JULY 14, 2023

TEL AVIV, Israel — In 1973, eleven Arab nations (and Cuba) launched a brutal and coordinated attack led by Egypt and Syria against Israel. The attack was planned on Yom Kippur, the Jewish nation’s holiest day of the year. The Arab armies were right in planning an attack at a moment when the Israel Defence Forces would have been less prepared defend the country.

Israeli men and women, including many soldiers, were at synagogue observing the holiday. On Yom Kippur, electricity and motorized vehicles are disallowed as the focus is purely on prayer. The IDF, the Arabs reasoned (correctly), would have a difficult time quickly deploying its soldiers to the field with a surprise attack on this day. It took days for Israel to mobilize its army, heavy equipment, the aircraft and the navy.

Israel was caught off guard and unprepared. To put it in perspective, the Arab armies combined mobilized over one million troops against Israel’s 415,000 who deployed over several days. Israel only had 1,700 tanks, 3,000 armored carriers, 945 artillery units and 440 combat aircraft. The other side had 4,000 tanks, 1,720 artillery units and 452 aircraft.

By all accounts, the Arab armies were superior in numbers and equipment. Israel was in an emergency situation. Citizens felt the end was near for the nascent state. In Tel Aviv, and other major cities, officials were scouting mass burial plots expecting heavy losses even among the civilian population. Some who lived through the era recall hiding in churches from anticipated bombing runs by Egyptian planes.

If you think this week’s mass rallies in Tel Aviv against the government’s judicial reform is the end of the Jewish state, you have clearly forgotten the dire straits Israel was in during the Yom Kippur War. This was my reply to a question following the screening of my film, The Future of Israel and its Defenders at the Canadian Embassy in Tel Aviv. The air in the room was stifled by gloominess as mass demonstrations were set to take place on the very same evening as my screening to the leadership of the Israel, Britain & the Commonwealth Association.

Contrary to the optimism of my film, the very well educated and obviously informed Zionist group had felt hopeless about Israel’s future. It’s not an uncommon feeling in Israel today. “I don’t mean to sound gloom and doom one attendee said, but how can you be so optimistic?” she wondered. Her question was a legitimate one for many “Tel Aviv” secular Israelis who are feeling that the Netanyahu government with its right-wing coalition is driving Israel off of a cliff.

This week, a new controversial bill was passed on first reading by Israel’s ruling coalition. The so-called “reasonableness bill” is said to stop judicial scrutiny over new laws introduced by the government. Its detractors say because there are no stop-gaps for the passage of bills that may be “extreme” or pose “very severe harm” and “multi-system damage” the judiciary is necessary to protect Israel and its citizens from abuse. The bill’s defenders say that the judiciary has become politically weaponized and that a democratically elected government cannot govern effectively if its work is quashed at every turn.

We drove by numerous peaceful rallies in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis are peacefully exercising their democratic right to disagree with the government. The rallies have been working to an extent. The judicial reform process has slowed and the government has, at least for now, halted some of the more dramatic measures. At their climax, earlier this year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had to backtrack on his call for the Defense Minister to resign, following wide-scale national rallies.

None of this sounds like Israel is falling off a cliff or that its future is in jeopardy. Certainly, this doesn’t even resemble the end of time felt on the eve of the Yom Kippur war. No one is digging graves. No one is going to war. No one is dying in the mass protests. Israel, I expressed to my audience, is simply in a heated debate about its future. 

There is nothing wrong with that. It's perfectly normal in any democracy. And when you consider Israel’s trials and tribulations over these past 75 years, this is just another blip Israel will overcome.

“We only have one Jewish State in this world. How can we afford not to be optimistic?” I asked my audience. “Optimism breeds optimism and the reverse is true for pessimism. It's our duty to tell the remarkable and epic story about the State of Israel, especially to our youth. That’s what my film does. If we focus on despair, that’s exactly what we will get. Our enemies will be thrilled.”

National Post

Avi Benlolo is the founder and chairman of the Abraham Global Peace Initiative.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/avi-benlolo-mass-protests-hardly-the-end-of-israel

Avi Benlolo and Henry Kopel:

“Don’t kick a man when he’s down” — this phrase captures a core tenet of human decency and fair play. Conversely, the abrogation of this principle expresses a primal level of indecency and bad faith — which was displayed this past week by Amnesty International in its latest defamation of Israel.

To put this in context: On Tuesday, in the West Bank town of Eli, four Jewish Israelis were peacefully dining at a hummus restaurant: 17-year-old Nachman Mordoff, 17-year-old Elisha Anteman, 21-year-old Harel Masood, and 64-year-old Ofer Fayerman. A car pulled into the gas station next door, then two Hamas terrorists jumped out, aimed their rifles at the restaurant, unleashed a hail of bullets, and slaughtered the four Israelis.

This massacre followed a months-long spike in Palestinian terror murders across Israel — all incited by the Palestinian Authority’s non-stop torrent of hate propaganda, and each massacre celebrated across Palestinian villages by dancing in the streets and fistfuls of candy handed out to children.

Against this somber background, while Israelis made preparations to bury their dead, Amnesty International tweeted out a thoroughly false and derogatory slander of Israel — and only Israel. Accusing Israel of a multiplicity of nefarious harms against the Palestinian-Arab people, Amnesty declared Israel guilty of committing “apartheid over Palestinians,” amounting to a “crime against humanity.”

Of course, Amnesty said nothing about the latest round of Palestinian murders of innocent Israeli civilians; nothing about the months’ long series of slaughters that preceded it; nothing about the constant incitement of their people into such homicidal rages; nothing about the ghoulish public celebrations of every such killing; and nothing about the PA’s spending of hundreds of millions of Western aid dollars on pensions and rewards for such terrorist murderers and their families.

No, amid those damning facts regarding Palestinian society and governance, Amnesty chose instead to focus exclusively on publicly defaming the world’s sole Jewish state as it buried its latest terror-victims. Israeli “apartheid,” Amnesty had the audacity to tweet, is “deprivation, segregation, fragmentation and dispossession”.

No guff. The only problem with that infantile statement is, its being applied to the wrong place. Apartheid does not exist in the free and democratic state of Israel. A country where the two largest gay pride parades are held in the Middle East (in Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv). A nation where its Arab minority can vote and do get elected to parliament, and where Arabs and Christians alike hold positions in every professional sector, including the military.

Amnesty’s sour objection to the existence of the State of Israel appears to say that a flourishing democracy is a crime against humanity if it’s a majority Jewish state. Everywhere else in the world, there is no objection to ethnic and religious nationalities comprising a majority in a nation state. It’s only Israel that seems to be a problem for Amnesty.

This obvious double standard is nothing less than antisemitism, if the IHRA working definition is applied. One of the examples of antisemitism given by the IHRA is the application of “double standards by requiring of it (Israel) a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.” More significantly, the IHRA definition makes it explicitly clear that “by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour” that this is a denial of the Jewish people’s “right to self-determination.”

Like every nation on earth, Israel is not without its problems and issues. But Amnesty is a powerful engine that is spreading dangerous mistruths about the Jewish State by saying it practices apartheid. How can this be? Another powerful and respected organization, Freedom House, says Israel is “Free” in its Global Freedom Status. Conversely, every neighbouring country is rated “not free” (other than Lebanon which is rated partially free) according to the Freedom House report.

Given these basic truisms, by disparaging Israel and saying it is committing a “crime against humanity,” why is Amnesty inviting this level of hatred against the Jewish State? The truth of the matter is that Apartheid is being practiced by both the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and by Hamas in Gaza. While over 2 million Arabs live anywhere they want in Israel, Jews are absolutely restricted and not permitted to reside in Palestinian cities and towns. Not to mention the repression that takes place against women, the LGBTQ community and Christians in Gaza and the West Bank.

Amnesty’s apparent bigoted double standard for defaming Israel is a crime against truth and decency. The Middle East is a tough neighbourhood. Terrorist attacks against Israelis occur on a near daily basis. Instead of standing up with hundreds of Israelis that are pushing hard to preserve democracy, Amnesty is inflaming an already fragile situation. In so doing, Amnesty itself is diminishing its own credibility, by choosing the very side in the conflict that is non-democratic, tyrannical and oppressive. What a shame.

