NZ Friends of Israel Association Inc
Fighting racial intolerance in New Zealand and beyond
At the funeral of the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani, one of the few non-family members to deliver a eulogy was the Hamas chairman Ismail Haniyeh—a reminder that the elite Quds Force, which Suleimani commanded for over two decades, invested much in coordinating terrorist attacks against Israel. And not only against Israel, writes Yehudit Barsky, but against Jews wherever they might be found
Chanting “Death to America” and trampling upon and burning U.S. flags have been part of state-sponsored, anti-American acts in Iran for the past 40 years.
Yet people’s opposition to that mantra and disrespecting the flag of the United States and others has increased in the Islamic republic in recent years — with some daring to publicly question the rationale behind such acts.
Amid the fury in Iran in recent days over the establishment’s mishandling of the downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), killing 176 people, students at two universities were seen walking around U.S. flags painted on the ground by officials in public acts of defiance against the clerical establishment and the state propaganda that portrays the United States and Israel as Tehran’s biggest enemies.
Videos of the incident at Tehran’s Shahid Beheshti University — which has been blacklisted by the United States for its nuclear-research activities — showed a majority of students moving to avoid treading upon painted American and Israeli flags.
The Pentagon is confirming that Iran has launched “more than a dozen ballistic missiles” at two targets hosting against US military and coalition forces in Iraq.
‘More than a dozen’ ballistic missiles were fired from Iran at two US bases in Iraq, according to the Pentagon. Source: Associated Press
Defense Department spokesman Jonathan Hoffman says “It is clear that these missiles were launched from Iran.”
He says the attacks “targeted at least two Iraqi military bases” at Ain Assad and Irbil.
Hoffman says the US is “working on initial battle damage assessments.”
Iranian state TV says the attack was in revenge for the killing of Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, whose funeral Tuesday prompted angry calls to avenge his death.
Tens of thousands of people, some covered in Israeli flags and others singing Hebrew songs, poured into Lower Manhattan on Sunday in a show of solidarity for New York’s Jewish community in the wake of a spate of anti-Semitic attacks in the region in the last month.
The most recent attack occurred inside a Hasidic rabbi’s home in a New York City suburb, when a man wielding a machete stabbed at least five people who had gathered for Hanukkah celebrations.
The violence has shaken the Jewish community in the New York area and underscored the startling rise of these types of hate crimes across the country: Anti-Semitic hate crimes in New York, Los Angeles
“We’re not afraid to stand together, to be able to stand against violence and promote nonviolence,” said Leslie Meyers, 44, who attended Sunday’s rally, which was organized by the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York and the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, along with dozens of other advocacy and Jewish community groups.
Speaking to the crowd on Sunday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said that New York will increase funding for security at religious institutions and will also increase the presence of the state police force and hate crimes task force in vulnerable communities. Mr. Cuomo said he also plans to propose a new state law labeling hate crimes as domestic terrorism.
A U.S. strike on a vehicle near Baghdad airport early Friday morning killed Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s most influential military commander. Soleimani was the leader of the Iranian Quds Force, which had ties to American and Israeli enemies such as Hamas and Hezbollah, and was directly responsible for some of the actions against Israel in Hezbollah’s war against the Jewish state in 2006.
Washington has been gripped by talk about what comes next — a real war between the U.S. and Iran? Iranian strikes on Israel? a string reaction of chaos across the Middle East? — but little actual insight as to what may ensue.
Still, there are already signs that one possible outcome is being taken seriously: attacks on domestic targets, including Jewish ones, like the gathering this weekend of what could be thousands of Jews to protest anti-Semitism in New York City. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Twitter that he had spoken with top police officials about “immediate steps” the NYPD will take to protect key city locations from “any attempt by Iran or its terrorist allies to retaliate against America.”
Here’s what you need to know about the assassination, and what it means for American Jews and Israel.
As most people know, last week two heavily armed gunmen killed a police officer and two customers and an employee at a kosher market in Jersey City. The FBI has declared the attack a case of domestic terrorism. But, incredibly, an elected member of Jersey City’s school board has defended the attackers, calling Jews “brutes.”
School board member Joan Terrell-Paige wrote on her Facebook page: “Where was all this faith and hope when black homeowners were threatened, intimidated and harassed by I WANT TO BUY YOUR HOUSE brutes of the Jewish community? They brazenly came on the property of Ward F black homeowners and waved bags of money.”
The suspects began their killing spree at a Jersey City cemetery, fatally shooting a veteran police officer before driving a stolen U-Haul van to the front door of a family-owned kosher market and opening fire again — setting off a hours-long gun battle that would leave a total of six people dead and the Jewish community on both sides of the Hudson River in mourning.
