Showing posts with label Unity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Unity. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 29, 2023


The Queen Bee syndrome is getting in the way of Jewish unity. It does this by creating conflict between Jewish women, and in some cases, men as well. In Queen Bee syndrome, a woman, the “Queen,” is mean to others, in particular to other women. The Queen may do so in order to establish a pecking order, or to get ahead in what she perceives to be a man’s world offering only limited opportunities for women. But whatever the catalyst, Queen Bee behavior by nature results in alienation—the alienation of those who might otherwise have been allies. Queen Bee syndrome is far from the only obstacle standing in the way of Jewish unity. But it should be addressed, because it affects Jewish unity as a whole, rendering us weak and ineffective as a force for good in the world.

Now, the vast majority of my own female colleagues, likeminded souls who fight on Israel’s behalf in a hostile world, are lovely. We network and help each other. We chat on the phone and share good news. We critique each other’s work with kindness and sensitivity and sit and schmooze together at press events, subtly rolling our eyes at each other whenever a speaker says something not in line with our political beliefs.

Why not? We’re on the same side. We are allies. Talking shop is fun.

But for some reason, a small number of women in Israel advocacy and related endeavors remain nasty, cold, and patronizing in their dealings with other women. There was the interview subject who told me my questions were too personal, even salacious, and that I clearly hadn't read her books. "I am an intellectual and a scholar and my work and ideas and thinking is [sic] at another level," she told me, putting me in my place for suggesting she might be mortal.

Public Embarrassment

Then there was the woman who upbraided me in public while I was delivering prepared remarks before a crowd. She actually wagged her finger and yelled at me. This queen bee, too, was putting me in my place. She had the power to overrule me, interrupt me, embarrass me in public. I think she wanted the other people in that room to know it should have been HER giving that speech. She wanted them to know I was noone, that I was stupid, and that they would have been much better served to be hearing from HER. 

Another time, in the run-up to yet another Israeli election, I messaged a female colleague: "I had this idea that perhaps women journalists and bloggers on the right could issue a statement in support of voting for Likud. Would this be a worthwhile effort, in your opinion?"

"maybe. couldn't hurt," she responded.

Encouraged, I wrote up a draft of a statement and sent it to her for input. She never responded. A bit later, I wrote, "Too emo?" in a last-ditch effort to elicit a response.

But she never was going to respond. I wasn't important enough. She wanted me to know that. 

Did I imagine these things? Read too much into them? No. The same woman avoided my eyes in the supermarket when I tried to smile and greet her. At an event, during the question and answer period, she pointedly took questions from everyone in the audience who raised their hands, everyone except for me. When my hand was the last one still standing in air, she said, "Well, that's all we have time for, tonight."

It's a shame. Because it's like these women have forgotten that we have a higher cause. It's not about who's smarter, or better, or more important. It's not about a pecking order, but about fighting for Israel and Jewish rights.

It's The Patriarchy

Of the woman I interviewed who told me she was too smart to answer my questions, I was told by the male colleague who made the introduction that I should expect in future, to be invited to this woman's fabulous dinner parties where she always hosts the most fascinating guests. 

He may have been a regular at her table, but I'm still waiting for an invitation. Because guess what? I'm a woman. There's no way she's going to invite the competition. There's no way she's going to invite the likes of me. 

And that's my general experience with Queen Bees. Queen Bees curry favor with the men while lashing out at the women and belittling them, often in public. The Queen Bee must call the shots, and so she is always the one to end a conversation or the relationship, such as it is. She often does this by ignoring you, your messages, and/or your emails, just as that female colleague did, after encouraging me to write up that statement she never intended to sign.

Why do some women mistreat others of their own gender? Some say it’s because of the patriarchy: queen bees have to eliminate the others if they want to rise to the top. Others say that women being mean to women is biological. Women try to destroy other women because historically, women have always had to compete not only for men but for the resources they need for their offspring. 

In the world of Israel advocacy however, there's no place for this sort of angling for resources, power, or pride of place. There's enough room for all of us, and each of us has our own unique perspective to share. No woman actively fighting for her people should be to be afraid to enter a room for fear of being belittled by the others. No woman should be bullying those fighting for the same cause. Ego should have no place in this arena.

Queen Bees Come In Three Varieties

Does Queen Bee syndrome sounds familiar to you? It's no surprise. I'm not the only one to have these experiences. You've probably witnessed this behavior, yourself. 

From the Atlantic, “Why Do Women Bully Each Other at Work?”:

The bitches, as Shannon saw it, came in three varieties. She categorized them on her personal blog, in a post titled “Beware the Female BigLaw Partner.”

First was the “aggressive bitch”—a certain kind of high-ranking woman at the firm where she worked who didn’t think twice about “verbally assaulting anyone.” When one such partner’s name appeared on caller ID, Shannon told me, “we would just freak out.”

Next was the two-faced “passive-aggressive bitch,” whose “subtle, semi-rude emails” hinted that “you really shouldn’t leave before 6:30.” She was arguably worse than the aggressive bitch, because you might never know where you stand.

Last but not least, the “tuned-out, indifferent bitch,” Shannon wrote, “is so busy, both with work and family, that they don’t have time for anything … This partner is not trying to be mean, but hey, they got assignments at midnight when they were associates. So you will too.

“There obviously are exceptions,” she added. “But there aren’t many.”

The Passive-Aggressive Queen Bee 

According to the theory of the Queen Bee syndrome, Queen Bees like to cut you down. That makes passive-aggressive behavior par for the course. Like the interview subject who felt it necessary to make me feel bad about the nature of my questions, though I had clearly stated up front that she could skip over any and as many questions as she liked. 

More from the Atlantic:

[Shannon] once spotted a female partner screaming at the employees at a taxi stand because the cars weren’t coming fast enough. Another would praise Shannon to her face, then dispatch a senior associate to tell her she was working too slowly. One time, Shannon emailed a female partner—one of the passive-aggressive variety—saying, “Attached is a revised list of issues and documents we need from the client. Let me know of anything I may have left off.”

