Middle East

CAMERA has prompted a correction by The Toronto Star in its article about Artist Ai Weiwei’s refugee documentary takes him to Gaza.

They write Toronto Star Corrects Inflated Number of Palestinian Refugees:
CAMERA has prompted correction of a Toronto Star photo caption which grossly inflated the number of Palestinians displaced in the 1948 war. The erroneous caption last week had stated:
The number of Palestinians who were displaced during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s establishment is estimated at more than five million people.


Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei with his film crew in Gaza.(Khalil Hamra / Associated Press)
In fact, in an article investigating the question How Many Palestinian Arab Refugees Were There?, historian Efraim Karsh's detailed analysis puts the number of Palestinian refugees as being at most 600,000.

So, if you are The Toronto Star and acknowledge that CAMERA is correct and the number of Palestinian refugees was 600,000 and not 5,000,000 -- what do you do?

Do you correct the caption to read:
The number of Palestinians who were displaced during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s establishment is estimated at six hundred thousand peopleNot if you are The Toronto Star.

Instead, the new corrected caption still used the "5,000,000" number and now reads:
The number of Palestinians who were displaced during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s establishment, along with their descendants (emphasis added) is estimated at more than five million peopleThe text does bring the caption in line with the article itself which from the start made the point that by counting the descendants of Palestinian Arabs you reach 5,000,000 refugees. But the question is how accurate is such a statement, since the refugee count of no other people includes descendants to inflate their numbers.

More importantly, the article continues to impress the 5 million number upon the reader instead of using the more accurate 600 thousand one -- and leaving out the fact that the vast majority of those "refugees" today are in fact descendants.

On the other hand, the article does leave the reader with an insight into the dishonesty of the count of Palestinian refugees -- albeit unintentionally.

The end of the article reads:
Correction: A photo caption accompanying a photo with this article was edited from a previous version to make clear that the number Palestinians displaced during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s establishment includes their decedents (emphasis added).This emphasizes a point CAMERA makes in Why Palestinians Still Live in Refugee Camps:
There is also incentive never to report deaths of people considered to be refugees – since the rations for the deceased would be discontinued.I suppose we should be glad that The Toronto Star at least got that right.

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Technorati Tag: Israel and Palestinian refugees and Media Bias.

Update: Sanders suspends Jewish outreach director who blasted Israel, Netanyahu

Just how does one prove their pro-Israel credentials these days, especially if you are a politician looking for the Jewish vote?

Well, if you are Bernie Sanders you might be expected to have an easier time than most.

During the Bernie Sanders interview with The Daily News Editorial Board, he certainly did seem to hit all the right notes, and then some:

• “Here’s the main point that I want to make. I lived in Israel. I have family in Israel. I believe 100% not only in Israel’s right to exist, a right to exist in peace and security without having to face terrorist attacks..."
  
  
• "Israel will make their own decisions. They are a government, an independent nation..."
  
  
• “There are going to be demands being made of the Palestinian folks as well...for a start, the absolute condemnation of all terrorist attacks. The idea that in Gaza there were buildings being used to construct missiles and bombs and tunnels, that is not where foreign aid should go. Foreign aid should go to housing and schools, not the development of bombs and missiles.”

Anthony Delmundo / New York Daily News Speaking with Sanders
One could question how much weight having family in Israel should carry -- after all, Hamas terrorist leader Ismail Haniyeh has three sisters secretly living in Israel as full citizens -- and 35 years ago, he used to visit his sisters in Israel as well. Of course, Haniyeh does not go around bragging about this. That's probably because Ismail does travel in different political circles than Bernie.

Then again, during that same interview, Sanders found another way to outdo Hamas, saying that
my recollection is over 10,000 innocent people were killed in Gaza. Does that sound right? I don't have it in my number...but I think it's over 10,000. My understanding is that a whole lot of apartment houses were leveled. Hospitals, I think, were bombed. So yeah, I do believe and I don't think I'm alone in believing that Israel's force was more indiscriminate than it should have been.The Sanders number of "over 10,000" civilians killed exceeds the Hamas figure of 1,617 civilians killed. According to the UN the number was 1,462 civilians killed, and Israel estimates the number of Gazan civilians killed as 762.

Odd.

As Varda Epstein writes, If You Love Israel You Don’t Exaggerate Civilian Deaths by a Factor of Ten. Nor do you allow yourself to be ignorant of what was happening at those schools and hospitals in Gaza and what Israel did to minimize casualties there.