Avi Benlolo is the founder and chairman of the Abraham Global Peace Initiative. Henry Kopel, former U.S. federal prosecutor in Connecticut with over 30 years’ experience investigating and prosecuting national security matters, domestic terrorism, violent crimes, narcotics trafficking, and white collar crime. 

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/opinion-amnesty-internationals-bigoted-claim-that-israel-is-an-apartheid-state

An increasing tide of antisemitism around the world is proving that Israel is needed now more than ever. Theodor Herzl, the founding visionary of the modern Jewish state, was right about re-establishing the Jewish homeland as the answer to antisemitism. The only way for Jewish people to truly escape this infectious disease of hatred is by seeking refuge in Israel.

Israel might not be able to eradicate antisemitism, but after 2,000 years of persecution, finally there is shelter. The recent surge in violent antisemitism in France for instance and even in Russia and Ukraine has brought a torrent of Jewish immigration to the Holy Land. Instability in Chile, Venezuela and Argentina is also leading more Jews to the safety and security of Israel. Even in Canada and America, the continued rise of antisemitism is making many Jews contemplate their future.

Israel’s existence is no longer in peril. Antisemitism and internal satisfaction is pushing its population closer to 10 million. Its GDP per capita stands as among the highest in the world, matching most western nations, and just last week, it was ranked among the 10 most influential and powerful nations on Earth by U.S. News & World Report. The same report ranked its military among the top five. Exports have increased dramatically in the past few years, with exports to Canada rising by 95 per cent in 2022. The Abraham Accords have opened new markets for the Jewish state with massive trade deals signed daily with the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Bahrain.

Consequentially, even when living in the shadow of pernicious antisemitism, members of the Jewish diaspora find strength and confidence knowing that Israel has their back. What other nation would conduct a stealth raid on a Ugandan airport to rescue citizens held by Palestinian terrorists? None. Israel is our insurance policy — and this is why every single Jewish person and every friend of Israel, no matter of what political or religious persuasion (and there are many), must relentlessly defend it.

This old-new-land is turning 75 years old but it has really been a part of the Jewish nation for more than 3,500 years. In one of the first recorded accounts in the Bible, Abraham purchased a burial place in Hebron for our patriarchs and matriarchs, laying a Jewish stake in the Holy Land. Centuries later and following our enslavement in Egypt, we returned to our homeland and twice built (and rebuilt) our temple in Jerusalem to worship in freedom. 

Over the centuries, our freedom was taken away by the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Ottomans and the British — as our people were repeatedly expelled or taken as slaves and our land became desolate.

But we never gave up on our dream to return home, suffering discrimination in Europe and in Arab lands where we were forced to live in ghettos. The past 1,000 years were especially brutal, particularly during the Spanish Inquisition of 1492 when thousands of Jewish people were forced to convert or were slaughtered or expelled from Spain and Portugal.

In the Eastern part of Russia and in Poland as elsewhere we were subjected to pogroms. These were episodes in which our neighbours turned against us by virtue of whatever conspiracy rumour was circulating in our village. Sometimes it was an unfounded assertion that we had murdered a Christian child to make matzo for Passover. Other times, we were accused of spreading the Black Death (not dissimilar to modern antisemitic tropes about COVID).

In all this, it’s clear that our loyalty and dedication to the countries in which we resided proved pointless against antisemitism. The story of Col. Alfred Dreyfus moved Herzl to act against the assimilationist model. Dreyfus was a dedicated Jewish soldier falsely accused of treason and humiliated, stripped of his medals in public and sent to prison following his trial in 1894.

During the enlightenment period in Vienna, Berlin, Paris, Budapest and throughout Europe, Jewish people assimilated and contributed to their nation states — in the military, sciences, academia, law, government and the arts. There were thousands of such Dreyfuses, Freuds and Einsteins producing and contributing to the social good, with complete fealty.

This did not matter. The Holocaust still happened. Herzl was one of the first Jews to realize that antisemitism cannot be overcome by assimilation. The Jewish State of Israel was the answer. Sadly, many Jewish people today, particularly in academia, have forgotten the lessons of the past. Every generation hopes their time is different and that humanity has somehow advanced — the Holocaust, they say, cannot happen again. But with antisemitism rising by 34 per cent to more than 70 per cent annually in western nations, how can we be sure?

In my recent documentary, The Future of Israel and its Defenders, I pointed out that Israel at 75 is an incredible achievement not only for the Jewish people, but for humanity. The land that used to export Jaffa oranges is now the solution-making factory of the globe. Israelis are working on some of the most important medical initiatives in the world and may yet find cures to many of the ailments (including cancer) that plague mankind.

The miracle of Israel today was borne of necessity. Herzl was right. Israel is the only answer to antisemitism. But as it happens, when Jewish people are given the freedom of self-expression, the rest of the world benefits. Can you imagine what gifts Israel will offer humanity in the next 75 years?

The wasted energy and resources on negative ad campaigns that achieve nothing except hate and discord sadly misrepresents the seismic shift that's now underway in the entire region

The United Nations’ so-called Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel was caught red-handed in the antisemitic cookie jar recently, when a member of the inquiry reportedly said that social media is largely controlled by the “Jewish lobby.”

That Jewish people somehow control global media is an antisemitic canard. And despite the fact that Israel is the only democracy in the region, the UN’s commissioner audaciously went further by saying that he would “go as far as to raise the question of why are they (Israel) are even a member of the UN?”

In response to these hateful comments, Canada’s permanent ambassador to the United Nations, Bob Rae, tweeted, “A Commission of Inquiry is different from a never ending Inquisition. Blatantly biased, anti-semitic comments are completely unworthy of the UN, the UN Human Rights Commission, and are a disgrace to institutions supposedly dedicated to the rule of law.”

Its this kind of pervasive antisemitic behaviour by the politicized and ultra-biased United Nations Human Rights Council that has given legitimacy to the Israel-bashing on university campuses and on our own city streets. Recent reports of signs on city buses in St. John’s, N.L., calling Israel an “apartheid” state are but one example. Yet although the signs were shocking to many Canadians, in Israel, the ad only drew laughs from most people with whom I spoke while filming the upcoming documentary, “The Future of Israel and its Defenders.”

In the northern Israeli city of Karmiel on July 27, an Arab-Israeli leader we were filming literally laughed in hysterics when I asked him about the assertion that Israel is an apartheid state. He outlined his own success in Israel, having completed a graduate degree at an Israeli university, then having the freedom to travel to Jordan to earn a doctorate and to pursue a successful career as an educator and media personality. Many of his friends are professionals like him and enjoy the benefits of being Israeli citizens. In fact, he ran in the last national election and still aspires to enter politics.

Indeed, hardly anyone in Israel actually believes it is an apartheid state. Co-existence and peace is the language of most political and community leaders in Israel today. This was the sentiment expressed by a Druze community leader who received me graciously in his home. He told me that the youth of his village, Majdal Shams, study on Israeli campuses and have professional careers throughout the country.

The war of words being waged against the Jewish state in the West seems somewhat surreal in Israel. When asked about the impact of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, Emilie Moatti, an Labour member of the Knesset, looked at me and said, “Seriously? Look around you. Does it look like its impacting us at all?”

While we grapple with these issues in the West on university campuses and our streets, it is becoming increasingly clear that they are having zero impact in present-day Israel. Instead, the Abraham Accords have shattered Israel’s isolation. They have created a complete paradigm shift and an unprecedented sense of normalcy for Jewish and Arab citizens alike.

In my meeting with Morocco’s ambassador to Israel, it became clear that the sense of optimism is regional. The ambassador expressed how proud he is of the warm reception he has received in Israel and the numbers of people who have attended his events to date.

Still, we must stand against the delegitimization campaigns targeting Israel, especially those of us who believe in freedom and democracy. Israeli celebrity Noa Tishby, who is also the country’s special envoy for combating antisemitism and delegitimization, said it best: “destroying democracies is not good for, you know … democracies.”

