Tunisian President Qais Saeed called for an investigation into the participation of a tennis player with Israeli citizenship in an international tournament in Tunisia.
A presidential statement said today that President Saeed asked the Minister of Youth and Sports Sunni Sheikh "to open an investigation in the purpose to determine responsibilities", pointing to Tunisia's principled position rejecting the establishment of relations with Israel in any way.
Aaron Cohen, holder of French and Israeli citizenship, participated in an international tennis tournament that started in Tunisia on January 26.
Cohen played his first match against Tunisian Karim El-Shazly last Sunday, winning two sets for nothing, and he also won his second match against Italian Simone Cavalieri before losing the third match against Portuguese Miguel Gomez and leaving Tunisia on Tuesday.
The Tunisian presidency confirmed that the player "entered Tunisia with a French passport, but he participated in the tournament as an Israeli."
President Qais Saeed - who is against normalization with Israel - pledged in his election campaign not to allow the entry of Israeli passport holders to Tunisia.
The president of Tunisia is seething over an Israeli teen playing tennis in his country. Hate is a fascinating thing.
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As US President Trump demanded "halting the financial compensation to terrorists" PA documents just publicized show the PA admits to paying 517.4 million shekels in salaries to terrorists in 2019, a rise of 15 million shekels compared to 2018.
Israeli government stipulated that the PA spent 150 million shekels on the payments to wounded terrorists and the families of dead terrorist "Martyrs" in 2018
PMW has calculated that this figure has grown by at least 1.6 million shekels, in 2019
Accordingly, in 2020, the Israeli Government must deduct no less than 669 million shekels from the taxes Israel collects and transfer to the PA
According to recently published Palestinian Authority financial reports, Palestinian Media Watch can expose that the PA has admitted to spending no less than 517.4 million shekels ($149.7 million/€136 million) paying salaries to terrorist prisoners and released prisoners in 2019.
The PA expenditure on allowances to wounded terrorists and the families of dead terrorists was at least 151.6 million shekels in 2019. Accordingly, the total minimum PA expenditure in 2019 on its payments to terrorists and families of dead terrorists - its Pay-for-Slay policy- was 669 million shekels ($193.6 million/€175.8 million).
In accordance with the Israeli law, Defense Minister Naftali Bennet should present the National Security Cabinet with a report showing that the PA expenditure on its Pay-for-Slay policy was no less than 669 million shekels.
Israeli law demands that this figure be deducted from the monthly tax transfers Israel makes to the PA.
Uganda is reportedly planning to announce that it is moving its embassy to Jerusalem next week, sources close to the Ugandan president and the Ugandan Christian community told The Jerusalem Post.
A spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry could not confirm the report.
The Hebrew website Ynet reported on Wednesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to travel to Uganda on Monday, but did not cite a reason for the visit.
Sources close to the community told the Post that the move has been in the works for three years.
Pastor Drake Kanaabo, who ministers at the Redeemed of the Lord Evangelistic Church Makerere in Kampala, Uganda, told the Post that he had been hearing rumors about the move.
"I got a note from sources that Uganda is moving the embassy," he said, though he noted that he was unable to confirm the rumors with senior leaders by press time.
He said it is important that Uganda move the embassy to the holy city "because of our past good relationship with the State of Israel.
"On a spiritual level, Uganda regards Israel as the mother of Christianity," he told the Post. "Ugandan Christians are no longer standing on one leg for Israel, but two - in prayer and action. Israel is the only first-world country that is near to Uganda and Africa."
Israeli-American backpacker Naama Issachar reunited with her mother on Thursday at Moscow's airport after her release from Russian prison, and boarded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's official plane on her way back to Israel as a free woman.
Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, greeted Naama in front of the cameras, along with Yaffa Issachar, after pushing for months for her release, which comes weeks before national elections in Israel.
Naama Issachar, 27, was sentenced by Russia to 7.5 years in prison after nearly 10 grams of marijuana were found in her luggage during a layover in a Moscow airport in April. She has denied smuggling drugs, noting that she had not sought to enter Russia during the layover on her way to Israel from India, and had no access to her luggage during her brief stay in the Russian airport.
Issachar, who was held in a Russian prison for some 10 months, was seen hugging her mother and greeting the Netanyahus inside the terminal.
The four then crossed the tarmac and boarded the plane without stopping to make a formal statement or answer questions from the many reporters in attendance.
"Let's go home, let's go home," the prime minister said.
