WarSclerotic

At a time of rising antisemitism, when we have become increasingly exposed to the notion of dog whistles and tropes that are antisemitic, when there is a lively and active debate about this issue in the US, The New York Times International Edition did the equivalent of saying “hold my beer.”

You thought that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s comments about foreign loyalty or “Benjamins” were problematic. The International Edition of the Times just said: “Let me show you what we can do,” with a cartoon of a yarmulke-wearing, blind US President Donald Trump being led by a dog with a Star of David collar and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s face for a head.

Harry Khachatrian

✔@Harry1T6

In the NYTimes international: Bibi Netanyahu characterized as a dog leading a blind, Jewish Trump.
When did the @nytimes hire David Duke as an editor?

3,774

5:10 PM – Apr 27, 2019

I didn’t believe the cartoon was real when I first saw it. Many of my colleagues didn’t believe it either. I spent all day Saturday trying to track down a hard copy. I phoned friends, I got a PDF of the edition, and even then I didn’t believe it.

I had to see for myself. So I drove to a 24-hour supermarket. There on the newsstand was the April 25 edition. I flipped gingerly through, fearing to see Page 16.

And then I found it. It stared back at me: That horrid image of a blind US President Donald Trump with a yarmulke being led by a dog with the face of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Worse, the dog was wearing a Star of David as a collar.

This is what The New York Times thinks of us Israelis. Even if they subsequently said it was an error, they thought it was okay to print a cartoon showing the US president being blindly led by the “Jewish dog”?

And not only that, those who watched as it went to print thought it was fine to put a Jewish skullcap on the US president. Dual loyalty? No need to even wrestle with that question.

It used to be that we were told that Trump was fostering “Trump antisemitism” and driving a new wave of antisemitism in the US. But the cartoon depicts him as a Jew. Well, which is it? Is he fostering antisemitism, or is he now a closet Jew being led by Israel, depicted as a Jewish dog? We used to say that images “conjured up memories” of 1930s antisemitism. This didn’t conjure it up; this showed us exactly what it looked like.

The Nazis also depicted us as animals. They also put Stars of David on us. Antisemites have compared us to dogs, pigs and monkeys before. It used to be that it was on the far-Right that Jews were depicted as controlling the world, like an octopus or a spider.

But now we see how mainstream it has become to blame the Jews and Israel for the world’s problems.

The cartoon comes in the context of numerous similar antisemitic statements and “dog whistles.” In this case it isn’t only “the Jews” but also Israel “leading” the US president. The cartoon is clear as day. It presents the Jews, as symbolized by that Star of David collar, secretly controlling the US president. Trump is being led by Israel, by the Jewish state.

No other country or minority group is subjected to such unrelenting and systematic hatred by mainstream US newspapers. No one would dare to put an Islamic leader’s face on a dog, with Islamic symbols, leading the US president.

Of course not. The editor would stop that.

They’d be sensitive to this issue. They would err on the side of not being offensive. The night editor, the assistant editor or someone would say: “This doesn’t look right.”

Imagine the days when racists tried to depict US president Barack Obama as a closet Muslim. We know the tropes. So why put a yarmulke on Trump’s head? When it comes to Jews and Israel, there is no depth to which they will not sink.

And an apology after the fact isn’t enough.

This cartoon didn’t end up in the International Edition of The New York Times by mistake. It was chosen; it was put on a page by someone. It was checked and re-checked.

I know. I’m an Op-ed Editor. When I used to run cartoons in my section, no fewer than four people would see it before it went to print. At the International Edition of The New York Times, it should have been more than four. And they all thought it was fine? What that tells me is that there is a culture of antisemitism somewhere in the newsroom.

THERE ISN’T just one problem with this cartoon. There are numerous problems.

Problem one is putting a yarmulke on the US president in a negative way. What is being said there? That he is secretly a Jew. Then making him blind, and having him led by Israel. That implies Israel controls US policy or controls America.

That is problem two. Then they put a dog leash with a Star of David, which is antisemitic in multiple ways.

Problems three and four. You’d think that after the Holocaust, any use of the Star of David would automatically raise questions in a newsroom.

But no. Then they put the Israeli prime minister’s face on a dog. On a dog. Problem number five.

So this cartoon wasn’t just mildly antisemitic. It wasn’t like “whoops.” It was deeply antisemitic.

The New York Times acknowledged this in a kind of pathetic way. They admitted that the cartoon “included antisemitic tropes.” It then noted, “The image was offensive and it was an error of judgement to publish it.”