And if you love Israel, you generally don't hire people to be in charge of Jewish outreach who hate Israel.

It turns out that the Sanders campaign’s newly hired Jewish outreach director condemned Israeli PM Netanyahu as a mass-murderer:


Zimmerman later cleaned up her post, substituting the words "politician" and "Shame on you" where appropriate.

In her favor, when she rounded up the number of Gazans killed, Zimmerman did not exaggerate as much as Sanders did.

Sanders does seem a bit tone deaf when it comes to Israel. Take for example the incident at the Apollo Theater when Bernie Sanders was challenged with an antisemitic statement:
“As you know,” opened the questioner, “the Zionist Jews–and I don’t mean to offend anybody–they run the Federal Reserve, they run Wall Street, they run every campaign.” As this unfolded, Sanders began wagging his finger in dissent, and interjected to deem “Zionist Jews” a “bad phrase.” His interlocutor, pressed to articulate a question, concluded by saying, “What is your affiliation to your Jewish community? That’s all I’m asking.”

“No, no, no, that’s not what you’re asking,” Sanders quickly replied, in a nod to the question’s underlying prejudice. “I am proud to be Jewish,” he declared, to cheers from the audience. But then Sanders did something odd. Rather than using the question as a teaching moment to address and rebuke its anti-Semitic underpinnings, Sanders instead immediately pivoted to his stump speech on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Talking about Zionism and Israel,” he said, “I am a strong defender of Israel, but I also believe that we have got to pay attention to the needs of the Palestinian people.” He never challenged the actual contents of the question, let alone labeled it anti-Semitic.While there may be valid reasons to try to explain his reluctance to address this antisemitic slander head on, the fact remains that Sanders did not address the comment and failed to take advantage of the moment. Instead, he changed the topic to Israel in order to push his claim of balance by blaming both Israel and the Palestinians equally.

Bernie Sanders does not make an issue of his Jewishness, and that is fine. Nor is he the most outspoken defender of Israel -- and that is OK too. But when he addresses Israel as a political issue in his run for for presidential nomination, Sanders should not be given a pass on his stands and statements on Israel. The fact he lived on a kibbutz for a few months in 1963 or that he has family there is not relevant.

But what Bernie Sanders says about Israel, that he hires people who accuse Israel of mass murder and how he hides behind the issue of Israel rather than address antisemitic slanders -- that is relevant.
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Technorati Tag: Israel and Gaza and Hamas and Bernie Sanders.

Here I am in the hospital, after hurting my knee, and my roommate is a 92 year old retired professor of literature who can describe at length the background and details of the lives of past literary figures.

Like James Joyce.


Portrait of James Joyce by Patrick Tuohy. Credit: Wiki Commons
Joyce's novel Ulysses was controversial because some of its passages were considered to be pornographic and so it was banned in the United States in 1921 for obscenity, based on an 1868 English case where the test for obscenity was
whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall.That is how matters stood until Bennett Cerf, one of the founders of Random House decided he wanted to publish Joyce's novel in 1933. In order to challenge the ban on Ulysses and clear the way for the publication without being prosecuted, Cerf imported a copy of the French edition of Ulysses and actually arranged to have it seized by the US Customs.

Unfortunately, it wasn't that easy.

First, despite the fact that he was warned about the book in advance, the Customs official didn't want to seize it because "everybody brings that in."

Even then, the United States Attorney took seven months before he finally decided he wanted to go ahead.

Finally, the case of United States v. One Book Called Ulysses came before Judge John Munro Woolsey, who found that Ulysses was not written with pornographic intent and did not have the "leer of the sensualist." On the question of whether the novel itself was pornographic, basing himself on Joyce's use of 'stream of conscious', Woolsey stated that
[i]n respect of the recurrent emergence of the theme of sex in the minds of [Joyce's] characters, it must always be remembered that his locale was Celtic and his season Spring.Random House started publishing Ulysses in January 1934.

This case reminds me of the case of a Van Gogh painting discussed by Rudolf Flesch in his book The Art of Clear Thinking.

I think the 2 cases are similar -- see if you agree.

In 1949, William Goetz -- a Hollywood executive -- bought a Van Gogh painting called "Study by Candlelight," only to have Van Gogh's nephew claim the painting was a fake. Worse yet, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York assembled a group of experts who agreed it was a forgery.