It was a unique event, where journalists from all major Israeli news outlets provided extensive coverage and television channels interrupted their regular broadcasts for the release of a young woman who committed a criminal offense, but whose fate — widely viewed as a disproportionate punishment — has gripped an entire nation.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strives to bring former spy Jonathan Pollard to Israel before the March 2 elections, local media reported on Wednesday.
The report cites a source within the Likud party, who said the premier aims to have Pollard on Israeli soil a week before Israelis cast their ballots in the country's unprecedented third elections in the same year.
Pollard, a US citizen who was caught spying for Israel and served 30 years in prison, was released in 2015 on parole. He is currently subject to strict terms and is not allowed to leave the US.
In August 2019, he revealed in an interview to Channel 12 News that he asked Israel's prime minister to help him receive a commute on his parole after learning his wife was stricken with cancer, so he could take better care of her.
From his cramped little apartment in Manhattan, New York, the former spy said he had urged Netanyahu to intervene on his behalf and ask US President Donald Trump to let him "go home" amid his recent familial crisis.
In response, the Prime Minister's Office released a statement, saying that "Israel remains committed to bringing Jonathan Pollard back home. The prime minister will continue with his efforts to bring him to Israel."
The Israeli Air Force carried out strikes on the southern Gaza Strip on Thursday afternoon in response to attacks earlier in the day, the military said.
"Earlier today, fire was identified from the Gaza Strip toward an observation antenna and explosive balloons were launched into Israeli territory," the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement.
"In response, a short while ago, IDF aircraft and tanks targeted a number of observation means used for intelligence collection by the Hamas terror organization, in the southern Gaza Strip," it said.
Palestinian media in the Gaza Strip reported that three separate sites were targeted.
On Thursday, a bundle of balloons connected to an explosive device were found in the area of the Ashkelon Coastal Regional Council. There were no injuries.
Earlier in the day, Ibrahim al-Shantaf, identified as a member of Hamas' military wing, died in an accident while working in one of its underground tunnels in the Gaza Strip.
MEANT TO KILL CHILDREN.
An explosive device, wrapped like a birthday present, sent by terrorists from #Gaza. Thousands of these balloon bombs have been sent from #Gaza. Directed and orchestrated by #Hamas. pic.twitter.com/RIzGX6egGs
Israel's El Al Airlines announced a halt on all flights to Beijing until March 25 in light of the spread of the Novel (new) Coronavirus on Thursday, following the lead of other carriers that have suspended or scaled back flights to China due to the viral outbreak.
The decision was apparently made after El Al employees refused to fly to China, according to Calcalist. Thursday's flight from Beijing to Ben-Gurion Airport will return as scheduled.
New directives released by the Health Ministry on Wednesday also contributed to the decision.
The death toll from the spreading virus, which originated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, has risen to 170, with the total number of known cases rising to 7,711, according to China's National Health Commission.
Italian Auschwitz survivor and Senator for Life Liliana Segre received a standing ovation for her address to the European Parliament, in a ceremony marking International Holocaust Memorial Day.
In a powerful speech that moved many MEPs to tears, Segre recounted her experience as a young girl facing the evils of humanity, while also launching a mighty message of love for life and to strive against racism and antisemitism.
"I am extremely emotional to be here in the European Parliament," she said. "Upon my arrival, I saw all the flags displayed at the entrance. So many colors, so many countries that are here in a spirit of brotherhood, with people speaking to each other and looking at each other directly in the eyes. This was not always the way things were." She also specifically addressed British MEPs, expressing her sorrow for their imminent departure – the Brexit deal was approved by the EU Parliament on the same day.
Born in 1930 into a Jewish family in Milan, Segre was deported to Auschwitz in 1944 at the age of 13.
For the past 30 years, she has been one of the most active witnesses of the Holocaust, speaking to thousands of schools and groups all over Italy.
In January 2018, she was appointed senator for life by the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella.
International Holocaust Memorial Day falls on January 27, the day that the Red Army liberated Auschwitz – or, more accurately, as Segre recalled during her speech, the day that Soviet soldiers reached the Nazi extermination camp that the Germans had abandoned several days earlier, and uncovered its horrors for the first time.
LBC: Holocaust survivor calls on politicians to act now on online hate speech
Manfred Goldberg BEM is concerned that social media has "taken the place of the Nazi propaganda ministry".
Manfred Goldberg BEM came to the UK in September 1946 having survived three and a half years in several labour and concentration camps.
