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Facts and Logic About the Middle East

September 12, 2017

Fighting the Trifecta of Anti-Semitism—Israel and Jews Face Attacks from the Left, Right and Jihadis

Dear Friend of FLAME:

In the 35 years I've been active in defending Israel, it has never ceased to astound me how shamelessly our enemies have tried to sell the most absurdly outrageous falsehoods about Jews and the Jewish state. Here are just a few:

• The Israel Defense Forces steal and sell the organs of Palestinian children.

• Jews make matzah using the blood of Arab children.

• Jews have no history in Palestine and therefore are colonizers.

• Palestinians are the indigenous people of Palestine, being ancestors of the ancient Canaanites.

• Israel is an apartheid state—denying equal rights to Arab citizens and other minorities.

Perhaps even more astounding—and disconcerting—is how many people actually fall for the lies. But then again, if you're an anti-Semite, you don't need rational evidence to convince you.

This week I became aware of another amazing lie—this one being trumpeted by a coalition of leftist and jihadi groups on the University of Illinois's Urbana-Champaign campus. This lie is truly bizarre: Zionists are part of the fascist and white supremacist coalition that is oppressing people of color, including Palestinians.

Sponsors of the rally—called "Smash Fascism: Radical Resistance Against White Supremacy" included Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Black Lives Matter (BLM) and (oh, yes) Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). (This is a good time to mention that your support of FLAME helps us publish our pro-Israel editorial messages regularly in the University of Illinois Daily Illini student newspaper.)

Of course, anyone remotely literate in history of the 20th century—or even who read newspaper accounts of the recent Charlottesville, VA riots—knows that millions of Jews were massacred by fascists and that white supremacists above all target blacks and Jews in their attacks. In other words, if you hate fascism and white supremacists, you will love the Jewish people and their fervently democratic state of Israel.

Which brings us to this week's FLAME Hotline featured article, below, by David Harris, CEO of AJC. Harris makes the point that these days anti-Semitism comes in three nasty flavors—far left, far right and Islamist. That's why, if you support Israel, it's helpful to leave your partisanship at the door: Our enemies can come from any flank—and we have to be ready to fight wherever they rear their hateful heads.

By the way, it's useful to clarify that neither Harris or we at FLAME define "left" to mean liberal or Democrat, nor "right" to mean conservative or Republican. Anti-Semites are those political activists who practice anti-Semitism—usually from the radical fringes, as surely SJP, BLM, JVP . . . and the KKK are. Nor do we define all Muslims as Islamists—that variety of Muslims who believe Islam and sharia law, by exercise of jihad, should dominate all civil society.

Tragically, it is the hard left—based on its perverse theory of intersectionality—that sees no contradiction between supporting self-determination of indigenous people and joining with Islamist groups like SJP to oppose the self-determination of Palestine's only indigenous people—the Jews (while favoring the Middle East's cruelest colonizers, the Arabs). But anti-Semitism will make you stupid.

I found Harris's "trifocal" concept useful in understanding the new configuration of our enemies, and I believe you will as well.

Finally, while we're on the topic of anti-Semitism, I hope you'll also quickly review the P.S. immediately below, which describes FLAME's latest hasbarah campaign demanding that the U.S. exit from the U.N. Human Rights Council—one of the world's most insidious anti-Semitic organizations.

Best regards,

Jim Sinkinson
President, Facts and Logic About the Middle East (FLAME)

P.S.

Did you know: While the U.N. discriminates against Israel in many ways, the organization's most outrageously unjust agency is the U.N. Human Rights Council, long a harbor for oppressive regimes to pass judgments on other nations, and above all against Israel. The Middle East's only democracy and truly a light unto nations in so many ways, Israel suffers more condemnations by the UNHRC than all other nations together. In just the last year, the UNHRC passed twice as many resolutions against Israel as against North Korea and Syria combined. In order to make Americans—especially college and university students—aware of this injustice, FLAME has just produced and will soon publish a new position paper: "Exit the U.N. Human Rights Council." This paid editorial will appear in magazines and newspapers, including college newspapers, with a combined readership of some 10 million people. In addition, it is being sent to every member of the U.S. Congress and President Trump. If you agree that this kind of public relations effort on Israel's behalf is critical, I urge you to support us. Remember: FLAME's powerful ability to influence public opinion—and U.S. support of Israel—comes from individuals like you, one by one. I hope you'll consider giving a donation now, as you're able—with $500, $250, $100, or even $18. (Remember, your donation to FLAME is tax deductible.) To donate online, just go to donate now . Now more than ever we need your support to ensure that the American people and the U.S. Congress end our support of blatantly anti-Semitic, global jihadist organizations.

As of today, more than 15,000 Israel supporters receive the FLAME Hotline at no charge every week. If you're not yet a subscriber, won't you join us in receiving these timely updates, so you can more effectively tell the truth about Israel? Just go to free subscription

Did you know: While the U.N. discriminates against Israel in many ways, the organization's

By David Harris, Huffington Post, September 4, 2017

For close to two decades, we have been blowing the whistle on the rising tide of anti-Semitism. When asked the source, our answer has always been the same: Look in three directions—the far left, the far right, and the jihadists.