That’s not enough. An error of judgment would imply that it was just a kind of mistake. “Tropes” would imply that to some people it is antisemitic, but that it’s not clear as day.

But this is clear as day.

This isn’t like some story of unclear antisemitism. This isn’t a dog whistle. This is a dog. This is antisemitic on numerous levels. It’s time to say no more. It’s time to say “They shall not pass.”

This should be a defining moment. It is a defining moment because one of America’s most prestigious newspapers did this, not some small town newspaper somewhere.

That it was in the International Edition doesn’t make it any less harmful. In fact, it shows America’s face to the world and gives a quiet signal to other antisemites. How can we demand that there be zero tolerance for antisemitism and antisemitic tropes when this happens?

People must speak up against the cartoon fiasco and demand a real accounting. And a real conversation. Not another set of excuses where we all pretend it’s not clearly antisemitism, and it’s not clearly an attack on Jews and “dual loyalty.”

We need to hear contrition and explanations. The public should be included, and The New York Times should listen to how harmful and offensive this was.

BOSASO – A US air strike killed three fighters from the Islamic State in the Somalia’s semi-autonomous Puntland region on Friday, a US military official said, two weeks after the group’s deputy leader was killed in a strike.

A witness said missiles struck two wells on the outskirts of Timirshe village, some 60km southeast of Puntland’s commercial capital Bosaso.

“This air strike eliminated ISIS-Somalia members staged in a remote location in northern Somalia,” Maj. Gen. Gregg Olson, US Africa Command (AFRICOM) director of operations, said in an emailed statement on Saturday.

AFRICOM also claimed responsibility for the killing of IS deputy Abdulhakim Dhuqub on April 14.

Somalia has been riven by civil war and Islamist militancy since 1991 when clan warlords overthrew a dictator before turning on each other.

“We heard the crash of four missiles on the outskirts of Timirshe village,” resident Ahmed Nur told Reuters by telephone.

He said the wells were used by militants from both IS and their more powerful Islamist rivals al Shabaab, an al Qaeda affiliate who have been fighting Somalia’s UN-backed government for years.

Al Shabaab was pushed out of the capital Mogadishu in 2011, but retains a strong presence in parts of southern and central Somalia.

It has frequently clashed with the much smaller IS force in the north who are thought to number fewer than 200 fighters.

A Puntland intelligence official said the air strike targeted both groups.

“There are casualties and we are investigating. In recent battles al Shabaab captured three bases from IS,” he told Reuters by telephone, requesting anonymity.

ZHUHAI, China – Chinese President Xi Jinping has elevated his country’s missile forces to a level where they pose an unprecedented challenge to the aircraft carriers and bases that form the backbone of American military primacy in Asia, a Reuters special report reveals today.

Many of the missiles in Beijing’s arsenal now rival or outperform those of the United States, puncturing the protective umbrella that for decades America has afforded its regional allies South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.

Critically, China has forged a monopoly in one class of conventional missiles that enable it to strike at U.S. aircraft carriers off its coast and at bases in Japan or even Guam in the Pacific Ocean. Under a Cold War-era treaty between the U.S. and Russia, neither country has been allowed to develop these weapons – land-based, intermediate-range ballistic and cruise missiles with a range between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (3,418 miles). But China, which isn’t a signatory to the treaty, has been deploying these rockets in massive numbers.

Today’s special report is part of “The China Challenge,” a Reuters series on how Xi Jinping is reshaping and rejuvenating China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), by filling its top ranks with loyal allies and enhancing its missile, naval and nuclear capabilities.

Previously in “The China Challenge” – Inside Xi’s remaking of the world’s largest fighting force: https://reut.rs/2Uzr9z4

In the event of a confrontation in the seas off its coast, Chinese military brass say they now have the means with which to keep American carriers at bay. “We cannot defeat the United States at sea,” a retired PLA colonel told Reuters. “But we have missiles that specifically target aircraft carriers to stop them from approaching our territorial waters if there were conflict.”

That is a potentially dramatic development, signaling that China is able to deter U.S. intervention as it expands its control in the South China Sea, steps up naval and air sorties around Taiwan, and extends its operations into areas it disputes with Japan.

With the United States suddenly finding itself on the wrong side of the missile gap, American military planners face a new and daunting scenario. Because some of China’s anti-ship missiles now outrange the fighter jets aboard U.S. carriers, they could neutralize American flattops in a conflict. If these carriers are forced to operate outside the range of their aircraft, they would be far less potent.

The United States, which has long been preoccupied with wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan, is now rushing to claw back the advantage. President Trump announced on Feb. 1 that Washington would withdraw from its missile treaty with Russia in six months, clearing the way for the U.S. to begin building the ground-launched missiles banned for more than three decades.