As the investigation continued Tuesday, authorities directly involved in the case were hesitant to identify a motive for the two suspects, whose bodies were recovered among the hundreds of shell casings beside the store owner, a bystander and an employee. But Jewish leaders were quick to call the attack an act of hate, and both Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio made public statements condemning anti-Semitism.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
22 November 2019 CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND — NZ Friends of Israel welcomes the US announcement on Monday November 18, that acknowledges that Israel’s settlements in Judea and Samaria (also known as the West Bank) are not illegal.
Most international law opinions that suggest otherwise are based on a misapplication of the Fourth Geneva Convention which was never written with the Middle Eastern situation in mind. The original convention expected that the land of a sovereign state was being occupied by another sovereign state.
This is not the case with the lands of the Middle East. Following the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the end of the Second World War, there was no legitimate sovereign over the disputed lands.
The US announcement affirms the fact that Jews have always been indigenous to the region and are not foreign colonizers.
With the resurgence of anti-Semitism in many countries of the world, the foresight and wisdom of the League of Nations in mandating the establishment of a Jewish homeland, is unfortunately being vindicated.
NZ Friends of Israel (www.nzfoi.org, contact@nzfoi.org, ph 027 433 9745) is a registered charity that fights racial prejudice and intolerance by raising awareness of Jewish history and culture.
ENDS
In remarks to reporters at the State Department, he said the administration was overturning actions taken late in the Obama administration, which for the first time declined to veto a United Nations resolution calling for the dismantlement of West Bank settlements.
Instead, Pompeo said, the administration said it was returning to policy under the administration of Ronald Reagan, who declined to characterize settlements as illegal but called them “ill-advised” and an obstacle to peace.
With political power comes rhetorical responsibility.
Spot the problem with the quoted remarks:
(1) The Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 was “something some people did.”
(2) Last month’s attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, was “something someone did.”
(3) The 2015 massacre at a black church in Charleston, S.C., was “something someone did.”
Now imagine that a public figure with a history of making racially inflammatory remarks — someone like Representative Steve King of Iowa or, better yet, President Trump — had said any of this. (Neither of them did.) Would you not be appalled?
Of course you would. You’d be insulted by the evasiveness of the something and someone. You’d be revolted that a right-wing politician would fail to speak forcefully against the bigotries too often found among his followers and fellow travelers. You’d be disgusted by the deliberate attempt to conceal the scale of the horror, the identity of the perpetrators, and the racist ideology that motivated them.
And you’d make no allowances for the possibility that the politician in question might have merely misspoken, especially if he failed to apologize, clarify or correct himself. With political power comes rhetorical responsibility.
The bulk of Omar’s speech was devoted to preaching political empowerment for American Muslims and denouncing Islamophobia. That’s fine as far as it goes.
The problem is that the remark is foul, in exactly the same way that the hypothetical remarks listed above are foul. I live in lower Manhattan, near the 9/11 memorial and museum. No decent person can look at the portraits of the 2,983 victims of Islamist terrorists and say, by-the-by, that this was “something” that “some people did.”
The problem is also that the remarks didn’t come from just anyone. Just as Trump has repeatedly made his ethnic prejudices plain, so has Omar. She has demonized Israel, and American supporters of Israel, in terms that are unmistakably anti-Semitic. She has been reproached by fellow Democrats, claimed ignorance by way of apology, and then slurred Jews again — without apology. And despite claiming to be a champion of human rights, she has been oddly selective about the human-rights issues that elicit her outrage.
All the more so as progressives rush to her defense. Omar is not a significant figure in her own right. And the House of Representatives has never lacked for cranks, knaves, fools and bigots.
What is significant is that Omar’s defenders don’t consider her prejudices about Jews as particularly disqualifying, morally or politically, at least not when weighed against the things they like about her (and hate about her enemies). As for her views about Israel, she’s practically mainstream for her segment of the Democratic Party — a harbinger of what’s to come as the old guard of pro-Israel liberals like Majority Leader Steny Hoyer gives way to the anti-Israel wokesters typified by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
What is all this reminiscent of?
Oh, right: the early days of Trump, when millions of Republican primary voters heard the candidate denounce Mexicans as drug dealers, criminals and rapists, and said to themselves, “We like that.” The central lesson of the moral collapse that followed for the G.O.P. isn’t that conservatives are a uniquely perfidious bunch. It’s that partisans of any stripe are always susceptible to demagoguery, particularly when the demagogue refuses to back down in the face of outrage. Shamelessness has a way of inspiring a following, and Omar is in the process of cornering the market on the left.
Still, let’s not be entirely negative about the congresswoman. Toward the end of her speech, she said it was vital “to make sure that we are not only holding people that we don’t like accountable: We must also hold those that we love, have shared values with, accountable.”
Those words, at least, are wise. The best thing Democrats could do now is apply them to Omar herself.
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