Too many in our hyper-politicized world, however, would prefer to shy away from this trifocal analysis. For them, it doesn't necessarily sit well ideologically, the facts be damned.

But we don't have a particular ax to grind or, if you will, a "preferred" enemy to confront. We're a Jewish front-line agency that doesn't get to pick and choose our threats because they might suit a subtle, or not-so-subtle, partisan outlook.

When neo-Nazis came out by the hundreds in Charlottesville and chanted blood-curdling diatribes evoking the Third Reich, many Jews rushed to condemn them, and rightly so. We were most assuredly among them.

Whether appropriate or not, some celebrity Jews even chose to brandish the yellow Star of David, reminiscent of what Jews in the German concentration camps and ghettos had to wear, marking them for likely extermination.

While admiring this post-Charlottesville determination to stand up as Jews, I couldn't help but wonder where some of these very same people had been in recent years when the threats and attacks were coming from elsewhere.

To be absolutely, unmistakably clear, there is a real danger emanating from the far right.

For some time, we had thought it was more ominous in Europe, where, unlike here, extremists were also organizing under the banners of political parties, such as the Golden Dawn in Greece, Jobbik in Hungary, and the National Front in France. They have been seeking to gain influence through the ballot box, in addition to their activities in cyberspace and on the streets.

In some cases, they lionize 20th century fascists, call for registries of Jews, disparage or even deny the Holocaust, and rant about Jewish power and influence.

It turns out that they have a fair number of kindred spirits in the U.S., who march in the streets declaring that "Jews will not replace us" and pining for "blood and soil," the English translation of the Nazi belief in "Blut und Boden."

But the danger doesn't begin and end here. Nor, therefore, should our concern and outrage.

For one thing, the far left also poses daunting challenges.

Many in this camp seem to have a problem with one country on earth—and it just happens to be the only Jewish-majority nation around, with a Jewish population, it might be noted, of just over six million people, many of whom were themselves targets of the far right (and the far left and jihadists) in the past century.

No other nation awakens the far left's misguided passion in the way that Israel does. Only democratic Israel is constantly in their crosshairs.

They don't organize BDS campaigns, flotillas, flytillas, apartheid weeks, or disruptive protests about the true human-rights abusers, just Israel, as it seeks to defend itself against those who openly proclaim their intent to destroy it.

In the same vein, they celebrate self-determination for the Palestinians, but would deny it for the Jews.

Is this obsessive, relentless attempt to challenge the Jewish people's national aspirations not a form of anti-Semitism? Of course it is, and has been acknowledged as such by the UN Secretary-General, the President of France, and many other astute leaders.

And when was the last time, for example, that anyone saw a protest by these self-professed human rights campaigners of the far left, whether on an American campus or elsewhere, about mass murder in Syria; Islamic State's genocide against the Yazidis; the Venezuelan government's wholesale destruction of a country; concentration camps housing hundreds of thousands of inmates in North Korea; the British Labor Party's recurring examples of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, beginning at the very top of the party leadership; or Iran's serial violations of the human rights of women, gays, and religious minorities?

Their blatant selectivity and hypocrisy speak volumes.

But bifocal lenses aren't sufficient, either. Trifocals are needed.

Of late, the greatest physical threat to Jews has come from jihadists.

Consider the fact that every fatal attack against Jews in Europe in recent years has been carried out by Islamic extremists.

From the kosher supermarket in Paris to a Jewish school in Toulouse, from the Jewish Museum in Brussels to the synagogue in Copenhagen, from the murders of Ilan Halimi and Sarah Halimi in Paris to the Israelis (and Bulgarian) killed in Burgas, they were all perpetrated by jihadists.

Add to that the genocidal ambitions of Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas, incendiary Salafist teachings in many madrassas, and the ubiquitous anti-Semitism in important segments of the Arab media.

So, by all means, let's express our utter revulsion when Nazis march in Charlottesville, and let's speak up when the occupant of the Oval Office stunningly fails to provide moral clarity in confronting such an unfolding drama.

But, equally, the same Jewish outrage needs to be manifested when the leader of a country, Iran, seeks a world without Israel, when Hezbollah's top cleric calls for the mass murder of Jews, when Jewish children are shot to death in front of a Jewish school for the simple fact that they are Jews, and when groups on American campuses single out Israel, alone among 193 UN member states, for delegitimization and disappearance.

Oh, and as if things weren't already complicated enough, we also must not lose sight of the seemingly bizarre alliances that emerge, such as between the far left and Islamic extremists regarding Israel and Zionism, or the far right and Islamic extremists on Holocaust denial and demonization of Jews.

In other words, it's a time for those who genuinely care about anti-Semitism to open their eyes wide—and not allow ideological or partisan thinking to narrow the field of vision.

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