“Here’s another example” of you not being confident, the partner responded, according to Shannon. “The ‘I may have left off’ language is not as much being solicitous of my ideas as it is suggesting a lack of confidence in the completeness of your list.”

Is Shannon perhaps being a bit thin-skinned? 

Shannon admits that she can be a little sensitive, but she wasn’t the only one who noticed. “Almost every girl cried at some point,” she says. Some of the male partners could be curt, she said, but others were nice. Almost all of the female partners, on the other hand, were very tough.

In my case, too, I found I was not the only female in Israel advocacy who had been cut down to size by a Queen Bee. One day, I called a writer friend, and told her about my experiences. "Who?" she asked me. It was just us chickens, so I named names, all the big deal women who had made me feel ant-sized and marginalized in our shared world, the arena of Israel advocacy. She too, had been abused by what I now know, are serial abusers of their own sex, women active in their own circles.

Male Vs. Female Boss

Sometimes a woman has to take it, be maltreated by the other women, if she wants to stay in the game, stay relevant. Other women have a choice. They don't have to stay. But even then, it's hard. It takes courage to make a move when your self-confidence has taken a beating and you've been made to feel inadequate. According to the Atlantic, it took 16 months for Shannon to finally decide to up and leave.

Is the Queen Bee syndrome real? There is ample evidence to suggest that it is. For example, both women and men prefer a male over a female boss. It seems plausible to conclude that a large enough number of women in the workplace are unpleasant to others, so much so that both women and men have been traumatized. They’d rather have a male boss than take the risk of suffering further female tyranny:

In 2011, Kim Elsesser, a lecturer at UCLA, analyzed responses from more than 60,000 people and found that women—even those who were managers themselves—were more likely to want a male boss than a female one. The participants explained that female bosses are “emotional,” “catty,” or “bitchy.” (Men preferred male bosses too, but by a smaller margin than the female participants did.)

In a smaller survey of 142 law-firm secretaries—nearly all of whom were women—not one said she or he preferred working for a female partner, and only 3 percent indicated that they liked reporting to a female associate. (Nearly half had no preference.) “I avoid working for women because [they are] such a pain in the ass!” one woman said. In yet another study, women who reported to a female boss had more symptoms of distress, such as trouble sleeping and headaches, than those who worked for a man.

Queen Bees Preen

According to the BBC, Queen Bee syndrome was first defined by psychologists at the University of Michigan in 1973:

Queen bee syndrome describes a woman in a position of authority in a male-dominated environment who treats subordinates more critically if they are female. Prof Dame Sally Davies, England's first female chief medical officer, used the term in 2014 when describing her own experiences in the health sector. "I saw it particularly in medicine - queen bees preening and enjoying being the only woman," she said.

Margaret Thatcher, the UK's first female prime minister, has been described as a queen bee for not promoting or furthering the careers of women in her cabinet.

There's A Ripple Effect

Some women, for example, Shannon, manage to extricate themselves from a Queen Bee-ruled workplace. But often, there’s a ripple effect (emphasis added):

In 2011, Prof [Naomi] Ellemers and her colleagues [at Utrecht University in the Netherlands] carried out a study asking Dutch policewomen to recall specific experiences of being discriminated against. They found that being reminded of gender discrimination prompted participants to downplay the sexism they had experienced. It also triggered queen bee behaviour among policewomen who identified weakly with other women at work. "They are being taught to be successful in the organisation you need to adopt male characteristics," Prof Ellemers says.

"They cope with gender bias by demonstrating they are different from other women."

These women use phrases such as: "I'm not like the other women, I'm much more ambitious."

Prof Ellemers calls this "self-group distancing" - a response that is also found among other groups that are under-represented at work - and argues queen bee syndrome is a product of gender stereotyping.

Perhaps so, but if women are to be part of a cohesive and strong Jewish front in the battle for Israel’s reputation and against Jew-hatred, they must always squelch the impulse to be nasty to their sistahs. Queen Bee syndrome may be about women’s inhumanity to other women, but Jewish unity is impossible when a significant number of them refuse to be nice to the others. Putting ego aside for the sake of our people and our nation is absolutely critical.



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Monday, October 24, 2022

On October 13, major media reported:
Palestinian factions signed a reconciliation deal in Algiers on Thursday, vowing to hold elections by next October in their latest attempt to end a rift that has now lasted more than 15 years.

The deal was signed by a leading figure from the Fatah party of President Mahmud Abbas and by the chief of Islamist movement Hamas, which rules Gaza.

But Abbas himself, president of the Palestinian Authority since 2005, was not present.

"We signed this agreement to get rid of the malignant cancer of division that has entered the Palestinian body," said the head of the Fatah delegation, Azzam al-Ahmed.

"We are optimistic that it will be implemented and will not remain ink on paper."

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh said it was "a day of joy in Palestine and Algeria and for those who love the Palestinian cause, but a day of sadness for the Zionist entity (Israel)".
I didn't even bother to discuss it, because we've seen this movie before. Fatah and Hamas have made these sorts of agreements before - in fact, most of them have been supposedly more comprehensive, with the promise of "unity" between the rival factions.

After the agreement, nobody said much about it. But Mahmoud Abbas sent a message of thanks to Algerian President Abdel Majid Taboun for his role in the meaningless gesture.

But Palestinian Sama News held an online poll for its readers, asking "Will the Palestinian reconciliation succeed under the auspices of Algeria?"

As of Sunday afternoon, the results are 93% saying that the agreement is meaningless, and only 4% think it will succeed.


The Palestinians know that the rift between the PA and Hamas is irreconcilable. Only Western media takes these performative "agreements" seriously.





Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Thursday, August 15, 2013

  • Thursday, August 15, 2013
  • Elder of Ziyon
On May 14, Hamas and Fatah agreed that they would have a unity government within three months.

In July, Hamas announced that the deadline was meaningless.

Yesterday, the deadline passed.

Meanwhile, Israel is negotiating with half of a government, with the other half dead-set against the existence of Israel altogether.

And Western governments seem to take no notice of this little problem.

Because when you worship the religion of "peace process," reality is something that must be consciously ignored.