Those who despise Israel don’t care about the numerous Arab and Israeli families that mingle in the cafes in Jaffa every evening. In a conversation by the clock tower in Jaffa with Col. Richard Kemp, who commanded British forces in Afghanistan, he casually observed the remarkable intermingling of people of all faiths around us as we spoke.

Those who oppose Israel do not care about the future of the Jewish and Arab youth who work together at the local sports store down the street. The wasted energy and resources on negative ad campaigns that achieve nothing except hate and discord sadly misrepresents the seismic shift that’s now underway in the entire region. Those who truly seek out peace will work toward those goals by promoting tangible solutions, not sowing discord among different groups of people.

Still, we cannot turn a blind eye to those who are intent on spreading libels and falsehoods about the Jewish state. A lie told enough times can become a truth if unopposed. We have a responsibility to stand up for Israel, because the right thing to do is to support the development of peace and friendship in the region. As Tishby said, Israel is a “miracle that we need to defend whether we live there or not.”

Thus, even when the false libels thrown at Israel are laughable, we must vigorously defend the Jewish state and the freedom and democracy that it represents. Which is why it is now incumbent upon the mayor of St. John’s to ensure that hateful rhetoric no longer has a place on the city’s public transportation network.

National Post

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/avi-benlolo-dont-let-apartheid-bus-ads-in-st-johns-fool-you-in-israel-the-idea-is-laughable

Author of the article:Avi BenloloPublished Mar 31, 2023  

For the first time in 2,000 years, the Jewish people have a national geographic center. For the last 75 years, they ambitiously began formulating a new and unique definition of what it means to be an Israeli Jew. Ever since Israel’s independence in 1948, profound questions have existed: Debates, protests and legislation have focused on existential questions like who is a Jew? Should women be allowed to pray at the Western Wall (of course they should)? And most significantly, should Israel be a Jewish state or a state for the Jews?

As Canadians, we can understand this quest for a national identity. We have struggled with our own identity since Confederation. Under the shadow of a friendly superpower that swallows our ability to formulate a cohesive national character, we try to develop a unique culture, create an independent economy and military and have a national broadcast system to bring our citizens together. Well before such concepts like equity, diversity and inclusivity came into vogue, we pretty much invented the concept of multiculturalism.

True democracies are democracies because they allow for a diversity of opinion. They are the antithesis of uniformity. That’s basically Israel my friends — a melting pot of a people from 190 nations. Judaism and Israel binds them together, but Israel is literally a United Nations. Except that unlike the UN which targets Israel relentlessly as the Jew among the nations, Israel is the natural safe haven for all Jewish people.

The current heartbreaking turmoil in the Knesset and on the streets should be understood as a fundamental democratic expression about pent-up frustration and legitimate fear about the judicial reforms sought out by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. True democracies are supposed to be messier than tyrranies. They allow for free expression, unlike China, North Korea and Russia. Democracy in Israel has never been up for debate, but neither should it be taken for granted or as a given. It must be relentlessly defended.

Netanyahu finally paused his government’s judicial reforms this week. But he was wrong to fire his defense minister for criticizing the reforms, and for ignoring mass demonstrations and members of the Israeli defence forces who didn’t show up for duty in protest of the plan. In his podcast this week, former Harvard Law professor, Alan Dershowitz argued that “there has never been a more vibrant democracy than current Israel.” The fact that the national protest movement worked and forced the government to rethink its position shows that democracy in Israel is alive and well. No emergency act was invoked as was done in Canada, for instance, over the Freedom Convoy protests. No bank accounts were frozen and relatively very few people were arrested.

But the proposed judicial reforms will weaken Israel’s democratic system as they would curtail the Supreme Court’s ability to provide checks and balances to parliament. The “judicial reform is not a good thing” according to Dershowitz. “It takes away substantial authority from Israel’s Supreme Court … which has been the legal iron dome defending Israel from international criminal courts. Israel’s Supreme Court maybe has gone too far … it has had the most review of legislative actions … and there is room for cutting back on that. But there is no room for cutting back on the role of the Supreme Court protecting essential minority rights, civil rights, civil liberties, etc.”

Its true that Israel needs a strong but less-intrusive judiciary. Having spent three days at the Knesset meeting a variety of political leaders including with Benny Gantz (one of the central figures leading the charge against Netanyahu), I then implored Prime Minister Netanyahu to accept the negotiated compromise proposed by President Isaac Herzog. Anything less than a reasonable outcome that does not change the rule of Israel’s Basic Laws will put Israel in a precarious position. Its begun to weaken Israel’s peaceful ambitions with Abraham Accord countries, something that deeply worries me.

We stand with Israel unconditionally. The situation is painful but crisis can be turned into opportunity. A constitutional path might yet emerge from this quagmire. In the meantime, Netanyahu must pull away from the brink and rein in the extremists in his coalition. They must not be allowed to harm Israel’s democracy nor cease control over the future of the State of Israel.

National Post

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/avi-benlolo-israels-democracy-is-robust-despite-netanyahus-proposed-judicial-reforms

Author of the article:Avi BenloloPublished Apr 07, 2023  

For some reason, this passover, like no other passover before, Max Eisen’s retelling of his family’s deportation to Auschwitz keeps playing in my head. I have heard him tell me about it on countless educational missions we took to Auschwitz.

In 1944, on Passover eve, unexpectedly perhaps, Nazis banged on his family’s house door. The Eisen family was seated around the table deep into prayer and just about to partake in what would be their last meal together — and family gathering. The Nazi soldiers gave them five minutes to gather their belongings, leave their generational family home and gather at the local transit camp. From there they would eventually be jam packed like sardines onto a train headed to Auschwitz.

Perhaps its because this Passover is the first one that I cannot call my friend and mentor and wish him a Chag Sameach — a happy holiday. He passed away last summer, leaving humanity with his story as a warning. His message was an echo of generations of our people who witnessed tragedy and to those of us in the future who might witness yet another calamity, should they let their guard down.

Having posted Max’s Passover story on social media, I received numerous testimonials from others. One woman reflected, “my grandmother’s father was one of those Jews. My grandmother was an only child. She was 16 when the SS banged down their door and forcefully pulled him away in the middle of their seder ceremony. All the years my grandmother would quietly sit through our family seder and never utter a word about the trauma she experienced.”

Forced off the train in the middle of night after days of transport without food, water and sanitary conditions, Max and his family were disoriented. At the age of 15 he was separated from his mother, brother and baby sister. Along with his father and uncle, he was taken to become a slave for the Nazis.

We know slavery. We were slaves in Egypt in 1290 BCE. Our Passover Haggadah which is read by millions of Jews every year is a warning system. It tells us that in every generation an evil will arise and strangle us. Ultimately, says the Haggadah, we will prevail, but always at a tragic cost.

Perhaps it’s having spent so much time with Max and studying the Holocaust and seeing the death camps, that like never before, the internal strife in Israel pains me as the nightmare unfolds. As Jews, we should not be spending a single moment arguing with one another. We are nothing if we fail to adhere to the “every generation must see itself as if they left Egypt” message of Passover. We suffered slavery in Egypt. We suffered the Spanish Inquisition, and we suffered crusades and pogroms, all before the Holocaust.

Now, we are witnessing a resurgence of antisemitism. “In every generation they rise up to destroy us” warns the Haggadah. A Jewish student’s article was rejected by the McGill Tribune because it reflected “Zionism.” A synagogue in Montreal was spray painted with Swastikas. Over 50 NGOS this week told the United Nations to reject the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of Antisemitism. The list of Hammans acting against the Jewish world is endless and repeats in every generation as the Haggadah foretells.

To them, a Jew is a Jew. Pharaoh did not care which tribe the Jews he enslaved belonged to. Hitler did not care if a Jew was religious or secular. He put them in gas chambers all together. Today, as Iran threatens to annihilate Israel with nuclear weapons, it cannot care less about an Israeli’s political affiliation or religious orientation. All Jew haters have one thing on their mind, that’s to murder Jews — any Jew.

Later on the night he was taken, when Max asked a fellow inmate where his mother and siblings were, the inmate laughed and pointed to the chimney. Today, one thing has changed from our tragic past, we have a State of Israel. Let’s take a moment to reflect on the significance of the message of Passover and find unity and compassion around our seder tables. We only have one Israel and this one chance. There is no Plan B.