He joined Maajid Nawaz in the studio to discuss the 75th anniversary of Auschwitz being liberated.
Manfred Goldberg said: "Today's social media sites are incredibly powerful and I feel that we are fighting an uphill battle which cannot possibly win unless some form of effective control is imposed on these websites.
|"At the moment, it's a free for all. The propagators of this propaganda can hide behind fake identities.
"There's no consequence for them so lies can be propagated with no risk attached to be out to have lied and misled people.
I feel that such controls are long overdue and I hope and pray that eventually, some politician will be brave enough."
LBC: "It's not the England I came to": Auschwitz survivor tells LBC
Ivor Perl said that when he arrived in England, he thought it was "heaven'. He told Andrew Castle that it's no longer the England he came to.
Ivor Perl was born in 1932 in Hungary. He had five brothers and three sisters.
He was taken to Auschwitz, aged 12, with his entire family. Only Ivor and one of his brother survived.
He spoke to Andrew Castle as part of the commemoration of 75 years since Auschwitz was liberated.
Ivor told Andrew Castle about his experience of the Holocaust.
He was first deported to a ghetto, then to Auschwitz.
He described arriving there as "horrendous" and how it followed a four day journey in a cattle truck with 70 to 80 people.
Upon arriving, he was separated from his mother and sisters. He never saw them again.
Major Barak's Grandmother Was Liberated From Auschwitz.
75 years ago, Barak's grandmother was liberated from Auschwitz after surviving the Holocaust.
Today, Barak is an officer in the IDF. This is their story!
Btsalmo, a human rights organization based in Israel, has written to the editor of Sabado Magazine, demanding the dismissal of cartoonist Vasco Gargalo for his cartoon of a "Palestinian" Holocaust. The cartoon depicts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shoving a PA flag-draped coffin into an oven bearing the infamous slogan from the gates of Auschwitz, Arbeit Macht Frei, "work will set you free."
The letter to the executive editor of Sabado was copied, among others, to the Portuguese Prime Minister, the Ambassador of Portugal to Israel, Israel's prime minister, and the Israeli Ambassador to Portugal. Btsalmo CEO Shai Glick, notes in the letter that the cartoon qualifies as both Holocaust denial and minimization according to the official International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.
More than 9,000 Americans have signed a petition calling on members of Congress to withdraw statements of support issued to the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization which the petition's signatories say is antisemitic.
More than 120 members of Congress, including Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chairs Pramila Jayapal and Mark Poucan, and presidential hopefuls, senators Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, wrote letters to CAIR last year ahead of the organization's 25th anniversary, praising its work.
The letters were printed in full in the program for a gala held to mark the occasion; three were from Republican representatives.
But thousands of Americans have called on the congressmen to renounce their letters, arguing that CAIR is an antisemitic organization and therefore cannot be supported by anyone who claims to oppose racism.
"Although CAIR leaders claim to oppose antisemitism, they routinely put blatantly antisemitic speakers front and center at some of their biggest events, including their recent 25th anniversary gala. No organization that truly opposes antisemitism would highlight such prominent bigots," the petition text states.
The petition statement cites four figures connected with CAIR who have displayed antisemitism publicly.
The first is Democratic representative Ilhan Omar, who is herself one of the authors of the letters of support. Omar headlined the gala at which the letters were circulated.
You mean the same group of people whose views were considered "infected with Jew hatred" to such a degree the Obama White House called them "troubling?" A great example of how anyone can reboot themselves in Washington. Just wait a few years and rebrand. https://t.co/W3F3hGA1ffhttps://t.co/pxObeKkkk1
Labour general secretary Jennie Formby has refused to make the party's submission to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) available to candidates fighting to replace Jeremy Corbyn as leader.
The JC understands that, at a meeting on Wednesday, Wigan MP Lisa Nandy asked for the material - submitted as part of the equality watchdog's probe into whether the party is institutionally antisemitic - to be shared with the four candidates.
But Ms Formby said she had been told to refuse this request after seeking advice from Labour's external counsel.
She also insisted that former deputy leader Tom Watson and other members of Labour's shadow cabinet had been offered an opportunity to view the submission last year.
One party source told the JC: "It seems astonishing the general secretary is refusing to share the EHRC submission from the party.
"One of the first major jobs Jeremy Corbyn's replacement will have to do is implement the findings of the EHRC.
"To keep the leadership contenders in the dark over the party's position is a joke, really." (h/t Zvi)
The Federation CJA and the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs-Québec (CIJA) have expressed concern over the decision of Montreal's mayor not to support the adoption of International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's working definition of antisemitism.