Wednesday, July 31, 2013

  • Wednesday, July 31, 2013
  • Elder of Ziyon
The Palestinian Minister of Religious Affairs, Dr. Mahmoud al-Habash, issued a fatwa obliging revolt against Hamas to end its rule in Gaza if it does not relinquish control of the territory.

Arabic media reports that he wrote on his Facebook page:

Ending the division [between Hamas and Fatah] is a duty. If ending the division does not end the coup, then ending the coup is a duty, and if an end to the coup means ending the Hamas takeover of Gaza, then ending the Hamas takeover of Gaza is a duty, and an end to the Hamas takeover of Gaza is accomplished by only one of two things: either a reconciliation with Hamas or a revolution against it, then one of these two things is a duty.

I couldn't find the original on what I believe is his Facebook page, but the article included an apparent screenshot.

Meanwhile, Hamas hacked the Facebook page of a Fatah radio station.

Unity!

Sunday, July 14, 2013

From IsraDocuMentalist:



This is a clip from the documentary “Israel: A Home Movie”. Miriam Lulu talks about her wedding, which was the first one at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron after its liberation in 1967.

“The Arabs thew rice at us the whole way…they cheered and applauded. They were glad that the Jews took over.”
It is a shame that so few Jews nowadays even consider visiting Hebron.

Thursday, July 04, 2013

From JPost, an interesting article that might be indirect proof for the story of the Book of Esther:
Just a hundred years ago, they were searching for it desperately. German, French and Italian archaeological expeditions were mounted to comb the lower stretches of Elephantine Island in the Nile River, in southern Egypt, but without success. They had been activated by the publication in 1911, two years earlier, of papyrus documents from the area that contained personal stories of members of a Jewish military colony in the area from the 5th century BCE. According to the document, there had been a temple in their midst of the colony. But where, exactly? Was it real or a myth ? Where was the colony, exactly, and why was it there at all? With the advent of World War I in 1914, the search was called off. It resumed after 1918, but again without success.

The papyrus scrolls were specific. The Jewish colonists lived in peace with their Egyptian neighbors, and they kept the Jewish laws. In fact, the Persian Emperor Darius II had commanded them to keep the Passover feast of unleavened bread in 418 BCE and not to drink beer for seven days after Nissan 14, according to one of the papyri. The area at the time was under Persian control; it had been captured by Cambyses in 525 BCE, and the Jewish colony was under Persian jurisdiction.

They occupied a whole row of mud-brick houses, some of them married Egyptian wives, some did not, and altogether they lived their lives in peace and quiet. Why were they there? They were a military unit serving there to guard Egypt’s southern border. They were on Elephantine Island, opposite Aswan on the mainland, and it was here, at the first cataract of the Nile, that Egypt had always had to defend itself against infiltrators from the south, where the poorer nations were desperate to enter and enjoy the riches of their wealthy neighbors.
Why would Darius II, a Persian king, instruct Jews to keep Passover?

Maybe because many scholars identify Darius II was the son of Queen Esther!


Thursday, June 20, 2013

The BBC has an excellent, very long magazine piece - including videos -  about how Israel keeps the memory of the Holocaust alive as the remaining survivors dwindle.

The Israeli delegation is marching in the footsteps of the many Jews who took their last steps here.

This is the spot where German SS officers rapidly assessed which prisoners looked fit and strong enough to be sent to the wooden blockhouses where the slave labourers lived. The Germans had taken a timber building originally designed to house about 50 cavalry horses and adapted it to the demands of the prison camp. Four hundred prisoners were crammed into the same space, packed on to double-decker bunks. In freezing rooms on starvation rations only a few lived for more than a few months.

The rest were herded towards the gas chambers.

It was murder on an industrial scale - whole communities perished together within hours of climbing down from the trains.

So the most moving moment in the Israeli soldiers' journey comes inside one of the old blockhouses, where a handful of them read out loud lists of the names of family members who died in the Holocaust.

Sometimes almost nothing is known to tell the stories of lives that were not lived, except a name.

As Yishai Szekely - a doctor who serves as a reserve officer in an artillery unit - explains, in some families first-hand memories are passed down. There are photographs or books and ornaments with stories attached, that make the dead seem real.

Here, the reading of the names is the only way to reclaim the dead from the anonymity of genocide.

"Six million is such a huge number, even to think of 1,000 it confuses you," Szekely says. "The power is in the name because we don't have much left. That's the only thing we can touch or understand or imagine, our only connection that we could start to make to our past… When you connect to one name, one person to one name, it makes it easier for you to understand."

When the last name has been read, I stroll between the blockhouses with Yechiel Aleksander, who was brought to Auschwitz as a teenager in 1944, on one of the Eastern Transports - the trains that carried the Jews to the selection process between life and death.

He survived of course and went to Israel after the war.

This is his 35th trip back to Poland with Israeli delegations to deliver lectures about what life was like here and to answer questions when he can.

The first nine or 10 trips back here affected him very badly, he says. For a moment, switching between Hebrew and the fluent Polish he still remembers from childhood, he is lost for words. He describes how the visits depressed him, by holding his hand out straight and level and then suddenly bringing it down in a plunging, swooping motion.

He still comes, though. He believes that those who know what it was like here have a special responsibility towards those who do not.

He remembers discussing the expulsion of the Jewish community from Spain at the end of the 15th Century with a group of Israeli schoolchildren and realising that most didn't know anything about it.

What, he wondered, if the Holocaust were to be forgotten in the same way, two or three generations from now?

"In 1994 I promised that all this must remain for future generations. I thought [if things remained the way they were] that in two generations from now no-one would even know that this place existed. It's much easier now that I know I'm passing things on to youngsters. Perhaps it will stick now and each generation will pass it on to the next generation."

...

A few years ago the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot published the extraordinary story of a photograph which hung on the wall of the office of Meir Dagan, who rose to become head of Mossad, Israel's external intelligence agency.

It is a slightly battered black-and-white print showing a scene from 1942 in the village of Lukow in central Poland. An older Jewish man is kneeling on the floor surrounded by German soldiers.

