We are ostensibly in what should be “Silly Season” – a period of mainly frivolous, non-news stories. So much for that. Known in Hebrew as “Onat hamelafefonim” (“Cucumber season”) – this year, the hard news, and hard-to-digest news, still abound. Nonetheless, in the heat of the moment, I want to share a joke with readers. It’s an Irish joke. A bad one.
Last week it was widely reported that the Irish government purchased a €53 million plane primarily to transport the Taoiseach (prime minister) and other ministers and officials on official state business, but dropped the FalconEye technology, co-developed by Dassault Falcon and Israeli defense giant Elbit Systems, which is essential for the aircraft to land in foggy weather. The republic does not want to award Israeli companies defense contracts.
Talk about a crash course in the irrationality of antisemitism. It’s not the fog that’s preventing them from seeing clearly. It’s blind hatred. It’s one thing for countries like Ireland to pull out of the Eurovision Song Contest because they didn’t want to share the stage with an Israeli singer. (It was no great loss to the Eurovision or to Ireland, which, unlike Israel, has fared poorly in the music competition in recent years.) It’s another thing to literally ground your government in frequent bad weather rather than permit Israeli technology to save the day.
The Irish reportedly still use Airbus helicopters and maritime patrol aircraft fitted with Elbit avionics, so maybe the joke really is on the government – it’s only the politicians who are at risk.
I leave it to others to list the many Israeli contributions in the tech, health, and agriculture spheres that the Irish officials would be denying their country and the world were they to really try to boycott all products of the Jewish state. Maybe they lost their way boycotting Israeli-invented WAZE. They’ve certainly lost their moral compass.
Irish antisemitism rises post-October 7
Irish indignation over all things Israeli goes back a long way but has strengthened over the allegations of “genocide” in Gaza. The allegations started the day after Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel on October 7, 2023. The terrorists deliberately perpetrated a genocidal attack that left 1,220 dead, more than 5,000 wounded, and 251 taken into captivity in Gaza. The accusations against Israel started before Israel had even responded to the mega-atrocity.
The “baby-killer” blood libel is by now so entrenched that it’s almost impossible to set the record straight, but a UNICEF-led report published last week showed the extent of the lies and hypocrisy.
The results showed acute malnutrition rates across Gaza ranged between 0.2% and 0.8%, comparable to or lower than those recorded there prior to the Israel-Hamas War. More significantly, they were notably lower than those reported in neighboring countries, including Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. Most of the world simply swallowed the fake “famine” news story whole.
Meanwhile, in the “No Jews, No News” category, a UN report from June states that in Yemen: “Around five million people – or 47% of the population – are currently experiencing crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity (Phase 3 and above)… a further 1.4 million people are trapped in the ‘emergency’ phase, with the number expected to grow as the year progresses.”
While the world was focusing on the fabricated famine in Gaza, the children of Yemen were being starved to death as a result of the jihadist Houthi regime, Hamas’s partner in crime.
And pity the Christian communities in Africa, where jihadists continue their murderous rampages and hostage taking. According to some sources, more than 60 Christians have been killed in Nigeria alone in the last 30 days. The world ignores these atrocities at its peril.
Mecca pact signed by Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia
In noteworthy news elsewhere last week, the so-called Mecca pact was signed by Turkey, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. Formally known as The Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, it has been described as a NATO-like alliance theoretically determining that an armed attack against any one of the member states would be regarded as an attack against the entire trio.
It was signed by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and the location of the signing ceremony said a lot. The signing took place in Mecca, underscoring the joint Islamic background to the treaty between the three Sunni states.
If ever a peace treaty between Saudi Arabia and Israel were reached, they’d have to pick a different venue for the signing ceremony, because non-Muslims are not permitted to enter Mecca, Islam’s holiest city. Their very presence is considered a defilement.
Keep that in mind next time you hear charges of Israeli “apartheid.” Consider what the response would be were the Jewish state to bar non-Jews from Jerusalem, Judaism’s holiest city.
It’s not funny, but every time I hear Saudi Arabia being described as “moderate,” it makes me smile. Turkey’s membership in NATO is itself a bad joke, while NATO is between a lame joke and a lame duck.
This week, journalist Roi Kais, from Israel’s KAN public broadcasting station, broke a story that was peculiar, if not funny. Under the limitations of military censorship, which prevented him from immediately naming and shaming the two countries involved, Kais revealed that officials from one Middle Eastern country advised another state in the region to pursue an agreement with Israel as a tactic to lull it into a false sense of security while preparing for a confrontation in the future.
A guessing game was immediately launched to identify the possible countries – given that Israel is already in talks with neighboring Lebanon and there have been discussions about an agreement of some kind with Syria under its jihadist-turned-president Ahmed al-Sharaa.
Since any regime can change swiftly, Israel in any case should be wary of future shifting sands, even with countries with which it officially has peace agreements, including Jordan and Egypt. And following the October 7 disaster, it would be foolhardy to rely on the concept of quiet deterrence. Our enemies are laughing all the way to the West Bank.
The Romans had a phrase for it: “Si vis pacem, para bellum,” “If you want peace, prepare for war.” Mind you, I’m happy to say that Israel today, despite its problems, is still alive and kicking, which is more than can be said of the Roman Empire.
In his thought-provoking column in this paper last week, David Weinberg wrote about the Palestinian Authority inventory of Jewish historical sites presented to UNESCO’s World Heritage List as “Palestinian” or “Islamic” heritage locations while erasing their Jewish connection.
UNESCO readily joined in the joke long ago, replacing Jewish history from the area in favor of a Palestinian narrative, even on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, exclusively known by the Arabic “al-Haram al-Sharif” in UN-speak.
The list includes the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered at Qumran, an area under Israeli control that they would like to become part of a future Palestinian state. In 2010, Jordan made a similar claim to the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were found in a cave between 1947 and 1956, when the area was under British, and then Jordanian, rule.
Like the fight to rename the holy sites in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria – to replace signs of the Jewish connection with an Islamic identity – so, too, with the scrolls. The fact that most of the scrolls are biblical texts written in Hebrew and predate the birth of Islam is apparently irrelevant.
Most Israeli children above the age of six would find the letters familiar; Jews everywhere still use the language in prayer. The average Jordanian or Palestinian would not be able to recognize the letters or language, but somehow it’s OK to appropriate them.
It only goes to show that the hypocrisy of Palestinians and their supporters is good for a laugh any time of the year.