Study By Candlelight, by Van Gogh (maybe)
What to do?

Goetz shipped the painting back to Europe.

Then he had 'A Study by Candlelight' brought back into the United States.

When it went through US Customs, as expected, because the painting was not considered to be an authentic Van Gogh, but just a forgery, customs duty was demanded. Goetz of course refused to pay because he considered it an original. So the case was handed over to the detectives of the Treasury Department.

Which was Goetz's plan all along.

The way Flesch describes it
The detectives analyzed everything the jury of experts had analyzed before. But they focused on one thing the four art experts had paid no attention to whatever: the meaning of the Japanese inscriptions. Three Japanese experts were called in and promptly found some typical mistakes a European would make; what's more, they found those same mistakes in other Japanese inscriptions by Van Gogh whose authenticity was known.On the basis of this analysis, the Treasury Department decided that Goetz was the owner of an authentic Van Gogh after all -- although an article from USA Today, tracing the history of the debate over Van Gogh's 'Study By Candlelight" notes that the controversy over the painting continues.

In any case, here are 2 cases -- albeit over half a century ago -- of using US Customs to trigger legal cases in order to validate works of art and literature.

It's not the kind of thing I normally blog about, but I found it interesting.
And I hope that you did too.

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Technorati Tag: James Joyce and Vincent Van Gogh and Ulysses and Study By Candlelight.

When Evelyn Gordon asks Are Palestinian Stabbings Ending?, she points out that the Palestinian stabbing attacks will continue only so long as the perceived reward outweighs the cost.

And the numbers indicate that a turnaround has begun. Thus:
in a poll taken just three months ago, fully 67 percent of Palestinians supported the stabbing attacks, including 57 percent of West Bank residents. Yet in the latest poll, not only did overall support fall to 56 percent but, in the West Bank, 54 percent of respondents opposed the stabbings.Gordon explains that this cost of the stabbings -- to the West Bank Arabs -- is three-fold:

• The stabbings are devastating the Palestinian economy. According to Arab merchants, since the start of the stabbings in October, 35% of Arab businesses in East Jerusalem have been closed -- and it is likely the effect on the West Bank as a whole has been similar.
  
  
• The economic impact of the stabbings to Israel has been negligible. During the first 3 months of attacks, Israel’s economy rose by 3.9% -- an improvement over the previous nine months.
  
  
• Every Palestinian attacker has been captured or killed, with the number of Palestinians killed during attacks on Israelis equal to roughly five times the number of Israeli fatalities. With the certainty of death or imprisonment, there is a limit to how many people are willing to volunteer for these attacks.

And that cost to West Bank Arabs is the key to why in Gaza, where they have not been providing these "lone-wolf" attackers, they have not had to face the consequences for the attacks, and therefore 79% of them favor continuing those attacks. Meanwhile, by contrast, the West Bank is the source of most of these attacks, feels the repercussions of them and within three months public opinion has gone from 57% in favor to 54% opposed.

This allows Hamas to continue to incite hatred and terrorist attacks against Israel without having to face any of the consequences.

Screenshot of Hamas video encouraging stabbing of Jews
Of course, such exploitation by the Hamas terrorists is not new, as they regularly exploit the Gazans under their rule as well.

Avi Issacharoff writes that Hamas uses tax money, donations from well-meaning countries eager to ease hardship for Gazans, to fund its military build-up

A prime example is the homes being built for the approximately 17,000 families whose homes were destroyed during Operation Protective Edge in 2014. The homes are being donated by Qatar and a new neighborhood, paid for by Qatar, is being named "Hamad City" in honor of the father of the present ruler of Qatar. Hamas created a lottery to select residents for the 1,040 new units.

So far, so good.

The catch is that Hamas requires the winners to pay $40,000, claiming either that the money is needed for connecting the apartments to water and electricity or that the money is being used as a donation for those still homeless. Considering the rate of unemployment in Gaza and that the average person makes $174 a month, the price is stiff.

The bottom line is that Hamas will be making $36 million off of Qatar's generosity.

And Hamas exploitation of Gaza does not stop there:

• When Israeli security forces return the vessels of Gazan fishermen who go beyond the permitted fishing boundary, over smuggling concerns, the fisherman are forced to pay a tax to Hamas to get their boats back.
  
  Times of Israel. Illustrative: Fishing vessels are moored at Gaza City's harbor on
  August 18, 2014. (AFP/Roberto Schmidt)
  
• Gazans are also required to pay a tax to Hamas whenever they need help from the police -- this despite the fact that salaries of the police are being paid by Iran.
  