It is Meir Dagan's grandfather, who is known to have been murdered a short time later.

The picture came to light when Dagan's father returned to his home village after the war, to look for Jewish survivors.

They asked a local Polish man to take some photographs. When he handed over the film roll and they eventually had it processed, they discovered at its start the picture of the Germans surrounding the helpless old man. The photographer must have been taking photographs for the newly-arrived Nazis too.

The photograph is appalling, but it's historically interesting too.

The young Germans are not Aryan supermen but ordinary soldiers called up into their reserve infantry battalions for service in Poland.

It's worth examining the soldier's attitudes - they do not look to me like men who feel they've been caught doing something reprehensible. They look like men posing for a photograph which they intend to display on the mantelpiece in years to come.

Meir Dagan rose to become one of the most powerful men in Israel and throughout his career he had the photograph of his grandfather and the Germans on the office wall.

The lesson he reads into it is simple: "We have," he tells me, "no choice but to rely on ourselves... and there's a hard moral lesson from the Holocaust that anyone could become a murderer. The killings weren't carried out by fanatics but by what might be called normal men."
Read the whole thing.

(h/t Zvi)

Friday, May 24, 2013

  • Friday, May 24, 2013
  • Elder of Ziyon
Ma'an reports:
Talks between Fatah and Hamas on Tuesday and Wednesday accomplished little as the parties failed to reach any agreement, a top Islamic Jihad official said Thursday.

Abu Imad al-Rifaei, the Islamist group's representative in a committee preparing for national elections, told Ma'an that the talks focused on the makeup of the Palestinian Legislative Council and the Palestinian National Council.

But he said neither Fatah nor Hamas seemed serious about ending the division and implementing a reconciliation deal signed in 2011.

Al-Rifaei, who also serves as Islamic Jihad's representative in Lebanon, blasted the talks as a "waste of time."
It is worthwhile to remember that the group that is most interested in Hamas/Fatah unity is an Islamist terror group that is more extreme than Hamas.

This part is illuminating:
Asked about the situation in Syria, al-Rifaei denounced Israel's bombing in early May of a regime facility in Damascus. He says Islamic Jihad stands by any country facing Israeli attacks and will respond as it sees fit.
Yes, Islamic Jihad is threatening to attack Israel for attacking the regime that is murdering its fellow Islamists by the thousands.

No matter how much Arabs and Muslims hate each other, they will always hate Israel and Jews more.

Friday, May 10, 2013

YNet (Hebrew) reports on monthly meetings between yeshiva students in Efrat and Muslims from Hebron to discuss co-existence.

Ma'an translates:
“For a short hour, two completely different worlds would meet here. Young Palestinian men from Hebron and Jewish Yeshiva students from Efrat settlement have been involved in monthly meetings.

“However, to document these meetings was not an easy job as the participants at the beginning refused to let us take photos of them, and asked us blur their faces because revealing their identities may create serious problems within their societies,” the report said.

“The Palestinians have enough reasons to fear joining such meetings with settlers because such dialogue is illegal in the eyes of their society. If they are stigmatized as collaborators, they will be in real danger,” the report quoted chair of the Jewish organization of religious dialogue Yehuda Stolov as saying.
This is the sort of thing that should be celebrated by the so-called "progressive" Western liberals.

Instead it will be ignored, or worse, condemned as "normalization" - a positive word that has become as toxic in certain circles as "Zionism" itself.

People who live together wanting to cooperate. How awful!

Video can be seen at the linked sites.




Monday, April 29, 2013

On Monday, at Sotheby's, the first part of a highly anticipated auction of Judaica - the Steinhardt Judaica Collection -  was held.

While there are exquisite pieces of all types, including a beautiful illustrated Mishneh Torah worth millions of dollars, today's auction included an unanticipated bidding war over a 19th century tablecloth.

The estimated price for this piece was between $20,000 and $30,000. It sold for an astonishing $137,000.

Here is what it looks like and the explanation:

This colorful Sabbath tablecloth embroidered with images of the holy sites of Israel is one of an exceptional group of decorative textiles created in the Holy Land in the nineteenth century. In the central panel, the artist has featured an idealized vision of the sacred sites of the Temple Mount; the Midrash Shlomo (Solomon’s school) Bet Ha-Mikdash (The Temple) and the Kotel ha-Maaravi (the Western Wall). Surrounding the central panel are ten pavilions each denoting a tomb of one of the famous men or sages of Israel. In addition, the well of Miriam is also depicted and a fanciful chained lion represents the tomb of Rabbi Solomon Luria (known by his acronym as Ha-Ari = the Lion). In the outside corners are depictions of the tombs of Rachel, Samuel, Hulda the prophetess and the Kings of the House of David. Several prayers recited on Friday evening at the start of the Sabbath meal, (including Shalom Aleichem) are decoratively inscribed in concentric circles.

Scholarly research has identified a total of only nine clothes created in this style; these include seven highly similar tablecloths:
1. The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. First half of the nineteenth century (161/58)
2. The Jewish Museum, London. First half of the nineteenth century (no. 366)
3. The Jewish Museum, New York. First half of the nineteenth century (F1789)
4. The Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Dated 1850 (755-1900)
5. The Wolfson Museum Heichal Shlomo, Jerusalem. Dated 1906 (#2185)
6. The Wolfson Museum Heichal Shlomo, Jerusalem. Early twentieth century (#257)
7. The Jewish Museum of Greece, nineteenth century

and one related Torah Ark Curtain in the collection of the Jewish Museum, London (#53).

The present cloth is the only one of this group to be both signed by an artist, Nachman the son of Hillel the Yerushalmi, as well as dated, 1821. More importantly, it is both the earliest example of this genre as well as one of the earliest extant dated objects of Judaica to be created in Jerusalem in the modern period.

Why would a tablecloth sell for such an astonishing amount?

Perhaps because this is simple yet powerful proof of the centrality of Jerusalem, and specifically the Temple Mount, to Jews - a truth that too many people nowadays downplay or ignore. The tablecloth also displays a small inkling of the richness of Jewish history in the Land of Israel, and it beautifully demonstrates how Jews and their land are inexorably linked.

