did so by releasing the exchange of communications between himself and the IDF's legal adviser, including the humorless bureaucratese.

The common element in these criticisms that legitimizes them is a commitment to truth and accuracy. As Eid was described,

Although he was a thorn in its side, the army came grudgingly to respect Eid. It recognized that his reports were free from the fancy and exaggeration that is all too common in Palestinian discourse. “Why exaggerate?” asks Eid. “For example, if 2,000 houses have been demolished, why make it 10,000? If the Israelis killed four, why say it was 40?” He did not take complaints from fellow Palestinians at face value. On the contrary, he made it a practice to probe the accuracy of the testimony he received before telling his colleagues in the B’Tselem headquarters to send a formal letter to the army asking for its version of the events described to him. It was not uncommon for him to discover distortion.

Needless to say, most of the western media considers fact-checking to be optional when it comes to reporting on Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians. Pointing out facts that are omitted from such reports that contradict the narrative of wanton Israeli commission of atrocities would expose how such reporting is not good faith criticism.

This is not to suggest that this is the only test that criticism of Israel must pass in order to be legitimate. In particular, the three D test (demonization, delegitimization, double-standards) provides further grounds on which to assess that criticism is due to bigotry. However, I have examples demonstrating accuracy of criticism in those specific cases.