According to the organizations, the Montreal City Council was expected to vote on a motion calling on the city to adopt IHRA on Monday, but the vote and debate, introduced by Lionel Perez, was postponed to Tuesday morning because it coincided with International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau.
"During the [Tuesday] debate, Mayor Valérie Plante proposed to refer the motion to the Commission de la présidence du conseil, suggesting that the city of Montreal should develop its own definition of antisemitism," the statement said. "Perez rejected the proposal and withdrew the motion."
Reacting to the situation, Federation CJA president Gail Adelson-Marcovitz and CIJA cochairman Reuben Poupko said they were deeply disappointed in Plante's decision.
"[The mayor] did not support the adoption of the most widely accepted definition of antisemitism, a tool endorsed by reputable international bodies and adopted by dozens of democratic countries, including Canada, to enhance the fight against resurgent antisemitism," the two said in a statement. "Indeed, Canada and many other countries recently chose to restate their commitment to IHRA and its definition of antisemitism." (h/t Zvi)
MESA's letter defends SJP, which organized a boycott of pro-Israel student groups. MESA it opposes the Department's investigation because it's "politically motivated," and thatthe complaint conflates support for Palestinians and criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
That claim is false. SJP and related groups who promote the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel are not critics of Israel or Israeli policy; they are opposed to Israel's existence.
MESA president Dina Rizk Khoury. Khoury, who supports academic boycotts of Israel, co-signed the letter,
If you thought that MESA couldn't discredit itself any more after inviting Temple University professor Marc Lamont Hill to deliver the keynote address urging academics to support BDS at its annual meeting last year, this letter shows the association isn't done.
The reference to "occupied Palestinian territories," which has nothing at all to do with the report's subject matter, is both gratuitous and, as CAMERA's Gilead Ini has explained in another context, incorrect. Guerin's inference of how some Israelis see their country, and her implication that this view is unjustified, is insulting to the many people for whom Israel was, in fact, a lifeline after they survived a genocide, as well as to their descendants.
The report was criticized by many, including former BBC executives. The British Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women asserted that the report would "only serve to feed and fuel antisemitism." The editor of the Jewish Chronicle called the report "depraved," explaining, "note that 'but' in her final sentence. You Israelis, she is saying, are the bullies now, with your military and your occupation. 'But' you have the gall still to think of yourselves as being the persecuted."
And the Board of Deputies of British Jews stated, "In an otherwise moving report on the experiences of a Holocaust survivor, Orla Guerin's attempt to link the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the horrors of the Holocaust was crass and offensive." In light of Guerin's history of bias, the BOD wrote, "it is questionable why the BBC would even use her for this sensitive assignment."
The BBC has so far defended Guerin's report, claiming that her "brief reference in our Holocaust report to Israel's position today did not imply any comparison between the two."
This is not the first time that the BBC has inserted political commentary concerning Israel into coverage of unrelated issues concerning Jews. In January 2015 Tim Willcox of BBC News interviewed a French-Israeli woman attending a rally in memory of the victims of the Paris terror attacks. She expressed concern about persecution of Jews, saying "the situation is going back to the days of the 1930s in Europe," whereupon Willcox stated, "Many critics though of Israel's policy would suggest that the Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well."
Iran and Hezbollah will not risk a major war with Israel, ex-CIA director and general David Petraeus said on Wednesday.
Speaking from the INSS annual international conference in Tel Aviv, Petraeus explained that a combination of US and Israeli military power had established deterrence with both Iran and Hezbollah from major risky actions, even as they might risk smaller confrontations.
Petraeus said that, "Iran will not risk a major war because it would put its survival at risk," stating that Tehran knew Jerusalem would not hesitate to unleash massive force in a broad conflict and that even the US might get involved.
He added that he believed Russia would act to restrain the Islamic Republic from major destabilizing activities.
Regarding Hezbollah, he said, "Hezbollah will not risk a full war" with Israel "unless it is pushed into a corner."
The former CIA director said that, "we in the US underestimated for years" the significance of the blow Israel "dealt Hezbollah during the 2006 Lebanon War."
He said Israel's use of force against Hezbollah in 2006 deters Hezbollah from a larger fight to this day.
Why is the head of @UN in Iraq sitting today next to portraits of the terrorists Qassem Soleimani & Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis?