(h/t D)

  • Monday, April 29, 2013
  • Elder of Ziyon
Hamas and Fatah are still trying to negotiate a framework for negotiating a way for them to have meetings that are meant to lead to more talks to give gullible observers the pretense that they are interested in unification.

The latest is that some mid-level members of Hamas and Fatah will meet in Cairo to discuss the composition of an interim government even though they disagree on whether or when actual elections should take place after the supposed creation of this government. The talks are described as "crucial."

Prime minister Fayyad has not been replaced, and he is seemingly still doing what he was doing before he "resigned." Given how unlikely it is that Hamas and Fatah will agree on a new government soon, I think he will be the "outgoing prime minister" for months to come.

But to know how things really are doing between Hamas and Fatah, just check this out:
Assailants bombed the car of a Fatah leader in the southern Gaza Strip at dawn Monday, police said.

The attackers planted a 500-gram explosive device targeting the car of Monther al-Bardawil outside his home in Rafah, said police spokesman Ayman al-Bandakji.

Witnesses told Ma'an the explosion shook the neighborhood.

The Fatah official's car was damaged but no injuries were reported. Al-Bandakji said police had opened an investigation into the incident.

Earlier in April, assailants set fire to the car of Fatah's secretary-general in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

Mahmud Hussein's car was torched outside his home in Rafah on April 18.
That is a more accurate barometer of how much Fatah and Hamas want to work together than any number of preliminary meetings.

Sunday, April 28, 2013

One of the reasons given for today's Lag B'Omer celebrations is to commemorate the Bar Kochba revolt of 132-136 CE. Most Jews believe that this was the last time of Jewish sovereignty over the land of Israel before the 1948 War of Independence.

However, there may have been another brief period of Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem, many centuries later.

In "A History of the Jewish People" by Haim Hillel be-Sasson, we learn:
In the last days of Byzantine rule over the Land of Israel the Jews made an attempt to exploit the rivalry between the powers ruling the orient - Persia, Byzantium and Rome - in order to regain their political independence. For hundreds of years they had repeatedly hoped that the redemption of the Jewish people would come with the conquest of Palestine by Persia; and now the time seemed to have arrived. At the beginning of the seventh century, the Persians set out on their conquests in the East, and in the year 614 they reached the borders of Palestine. Their approach set off a powerful messianic fermentation, which is reflected in several works written at the time whose theme is the Redemption. The Armenian historian Sebeos reported (Chapter XXIV): 'As the Persians approached Palestine, the remnants of the Jewish nation rose against the Christians, joined the Persians and made common cause with them.' The Jews assisted the invaders materially in their conquest of Galilee. From there the invading army turned to Caesarea and continued its conquests down to Apollonia, then eastwards to Lydda and from there to Jerusalem, which was captured in May 614. Jewish forces also took part in the conquest of Jerusalem. Sophronius, a contemporary monk who lived near Bethlehem, wrote in a poem: 'God-seeking strangers and citizens of the city [Jerusalem]; . When they faced the Persians and their Hebrew friends/Hastened to close the city gates.'

The Persians handed Jerusalem over to Jewish settlers, who proceeded with the expulsion of the Christians and the removal of their churches. At the head of Jerusalem stood a leader whom we know only by his messianic name: Nehemiah ben Hushiel ben Ephraim ben Joseph. The sacrificial cult may even have been resumed. Jewish rule in Jerusalem lasted three years. In 617 there was a reversal of Persian policy. For reasons that are not sufficiently clear, the Persians made peace with the Christians. The Jews, on the other hand, did not, and the Persian authorities were forced to fight them: 'And they waged war against the saints and brought down many of them. and Shiroi [the king of Persia] stabbed Nehemiah ben Hushiel. and sixteen of the just were killed together with him (Book of Zerubabel, page 101).
There are other accounts of this episode as well.
The Jews saw another opportunity to take back Jerusalem in the early seventh century, just before the rise of Islam. The Persians conquered what had been Judea from the Byzantine Empire, capturing Jerusalem in 614 CE. The Armenian historian Sebeos described the Jews' reaction to the Persian campaign: "As the Persians approached Palestine, the remnants of the Jewish nation rose against the Christians, joined the Persians and made common cause with them." The Persians even installed a Jew, Nehemiah ben Hushiel ben Ephraim ben Joseph, to rule the city.

But this regime was short-lived. Hoping to accommodate their Roman Christian subjects, the Persians apparently withdrew their support for any Jewish self-government. Moreover, in 629 CE the Byzantine emperor Heraclius reconquered Jerusalem, where the former anti-Jewish edicts were again renewed. The city's new rulers banned public recital of Judaism's core prayer, the Shema, and executed many Jews or evicted them to neighboring countries. Five years later, the Byzantines required all the empire's Jews to become baptized. This harsh regime did not last long, however, for in 638 CE Muslim armies from Arabia conquered Jerusalem, thus opening a whole new chapter in the Holy City's history.

Thirteen hundred years would pass between the last Jewish self-government in Jerusalem in 614 and the establishment of a Jewish national home under the British that would later become the State of Israel. During that time, Jerusalem would remain the center of Jewish national aspirations as well as religious ritual. But the quest to return to Jerusalem was not left as an eschatological task for the distant future. Jews returned to Jerusalem whenever the bans on Jewish settlement were lifted; thus many Jews came back to the Holy City after the second caliph of Islam defeated the Byzantines, establishing a new Jewish Quarter that was populated until the First Crusade. Jerusalem's main Jewish synagogue in the first decades of Islamic rule, known as "the Cave," was located under the Temple Mount, at the point along the Western MA closest to the Holy of Holies.

The Jewish Encyclopedia does not mention this, however.

Thursday, March 28, 2013

On March 20, the Huffington Post wrote:
As U.S. president Barack Obama arrived in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, the Israeli military reportedly detained a group of children on their way to school in the West Bank city of Hebron.
Independent Catholic News:
Twenty-seven Palestinian children, age seven to 15, were arrested while on their way to school in the West Bank city of Hebron, Christian Peacemaker Teams reported on 24 March.
B'Tselem:
Soldiers detained or arrested over twenty minors on their way to school.