  
  
• Payment is required of Gazans who need a doctor's note in order to receive emergency medical treatment either in the West Bank or in Israel. For good measure, Hamas uses these people for transferring money or messages to their operatives in the West Bank.

Hamas does quite well for itself off of the suffering of their own people -- leading to an article on the billionaire leaders of Hamas as examined in a TheTower.org article on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous Terrorists.

Ismail Haniyeh (R) and Hamas associates on Haniyeh’s private plane
on the way to Qatar. Source: Breaking Israel News
The Hamas terrorists who lead the government continue to benefit from the people of Gaza under their rule. Their exploitation of the people extends beyond times of war, when they use the people as human shields to protect rockets and mortars -- using concrete and other supplies to build tunnels to protect weapons instead of bunkers to protect Gazans during the wars they start. Even in times of peace, Hamas never fails to find a way to milk the people of Gaza for all they are worth. And now Hamas is only too happy to incite terrorist attacks against Israel -- attacks that will be carried out by Arabs in the West Bank, where the consequences will be felt.

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Technorati Tag: Israel and Gaza and Hamas and Operation Pillar of Defense.

In southern Israel, the problem of the Bedouin homes there is a complex problem, combining the issue of Bedouin claims with the Western media's willingness to unquestioningly publish them and the European Union to honor them.

Legal Insurrection discusses Negev Bedouin problems – real and imagined and Akiva Bigman discusses in an article for The Tower why the Bedouin's claims to the Negev are outrageous.

A central claim of the Bedouin is that they are indigenous to the Negev, thus deserving of special consideration and rights under international law.

Bedouin village in the Negev. Photo: Nati Shohat / Flash90 

While the EU is more than happy to accept this as fact, there is research by Havatzelet Yahel and Seth J. Frantzman explaining why the Bedouin are not indigenous to the Negev and that in fact “most of [the Bedouin tribes] arrived fairly recently, during the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, from the deserts of Arabia, Transjordan, Sinai, and Egypt.” Although Bedouin tribes did reside in the area before then, the Ottoman Empire’s tax records from the 16th century indicate that that Bedouin tribes living in the Negev back then are related to those tribes living there today.

So what do the Bedouin tribes in the Negev have to do with Judea and Samaria -- the "West Bank" -- and the Two-State Solution for peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs?

Absolutely nothing.

However, Israel's demolition of illegal houses is not limited to the Bedouins -- nor to the Arabs. So when he hears a question about alleged illegal demolition of homes in the Negev, State Department Spokesman John Kirby quickly opens his notes to get the right phrases, but in the process gets the entire context wrong and explains how Israeli demolition of homes in the West Bank have a negative impact on peace:



Despite the fact that Israel demolishes homes illegally built by Jews, just as it demolishes homes illegally built by Arabs, the topic of the state demolishing homes is a sensitive and controversial topic. It is a topic so sensitive, that the mere mention of it welcomes the kind of well-used boilerplate platitudes that Mr. Kirby is so quick to bring out. It is an honest mistake confusing house demolitions in the Negev with those in the West Bank.

Others, both in the media and in the West, are not so careful.

Hat tip: Regavim Advocacy Project


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Technorati Tag: Israel and Bedouins and Negev and State Department.

I'm unmoved by the hand-wringing over Israel's "isolation." When I came to the country 30 years ago, Israel had no relations with the USSR (and Eastern Europe), China, and India. There was no foreign investment and a UN General Assembly resolution still stood, condemning Zionism as racism. It will take more than a Cairo mob, a truculent Turk, and another UN resolution to make me feel "isolated."
Middle East expert Martin Kramer, quoted by Todd Warnick in The "Isolation" Canard

For decades, claims are periodically trotted out that Israel -- by virtue of its actions -- is being faced with the threat of being isolated.

In describing Jerusalem's Decreasing Isolation, Efraim Inbar delineates 3 ways to measure a county's isolation:

• The number of states that have diplomatic relations with a particular country. 
• Membership in international governmental organizations and agencies. 
• The amount of negative attention a state receives in international forums and public opinion. 

The claim that Israel is isolated on account of lacking friends and allies on the international stage is constantly being debunked. Just this week, Arsen Ostrovsky wrote that Israel not as isolated as many people think.