National Post

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/avi-benlolo-this-passover-especially-is-no-time-to-pit-jews-against-jews

Israel will be OK, we just need to have faith

Author of the article:Avi BenloloPublished Feb 24, 2023  

JERUSALEM — According to media reports, the sky is falling in Israel. Yet I assure you that in Jerusalem, life is continuing as normal. The streets are quiet with people bustling about, sitting in cafes and strolling through shops. There were protests earlier in the week over the government’s proposed judicial reforms, but they were mostly peaceful.

This week, I spent three days in Israel’s parliament (the Knesset), in meetings with parliamentarians on a fact-finding mission. While thousands of demonstrators were outside pleading with the government not to proceed with its first reading of the bill that will shift the power from Israel’s Supreme Court to the Knesset, the Knesset, I was attempting to communicate my concerns about the changes. I reasoned that it’s better to be on the inside communicating, than on the outside looking in.

The Knesset was bustling and there was tension in the air, but there seemed to be order to the madness. In an intensive meeting with Amichai Chikli, Israel’s minister of diaspora affairs (who’s also responsible for combating antisemitism), I expressed grave concern about the accelerated approach to the passage of his government’s judicial reforms.

Israelis are calling these rapid changes an “upheaval.” The last “upheaval” was when Menachem Begin took office in 1977 after years of Labor party elitist rule and gave a voice to communities that were traditionally marginalized. It was a result of that process that the Supreme Court gained strength, bringing forward rulings centred on protecting the rights and freedoms of every Israeli citizen. The problem was that it stepped into the work of Parliament more often than not.

In Israeli society, particularly in secular Tel Aviv, fear permeates about the possible regression of fundamental freedoms. In the shadow of these incredibly impassioned concerns regarding the judicial reforms, I warned Chikli that Israel’s image is being defamed internationally and that this will inevitably lead to increasing antisemitism.

Given his role to combat antisemitism, I implored him to help defend diaspora Jewish communities, particularly on university campuses, by helping defuse the situation and preserve fundamental rights and freedoms. Israel must do what is best for Israel, but it is also responsible for the impact its decisions have on Jewish people living elsewhere.

While the parliamentary factions are at odds, Benny Gantz, the leader of the opposition Blue and White party, accentuated the incredible progress Israel’s civil and business society has made in recent decades. “What do we tell the world,” I asked.

Despite this sentiment, he called this a “black day for democracy.” That is the image the opposition parties have been trying to portray. But some on the other side are asking why the proposed reforms are problematic when they bring Israel’s judiciary closer to that of other democracies? They argue that the Supreme Court having a veto over its own judges is not fair. They say that the Supreme Court having more power than the Knesset is not fair, as well.

While Gantz agreed with most everyone I spoke with that Israel’s judiciary is in need of reform, he is concerned the bill is being rammed through the Knesset with little consultation. More significantly, with few checks and balances supposedly in place, opposing politicians are concerned that the highly religious coalition government will abuse its newfound power to the detriment of the state. “It’s not antagonism to the idea,” said former member of the Knesset Ruth Wasserman Lande of the opposition to the bill. “It’s just wanting a process.”

Yesh Atid MK Tatiana Mazarsky explained that, “They have their theology and we have our ideology.” This is the main difference between the secular parties, which argue for due process based on the established laws of the state, and the religious parties, which are attempting to bring together “church and state.” Whereas in the past, there was a separation of power and the judiciary could hold politicians to account, Mazarsky worries that this may no longer be possible once the new reforms become law. Hailing from the former Soviet Union, she is concerned about absolute power.

In an effort to gain perspective from multiple voices, aside from speaking to leaders of the governing coalition, I also heard from Labor and Arab party members about their concerns. Many of them expressed that the government’s focus on judicial reform is distracting from more pressing matters facing society, such as poverty and the increased cost of living.

Tensions are high, but Israelis are resilient and usually shine in active democratic debate, such as the one we are witnessing now. We cannot predict the future nor the long-term implications of the “upheaval” now taking place.

Yet the struggle for democracy and its preservation has never been linear. Every democracy gains from ups and downs and in the end, the voters decide. Israel generally draws more attention than most countries. But these struggles tend to be part of the evolution of democracies as they mature. Israel will be OK, we just need to have faith.

National Post

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/avi-benlolo-israeli-judicial-reforms-have-caused-much-upheaval-but-democracy-will-prevail

The UN appears to insist on keeping Israel’s very existence in question and disrupting peace-building efforts by ensuring Palestinians remain as refugees

Published Feb 10, 2023  

The United Nations “special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories,” Francesca Albanese, told an English-language Middle East news site that the European Union erred by adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

Apparently, she wants UN leaders to be able to scrutinize Israel without any guidance about when such criticism veers into hate. “No one should be above scrutiny,” she said. Good, because on the heels of my expose last week on how the West is aiding and abetting Palestinian terrorism, the UN should not be above scrutiny, either.

Despite the work being done to promote peaceful solutions in the Middle East through the Abraham Accords, the UN appears to insist on keeping Israel’s very existence in question and disrupting peace-building efforts by ensuring Palestinians remain as permanent refugees.

The UN’s planners must have been absent from school the day the teacher repeated the old adage that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; but if you teach him to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. Instead, the UN established the only permanent refugee organization in the world, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

Millions of refugees poured out of Syria following President Bashar Assad’s gassing and murder of nearly 500,000 civilians, but no dedicated UN agency was founded for them. Instead, they were quickly assimilated into countries like Germany and Canada. There are no international campaigns or significant Syrian refugee movements on university campuses calling for their return, because most have acclimatized to their new homes — as refugees generally do.

A number of permanent exhibits line the wall near the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York. Of all the refugees past and present, the Palestinians are the only ones who have their own permanent exhibit, under the heading, “The Question of Palestine and the United Nations.”

The exhibit states, “The question of Palestine has been on the United Nations agenda since the organization’s earliest days.” The Arabs rejected the establishment of the Jewish state following the UN’s positive vote on the “partition plan,” which called for two states living side-by-side in peace.

In 1948, the Arab world went to war against the newly founded State of Israel. Many Arab-Palestinians either fought Israel or fled to neighbouring countries (Lebanon, Jordan, Syria), hoping to return when the Jews were pushed into the sea. That did not happen.

Instead of absorbing the refugees into their host countries, UNRWA deliberately kept them in so-called refugee camps. They were (and still are) used as pawns by both their host countries and the UN itself to leverage a “final status agreement” with Israel.

From a human rights point of view, that is completely unfair to the millions of children who have had their futures stolen from them by the UN. Their host countries continue to refuse to allow them citizenship or to integrate them into civil society.

For its part, instead of down-scaling operations, UNRWA has grown into a bureaucratic behemoth that employs 30,000 people and has an annual budget of around US$1.5 billion (C$2 billion). By keeping Palestinians trapped and needy as refugees, the agency reinforces their false hope that they may one day return to a country that never existed in the first place.

Everyone deserves to be free in their own land. But the truth should always be the truth. Before 1948, the area was ruled by the British for a short time and by the Ottomans for 400 years before that. There was never a state of Palestine. This generation of Palestinians wants to lay claim to Jerusalem, but the holy city was never Palestinian. Still, Israel has recognized the right to Palestinian self-determination since its inception — but despite the fact that Jews are indigenous to the land, Palestinians refuse to share, even at their own peril.

Since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, countless peace overtures have been made. The Palestinian leadership rejected them all — carrying forward the false narrative that one day, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

Now, it appears as though peace and a two-state solution are more elusive than ever. Both sides have entrenched their positions. More violence is inevitable. The way back to peace is for the UN and its agencies like UNRWA to stop deceiving the Palestinian people by suggesting that Israel is a temporary political entity. It’s not going anywhere.