Iran's state media is promoting these pics of @UNIraq chief @JeanineHennis w/ the regime's Amb to Iraq (IRGC Gen Iraj Masjedi)
Female Iranian chess grandmaster Mitra Hejazipour has openly claimed that the hijab serves as a "limitation" for women not "protection," demonishing the country's compulsory hijab dress codes in an Instagram post on Tuesday.
Hejazipour added that the hijab serves as lucid representation of a set of beliefs that designate women as "the second sex."
"It creates many limitations for women and deprives them of their basic rights. Is this protection? I say definitely not, it is solely and merely a limitation," she wrote.
Hejazipour claimed further, that starting around the age of six, a relative used to bully her into consistently wearing her hijab, even around the house. At the age of 27, after more than 20 years of consistently wearing a hijab everywhere she goes and considering she has now become "an example to others," the chess grandmaster has decided "not to have a share in this horrendous lie and not to play the game of 'We love the hijab and have no problem with it' anymore."
She protested in clear dismay of the hijab late last December, when she removed her hijab during the World Rapid & Blitz Chess Championship in Moscow - a move that got her sacked from the Iranian national team and expelled from the Iranian Chess Federation after playing for the Islamic Republic for over 18 years.
Business is booming at Iran's largest flag factory which makes US, British and Israeli flags for Iranian protesters to burn.
At the factory in the town of Khomein, southwest of the capital Tehran, young men and women print the flags by hand then hang them up to dry. The factory produces about 2,000 US and Israeli flags a month in its busiest periods, and more than 1.5 million square feet of flags a year.
Tensions between the United States and Iran have reached the highest level in decades after top Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad on Jan. 3, prompting Iran to retaliate with a missile attack against a US base in Iraq days later.
In state-sponsored rallies and protests in Iran, demonstrators regularly burn the flags of Israel, US and Britain.
Ghasem Ghanjani, who owns the Diba Parcham flag factory, said: "We have no problem with the American and British people. We have (a) problem with their governors. We have (a) problem with their presidents, with the wrong policy they have."
"The people of America and Israel know that we have no problem with them. If people burn the flags of these countries at different rallies, it is only to show their protest." (h/t Zvi)
Iranian Animation Group Releases Video Depicting Countless Coffins of American Soldiers
On January 21, 2020, an Iranian animation group called SSAFF uploaded an animated video titled "Ayn Assad" to the Iranian website aparat.com. The animation shows the "aftermath" of the January 8 Iranian attack on the Ayn Al-Asad airbase by depicting hundreds of coffins covered in U.S. flags that have skulls instead of stars. A helicopter is shown flying over the coffins, and the pilot says into his radio that there are "many corpses" that cannot be evacuated with one helicopter. The pilot then requests for an additional helicopter to be sent to evacuate the bodies. The animation ends with the following quote from Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei: "They received a slap in the fact [that] night."
Blood &soil demonstration in Berlin -- no worries, not by German old-timers, but by Palestinian newcomers... https://t.co/t8x9oX4MbU
— Dr. Petra Marquardt-Bigman (@WarpedMirrorPMB) January 29, 2020
On a windy January night in Brooklyn, a young Jewish woman wary of rising anti-Semitism in her city threw a man who had confronted her to the sidewalk.
It was Ariana Gold's first night of training with the Guardian Angels, a volunteer neighborhood patrol group that has started patrolling the borough's Crown Heights section, where attacks against ultra-orthodox Jews have risen in recent months.
"I think a lot of people are afraid and I think rightly so," Gold said. "We've seen a lot of attacks in the Jewish communities."
Gold, 28, who lives in a different Brooklyn neighborhood and is not ultra-orthodox, is among the first group of local Jewish women to sign up with the Guardian Angels, which was born in New York during the high-crime late 1970s and now has branches in dozens of cities across the country and around the world.
The defense techniques she was shown on her first night are designed to "bring a person into submission without really hurting them," said martial arts master Milton Oliver, 51, a construction supervisor and Guardian Angel since 1982.
Gold, a New York native who has been boxing for exercise for five years, found her way to the Guardian Angels after spotting a recruitment poster in the subway.
"I believe in community engagement and working with communities, I believe in martial arts and self-defense, I believe in volunteerism and taking care of the people around you," said Gold, who works at a non-profit organization. "So, this kind of combined all of those traits."
US Comtech Telecommunications Corp. said Wednesday it will buy Israel's Gilat Satellite Networks Ltd. for $532.5 million in a cash and share deal.
