January 02, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" -
One might
think that 2019 was the year war was
declared against anti-Semitism judging from
the pronouncements of politicians in
Washington, London, Paris and Berlin. To be
sure, Israel and its diaspora friends have
continued to play the “anti-Semitism” card
whenever their behavior is challenged but
the international passion to extirpate the
“new anti-Semitism” to include any and all
criticism of Israel is something quite
special that is being backed up by punitive
legislation.
In one of its more recent victory laps,
British Zionists are toasting Mazel Tov in
their Hanukkah
celebrations over their part in the
defeat of Labour candidate Jeremy Corbyn.
Corbyn was demonized personally by the
British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis shortly
before the December election and was
unfairly labeled an anti-Semite by the
Jewish media over his antipathy towards
Israeli actions and his willingness to
recognize the suffering of the Palestinians.
From now on, no British politician will be
willing to challenge Jewish power in the
U.K. Indeed, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who
claims some Jewish ancestry and spent
some time in his youth on a kibbutz, has
already pledged to make any criticism of
Israel illegal in Britain. Moving the
British Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem
will no doubt soon follow.
Meanwhile, and as a direct result of the
unwillingness to confront Israel in any
meaningful way, war crimes committed by the
Jewish state proliferate. Every Friday there
is a shooting gallery along the fence with
Gaza, where unarmed Palestinian protesters
are targeted by Israeli snipers. And in
November, Israel conducted a series of air
strikes on the Gaza Strip after its
assassination of a senior Islamic Jihad
commander and his wife. At least 34
Palestinians were reported killed and
more than 100 wounded in the two days of
bombardment while no Israelis were killed. An
attack on the makeshift home of the al-Sawarka
family killed eight members of the
family, including children. A week later, a
ninth member of the family, Mohammed al-Sawarka,
died from from his injuries.
The Israeli army carried out a
perfunctory investigation of the deaths and concluded
that that the army’s intelligence
section had made a mapping mistake that
included the family home as part of an
Islamic Jihad “compound.” So a filing error
led to the deaths of nine innocent civilians
in one family and, of course, no one in the
Israeli military was in any way punished or
even reprimanded. Or even apologized.
And when it is pushed to do so, Israel
uses the anti-Semitism weapon to render
itself completely unaccountable in spite of
its war crimes.
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The recent announcement by the
International Criminal Court (ICC) that it
is looking into possible crimes relating to
the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict has
produced a quick response from Washington
and Jerusalem. The Trump Administration,
fearful lest one crime lead to investigation
of another, is concerned lest atrocities
committed by U.S. troops in Afghanistan and
Iraq become the fodder for a subsequent
inquiry, has reiterated
its claim that the ICC has no
jurisdiction over it as the U.S. has never
recognized its authority. Washington has
also revoked a visa held by chief prosecutor
of the ICC, has threatened more visa
refusals, and is also threatening sanctions
as reprisals, claiming that the court is
“illegitimate” while also vowing that the
Trump Administration would do everything “to
protect [American] citizens”.
In Israel meanwhile, Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu has sought to shore up
his sputtering attempt to remain in office
by denouncing
the inquiry itself as “anti-Semitism.”
He made the claim while using Judaism’s holy
Western Wall as a backdrop during a
candle-lighting ceremony marking the start
of the eight-days of Hanukkah, saying “New
edicts are being cast against the Jewish
people – anti-Semitic edicts by the
International Criminal Court telling us that
we, the Jews standing here next to this wall
… in this city, in this country, have no
right to live here and that by doing so, we
are committing a war crime.” He called it
“Pure anti-Semitism.”
Back in the United States the war on
anti-Semitism initiated by President Donald
Trump and endorsed by both parties in
Congress is running full speed ahead. The first
lawsuit linked to the Trump executive
order signed on Hanukkah that creates a
mechanism for defunding universities that do
not protect the “civil rights” of their
Jewish students has been filed by a Israeli
student at Columbia
University. His lawyer Brooke Goldstein
claims that the university is in violation
of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
for “discrimination against Jews.” He added
that “We drafted and filed a complaint with
the Office of Civil Rights (OCR), which is,
to my knowledge, the first action of its
kind since Trump’s executive order.”
Goldstein is the executive director of The
Lawfare Project, which has been engaged
in Jewish and Israeli advocacy. Her client,
Jonathan Karten, a senior at Columbia
University, alleges that he was on the
receiving end of anti-Semitism on campus.
The Trump executive order broadens the
definition of discrimination by implying
that “Jewish” is a nationality while also
accepting that criticism of Israel
constitutes anti-Semitism.
