On April 1 the Santa Fe New Mexican published “Santa Fe Plaza protest condemns deaths of Palestinians.” This story about the terrorist-supporting, pro-Boycott, anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) lays bare the JVP’s real aim: the elimination of a Jewish state of Israel, the support of Palestinian terrorism, and the support of Hamas’ perverse priorities of militancy over basic services for its citizens. As described in the Wall Street Journal article reprinted below, this was “The usual people denounc[ing] Israel in the usual ways, countered by the usual defenders making the usual arguments.”
At the same time the New Mexican article provides no context about the protests at the Gaza border, ignores the circumstances of the Gaza protests and Palestinian injuries, makes no attempt to state the massive preventive actions Israel took in advance to reduce the effects of Palestinian violence, gives no context of what JVP stands for (see below), and implies that all the violence came from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) when indeed the violence was started, encouraged, and escalated by members of Hamas terrorist groups.
TAKE ACTION: WRITE TO THE NEW MEXICAN AND SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT. Send letters and op-eds (My Views) to: letters@sfnewmexican.com. More information about writing letters and op-eds can be found on our website here. A particularly interesting article from the Wall Street Journal on the Arab world’s view of the Hamas gambit is reprinted below as well.
Talking Points
1. The real intentions of JVP is the elimination of Israel. The New Mexican notes that “demonstrators carried signs and chanted slogans such as ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.'” This is no euphemism or symbolic chant. The goal of Hamas is the elimination of Israel. This “from the river to the sea” slogan has been used for years explicitly to define a State of Palestine as one that includes all of even pre-1967 Israel. There is no ambiguity here. JVP supports Hamas, JVP chants “from the river to the sea.” JVP supports the elimination of Israel.
2. JVP supports violent protests and terrorists. As usual, JVP members try to appear as if they are pursuing peace when in fact they are contributing to the perpetuation of violence and terrorism by exploiting the deaths of innocents and ignoring the purpose and violence of Hamas. Hamas called for these protests. They supplied the stones and leaders that instigated the violence. They called on Gazans to rise up against the IDF and to attempt to cross over into Israel. There is significant evidence that they attempted to use the protests to try to infiltrate into Israel to carry out terrorist acts.
Here is how the Times of Israel summarized the situation:
On Friday, some 30,000 Palestinians took part in demonstrations along the Gaza border, during which rioters threw rocks and firebombs at Israeli troops on the other side of the fence, burned tires and scrap wood, sought to breach and damage the security fence, and in one case opened fire at Israeli soldiers.
Further, not all of the “17 Palestinians killed by Israeli military forces during protests in Gaza on Friday” were innocent civilians – Israel has identified at least 10 of those as members of Palestinian terrorist groups. Hamas itself has acknowledged that at least 5 of them were gunmen from its “military wing.” Here is what the Algemeiner reported as of Monday evening:
Eight of the dead men belonged to Hamas — the Islamist faction that has ruled in Gaza since 2007 — while the other two belonged respectively to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, affiliated with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement, and the Palestinian branch of Islamic Jihad.
The IDF posted a picture of a Palestinian shooting at IDF troops
asking (originally in Arabic – this translation is by Google translate): “Did you say that your journey will be # peaceful and without weapons? O Organization ## Hamas_alarhabiyh, or from trying to infiltrate? Do you send militants to the wall in order to risk the lives of [your people],” and a video of two Palestinian terrorists trying to infiltrate the Gazan Border (see here).
As Jonathan Tobin, editor-in-chief of the JNS, stated:
It’s possible to criticize Israeli policies without joining forces with those who desire its destruction. Yet the opinions of individuals [like JVP] willing to swallow an obvious Hamas ploy devised to sacrifice Palestinians in order to promote an effort that makes a two-state solution — or peace of any kind — impossible can’t be taken seriously as a reasonable critique of Israeli behavior.
The Anti-Defamation League has pointed out JVP’s infatuation with and promotion of terrorists:
In its zeal to condemn Israel at every opportunity, JVP has celebrated figures who have been convicted of engaging in terrorism, including Rasmea Odeh and Marwan Barghouti.
JVP feted Odeh at its 2017 conference, describing her as “a feminist leader… [who has] survived decades of Israeli and US government persecution and oppression.” In fact, Odeh was sentenced to life in prison by an Israeli military court in 1970 for her membership in an illegal terrorist organization and for planting the explosives used in two 1969 Jerusalem bombings.