He notes that on Monday alone:

• Netanyahu met the new Egyptian Ambassador, after a three year absence, and relations between Israel and Egypt are at a recent all-time high.
• PM Netanyahu also announced a trip to Kenya and Africa, following the Kenyan President’s successful visit last week
• The Knesset launched a new Israel-Africa caucus to strengthen ties with Israel, after Kenyan Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed was quoted as saying that most African countries “see Israel as a very close friend.”
• Both a senior delegation from the Bundestag, as well as the Italian Defense minister, visited Israel.
• There are reports that Israel and Turkey are on the verge of normalizing diplomatic relations

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with new Egyptian Ambassador
Hazem Khairat in Jerusalem, February 29, 2016. (photo credit:KOBI GIDEON/GPO)
That is just within a 24 hour span on Monday.Ostrovsky notes Israel's other diplomatic successes over the longer term:

• Trade relations with India, China and Japan are at record high
• The Governments of Britain and Canada as well as the EU Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini have strongly denounced the BDS Movement, with a number of states in the US doing likewise
• Israel has been forming close strategic ties with Greece and Cyprus
• Israel continues to have strong diplomatic relations with Germany, where Netanyahu and Chancellor Merkel recently headed government meetings.
• Relations with Russia are good, with cooperation on the situation in Syria
• The threat of ISIS has improved relations between Israel and the Sunni Arab states.

Obviously, things are not nearly as good when you turn your attention to Israel's involvement with international agencies and organizations:  there are always problems at the UN, and Israel has problems with the EU, especially in connection with the labeling of Israeli products from Judea and Samaria ("The West Bank"). Getting back to Inbar, who was writing in 2013, he contends that while Israel's relations with the UN have not improved -- they have not gotten worse either. In fact, Israeli diplomats feel that in some ways, the UN has actually become less hostile.

After becoming a temporary member of the Western European and Other States Group in 2000, Israel became more integrated into the UN and has more involved in its agencies. Jerusalem has hosted UN-sponsored conferences and its international aid agency, Mashav, is supported by both the UN and other international agencies. In May 2010, Israel was also admitted to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, consisting of the 33 most developed countries in the world committed to democracy and the market economy. Israel is also an associate member of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), ensuring Israel's involvement in scientific projects in Europe.

Prime Minister Netanyahu (third from left) joined hands in Paris with leaders
(left to right) Andrus Ansip, Estonia; Felipe Larrain, Chile; Silvio Berlusconi, Italy;
Borut Pahor, Slovenia, and Angel Gurría, secretary general of the Organization for
Economic Co-operation and Development, when Israel was formally admitted
into the exclusive organization. Credit: MEF
Inbar notes that "Israel's enhanced position is based on European perceptions of its own self-interest rather than ideological alignment."

International forums and public opinion are another matter, what with the attempt to isolate Israel by delegitimizing it as an apartheid regime. The success of this 'Durban strategy' is not clear, with the effectiveness of the BDS movement debatable at best. Inbar suggests that some of Israel's isolation is the result of the Obama administration, specifically the diminishing clout of the US during his term as president.

Also of concern is the escalation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism on college campuses, not only because of the increase of the  phenomenon itself, but because of the lack of a strong response from the college and university heads as well. Yet even here, the fight on campuses is being joined. BDS campaigns there have not been as successful as in the past, with the defeat of divestment resolutions now making headlines.

Israel is not isolated.

Saying that obviously does not mean the threat of isolation does not exist. It does exist, and on all three levels -- diplomatic relations with other countries, international governmental organizations and agencies and  in international forums and public opinion. However, Israel is making headway in all three areas.

Yet, Israel to some extent will probably always fulfill the words of Balaam, who called the Jewish nation "a people that dwells alone".



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Technorati Tag: Israel and United Nations and European Union and Isolation.

There seems to be a new trend developing in the face of the growing incidents of antisemitism reported on college campuses -- outright denial along with claims that such reports are mere exaggeration.

Take Vassar for example, where the president of Vassar, Catharine Hill claims social media misrepresents tensions as incidents of antisemitism.

What kind of "tensions"?

Legal Insurrection has been tracking the spread and increasing appearance of antisemitism on college campuses. At Vassar, here are some examples:

• In 2014 Jewish students were mocked and jeered by a crowd of students and faculty at a campus-wide forum
  
  
• A class involving a trip to Israel and the West Bank was picketed, forcing a professor to cross a picket line of shouting students
  
  
• Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) posted a Nazi cartoon on social media, and pro-Israel displays were vandalized.
  