Now, the video:



Isn't it interesting that the many media outlets that showed video of the children's arrests didn't bother to show what was happening immediately beforehand?

(h/t Omri)

Monday, March 25, 2013

A few months ago I reported that Egyptian "antiquities expert" Dr. Rahim Rihan claimed that the Star of David was originally a Muslim symbol but the Jews stole it - in the 17th century.

Al Fajer TV and other Arab media report that Rihan has added to his theory, saying that Saladin used the six-pointed star in a castle in Ras Sudr 230 kilometers from Cairo:


Saladin lived in the 12th century.

The funny part is that some of the other Arab media that picked up this story, like Raya.ps, illustrated it with this star:

Which is, as I had previously pointed out, the front of the Leningrad Codex Hebrew Bible - which predates Saladin by 150 years!

However, another site has scientific proof that the star really originates from the Mahdi. I cannot say I understand the proof, but apparently if you write some Arabic letters (I think Mohammed with an extra M) in a circle in a certain way, they sort of make something approaching what might slightly resemble a six pointed star if the lighting is bad. Here is the proof in black and white:


See? it is so obvious!

It is endlessly amusing that people who claim that Jews are stealing their culture are so obsessed with, well, stealing the culture of Jews.


Wednesday, March 20, 2013

He even poses like a liar
Shlomo Sand, the fake historian who claims that there is no such thing as the Jewish people and that the Land of Israel is a myth - two arguments that I easily demolished in the past - was interviewed by the Palestine Chronicle, and for some reason some other publications have reprinted it.

Here's another of his laughable lies:
In Judaism there isn’t any traditional patriotism, any tradition of homeland. Palestine, Judea, it wasn’t the homeland of the Jews. And I discovered that the Christians were much more attached physically to the land. And very quickly I discovered that the first Zionists were not Jews; they were your [British] ancestors.

While I have written about Christian proto-Zionism (and pre-Zionist Zionism) a number of times, it is absurd to say that it predates the Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel.

Let's look at the Grace After Meals that religious Jews have been saying since at least Talmudic times (unless Sand wants to argue that this prayer it is a myth as well):

We offer thanks to You, L-rd our G-d, for having given as a heritage to our ancestors a precious, good and spacious land....For all this, L-rd our G-d, we give thanks to You and bless You. May Your Name be blessed by the mouth of every living being, constantly and forever, as it is written: When you have eaten and are satiated, you shall bless the L-rd your G-d for the good land which He has given you. Blessed are You, L-rd, for the land and for the sustenance.

...And rebuild Jerusalem the holy city speedily in our days. Blessed are You, L-rd, who in His mercy rebuilds Jerusalem. Amen.

Similarly, in the daily prayers:
Sound the great shofar for our freedom; raise a banner to gather our exiles, and bring us together from the four corners of the earth into our land. Blessed are You L-rd, who gathers the dispersed of His people Israel.

...Return in mercy to Jerusalem Your city and dwell therein as You have promised; speedily establish therein the throne of David Your servant, and rebuild it, soon in our days, as an everlasting edifice. Blessed are You L-rd, who rebuilds Jerusalem.

...May our eyes behold Your return to Zion in mercy. Blessed are You L-rd, who restores His Divine Presence to Zion.
In fact, in the daily prayers we pray for rain only for the part of the year that it would help the land of Israel!

Every Jew who is remotely familiar with the prayers knows the centrality of the Land of Israel to his or her belief system. According to many rabbis who pre-dated Christian Zionism, dwelling in Israel is a Biblical commandment. And the number of prominent Jews who moved to Israel since the time of the current diaspora is significant.

In other words, Sand is proven to be a liar yet again.

One other thing that he mentions is interesting:
I tried to read over again Jewish history to see if what I learned in school was right, and I discovered an unbelievable thing, as an Israeli citizen, as a historian – I can tell you that 10 years ago I believed that Judean society was exiled by the Romans. Discovering that it’s a myth, it was shocking for me.
Yes, a person who pretends to be a distinguished historian today didn't know a basic fact about Jewish history until ten years ago!

Apparently, he never read the radical 1993 work of that revisionist leftist historian - Binyamin Netanyahu:

How, then, were the Jews finally forced off the land‘? The most prevalent assumption is that the Jewish people's state of homelessness was owed solely to the Romans. It is generally believed that the Romans, who had conquered Palestine and destroyed Jewish sovereignty, then took away the country from the Jews and tossed them into an exile that lasted until our own century. However common this view, it is inaccurate. It is true that the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. was a highly important factor in the ultimate decline of Jewish power and presence in Palestine. But it was not the exclusive factor; nor did it depopulate the country of its Jewish inhabitants. Therefore. the common refrain about “two thousand years of exile." uncritically repeated by many Jews and non-Jews alike, is misleading. The Diaspora did not begin with the Roman destruction of Jerusalem-vibrant Jewish communities in Alexandria, Babylon, and elsewhere had antedated the Roman conquest by centuries. Nor did the Romans end Jewish national life in Palestine. That did not come until many centuries later. Thus in 135, sixty-five years after the razing of Jerusalem, the Jews under Bar Kochba revolted once more against Rome, “until the whole earth seemed to have been stirred up over the matter," according to the third-century Greek historian Dio Cassius.

Although this three-year Jewish revolt against Rome was also brutally crushed, the country remained primarily Jewish. and shortly thereafter the Jews were granted a considerable measure of autonomous  power, an authority that was recognized by Rome and later by Byzantium. In 212 C.E., when the Roman emperor Caracalla bestowed Roman citizenship on most subjects of the empire, he denied that privilege to those who lacked a country of their own. The Jews were granted Roman citizenship, because they were recognized as a people with their own country. This is not to say that they did not continue to rebel, attempting to expel Rome yet again in 35 1. And it should be noted. too, that the great Jewish legal works of the Mishna and the Jerusalem Talmud were composed in Palestine during the centuries of Roman and Byzantine domination, reflecting the dynamic Jewish intellectual life that persisted there even in the face of occupation. In 614 the Jews were, incredibly, still fighting for independence, raising an army that joined the Persians in seizing Jerusalem and ousting the Byzantines from Palestine. The size and vitality of the Jewish population at the beginning of the seventh century may be judged by the fact that in the siege of Tyre alone. the Jews contributed more than twenty thousand fighters.