Goldstein claims that Karten “has been
ridiculed and embarrassed because of his
religion and his national identity” on
campus, most particularly by members of the
group Students
for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Karten
claims that he was called “a Zionist pig”
and other names. And Karten complains that
even a professor was mean to him when he was
speaking with other students at an event
hosted by the Columbia chapter of Students
Supporting Israel. A “Columbia
professor of Arabic literature…interrupted
the conversation, pointed at Jonathan and
yelled, ‘Don’t believe a word he is saying.
He is Mossad.’” According to the complaint,
“Jonathan felt ridiculed and embarrassed due
to someone in authority publicly targeting
him, accusing him of being a spy for a
foreign government because of his religion
and national identity.”
Karten decided to take action after a
November 8th speech by a modern
Arab politics and intellectual history
professor named Joseph Massad. Massad
reportedly gave a speech at the annual
conference of the Jerusalem Fund and
Palestine Center, where he said that “The
Oslo Accords inaugurated this process of
liquidating the Palestinian national
struggle while the ‘Deal of the Century’
plans and hopes to conclude it … The only
thing standing in its way is the ongoing
Palestinian resistance to Israeli settler
colonialism and racism that continues inside
Israel and Jerusalem, the West Bank and
Gaza; the ongoing Marches of Return in Gaza;
and the armed resistance of the Izz al-Din
al-Qassam Brigades to Israeli invasions in
Gaza.”
The complaint notes that “The Izz al-Din
al-Qassam Brigades is the military wing of
Hamas, which is a U.S.-designated foreign
terrorist organization [FTO]” while the “Izz
al-Din al-Qassam has killed more than 650
civilians. It is also directly responsible
for the kidnapping and brutal murder of
Jonathan’s uncle, Sharone Edri. However,
according to Professor Massad, this group’s
killing of innocent Israeli citizens, like
Jonathan’s uncle and countless others, is
justified due to Israel’s ‘settler
colonialism.’”
Karten and Goldstein maintain that their
complaints fell on deaf ears within the
Columbia University Administration. Karten
had filed a complaint with Columbia
University’s Department of Public Safety
last year “…after he and his friends were
repeatedly called murderers at a BDS [Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions] referendum at the
school.”
One might observe that Professor Massad
did not say anything that is contrary to a
reasonable assessment of what the Israelis
and their friends have done to the
Palestinians. Under international law, it is
perfectly justified for a people under
occupation to resist the occupiers, using
whatever means are available. And it is not
unimaginable that Karten reports to Mossad.
One presumes that he has done his military
service and perhaps he should explain what
that entailed in light of claims that he was
or is a “murderer.”
Jonathan Karten appears to be such a
sensitive soul that being called names over
what is admittedly a red-hot and very
controversial political issue needs to be
redressed by putting those hurling the
epithets out of business permanently. That
amounts to a nullification of the First and
Fourth amendments to the Constitution of the
United States, which guarantees freedom of
speech and association. Karten himself felt
free to associate with a group of Students
Supporting Israel and one might safely bet
that some serious invective would flow out
of that organization whenever a Palestinian
might appear at or near one of its
gatherings. And most importantly, one should
also note that Karten was not by his own
admission in any way threatened. It was only
words.
And lawyer Goldstein is not necessarily
an objective observer pursuing “justice.”
She is nothing more than a professional
advocate for Israel and what are perceived
as Jewish issues. As it is somewhat unclear
what exactly she and her client want the
university to do to address the issues they
have cited, one can only guess that it would
include silencing the critics and possibly
even reparations of some kind, a
frequent feature in the old “discrimination”
game.
None of this agitation occurs in a
vacuum. There is extensive advocacy for
Israel at all levels, much of it hidden. In
2019 alone the Sheldon Adelson supported
Maccabee Task Force “secretly
funded over 3,200 pro-Israel events on
112 campuses, and brought over 2,300 student
leaders on ‘transformative trips’ to
Israel.” Taken all together, every bit of
uncritical empowering of the Jewish state
now surfacing in London, Washington, New
York and in Israel itself is part of a vast
international conspiracy to render the
Zionist crimes against humanity unobserved
and unreported whenever possible as well as
always unaccountable. And when all else
fails, the Israelis and, to be sure, many
diaspora Jews know exactly what to weaponize
when they want to win the debate. Former
Israeli Minister Shulamit Aloni once explained
how it is done: “Anti-Semitic”…”it’s a
trick, we always use it.”
Philip Giraldi is a former
counter-terrorism specialist and military
intelligence officer of the United States
Central Intelligence Agency and a columnist
and television commentator who is the
Executive Director of the Council for the
National Interest.
This article was originally published
by "Council
for the National Interest"
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