China’s Ministry of National Defense, the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and the Pentagon did not respond to questions from Reuters.

The newly formed Committee to Ban Hezbollah in Germany called on US consumers to boycott German automobiles in an advertisement in The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, after German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected outlawing Hezbollah.

The advertisement declares, “Boycott the German car industry until Hezbollah is banned in Germany.”

The advertisement in the community weekly reads: “Yet Germany allows Hezbollah to operate openly on its soil. It’s time to send a message to the German government. Americans will not buy their cars while it allows the murderers of our soldiers to raise money, recruit and propagandize on German soil.”

Merkel’s administration is vehemently opposed to banning Hezbollah’s entire organization in Germany, where at least 950 Hezbollah members operate.

The Jerusalem Post examined German intelligence reports from 2018 stating that Hezbollah operatives recruit new members, transfer funds to the terrorist entity in Lebanon, and spread lethal antisemitic and jihadi ideologies in the federal republic.

The advertisement ends with a quote from famed US president Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: “…that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.”

A picture of the memorial at Patrick Air Force Base for the 19 American airmen murdered by Hezbollah is shown in the advertisement.
A spokesman for the Committee to Ban Hezbollah told the Post that, “Hezbollah is the biggest terrorist threat in the world because it is state-backed.”

The spokesman said the committee plans to send the advertisement to German diplomats and managers of German automobile companies in the US such as Damler, BMW, Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche.

The committee is slated to also send the ads to mayors in cities where German car plants are situated and to the embassies of Gulf countries.

The spokesman said that the fact that “Hezbollah and Iranians have killed American troops is intolerable.”

Hezbollah is Iran’s chief terrorist proxy in the Middle East.

US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell is pressing for the German government to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Sources say that he brings it up at every meeting he attends with German officials.

The United Kingdom outlawed Hezbollah’s so-called political wing in February. The EU and Germany have merely prescribed Hezbollah’s military wing as a terrorist entity. The US, Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, the Arab League and Israel classify all of Hezbollah a terrorist organization, without dividing the entity into military and political wings.

Merkel has rejected appeals from both the US and the Israeli governments to also designate Hezbollah’s political wing a terrorist entity. Niels Annen, a deputy German foreign minister, said Hezbollah is necessary for stability because it is a part of the Lebanese government. Germany’s foreign ministry, represented by Annen, participated in a ceremony in February to honor Iran’s Islamic revolution.

In 2012, Hezbollah blew up an Israeli tour bus in Burgas, Bulgaria, murdering five Israelis and their Muslim Bulgarian bus driver.

Merkel told Israel’s Knesset last year that the security of the Jewish state is “non-negotiable” for her government.

The Israeli Air Force opened a second squadron of F-35 stealth fighter jets, The Jerusalem Post learned on Thursday.

The squadron will be called “Defenders of the Negev.”

With close air-support capabilities and a massive array of sensors, pilots of the stealth jet have an unparalleled access to information while in the air.

The Israel Air Force currently has 14 F-35 Adir aircraft and is expected to receive a total of 50 planes to make two full squadrons by 2024.

With a need to keep ahead of increased threats in the Middle East, the Israeli Air Force is set to decide within the coming months to place orders on several new aircraft to upgrade its ageing squadrons.

The IAF is also now considering whether to purchase an additional 25 F-35s to give the Jewish state a total of 75 stealth fighter jets.

While the F-35I has advantages such as intelligence gathering, the F-15IA’s assets closely match most missions carried out by the IAF such as dealing with enemy missile launch sites or terror targets on its northern or southern borders.

Although the F-35 is considered one of the world’s most advanced fighter jet, the stealth aircraft is limited in the weapons they are able to carry as they have to be stored in internal munition boxes in order to maintain a low radar signature.

And in parallel to the fifth-generation air crafts, the IAF needs to retain it’s qualitative military edge and modernize an essential squadron of it’s fighter fleet. Most of the IAF’s F-15s are over  30 years old with the majority acquired in the second half of the 1970s and while a more advanced squadron of the F-15, the F-15I arrived in Israel in the 1990s.

The F-15IA model that the IAF is leaning towards purchasing is one of the most advanced and cost-effective fighter planes ever to be built, with various upgrades to the earlier models such as more efficient engines and fly-by-wire avionics-which is considered the biggest change to the jet in 20 years.

Officials believe that a force mix of F-35I Adirs along with a squadron of F-15IA would allow Israel to carry out a number of complex operations, including any possible confrontation with Iran on its borders.