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Commentary… Old City (Then Under Jordanian Occupation) בס״ד supremacists embrace עש"ק פרשת אמור – ל"ג בעומר 18 Iyar 5781 ISRAEL NEWS Israel & anti- April 30, 2021 Semitism.” Issue number 1343 A collection of the week’s news from Israel Over the years, Roth has also From the Bet El Twinning / Israel Action Committee ofof hired a number of experienced Jerusalem 6:39 Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto Congregation and dedicated anti-Israel Toronto 8:01 activists, such as Sarah Leah Whitson, who was born in the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem’s Commentary… Old City (then under Jordanian occupation). Her family reportedly moved to the United States in 1960, but for whatever reason, her anti- Human Rights Watch Exploits its Mission for Hate Israel passion, often crossing the line into antisemitism, is well- By Gerald M. Steinberg entrenched. Prior to joining HRW in 2004 and heading their BDS In the 1960s and 1970s, the Soviet bloc and the Arab league campaign, she had been active with the Arab-American Anti- combined forces in the United Nations to promote anti-Semitism and Discrimination Committee and, even then, ran campaigns attacking demonize Israel. This crescendoed into the infamous 1975 United Israeli “apartheid” and its “matrix of control.” (Whitson also raised Nations resolution labeling Zionism as racism. money in Saudi Arabia and suddenly left HRW in early 2020 when By the 1990s, the hatred had spread to powerful political those details were leaked.) organizations working under the banners of human rights and In 2016, Roth and Whitson hired Omar Shakir—the lead author international law. In particular, the propaganda war against the Jewish of HRW’s “apartheid” publication. Shakir is also deeply and state was and continues to be led by Human Rights Watch (HRW), an personally invested in vilifying Israel and spent many years as a NGO superpower working in close cooperation with other groups, campus activist speaking under headings like “Apartheid IsReal.” He including some in Israel. In 2009, HRW founder Robert Bernstein, has led HRW’s (failed) effort to press Airbnb and the FIFA soccer writing in The New York Times, criticized his own organization for association to join the anti-Israel boycott. For Shakir, who left Israel helping “to turn Israel into a pariah state.” after his work visa was not renewed and he lost a lengthy court battle, HRW’s latest contribution to the anti-Israel agenda was launched this is revenge propaganda. on Tuesday under the heading of “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli But perhaps this time, Roth, Shakir and HRW overshot their Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution.” With an target. After the report was criticized in media reports, such as in Le annual budget of almost $100 million (including some long-hidden Point (often quoting NGO Monitor), they tried to spin the message, donations such as from a corrupt Saudi billionaire), the organization claiming that they were not actually comparing Israel to South Africa was able to gain a great deal of publicity and media coverage. but instead were using a new definition of apartheid. But with the The headlines highlight the disingenuous equivalence that HRW long history, the 200 references and the title, even an NGO draws between Israel and the South African apartheid regime. HRW’s superpower will have trouble selling that canard. publication has 200 references to apartheid — approximately one per (JNS / NGO Monitor Apr 29) page—interspersed among false accusations and distorted (or invented) versions of international law, many of which were copied directly from other NGOs. HRW attacks everything from Israel’s 1950 Can J Street Stoop any Lower in Backing Anti-Israel Views? Law of Return, enacted in the shadow of the Holocaust, to counter- By David M. Weinberg terror measures, which, they claim, are used “to advance demographic First in sorrow, then in anger, for years I have tracked J Street’s objectives” and “have no legitimate security justifications.” This claim malignant metamorphosis from a “pro-Israel and pro-peace” is made easier by the fact that they fail to mention decades of organization into an anti-Israel mutant. Palestinian terror against Israeli victims. At its founding a dozen years ago, “pro-Israel and pro-peace” Why has HRW focused so much money and energy on viciously was taken to mean partnering with the mainstream Israeli political targeting Israel for more than 20 years? The answer is Kenneth Roth, Left to build support in Washington for a two-state solution between who has led HRW since 1993 and is the driving force behind the Israel and the Palestinians. Fair enough. organization’s obsession with Israel. Roth has not hidden his strong But since then, J Street has spent its time and money besmirching anti-Zionist compulsion. In 2004, an Israeli journalist asked him, Israel, lobbying for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas; “What’s a good Jewish boy from Chicago doing at the helm of HRW, smearing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Birthright the