But in 636, after a brief return of the Byzantines under Her-aclius. the Arabs burst into the land-after having destroyed the large and prosperous Jewish populations of the Arabian Peninsula root and branch. The rule of the Byzantines had been harsh for the Jews, but it was under the Arabs that the Jews were finally reduced to an insignificant minority and ceased to be a national force of any consequence in their own land. The Jews initially vested their hopes in the “Ishmaelite conquerors“ as they called them in contemporary sources, but within a few years these hopes were dashed Arab policy became clear. Unlike previous conquerors, the Arabs poured in a steady stream of colonists, often composed of military battalions and their families, with the intention of permanently Arabizing the land. In order to execute this policy of armed settlement, the Arabs relied on the regular expropriation of land, houses, and Jewish labor. In combination with the turmoil introduced into the land by the Arab conquest. these policies finally succeeded in doing what the might of Rome had not achieved: the uprooting of the Jewish farmer from his soil. Thus it was not the Jews who usurped the land from the Arabs, but the Arabs who usurped the land from the Jews.
This is the history that Sand is doing all he can to suppress - because it is the truth.

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

  • Wednesday, January 16, 2013
  • Elder of Ziyon
Hamas deputy political head Moussa Abu Marzouk insists that the Qassam Brigades, Hamas' terrorist wing, will remain under any unity deal with Fatah.

Abu Marzouk said in comments broadcast on Al-Risala Wednesday that the issue has not been raised in negotiations "because the Qassam Brigades can not be removed from the equation of confrontation with the occupation."

There had been rumors that Fatah was asking that the Qassam Brigades be dismantled or subsumed in the PA security forces.

Echoing Hezbollah's logic in keeping a separate militia while participating in the Lebanese government, Abu Marzouk insisted that the Qassam Brigades were the only professional security forces with the ability to protect Palestinian Arabs from Israel.

Monday, January 14, 2013

Al Ahram reports that Egyptian researcher Dr. Rahim Rihan, a supposed expert in Sinai and maritime archaeology, has determined that there have never been any Jewish Temples in Jerusalem.

Part of his evidence is the League of Nations report of December 1930 that determined that the Western Wall belongs to Muslims. (Part of that conclusion came because the rabbis that testified said that it belongs to no one but God, while the Muslims claimed it as their real estate.)

However, if you look at that very same report, the League of Nations makes it crystal clear that the Jewish Temples were on the Temple Mount:

The Wailing Wall forms an integral part of the western exterior shell of the Harem-esh-Sherif which itself is the site of the ancient Jewish temples, at the present day supplanted by Moslem Mosques....The very large blocks of stone at the base of the Wall, more especially the six courses of drafted stones, are dated by most archaeologists to the times of the Temple of Herod (i.e., the second, reconstructed Temple). Many of the stones bear inscriptions in Hebrew on their faces, some of them painted, others engraved. Above these stones there are three courses of undrafted masonry; these are probably Roman work (dating from the rebuilding of the city as a Roman colony by the Emperor Hadrian). The upper strata again are of much later date, belonging probably to the period about 1500 A.D. Recent researches go to show that the boundaries of the Wall coincide with those of the platform of the Temple of Solomon, of which courses of stones are supposed to still remain beneath the surface.

...It was Solomon who built the first Temple of Jerusalem, the grandeur and beauty of which have become widely renowned, thanks to the holy books and the historians. The Temple was situated on Mount Moriah on the platform, now known as the Harem-esh-Sherif area.

...About 720 B.C., the Assyrians destroyed the Kingdom of Israel and carried the inhabitants away as captives. About 600 B.C., Nebuchadnesar, King of Babylon, attacked the Kingdom of Judah. He destroyed the city of Jerusalem and the Temple of Solomon in the year 587 B.C. Most of the inhabitants were conveyed into captivity and were unable to return to their country until about 50 years later, after Cyrus, King of Persia, had conquered Babylon.

According to the Prophet Jeremiah the Jews who remained in the Holy Island during that period of expatriation had already developed the habit of going to worship on the ruins of the Temple. After the Jews returned to Palestine, the Temple was rebuilt on its ancient site, about the years 520-515 B.C. During the ensuing century a set form of ritual was established by Ezrah and Nehemiah.

In 332 B.C. the Jews came under the domination of the Macedonians. King Antiochus IV treated the Jews severely and, after the revolt they set on foot about 170 B.C. had been quelled, the second Jewish Temple was destroyed. Then there followed a period of independence, to a certain extent, which lasted until the country was conquered by the Romans, Pompey entering Jerusalem in the year 63 B.C. According to tradition - Bavli, Makkoth 24 - the Jews also during this period, i.e., after the destruction of the second Temple, were accustomed to go to the ruins of their holy site.

In the year 40 B.C., with the support of the Romans, Herod, surnamed the Great, became King of Judea and during his reign the Judean Kingdom regained some of its ancient splendour. Herod reconstructed the Temple for the second time.

This last Temple was not destined to attain the same length of life even as its predecessors, for in the year 70 A.D., Titus, who afterwards became Roman Emperor, conquered Jerusalem and, like Nebuchadnesar six and a half centuries earlier, destroyed the whole city of Jerusalem and also the Temple, a part of the Western Wall being the only remnant left of the building.

In the book edited by the Dominican Fathers, Vincent and Abel, Jérusalem nouvelle, Paris 1922-26, we are told that, during the first period after the destruction of the Temple of Herod, the Jews continued to go and weep at the ruins of it. According to tradition, the Jews' wailing-place at that time seems to have been the stone on Mount Moriah where the Mosque of Omar now stands.