National Post

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/avi-benlolo-by-maintaining-palestinians-permanent-refugee-status-the-un-has-perpetuated-violence

Berkeley’s law school's 'Jewish-free zones' aren't about speech, they're about discrimination

Writing in 1940 during the Holocaust years, Viennese Jewish author Stefan Zweig said, “It is an iron law of history that those who will be caught up in the great movements determining the course of their own times always fail to recognize them in their early stages.” What Zweig meant and what we all know is that we can be overtaken by bad movements or rotten people before finally realizing an upheaval has consumed our peaceful existence. The war on Jews on university campuses is one of those movements yet to be recognized by the mass population.

In recent days however, it has drawn reaction even from Hollywood celebs. In response to a scathing article published in the Jewish Journal last week alleging that the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Law is developing “Jewish-free zones,” Barbra Streisand rhetorically asked on Twitter, “When does anti-Zionism bleed into broad antisemitism?” In truth, we all know that anti-Zionism is the new antisemitism. It doesn’t quite make sense because Zionism is simply the liberation movement of the Jewish people manifested by their desire to return to their indigenous homeland, the land of Israel.

Non-violent liberation movements are often welcomed by progressives around the world — but not for the Jews. Progressives are ridiculously upset that we Jews had the gall to return to our homeland. They cannot stand that our national political movement called Zionism — which has manifested the only democratic state in the Middle East — actually succeeded. After centuries of trying to kill us off through pogroms, inquisitions and then a genocide, how could it possibly happen that we Jews pulled a fast one on the Jew-haters by rising like a phoenix from the ashes of the Holocaust? It’s never been done before. It’s chutzpah.

In the words of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, our foes are shaking their heads wondering, “Don’t Jews know by now that their role in history is to be scattered, dispersed, homeless and defenceless? And now they want a space where they can defend themselves? How dare they? … We dare because to be denied the right to self-defence is to be treated as less than human.” That is indeed what campus progressives are trying to do — treat us as less than human, treat our desires for freedom and security as unacceptable.

Having lost the physical war against us, progressives who are still instrumental in motivating the forces of terrorism and hate in the Middle East have now turned back to their old-age antisemitic hatred against the Jews. Their racism in plain view, they constantly seek out new, venomous methodologies to isolate and marginalize us. In the past, they called us capitalists, socialists and Marxists. They said we were subhuman — rodents and vermin. They spread rumours about us, alleging we were trying to take over the world, that we were responsible for the Black Death and most recently, the coronavirus.

Now their cover story is an attack on our liberation movement — Zionism itself. In the major exposé in the Jewish Journal, Kenneth Marcus wrote, “Nine different law student groups at the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Law, my own alma mater, have begun this new academic year by amending bylaws to ensure that they will never invite any speakers that support Israel or Zionism.” Marcus argued that the real issue is discrimination, not speech. “The exclusionary bylaws operate like racially restrictive covenants, precluding minority participation into perpetuity.”

In a response to Marcus’s column, Irwin Cherminsky, Berkeley’s Law School Dean, said he told student leaders in a letter that “excluding speakers on the basis of their viewpoint is inconsistent with our commitment to free speech and condemning the existence of Israel is a form of antisemitism.” He also noted that only nine out more than 100 student law groups had adopted bylaws banning pro-Israel speakers.

But this is not a matter of free speech, argued prominent Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz on his most recent podcast — “it’s discrimination.”

As to Cherminsky seeming to excuse the discrimination by saying “only a handful of student groups … did this,” isn’t one racist too many, or are a few acceptable when it comes to us, the Jews?

Why is it that progressives seem to ignore or unlearn the wisdom of the ages? In the midst of the Holocaust, Zweig, one of the leading European intellectuals of his day, observed: “We have found that we have to agree with Freud, who saw our culture and civilization as a thin veneer through which the destructive forces of the underworld could break at any moment.” He observed that there is little correlation between our technical achievements and an improvement in morality.

As I have argued before, throughout history, human morality has been stuck in the same place. Our wheels keep spinning in the mud. Try as humanity might, it simply cannot overcome hate and discrimination. The proverbial canary in the coal mine — the litmus test for where hate stands — is usually us Jews. But here is the thing: unlike the past 2,000 years, the Jewish State of Israel is back in its rightful place to protect and defend us. So for all the Jew-haters out there, you can shout and scream as much as you want. We are here. We are not going away. Grow up and live with it.

National Post https://nationalpost.com/opinion/avi-benlolo-end-the-war-on-jews-on-campus

Avi Abraham Benlolo is the Founding Chairman and CEO of The Abraham Global Peace Initiative www.agpiworld.com

Patience has worn thin over Palestinian and UN hypocrisy

August 19, 2022

Just two weeks ago I wrote about the UN Commission of Inquiry being caught red-handed in the proverbial antisemitic cookie jar. The notoriously anti-Israel UN Human Rights Council and its inquisition were decloaked after one commissioner made antisemitic remarks in a media interview, stating that social media is largely controlled by the “Jewish lobby.” 

It was a gift because it spotlighted the extraordinary bias of the UNHRC. This week, we were handed two more examples that demonstrate to the world without a shadow of a doubt the laughable absurdity of those who demean, defame and attempt to delegitimize the State of Israel.

Speaking alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at a press conference during a visit to Berlin on Wednesday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas elicited international outrage when he said Israel had committed "50 massacres in 50 Palestinian villages. … Fifty slaughters. Fifty Holocausts."

His remarks were in reply to a reporter’s question about the massacre by Palestinian militants of 11 Israeli athletes and a German police officer 50 years ago during the Munich Olympics. Abbas accentuated the word “Holocaust” in English to drive it home.

Drive it home he did, eliciting harsh reactions. Scholz tweeted, “I am disgusted by the outrageous remarks made by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. For us Germans in particular, any relativization of the singularity of the Holocaust is intolerable and unacceptable. I condemn any attempt to deny the crimes of the Holocaust.”

Similarly, the U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt, called Abbas's statement “unacceptable,” tweeting that “Holocaust distortion can have dangerous consequences and fuels antisemitism."

Abbas, who is in his 17th year of power despite being elected for only a four-year term, also succeeded in pushing away a possible peace partner should Israel’s interim prime minister, Yair Lapid, be elected in the country's upcoming election. Lapid called Abbas's remarks “not only a moral disgrace, but a monstrous lie. Six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, including one and a half million Jewish children. History will never forgive him.”

Israeli journalist Caroline Glick went so far as to tweet that “2-state-solution supporters will have to deal with the fact that the man they pin their hopes on, the “moderate” Mahmoud Abbas, is a Holocaust denying, Nazi-style Jew hater who is also a terrorist and an embezzler.” Too little too late, Abbas tried to walk back his remarks by acknowledging in a statement issued by aides that the “Holocaust is the most heinous crime in modern human history.”

Here is the truth: The stronger and less isolated Israel of today has completely left its detractors in the dust. The more shallow and ignorant Israel’s detractors are, the more they are becoming global pariahs for their false narratives. The world has had enough of falsehoods. Scholz also flatly rejected Abbas’s attempt to call Israel an apartheid state, responding directly to the Palestinian president by saying, “I want to say explicitly at this point that I do not adopt the word apartheid as my own and that I do not think it is right to describe the situation.”

Previously, I wrote about a “seismic shift” that is happening in the entire region. I said people have little patience for wasted energy focused on hate and that “those who truly seek out peace will work toward those goals by promoting tangible solutions, not sowing discord" among people and nations, as is being done by Abbas.

Recognizing its own isolation over the past decade, Turkey is also joining Israel in the region’s peace initiatives. In a press release on Wednesday, President Tayyip Erdogan announced that he had spoken with Lapid and that both countries were reappointing ambassadors to represent them. 

The release explicitly stated that Erdogan “expressed his pleasure over the advancement of the relations within the framework agreed upon during Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s visits to Turkiye.” Unlike before, the recent conflict in Gaza had no detrimental impact on Turkey’s rapprochement.

An acceptance of Israel and the rejection of false narratives is becoming commonplace. Patience has worn thin over Palestinian and UN hypocrisy. The truth is setting the Middle East free. It’s time for Israel’s detractors to catch on.

