The Palestinians' "Jewish Problem"

by Bassam Tawil • September 13, 2017 at 5:00 am

According to the Palestinians, the two US envoys seem fully to have endorsed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's positions instead of representing the interests of the US. Why? Because they are Jews, and as such, their loyalty is to Israel before the US.
Perhaps this view is a projection of what many Muslims would do if the circumstances were reversed.
What we are actually witnessing is the never-ending search for excuses on the part of the Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, not to engage in peace talks with Israel.

When President Trump's envoys visited Ramallah last month, Palestinians staged a protest against US "bias" in favor of Israel. Pictured: A poster at the protest, featuring Jared Kushner tied to a leash by a blond woman (apparently his wife, Ivanka) who is dressed in an Israeli flag. (Image source: Wattan video screenshot)

The Palestinians do not like US President Donald Trump's envoys to the Middle East. Why? The answer -- which they make blindingly clear -- is because they are Jews.

In the Palestinian perspective, all three envoys -- Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt and US Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, cannot be honest brokers or represent US interests because, as Jews, their loyalty to Israel surpasses, in the Palestinian view, their loyalty to the United States.

Sound like anti-Semitism? Yes, it does, and such assumptions provide further evidence of Palestinian prejudices and misconceptions. The Palestinians take for granted that any Jew serving in the US administration or other governments around the world should be treated with suspicion and mistrust.

Moreover, the Palestinians do not hesitate to broadcast this view.

Take for example, the recent Palestinian uproar over statements made by Friedman in an interview with the Israeli daily Jerusalem Post.

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Campus Censorship: Orwell Ignored

by Robbie Travers • September 13, 2017 at 4:30 am

What about the delicate sensibilities of those of us who find censoring offensive?
Where are the "safe spaces" for those who would ban banning?
Anyone should be able to criticise or question just about anyone. We should not care -- or even know -- what minority group, if any, someone belongs to. That would be racist.

Where would our culture be without the freedom to question, be creative or even at times offend? Pictured: Galileo Galilei at his trial by the Inquisition in Rome in 1633. (Image source: Wellcome Trust/Wikimedia Commons)

When you hear the quite horrific stories of censorship and dangerous restrictions on expression at universities in the US, the UK and Europe, your first reaction might be to laugh at how infantile the nature of political discourse in the student world has become.

Cardiff Metropolitan University banned the use of the word "man" and related phrases, to encourage the adoption of "gender neutral" language. It is the equivalent of the "newspeak" about which Orwell warned: "Ambiguous euphemistic language used chiefly in political propaganda".

Currently, longstanding expressions carrying no prejudice are now used as the trappings of often fictitious "oppressions."

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What Happened to the ADL?

by Ruthie Blum • September 13, 2017 at 4:00 am

Potential donors to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) need to ask themselves, to what use their money will be put?

Columnist Isi Leibler blasted Jonathan Greenblatt (pictured above), CEO of the Anti-Defamation League and a former adviser to President Obama, for turning the 100-year-old organization, whose mission is to monitor and expose anti-Semitism and other forms of racism, into a platform that "represents an echo chamber of left-wing Democratic politics." (Image source: Erik Hersman/Flickr)

In the months leading up to the U.S. presidential election in November 2016, a former director of the World Jewish Congress decried the direction in which the new head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was taking the international human rights group. In a series of columns, Isi Leibler -- a prominent Australian Israeli -- blasted ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, a former adviser to President Barack Obama, for turning the 100-year-old organization, whose mission is to monitor and expose anti-Semitism and other forms of racism, into a platform that "represents an echo chamber of left-wing Democratic politics."

Leibler first took issue with Greenblatt's April 2016 address to the far-Left Jewish organization J Street, backed by anti-Israel billionaire George Soros.

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