On June 2, JVP ran a paid advertisement in the Jewish newspaper, The Forward, which featured an extended quote from Barghouti alleging that Israel has purposely inflicted suffering on Palestinians who are incarcerated in Israeli prisons. Bizarrely, JVP described Barghouti as the leader of a Palestinian prisoner hunger strike, omitting the fact that he is a terrorist convicted of murdering five Israelis.
On wonders if JVP is simply naive or fully gullible in believing that protesters were innocently throwing stones. These slingshot “stonethrowers” can do great harm to others.
3. JVP supports Gazan’s hardship, poor governance, perverse priorities, and mismanagement. But they won’t admit it, or are too blind with hatred to see it. The deeper problem is Hamas leaders have used the generosity of the international community to dig tunnels and manufacture arms and armaments instead of paying for electricity, installing sewage treatment plants, improving hospitals, and renovating infrastructure. The Hamas leadership in Gaza treats their citizens worse than anything the IDF has done in recent memory. They let their hatred for the Jews and Israel pervert their priorities.
[4. JVP blames all woes on Israel – yet Egypt blockades Gaza as much as Israel, and even the Palestinian Authority has been imposing limited boycotts on Gaza (see, for example, in Al Jazeera last year: “Israel agrees to PA request to reduce Gaza electricity.”)
As the New York Times opined in an editorial on April 2:
Palestinian leaders have also failed their people. Hamas leaders who run Gaza have waged war against Israel, exploiting their people in the process. Their rival, the Palestinian Authority, has been feckless at pursuing peace with Israel and last year imposed its own punitive measures on Gaza, including cutting salaries, in a bid to end Hamas’s control.
5. Just because JVP members are Jewish doesn’t mean they represent American Jews. JVP members think that by saying they are Jewish it gives their protest against Israel greater moral authority. The reality is that the great majority of American Jews and Jews around the world support Israel’s right to self-defense and don’t try to undermine US-Israel security, the way JVP does. By the way, they were protesting at the plaza on Shabbat and the first of the Passover holy days. Curious that they would do it on a day when many even mainstream Jews are unable to answer their protests with counter-protests.
SFMEW doesn’t take any pleasure in writing this posting. We regret the loss of innocent life. We regret that there are anti-Semitic Jews like those in JVP who are quoted in the New Mexican article who misrepresent the facts and the circumstances of the conflict. And we regret that we need to constantly remind the New Mexican that its coverage is irresponsible when it doesn’t provide context and fact check statements by those it quotes, or at least provide an Israeli government or a local response from a knowledgeable source to such a biased article. Unfortunately this is the state of such biased, propagandistic expressions by JVP, and unbalanced reporting from the New Mexican.
More about Jewish Voice for Peace
The following is from the Anti-Defamation League’s Profile (the full report can be found here):
Despite the neutral tone of its name, JVP works to demonstrate Jewish opposition to the State of Israel and to steer public support away from the Jewish State…JVP uses its Jewish identity to shield the anti-Israel movement from allegations of anti-Semitism and to provide the movement with a veneer of legitimacy. On its website, JVP recognizes its role as such, noting that the group’s Jewish nature gives it a “particular legitimacy in voicing an alternative view of American and Israeli actions and policies” and the ability to distinguish “between real anti-Semitism and the cynical manipulation of that issue.”
The group has also started to invoke its Jewish identity more frequently in an attempt to directly confront the American Jewish community about its positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
JVP’s positions on BDS, its willingness to partner with anti-Israel organizations that deny Israel’s right to exist, and its refusal to support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, demonstrate its hardline stance. In fact, JVP has consistently co-sponsored demonstrations to oppose Israeli military policy that have been marked by signs comparing Israel to Nazi Germany and slogans that voice support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. JVP has not condemned or sought to distance itself from these messages. JVP also intentionally exploits Jewish culture and rituals to reassure its supporters that opposition to Israel does not contradict Jewish values, but that it is actually consistent with them.
Note on your calendars, plan to attend, and rsvp:
The next meeting of Santa Fe Middle East Watch will be April 17, 7:00 pm, place to be announced. RSVP to info@sfmew.org. Those responding they will be attending will be sent the location information before the meeting.