National Post

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/avi-benlolo-the-truth-is-setting-the-mideast-free-israels-detractors-should-catch-on

The anti-Israel BDS movement has failed miserably

Those who are aligning with the BDS narrative are stuck in the 1967 Arab League Summit that called for 'no peace with Israel'

By Avi Abraham Benlolo

July 7, 2022

Ben & Jerry’s announced its was suing its parent company, Unilever, over its deal with an Israeli manufacturer that allows for the sale of its ice cream in the West Bank. Ben & Jerry’s says it is suing "to protect its social integrity" and aims to block the sale of its Israeli business to a local licensee reportedly saying to do so was “inconsistent with our values.” 

Social awareness with respect to human rights is critical today more than ever, but sadly, as in the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, many social activists are siding with a tyrannical and undemocratic Palestinian regime committing human rights abuse against its own people. I have seen this misplaced social activism on university campuses and elsewhere where social justice warriors are aligning with Palestinian groups that yell human rights abuse on one hand while promote terrorism, incite hate and persecute dissidents on the other hand.

Conversely, Israel just celebrated the biggest Pride parade in the Middle East and most places on earth. Its respect and championship of women’s rights and freedom and democracy is second to none. Like any nation, Israel is imperfect. But it’s incredible social advancement in a region of hate and tyranny should make every human rights defender ponder which country to champion and align with.

In this international row over ice cream, many have argued that Ben & Jerry’s folded to pressure by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Likening its strategy to the boycott campaign against the apartheid regime in South Africa, the BDS movement has so far failed miserably in its ultimate quest to economically bring Israel to its knees.

It must be frustrating for the BDS movement. Over the last twenty years, the reverse has happened. Israel has become an economic powerhouse in the region and around the world. Israel consistently ranks high among the world’s economies especially in terms of technology, venture capital and research. In fact, Israel ranks first in availability of scientists and engineers. Forbes says that “Israel finds itself in the enviable club of top 20 economies in the world with the per capita GDP at $43.7 thousand (USD) for the past year, putting Israel in the 19th spot on the list, according to data from the International Monetary Fund.” 

Anyone visiting Israel can see hundreds of construction cranes scattered along the horizon of nearly every city across the country. International companies like Microsoft, Dell, IBM and numerous others are proudly omnipresent in glimmering office buildings. Given that suicide attacks and indiscriminate rockets landing on civilian populations failed to bring Israel to its knees, BDS was a new strategy that tried to isolate, marginalize and criminalize the Jewish state. But smart business people saw through the propaganda and instead of withdrawing from Israel, double-downed on investment, capital and partnership.

Unilever’s public statement proves this point. In a slap in the face to Ben & Jerry's, it said it “rejects completely and repudiates unequivocally any form of discrimination or intolerance. Antisemitism has no place in any society. We have never expressed any support for the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement and have no intention of changing that position. Over the last decade, Unilever has invested more than 1 billion Shekels (around E250 million) in our business in Israel. We look forward to continuing to make a positive contribution to Israel’s economy and society for many decades to come.”

Even Israel’s neighbours have now realized the double standard and defamatory strategy of the BDS movement. The Abraham Accords have resulted in billions of dollars worth of trade between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco in the last twelve months. Trade will bring about peace, not boycott. Not silence. Not war. With increased trade comes increased dialogue and natural partnerships. The Palestinian question will be solved under the proverbial Abrahamic Tent — where we all come together — rather than the cold shoulder anti-normalization tactics tried by the BDS movement.

Those who are aligning with the BDS narrative are stuck in the 1967 Arab League Summit that called for “no peace with Israel. No recognition of Israel. No negotiations with Israel.” Where has that archaic attitude led the Middle East? Nowhere but more war and conflict. The world has since moved on.

The BDS movement is equally reminiscent of the economic, cultural, religious and academic boycotts imposed on Jewish communities from time immemorial itself. To boycott the Jewish state, is to single out the embodiment of the Jewish people. It’s a stain on history itself, given the trial and tribulations this people has undergone during the Holocaust and the Inquisition, among other horrific periods — where boycotts were imposed. It also symbolizes a profound ignorance to the very indigenous connection of the Jewish people to their homeland.

Israel itself is a vindication of these historic obscenities. It is a triumph of good over evil. It is a land of hope and freedom and what a small group of people can build out of the ashes of the Holocaust. The Jewish people have been here long before Ice cream was invented and we shall be here long after — no matter what fate brings. Our very existence is a rejection of hate and intolerance and this is why we are proud of the State of Israel — and will keep pouring our support into the Jewish State. Thanks Ben & Jerry’s for keeping us motivated!

National Post

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/avi-benlolo-the-anti-israel-bds-movement-has-failed-miserably

This week, about 400 new Ethiopian immigrants touched down to much fanfare at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. Their arrival is emblematic of the miracle that is the modern State of Israel.  

The in-gathering of the Jewish people from the four corners of the world is one of the greatest and most admirable stories of our time. A people who had been taken into slavery, dispersed and forcibly converted to other religions following the destruction of the Jewish temples somehow kept their faith for 2,000 years and managed to return home to Jerusalem.  

Some may see the return of the Jewish people as a prophecy. Others see it as a fulfillment of destiny. While others simply understand that the State of Israel offers safety and security to a persecuted people. The Jewish people, after all, are indigenous to the land of Israel and have lived in the region since time immemorial.  Following the destruction of King Solmon’s Temple in 586 BCE, and again after the destruction of the Second Temple around 70 CE, the Jewish people were forced into exile. Generation after generation called out the four most important words in our existential liturgy: “next year in Jerusalem.”  

Our world was incomplete without the beating heart of Jerusalem, the most sacred of all that is sacred in the Jewish religion. The return home of millions of Jewish people who were scattered around the globe is a fulfillment of justice and freedom. Zionism reignited our passion to free ourselves from oppression and antisemitism.  

This narrative contradicts the prevailing pro-Palestinian campaigns that seek to delegitimize the Jewish people's historical attachment to the land of Israel. Despite the fact our history is written in stone throughout the land — from ancient synagogues, to the Dead Sea Scrolls and what remains of our Temple in Jerusalem — there are those who continue to falsely label Jewish people living in Israel as “colonizers” and “settlers.”  

The fact is, however, that there has never been a Palestinian state on this land. Preceding Israel’s independence in 1948, the land of Israel was occupied by the British, the Ottomans and many others. And consecutive waves of immigration into Israel of people from various ethnic, racial and cultural backgrounds disproves the shameful “apartheid” accusation that's frequently lobbed against Israel.  

While the independence and freedom of other historically repressed and indigenous peoples is supported by international human rights organizations that have gone after Israel, the same sentiment is not shared when it comes to the Jewish state. In fact, even before it was a state, Jewish immigration into Israel was frequently curtailed, particularly by the British, who blocked many Jews attempting to flee Nazi persecution.  Israel is the fulfillment of a 2,000-year-old dream to return home. 

No other nation on earth has expended so much kindness, acceptance and effort to reunify its lost tribes as has the State of Israel.  Ethiopians started immigrating to Israel in the 1980s, but it wasn’t until Operation Solomon in 1991, when 14,325 Beta Israel were brought to Israel in 36 hours on 35 planes, that the significance of this moment in Jewish history was fully realized. This week’s Ethiopian immigration is part of a long chain of incredible rescue efforts of a people who are fulfilling a dream to come home.  Many Ethiopians, who often had to trek through the dessert to reach the Israeli planes, recount that they were motivated by the idea of seeing the city of Jerusalem with their own eyes. It was the promised land they had been told about for generations. 

Once they arrived in Israel, integration was not simple. But they were welcomed home.  Those of us who grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust and Israel’s existential battles for survival celebrate this reunification of the Jewish nation. It’s a triumph against evil. It’s a win against the Hitlers of the world and a fulfillment of our destiny as a people.  

National Post

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/avi-benlolo-the-modern-miracle-that-is-the-state-of-israel

By Avi Abraham Benlolo and Jerry S. Grafstein February 4, 2022  

On June 1, 2001, a Palestinian terrorist blew himself up outside a Tel Aviv night club, killing 21 Israelis, 16 of whom were teenagers. Two months later, another Palestinian suicide terrorist entered the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem and killed 15 Israelis, including seven children and a pregnant woman and wounded 130 others. In March of 2002, during a Passover Seder in a hotel in Netanya, a Palestinian suicide bomber murdered 30 civilians and injured 140 others in one of the deadliest massacres.  

