1) Palestinian Media Watch brings some follow up to a story reported earlier this month by the BBC.
“The European Union’s recent announcement that it will be renewing its aid to the PA means that the EU is accepting that the PA continues to reward terror and continues its antisemitic, hate-filled school curriculum, according to the Palestinian Authority Minister of Public Works and Building Muhammad Ziyara. According to the PA, this “political victory” over the EU is more important that the financial aid…”
2) At the Moshe Dayan Center, Joshua Krasna analyses ‘A Tale of Two Normalizations’.
“The Negev Summit on March 28, 2022, which was attended by Bahrain, U.A.E., Egypt, and Morocco, as well as the United States, symbolized a maturing and coalescence of the regional normalization processes between Israel and conservative Arab states. A follow-up to the Negev Summit took place in Manama on June 27, 2022 and the steering committee, which was chaired by Bahraini Undersecretary for Political Affairs Sheikh Abdullah bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, formed working groups on security, health, education, tourism, food and water security, and energy.”
3) The JCPA provides the third in a series of papers about the UN HRC’s ‘Commission of Inquiry’ by Anne Bayefsky.
“If one is still pondering just how dangerous this venture might be, listen to the outrageous words of Chris Sidoti to the Human Rights Council at the end of the presentation of the report, after some speakers objected to the “inquiry” and the Council’s treatment of the Jewish state. Sidoti said, “Accusations of antisemitism are thrown around like rice at a wedding.”
A retort intended to mask the very real antisemitism inextricably bound up with this “inquiry,” which is destined to cause serious harm to genuine victims of violence and discrimination unless it is stopped.”
4) At the Tablet Magazine, Matti Friedman describes a new exhibit at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
“The recreated synagogues of the Israel Museum, including this one, are beautiful and memorable and deeply sad. The curatorial energy and creativity can’t obscure what all of this tells us, which is that the Jewish world is contracting. The fact is that in the lifetime of our parents and grandparents, Jews were eradicated in much of the Christian world and erased from the world of Islam. It’s not just the Great Synagogue of Aleppo—it’s the houses of worship in Tataouine or Oran, the synagogues of Galicia and Romania, the ones in grand Italian towns and obscure Polish hamlets. And what about Cochin, or Kaifeng, or, for that matter, Knoxville, the Carolinas, and the Caribbean? Much of the tenuous, beautiful, and strange variety of Jewish life that existed a century ago is gone. The vast majority of what remains plays out in the state of Israel and a few big cities in North America.”