  
• Recently, a Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign was kicked off by SJP and Jewish Voice for Peace, followed by an event sponsored by the faculty where Israel was accused of  experiments to “stunt” Palestinian bodies
  
  
• In response to a pro-Israel post by the Vasser Jewish Student Union on Facebook, a student replied "F*ck Jews" via Yik Yak
  
  
• SJP promoted the sale of t-shirts honoring Palestinian terrorist Leila Khalid, the first female plane hijacker:

Catalog image of shirt honoring Palestinian terrorist Leila Khalid,
the first female plane hijacker. Credit: Legal Insurrection

The New York Post reported on antisemitic attacks at another campus just a few days ago, under the headline ‘Jew haters’ spread fear at CUNY colleges, with the following list

• At John Jay College, which specializes in criminal justice, Jewish students have been the target of so many slurs that at lease three have transferred. One John Jay administrator responded to a Jewish student’s concerns by saying, “What are these white kids complaining about?” (emphasis added)
  
  
• On Nov. 12 at Hunter College, during a demonstration for free tuition, Jewish students were denounced as “racist sons of bitches,” “fascists” and “Nazis” and were greeted with comments such as “Jews out of CUNY.” One student tweeted at the time, “Full-blown anti-Semitism allowed at my college . . . I witnessed this and froze in fear.”
  
  
• At Brooklyn College, the pro-Palestinian group disrupted a faculty meeting last week and called a professor wearing a yarmulka a “Zionist pig.” Brooklyn College slammed the “hateful” comments and the disruption.
  
  
• At The College of Staten Island, a pro-Palestinian demonstrator told a Jewish student last November, “I don’t hug murderers.” Swastikas also defaced the college’s desks and walls.

ZOA President Morton Klein is quoted as commenting that CUNY was not doing enough, and that the “hateful, anti-Semitic and violence-inciting conduct” of SJP needed to be addressed in order to protect the safety of the Jewish students:
Such bigotry would never be tolerated by CUNY if it were being directed against another ethnic, racial or other targeted group,” Klein wrote. “CUNY should not be tolerating it when the bigotry is directed against Jews.Jews are not immune at Oxford University either, contrary to the attempt to whitewash what is happening there. UK Media Watch debunks a letter in the Guardian that accuses those who complain about antisemitism as merely "crying wolf." This, in the face of these incidents at Oxford:

• Members of the Labour Club’s committee have been known to sing the song “Rockets over Tel Aviv” and have specifically expressed support for Hamas’ tactic of launching indiscriminate attacks against Israel’s Jewish citizens.
  
  
• One Labour Club member stated specifically that it was “not antisemitic” to allege the existence of a “New York – Tel Aviv axis” that rigs elections, and said that “we should be aware of the influence wielded over elections by high net-worth Jewish individuals”. He also stated that it was “not antisemitic” to allege the existence of an international Jewish conspiracy, even though he did not endorse the idea himself.
  
  
• One Labour Club committee member stated that all Jews should be expected to publicly denounce Zionism and the State of Israel, and that nobody should associate with any Jew who fails to do so.
  
  
• Several individuals, some who have been on the Labour Club committee, repeatedly used the word “Zio” (a word normally only found on neo-Nazi websites) to refer to Jewish students.
  
  
• Several Labour Club members have alleged that US foreign policy is under the control of the “Zionist Lobby” and when asked if by “Zionist” they simply meant “Jewish” they did not answer.
  
  
• One member of the Labour Club was formally disciplined by their College for organising a group of students to harass a Jewish student and to shout “filthy Zionist” whenever they saw her.
  
  
• In a public discussion on the Labour Club’s Facebook group, one member argued that Hamas was justified in its policy of killing Jewish civilians and claimed that all Jews were legitimate targets. Several other members, including two former Labour Club co-chairs and one then on committee, defended the member as making “a legitimate point clumsily expressed”.
  
  
• Two Labour Club members argued that Jenny Tonge, a peer expelled from the Liberal Democrats over antisemitism, should be encouraged to join the Labour Party.

Ignoring these very real incidents of antisemtism and incitement at Oxford, the writers of the letter go on to lecture:
Those who deliberately confuse antisemitism and anti-Zionism give comfort and aid to the real antisemites in our society. Like the boy who cried wolf, they ensure that if antisemitism does rear its ugly head, people will assume that this is just another false accusation. And therein lies the essence of this growing trend to deflect reports of antisemitism by claiming that Jews are merely overreacting.