In response to the more than 1,378 civilians murdered by Palestinians terrorists from Gaza and the West Bank since September 2000, Israel had little choice but to build a security barrier to protect its citizens from continued mass murder. As a result, suicide-terrorism stopped almost immediately and while terror incidents still occur, they are now less co-ordinated by the Islamist groups that try to infiltrate the Jewish nation daily. The security barrier is not an “apartheid wall.” It is there to save lives and bring about peace. Good fences sometimes do make good neighbours.  

Thus, this week’s shameful release of a new report by Amnesty International accusing Israel of “apartheid” in its treatment of Palestinians is devoid of this context. Unlike any other nation on Earth, Israel faces unrelenting violent threats from the various terror organizations that are relentlessly engaged in undermining the Jewish state. Just this past May for instance, Hamas started an unprovoked war with Israel and launched 4,600 rockets at its civilian population. When Israel’s next-door neighbour, Bashar al-Assad in Syria was threatened by a civil uprising, he brutally murdered hundreds of thousands of his own citizens — and continues to do so. Where was Amnesty International?  

Israel’s detractors never seem to worry about the safety and security of Jewish lives in Israel. They never run to Israel’s defence when Israel is attacked. They never issue scathing reports, initiate global campaigns or call on the International Criminal Court to take action against the incitement of hate and war crimes targeting Israeli civilians. Instead, they are quick to come down on the “Jews,” especially if they are trying to protect themselves.  But we say, "Never again." When the Jewish people were herded from their homes, into ghettos and then to concentration camps where they were gassed, the world stood by and did nothing against this vile antisemitic act. So, Amnesty, your report means nothing to us. 

As Jewish people, we will fight back to protect our families this time. At the same time, we will always and relentlessly stand at the forefront of human rights advocacy, promoting freedom and peaceful co-existence.  Clearly, it makes little difference to so-called human rights advocates that Israel is a free and democratic country. It's incomprehensible to understand that a report is issued calling Israel an apartheid state while for the first time in history, an Arab political party is part of the governing coalition of the country. 

Israel’s citizens also represent every ethnic and religious group under the sun. It's also irrational to believe that Israel is intentionally ethnically cleansing the Palestinian population given the fact this community has increased from approximately 500,000 in 1948 to nearly six million in 2021 in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The numbers speak for themselves and completely disqualify Amnesty’s underlying premise.  

Israel’s tormentors have been planning this assault since the United Nations' infamous Durban conference in 2001. The stage was set to falsely equate Israel with the former South African apartheid regime, in an attempt to delegitimize, demonize and disrupt the very existence of the Jewish State. 

The Amnesty report regurgitates this established campaign and is calling for “Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to their homes where they or their families once lived,” which it's known would spell a demographic end to the Jewish State. Israel could not possibly absorb millions of Palestinian refugees who have been purposely held up in refugee camps without losing its Jewish character. Everyone knows this.  

We are pleased to note that most of Israel’s allies, including the Americans and Germans, have denounced the Amnesty report. We have called out Canadian leaders including our own prime minister, Justin Trudeau, to follow suit. As we wrote to the prime minister and the former leader of the official opposition this week, no other country is similarly harassed by the international community. 

Because Israel is the very embodiment of the Jewish people, the biased double standard practiced through these unrelenting attacks can only be understood as antisemitism. In fact, given the growth of violent antisemitism around the world, the Amnesty report is blatantly irresponsible and will trigger ever increasing antisemitic attacks, which are already at an all-time high around the world.  

National Post Avi Abraham Benlolo is the founder and chairman of The Abraham Global Peace Initiative. Jerry S. Grafstein, Q.C., is a former Canadian Senator.

In current times we honour non-Jews who saved their Jewish neighbours during the Holocaust. In 100 years, will we honour those who stood up for the Jewish state — the embodiment of the Jewish people — during these times? We venerate and uplift those who refused to be bystanders or “useful idiots” during the slaughter of the six million; Raoul Wallenberg, Irena Sendler, Chiune Sugihara and countless others who shall remain nameless saw behind the evil Nazi mask. They refused to go along to get along at great personal risk. They spoke up. They spoke out. They refused to be silent in action and deed.

During the Holocaust, Nazism was normalized. In the eyes of millions of Germans and other Europeans, the Jewish people were denigrated, dehumanized and marginalized, giving way to their murder. Parades took place in Berlin and across Germany with hundreds of thousands of youths and adults alike clamouring to cheer Adolf Hitler as he drove by in his motorcade. The photos of their smiling and excited faces as they raised their arms in the Nazi salute reveal either their complicity or sheer ignorance. As we look back now, we often ask how it was possible for millions of people to have fallen for Hitler.

The Nazi rallies in Nuremberg that brought together formations of youths and soldiers showed how easily a society can normalize evil. Photographs exist of Jews being led out of their towns to their slaughter while their neighbours cheered and spat on them. Father Patrick Desbois carefully documented hundreds of villages scattered across Eastern Europe where non-Jews turned against their Jewish neighbours and literally walked them to the ravine down the street and shot them into the pits they had dug for them hours before.

If history repeats itself, it’s repeating itself here and now. The Jewish people have seen this movie before. The media turns against them, propagandizing false narratives: Israel is attacking Gaza. Israel is committing genocide. Israel is occupying Palestine. Israel is blockading Gaza and committing ethnic cleansing.

Politicians grandstand by calling on their nations to stop selling arms to Israel and increase aid to the Palestinians. Universities and their equity departments make false accusations, asserting that Israel is a colonial state.

The promotion of false narratives against the Jewish state and by extension, the Jewish people, is an effort to reduce them to a level that makes it acceptable for the public to engage in violent anti-Semitism and more seriously, to commit genocide against the Jewish state itself. What we are witnessing in the surge of anti-Semitism on social media platforms and violent incidents across the world is a normalization effect that legitimizes attacks on Jewish people, not unlike Nazism. Incidents of anti-Semitism have skyrocketed, particularly affecting Millennials and young children.

For all those righteous groups that are siding with Hamas-led Gaza, shame on them for their ignorance and complicity in evil. The Nazis did not hide their agenda to eradicate the Jewish people. Neither does Hamas. For anyone who professes to have expertise in equity, diversity and anti-racism initiatives to be ignorant of the mission statement and charter of Hamas — the Islamic Resistance Movement — makes them enablers of the anti-Semitism and hatred now levelled against Jewish communities worldwide. 

How could anyone who professes to promote human rights agree to the following statement in the Hamas charter: “The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O’Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him!”

If you believe Hamas is a peaceful movement, its charter has something to say about that as well: “Peace initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement … the Movement educates its members to adhere to its principles and to raise the banner of Allah over their homeland as they fight their jihad.”

If you are standing with the pro-Palestinian movement that supports Hamas, at the very least, you should declare fealty with its charter and to violent jihad. Why have this masquerade of false assertions relating to the “occupation” (which is untrue because Israel does not occupy Gaza); or historically ignorant assertions that Jews are colonizers of their own land (there is evidence of Jewish history on the land but little if any of Palestinian nationhood); or that Israel is a “racist-apartheid” state (completely invalidated by the international community). 

If you believe in Hamas and its stated goal in its own charter of “waging Jihad against the enemy” — why not simply declare yourself as such? Say it.

The right to self defence is the most basic human right. Israel has every right and an obligation to defend its citizens against a terrorist organization. In my naïve world view, I cannot see how anyone in their right mind can align themselves with a radical jihadi group that espouses violence. Neither can I understand how anyone can join anti-Semitic protests around the world — especially if they are aligned with anti-racism and anti-discrimination movements. In almost every protest, posters are shown depicting Jews as Nazis and calling for their genocide in the state of Israel. At a car rally in London, England, one protester called for the raping of Jewish girls. Is this the movement you want to be aligned with?

If there is one thing we have learned from history, it is that it does repeat. No matter the logic provided or the counter arguments given, those who are bent on destroying the Jewish people will try to normalize their crimes and propagate them. They will overlook anti-Semitism. They will convolute news and information and set forth new policies in their institutions that advance the anti-Jewish agenda. 