...There are several Jewish authors of the 10th and 11th centuries, e.g., Ben Meir, Rabbi Samuel ben Paltiel, Solomon ben Judah, and others, who write about the Jews repairing to the Wailing Wall for devotional purposes, also under the Arab domination. A nameless Christian Pilgrim of the 11th century testifies to a continuance of the practice of the Jews coming to Jerusalem annually.
What kind of a liar does it take to cite a document as proof of your position when it actually says the opposite?

Thursday, December 27, 2012

  • Thursday, December 27, 2012
  • Elder of Ziyon
Fatah in Gaza has announced that it is canceling its planned rally to celebrate the 48th anniversary of its first terror attack.

Hamas refused to let Fatah use any of the large public squares in Gaza for the rally, Fatah was offered alternate venues, such as a soccer stadium, but they could not accommodate the expected 100,000 people Fatah was hoping for.

Fatah in Gaza decided not to complain too loudly about this in order to keep the facade of unity between Hamas and Fatah. Instead, they are calling on members to fly the yellow Fatah flag at their homes and to wear the keffiyeh, as a symbol of the movement.

This is actually a fairly big deal. Fatah allowed Hamas to hold a large public rally in Nablus. Which means the net effect is that Hamas is ascendant in the West Bank while Fatah is publicly invisible in Gaza. Hamas' refusal to allow a Fatah rally in the large public squares is being interpreted as a desire to ensure that Hamas has no visible competition in the sector.

"Unity," to Hamas, is only one way - for it to gain influence the West Bank without giving any quarter to Fatah in Gaza.

Once again, the Islamists completely outmaneuvered their opponents in the Middle East.


Thursday, December 13, 2012

  • Thursday, December 13, 2012
  • Elder of Ziyon
From YNet:
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas blasted Hamas Politburo Chief Khaled Mashaal for asserting that his group will never recognize Israel, hinting that the statement hinders the chances of the two-state solution, according to the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet.

“I don’t agree with Khaled Mashaal’s statement on the non-recognition of Israel because we, in fact, recognized it in 1993,” Abbas told reporters in Ankara at the conclusion of a two-day visit. “A four-article agreement between (Fatah and Hamas) stipulates a two-state vision. And Mashaal approved of this agreement."
So what is this four-article agreement that Hamas signed that accepted a two-state solution?

Apparently, it is not the 2011 Cairo agreement, which has five articles, but it is the 2007 Mecca national-unity agreement between the two.

Here is the full text:
Based on the generous initiative announced by Saudi King Abdullah Ben Abdul Aziz and under the sponsorship of his majesty, Fatah and Hamas Movements held in the period February 6–8, 2007 in Holy Mecca the dialogues of Palestinian conciliation and agreement and these dialogues, thanks to God, ended with success and an agreement was reached on the following:

First: to stress on banning the shedding of the Palestinian blood and to take all measures and arrangements to prevent the shedding of the Palestinian blood and to stress on the importance of national unity as basis for national steadfastness and confronting the occupation and to achieve the legitimate national goals of the Palestinian people and adopt the language of dialogue as the sole basis for solving the political disagreements on the Palestinian arena.
Within this context, we offer gratitude to the brothers in Egypt and the Egyptian security delegation in Gaza who exerted tremendous efforts to calm the conditions in Gaza Strip in the past period.

Second: Final agreement to form a Palestinian national unity government according to a detailed agreement ratified by both sides and to start on an urgent basis to take the constitutional measures to form this government.

Third: to move ahead in measures to activate and reform the PLO and accelerate the work of the preparatory committee based on the Cairo and Damascus Understandings.
It has been agreed also on detailed steps between both sides on this issue.

Fourth: to stress on the principle of political partnership on the basis of the effective laws in the PNA and on the basis of political pluralism according to an agreement ratified between both parties.

We gladly announce this agreement to our Palestinian masses and to the Arab and Islamic nation and to all our friends in the world. We stress on our commitment to this agreement in text and spirit so that we can devote our time to achieve our national goals and get rid of the occupation and regain our rights and devote work to the main files, mainly Jerusalem, the refugees, the Aqsa Mosque, the prisoners and detainees and to confront the wall and settlements.
Apparently, Abbas is claiming that the fourth paragraph binds Hamas to existing PNA laws which implicitly accept Israel (it is the PLO that accepted Israel, that is out of the scope of what the PA can do.)

This agreement has been abrogated numerous times since it was signed, and in fact the Hamas uprising that cut Gaza off from the West Bank - with scores killed - occurred only a few months after this agreement.

Obviously, Hamas never interpreted this agreement, nor the Cairo agreement, the way Abbas pretends they do. Hamas has explicitly and repeatedly stressed that it will never accept Israel's existence.

So which do you believe - a strained interpretation of intentionally vague language that doesn't even mention anything about a two-state solution or Israel itself, of Hamas' explicit daily threats to destroy Israel?

The entire purpose of Abbas' lies is to try to convince the West that the split between the two parties is nothing, really, and that they are really unified.

In fact, if they agree on anything, it is that Israel must be destroyed - they just disagree on the timing and tactics. (And sometimes, Fatah leaders seem to agree more with Hamas on even those.)

Monday, December 10, 2012

  • Monday, December 10, 2012
  • Elder of Ziyon
From Ma'an:
The Palestinian Authority has officially agreed to allow a Hamas festival commemorating the movement’s 25th anniversary in the West Bank, an independent politician said Monday.

Khalil Assaf, who heads a Palestinian forum of independent figures, said Hamas would organize a festival in Nablus on Thursday.

Hamas leaders will deliver speeches, with the sanction of the Fatah-dominated West Bank government.

Hamas has already approved a Fatah festival in Gaza commemorating its 48th anniversary, Assaf noted.
And so the Hamas takeover of the West Bank accelerates, using the excuse of "unity." Remember that Hamas won the legislative elections in nearly every district in the West Bank the last time they were held. in 2006.

For some reason, Western diplomats and pundits believe that that Hamas' ascendancy is a reason for Israel to give yet more concessions, as if the Palestinian Arabs will suddenly have a flood of good-will feelings and decide to support Israeli liberalism instead of Hamas terrorism.

"Time is running out," they say.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Hamas denies that the PA gave permission for the festival.


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