From the Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2018:
Arab Leaders Abandon the Palestinians
Facing threats from Iran and Turkey, they want peace—and to strangle Hamas.
On the surface it was business as usual in the Gaza Strip. Hamas bussed thousands of residents to the border with Israel to begin a six-week protest campaign ahead of the 70th anniversary of Israel’s independence—or, as the Palestinians call it, the nakba, or “catastrophe.” This protest would mark “the beginning of the Palestinians’ return to all of Palestine,” according to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
It didn’t. Stones were thrown, tires were set aflame, and shots were fired. When the smoke cleared, the borders were still in place and 15 Palestinians lay dead, with three more succumbing later from injuries. While families endured their private tragedies, familiar controversies swirled. The usual people denounced Israel in the usual ways, countered by the usual defenders making the usual arguments.
But what is happening in Gaza today is not business as usual. Tectonic plates are shifting in the Middle East as the Sunni Arab world counts the cost of the failed Arab Spring and the defeat of Sunni Arabs by Iranian-backed forces in Syria.
In headier times, pan-Arab nationalists like Gamal Abdel Nasser and lesser figures like Saddam Hussein dreamed of creating a united pan-Arab state that could hold its own among the world’s great powers. When nationalism sputtered out, many Arabs turned to Sunni Islamist movements instead. Those, too, have for the time being failed, and today Arab states seek protection from Israel and the U.S. against an ascendant Iran and a restless, neo-Ottoman Turkey.
But the American protection on which Arabs rely cannot be taken for granted, as President Trump’s apparent determination to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria in the near term demonstrates. Under these circumstances, Israel’s unmatched access to Washington makes Jerusalem even more important to Arab calculations. Perhaps only Israel can keep the U.S. engaged in the region.
It is against this backdrop that the old Palestinian alliance with the Arab nations has frayed. Most Arab rulers now see Palestinian demands as an inconvenient obstacle to a necessary strategic alliance with Israel. The major Gulf states and Egypt apparently have agreed on two goals. The first is to strangle Hamas in Gaza to restore the authority of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. The second is to press the authority to accept the kind of peace that Israel has offered repeatedly and that Yasser Arafat and his successor have so far rejected.
Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority are playing for time. They support the first goal by refusing to pay the salaries of government employees in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip even as they resist pressure to make peace with the Jewish State. It is not yet clear what the authority’s final response to the peace pressure will be. Even if it ultimately decides to accept an Arab-sponsored compromise, making a show of resistance can improve its credibility with the Palestinian public and, perhaps, extract better terms.
Hamas is in an even more desperate plight. The Arab blockade and donor strike cripples Gaza in ways the Israelis never could. Food is growing scarce, electricity is erratic, unemployment exceeds 40%, and raw sewage runs into the sea. Many Gaza residents presumably want the only thing Hamas can’t offer: relief.
Historically Hamas has reacted to this kind of pressure by launching wars against Israel, trusting its friends abroad to force the Jewish state to cease fire before it can inflict serious damage on Hamas’ leadership. But in the 2014 war, Arab foot-dragging gave Israel time to deal a serious defeat to Hamas. Another war would be equally ruinous and for the same reason: The Arab governments want Hamas crushed, and they won’t stop Israel from doing the job.
The current demonstrations, Hamas hopes, can whip up a global wave of rage and indignation against Israel without provoking a full-on war. That might weaken the Arab coalition against it. But the prime audience for Hamas’s performance this time isn’t the Arab world; it is Turkey and Iran, whose support Hamas will need to survive if it is driven from Gaza (as Arafat was once driven from Jordan and Lebanon).
Rifts between Palestinians and other Arabs are nothing new. But the collapse of Arab nationalism and the failure of Sunni radicalism have weakened the political forces that rallied Arab support to the Palestinian cause. With millions of new Arab refugees in Syria, and growing threats to Arab independence from powerful neighbors, prioritizing Palestine is a luxury many Arabs feel they can no longer afford.
SFMEW is a beneficiary organization of the Jewish Federation of New Mexico.
Be sure to attend the lunch and presentation by Stephen Schneider of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on April 15 at noon at Chabad in Santa Fe. There is no charge for the event, but an RSVP is required. More information can be found and RSVP information: http://www.sfmew.org/stephen-schneider-on-europe-and-israel/.