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How to Fight Anti-Israel Lies in a Post-Truth World
400 descendants of Holocaust survivor Shoshana Ovitz gather at the Western Wall to celebrate her 104th birthday. Photo: Twitter screenshot.
Shortly after the events of October 7, when Hamas attacked, killed, raped, and mutilated 1200 Israelis in southern Israel, including babies, a graduate student at my university in Canada (I am retired, but still receive university email), sent a message to our president and senior administrators. The message, forwarded to others in the university community, lamented the suffering of Palestinians and claimed that the accusations and videos of murder and rape by Hamas were not true; they were creations by Israel using AI.
Remember, this was well before the full force of the Israeli response to the Hamas massacre.
I thought of this incredible example of blindness to the truth when I read a recent New York Times article on the limits of moralism in the Middle East by Ross Douthat.
Douthat questions the Israeli government’s decisions, both before and after October 7, but he is especially critical of the pro-Hamas campus protestors for not seeing the truth of Hamas’ rule in Gaza, and for being comfortable in supporting a revolutionary struggle led by Islamist fanatics.
I thought of this blindness again when I read another recent article that makes the same point in the Times of Israel, based on an interview with Salmon Rushdie by the German tabloid newspaper Bild. In referring to the protesters’ demand to liberate Palestine, Rushdie finds it strange that progressive youth would support a fascist terrorist group like Hamas. He adds that although he has long been a supporter of a Palestinian state, it would likely become an authoritarian Islamist regime like Afghanistan.
In fact, Hamas’16 year rule over Gaza has shown the terror group to be against all progressive societal norms, including a free press, gender equality, LGBQT+ rights, and free democratic elections. On the other hand, the latest Economist Magazine Democracy Index 2023 (eiu.com) clearly indicates that Israel is still the only democracy in the Middle East.
Established in 2006, the annual Democracy Index includes 60 numeric scores measuring electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, political culture, and civil liberties. Countries are categorized as one of four regime types: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes, and authoritarian regimes.
The first Index listed Israel as a flawed democracy with a ranking of 47, while the US, a full democracy, ranked 17. Over the years, the ranking for the US has gone down, while that for Israel has gone up, in spite of periodic wars and existential threats. (Israel’s score was highest in 2021, at the time of the Bennet-Lapid government when, for the first time, an Israeli Arab party participated in the governing coalition. It has gone down somewhat since then because of efforts by the current government to curtail the power of the judiciary.)
For 2023, only 24 countries are full democracies, 50 are flawed democracies, 34 are hybrid regimes, and 49 are authoritarian regimes. Both the US and Israel are at the upper end of the flawed democracy range, the US ranking 29 and Israel 30.
Of the 20 countries listed for the Middle East and North Africa for 2023, only Israel is a democracy. Morocco and Tunisia are hybrid regimes while the rest are authoritarian. Turkey is a hybrid regime, “Palestine” has an authoritarian ranking, while authoritarian Saudi Arabia is number 150 and Taliban-ruled Afghanistan is last at 167.
That the two million Israeli Arabs (20 percent of Israel’s population) participate fully in Israel’s electoral process does not matter when it comes to labeling Israel an apartheid regime, for we live in a post-truth world in which lies are easy to disseminate with the help of the Internet and social media.
Instead of lauding Zionism as the decolonizing effort of an oppressed indigenous people, the Jews (who have always lived in the Holy Land) are colonialists. Instead of recognizing that more than half of Israeli Jews stem from Jewish refugees forced out of Muslim countries, all Jews in Israel are Europeans. Instead of sanctioning Hamas for the genocidal organization that it openly and proudly claims to be, Israel is accused of genocide when it defends itself.
Whether in relation to the blood libel, or the fabricated Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or any one of a number of imagined conspiracies, lies have been the heart of antisemitism through the centuries. Today the technology used may be different, but the lying continues.
Jacob Sivak, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor, who taught at the University of Waterloo.
The post How to Fight Anti-Israel Lies in a Post-Truth World first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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