History has shown that what starts with the Jews won’t end with them. If you think the pandemic is bad, take a look at how many people were killed in the Second World War — a war and a genocide that started because of hate, ignorance and complicity.

TEL AVIV — The other day, I walked by a convenience store in Tel Aviv that was stocked to the brim with Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. No one was buying it. That’s probably because most Israelis might be finding it hard to stomach a dessert that has waded into Middle Eastern politics.

Ben and Jerry’s has caused a stir in Israel and around the world by announcing that its ice cream will no longer be sold in the “occupied territories.” Its website touts important social justice activities like “climate justice, marriage equality and peace building” — but boycotting the disputed territories, where Jewish people reside because of their religious connection to the land, is not the same. Some might say it’s discriminatory. If we are all promoting freedom, why can’t Jewish people live there?

Outraged Israeli politicians called it an acquiescence to the anti-Semitic boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against the Jewish state. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett went as far as to lodge a formal complaint with the CEO of Unilever, which owns Ben and Jerry’s, warning him of possible “serious consequences, legal and otherwise.”

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, wrote to 35 countries that have passed anti-BDS laws, encouraging them to engage in “rapid and determined action … to counter such discriminatory and anti-Semitic actions,” in order to “send an unequivocal message that this will not be tolerated.”

In Tel Aviv, I met with Israeli progressive leader and former parliamentarian Stav Shaffir, who told me that unilateral boycott campaigns like this one actually undermine the Israeli left. Rather than working with civil society, and even with the business community, to find effective strategies that advance peace, by embracing the BDS movement, multinational companies end up perpetuating the conflict.

Boycotts build walls, not peace and dialogue. I admire socially responsible companies, including Ben and Jerry’s, interest in making the world a better place. In general terms, perhaps rather than the promotion of boycotts, greater investment in projects that promote dialogue, unity and pluralism might result in a more effective strategy for change.

At a time when anti-Semitism is at an all-time high, and when vicious and unfounded campaigns against Jewish communities and the State of Israel are raging widely, greater social responsibility is necessary, on the part of governments and corporations, to ensure their actions are not re-enforcing this climate of hostility.

Given the international community’s vociferous condemnation of anti-Semitism, including this week’s summit in Canada and last week’s in Israel, it would seem prudent to take a measured approach to the Middle East conflict. Anti-Semitism must not be excused as a consequence of events in the Middle East, as no other form of racial and religious discrimination is excused in this manner.

Its not just about Ben and Jerry’s. This is a significant problem that has grown from anti-Semitic campaigns on university campuses over the last two decades. It must be understood that boycotting Jewish people is never right, and is antithetical to the cause championed by those who espouse social justice and human rights.

A quick look at history reveals that for more than 2,000 years, Jewish people have been marginalized, isolated and boycotted. If this was a legitimate form of social justice, as some might argue, then why do we so rarely see boycotts targeting real human rights abusing countries like Syria, Iran, China and Myanmar?

Anti-boycott legislation in the United States jeopardizes the business affairs of any corporation targeting the Jewish state. Sadly, Ontario’s previous government refused to pass such precedent-setting legislation several years ago, when, alongside Tim Hudak and Mike Colle, I presented this groundbreaking opportunity to fight the BDS.

With the global community now recognizing the tsunamic levels of anti-Semitism worldwide, very few leaders are embracing boycotts. In fact, the four Muslim countries that recently signed onto the Abraham Accords have outwardly condemned the BDS movement through accelerated trade with Israel. But this hasn’t stopped those who wish Israel harm from continuing on their hateful mission.

The anti-Israel campaigners have attempted to characterize Jewish-Israelis as oppressors, if not the devil itself. Their demonizing and public shaming serves to help legitimize and perpetuate the boycotts, along with violence perpetrated against Jews and the Jewish state.

Ice cream is the least of Israel’s problems, as it contends with continued threats from terrorist organizations like Hamas, along with state actors like Iran. But such boycotts are a symptom of the wider problem of anti-Semitism that has seen a frightening resurgence recently.

A media firestorm was set off recently, after actress Scarlett Johansson was widely criticized in Egypt for being a Zionist. It all started on Dec. 1, 2020 when Johansson released a YouTube video calling for the release of four human rights activists who were arrested after they hosted foreign diplomats to discuss the human rights situation in Egypt.

It didn’t matter that her calls were backed up by the United Nations, numerous foreign governments and human rights organizations, as well as other celebrities. The fact that Johansson is Jewish was cause enough for many in the Egyptian media, as well as on social media, to single her out as an enemy of the people.

No matter what one’s political inclination is, from this point of view, if being a Zionist implies standing up for human rights, it should be considered a badge of honour. Those who have worked hard to defame and delegitimize Israel and, by extension, the Jewish people, suggest that Israelis are racist colonizers. But nothing could be further from the truth.

Zionism was, and still is, a movement based on the belief that the Jewish people have a right to return to their ancestral homeland to live in peace and harmony with their neighbours. It inspired the foundation of the only true democracy in the Middle East — a hostile region of the world that is largely ruled by tyrannical regimes.

Today, Israel is a nation that celebrates and promotes equal rights for all people, regardless of race, religion or gender. It respects the rule of law according to Western legal standards and promotes freedom of the press, free speech and freedom of movement and assembly, as well as gay rights.

Zionism is an ideology that has created a Jewish state with vigorous democratic debate — so vigorous, in fact, that many have criticized its multi-party system for being too democratic.

When Morocco joined the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan in normalizing diplomatic relations with Israel, it showed that many Arab states are not threatened by this vision. In fact, they were now partnering with Israel and the United States to stand up to rogue and dangerous regimes like the one in Iran.

Many ethnic and religious groups around the world have struggled for their freedom. But only the Jewish people have been severely and repeatedly reprimanded by the international community for rebuilding their homeland.

In the late 1800s, Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, advocated for the re-establishment of the Jewish state, after prophesizing that a catastrophic event was about to befall Europe’s Jewish community. Indeed, less than 50 years after his prediction, six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, including his own daughter.

The Jewish state came into being in 1948, following the Holocaust. Even while its founders were being attacked by their Arab neighbours, they never gave up on Herzl’s vision of creating a modern state that strives to promote tolerance, justice and human rights. Herzl himself advocated living peacefully and respectfully with Israel’s Arab, Druze and Christian population.

Like all countries, Israel is imperfect. It’s still a work in progress and, over the past number of years, an incredible development has been occurring: young and energetic Israeli Arabs, Christians, Bedouins and Druze have been joining Israel’s military and diplomatic corps and representing the country around the world.

Take for example, Muhamed Heib, an Israeli spokesperson who works out of its Embassy in India and hails from a Druze village in Israel’s north. In his online video, which has garnered nearly 400,000 views, he proudly represents the Jewish state. He is also becoming a role model in his village.

There is also Lorena Khateeb, a young Druze woman who is garnering much online attention in the Persian Gulf for her work with the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s digital diplomacy department. And then there is Ambassador George Deek, an accomplished Christian-Israeli diplomat who is currently serving his country in Azerbaijan.

Israel has changed. All over the Jewish state, we are seeing new and inspiring stories of pluralism, diversity and acceptance. Yoseph Haddad is the co-founder and CEO of a new non-profit organization called Vouch for Each Other. An Israeli Christian Arab, he served in the famous Golani Brigade of the Israel Defense Forces and was wounded in battle. He now dedicates himself to promoting integration among all Israeli citizens, including bridging the “Arab sector of Israeli society with Israeli society as a whole.”

It’s no longer simply about politics or ideology or a singular identity. Israeli citizens I have spoken with recently are optimistic, excited and motivated to advance their country. What we are seeing are positive social shifts from a maturing of Israeli society that involve collaboration and integration.

Israel’s diversity, openness and democracy, coupled with its economic, scientific and military successes and now the Abraham Accords, presents a dramatic shift for its diverse citizens and its neighbours.

The seeds of a more peaceful and prosperous future in the Middle East are already starting to sprout. Hopefully, those spouting hate against Scarlett Johansson and others will prove to be the last vestiges of an old way of thinking that has allowed violence and hatred to fester for far too long.