Thus we have another claim of overreacting -- this time by Haaretz, about Crying wolf on campus anti-Semitism: The Vassar College talk was no blood libel, claiming that
Jasbir Puar's claim that Israel harvested Palestinian body parts was irresponsible and unsubstantiated – but it wasn't anti-Semitism.What is unclear is whether those who defend these antisemitic attacks would respond the same way if they were directed against any other group. Contrary to others on campus, who are deemed deserving of safe places from microaggressions, Jews are expected to quietly submit to macroaggressions - to all the accusations, intimidation and assaults that are thrown at them. Something heinous is brewing on college campuses, and the one thing Jews cannot and will not be is silent.

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Technorati Tag: Israel and Antisemitism and College Campus and Jews.

Joel Fishman writes that UN Resolution 3379, claiming that Zionism is a form of racism, did not just appear out of nowhere. Though passed in 1975, the roots of the UN resolution equating Zionism with racism can be found in the UN in 1964. Back then, the UN Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities was engaged in discussions aimed at recognizing Antisemitism as a form of racism -- along with apartheid and Nazism.

At the time, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency had the story of what happened next:
Russia Asks U.N. to Condemn Zionism Along with Anti-semitism, Nazism

The Soviet Union called formally upon the United Nations today to condemn Zionism along with anti-Semitism, Nazism and neo-Nazism as a policy of “colonialism and race hatred.” The step was taken in the General Assembly’s Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee where a draft convention was being debated calling for the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination.
UN General Assembly (November 1965) UN Photo/TC
The amendment introduced by the US and Brazil, according to which the states would “condemn anti-Semitism and shall take action as appropriate for its speedy eradication in territories subject to their jurisdiction” would not see the light of day.

Instead, it would be replaced with:
“States parties condemn anti-Semitism, Zionism, Nazism, neo-Nazism and all other forms of the policy and ideology of colonialism, national and race hatred and exclusiveness and shall take action as appropriate for the speedy eradication of those misanthropic ideas and practices in the territories subject to their jurisdiction.In the end, Russia's ploy served its purpose. A different amendment was proposed by Greece and Hungary, removing all reference to any specific kind of discrimination.

In her article "Equating Zionism with Racism: The 1965 Precedent", Dr. Ofra Friesel outlines the various motives that surrounded the push both for and against the amendment condemning Antisemitism as racism:

• The United States wanted to include the issue of religious persecution with racial discrimination in order to deflect international attention away from African-Americans discrimination -- and focus it instead towards the persecution of religious groups in Soviet Russia
• Soviet Russia wanted to protect itself from international criticism, while at the same time keeping international public opinion focused on the problem of race relations inside the US
• Israel and Jewish organizations also wanted to use the mention of religious persecution in order to criticize the USSR -- for its persecution of Jews.
• African and Asian countries did not want to be sidetracked by the issue of religious persecution. They were more concerned with racial discrimination
• Arab countries saw a religious persecution clause as an attempt to protect Israeli and Jewish interests

If accurate, the US and the USSR appear to have been using their particular amendments to embarrass each other. Thus, it could even be that this time around, the real target of the USSR in thwarting the original amendment by attacking Zionism was the US, and not Israel.

According to Dr. Yochanan Manor, while they occasionally claimed that Zionist leaders cooperated with the Nazis, Soviet Russia did not accuse Zionism of being racist -- instead defining Zionism as chauvinistic, bourgeois and reactionary. They reserved the term "racist" for the non-Slavic national movements which attempted to form ties with ethnic movements outside of the USSR, in an attempt to discredit them.

That all changed in 1967, after the Six Day War, when the Soviets saw the influence of the war on Jewish nationalism.

By 1971, Yakov Malik, the Soviet ambassador was openly lecturing the UN Security Council that Zionism was parallel to Fascism, and the UN was well on its way to UN Resolution 3379, just 4 years later.

Though repealed in 1991, UN Resolution 3379 equating Zionism with racism served its purpose. It tagged Zionism, and by extension -- Israel, with a slur that continues to be exploited by both virulent anti-Israel critics and by antisemites. While the association may have initially been utilized to thwart the US, ultimately it has been a tool against Israel and will continue to be resorted to by those who deny Israel's right to exist.
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