famous NGO that many accuse of singling out the Jewish state?” and other truly pro-Israel organizations; pumping former US Roth did not deny his hostility toward Israel, but instead referred to his president Barack Obama’s dangerous deal with Iran (and supporting father’s “stories of life in Nazi Germany until he fled in summer its renewal) and backing political candidates for whom the Boycott, 1938.” For many years, Roth’s official HRW biography cited his Divestment and Sanctions movement is a badge of honor and father’s experience in Germany, as if this somehow explained singling antisemitism is part of their repertoire. out Israel for attack. To this shameful list can now be added: lobbying to restrict US In addition to his obscure personal factors, Roth also promotes a military aid to Israel and possibly moving toward advocacy of a condescending worldview known as post-colonialism that “confederated state” to replace Israel all together. automatically treats supposed victims of the West as innocents who The organization’s descent into anti-Israel iniquity started when it can do no wrong, in contrast to the West—particularly the United supported the evil Goldstone Report (the UN’s hatchet job on Israel States—which he always paints as guilty. After 1967, when Israel was following the 2009 war with Hamas), advocated open diplomatic no longer in danger of being destroyed by Arab armies, was receiving talks with Hamas but not military action against it and then endorsed increased support from the United States and became an “occupier,” the Palestinian Authority’s drive for unilateral recognition of the Jewish state became a primary target for the post-colonialists, statehood at the UN. including Roth. J Street also began wrapping its confrontation with Israel in pious Many years ago, Roth also understood the value in comparing spiritual claptrap. Its leaders earnestly broadcast their “profound Israel to the heinous South African apartheid regime. He sent HRW Jewish and spiritual identities,” to besmirch the mainstream Jewish officials to play a central role in the 2001 U.N. Conference in Durban, community and engender a distancing in US-Israel relations. South Africa, and defended this comparison as part of the Peter Beinart launched his notorious book, The Crisis of Zionism, organization’s agenda of countering what he referred to, even then, as at the 2012 J Street conference too, promoting a “progressive vision “Israeli racist practices.” In interviews and on Twitter (Roth posts of American interests and liberal Jewish values.” We all know where every hour, seven days a week), he frequently promotes the apartheid Beinart ended up: Openly calling for the dissolution of Israel. and racism theme. (Judging from this year’s J Street conference, the organization may In 2017, after the white supremacist march and violence in not be far behind Beinart.) Charlottesville, Roth tweeted a link to a propaganda piece headlined In 2012, J Street became a shill for Obama’s Iran policies. It “Birds of a feather: White supremacy and Zionism.” He included a started a campaign to “Stand up to those beating the drums of war picture depicting a Confederate and Israeli flag, commenting, “Many against Iran,” meaning those nefarious, radical Israelis led by Prime rights activists condemn Israeli abuse & antisemitism. Some white Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and his knee-jerk, incautious, ra-ra cabal of American Jewish supporters – like the 13,000 American Jews solution” which focused on Israeli-Palestinian “confederation.” You who attended that year’s AIPAC conference and lobbied for can argue that “confederation” is just a twist on the two-state concept. restrictions that would permanently end Iran’s nuclear bomb program. But I view this as an insidious slide away from support for the “It is not as if we’re seeing Iran develop a specific plan for the sovereign Jewish state of Israel towards the nihilistic one-state elimination of the Jewish people,” soothed J Street’s president and “solution” now advocated by Beinart and other post-Zionist founder, Jeremy Ben-Ami. Consequently, his pro-peace angels propagandists. marched on Washington “to stand up to those who talk loosely about The most inflammatory talk at the conference was given by war with Iran” and to support Obama’s spineless policy regarding Iran. Warren, who reiterated her call to condition US aid to Israel, and then In 2017, J Street launched its “StopDemolitionsBuildPeace” campaign, implored Israel’s opposition parties to unite and oust Netanyahu so designed to “challenge our communities to wake up to the omission that the US could facilitate the creation of a Palestinian state. (Talk and erasure of Palestinian perspectives and narratives, which create the about blatant foreign interference in Israeli politics!) environment that make it easy to ignore demolitions, settlement Warren then repeated the blood libel about supposed Israeli expansion and occupation.” “apartheid” in denying or blocking coronavirus vaccinations to In 2018, younger J Street-yites (sounds like “Trotskyites”), newly Palestinians.
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