Founded in 1987 with its headquarters in Petah Tikva, Israel, Gilat is a maker of satellite networking technologies and services. Its product portfolio includes a cloud-based VSAT network platform, high-speed modems, high performance on-the-move antennas and high-efficiency, high-power amplifiers.
Comtech, a maker of products, systems and services for advanced communications solutions, has agreed to acquire Gilat in a cash and stock transaction for $10.25 per Gilat ordinary share of which 70% will be paid in cash and 30% in Comtech common stock, resulting in an enterprise value of approximately $532.5 million, the two companies said in a statement. The price is a premium of some 14.52% to Gilat's 90-day volume-weighted average trading price, the statement said.
Upon completion of the transaction, Gilat's shareholders will own approximately 16.1% of the combined company.
The combined companies will employ some 3,000 people and offer satellite technology, public safety and location technology and secure wireless solutions to commercial and government customers around the world, the statement said.
Following the deal, Comtech will seek to dual list its shares on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, the statement said. The US company's shares are currently listed on the Nasdaq, while the shares of Gilat are listed on both exchanges.
Israel Electric Corporation (IEC), the nation's main electricity provider, has signed an agreement with a leading energy utility in Japan to help it secure infrastructure against cyberattacks during the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and further, the chairman of the Israeli utility told a gathering of officials, entrepreneurs and investors at a cybersecurity conference in Tel Aviv.
"A Japanese top energy utility corporate, and IEC have signed a collaboration agreement for cyber services, including support at the Tokyo Olympics," Yiftah Ron-Tal, of the IEC, said at the Cybertech 2020 conference on Wednesday, without disclosing the name of the Japanese corporation.
Yosi Shneck, the head of cyber entrepreneurship and business development at the Israeli firm, said the idea behind the deal was to help the Japanese company secure its critical infrastructure during the Olympic games and for additional cooperation even after the games are over.
The Israeli energy firm has similar cooperation agreements with an electricity producer in Canada and a European utility, he explained in an interview with The Times of Israel on the sidelines of the conference.
On Wednesday, Israel Electric launched a suite of new cybersecurity products and services that include both software and hardware to protect the energy industry from cyberattacks.
Since the 1950s, aerial firefighting has been conducted using liquid cascade drop methods, which require firefighting sorties at low altitudes.
Although effective, these methods are restricted to daytime-only flights because of their altitude.
Haifa-based defense firm Elbit Systems is changing the way fires are being fought, after completing its first successful test of the HyDrop system, which allows planes to fight fires from a higher altitude and with higher precision.
Elbit said the test took place during a field demonstration, as part of an exercise led by the Fire and Rescue Service.
During the exercise, two Air Tractor aircraft from were directed to extinguish a burning field from as high as 150 m., which is more than four times higher than the average altitude of a standard aerial firefighting sortie, it explained.
"Using the HyDrop system, each aircraft launched 1.6 tons of 140-gram liquid pellets in a computed ballistic trajectory, achieving a precise hit with saturation of one to two liters per square meter."
Efforts are underway to bring 400 members of the Falash Mura community in Ethiopia to Israel before the March 2 election, with a vote in the cabinet to approve the initiative expected at the following cabinet meeting next week.
In October 2018, the government approved a decision to bring a thousand members of the approximately 8,000-strong community remaining in Ethiopia to Israel in 2019, but only 600 were brought by the government that year.
Likud MK Gadi Yevarkan is apparently involved in the initiative to bring the remaining 400 of the 2019 quota, although he did not respond to requests for comment.
Avraham Neguise, a former Likud MK, is also working on the effort and said he hoped government approval would be given as soon as possible, saying they could arrive in the next few weeks.
Concerns have been raised that the effort to bring the 400 members of the community is a political ploy to boost the Likud's electoral appeal to the 121,000-strong Ethiopian Jewish community in Israel.
IDF Chief of the General Staff LTG Aviv Kohavi met with Nikki Haley, former US Ambassador to the UN, in Tel Aviv this week.
Thank you @NikkiHaley for your continued friendship & commitment to the Israel-US partnership.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Peter Beinart has recently joined Jewish Currents as a columnist and "editor at large," leaving The Forward. Jewish Currents was a Communist publication from decades ago that has been reborn recently as an equally leftist publication. (Apparently, the Forward was too right-leaning for Beinart.)
His tweets have been becoming more and more unhinged. It feels like he is following the Max Blumenthal model of going from somewhat respected to off-the-wall crazy. (We'll see how long he lasts at the Atlantic.)
His latest piece for Jewish Currents, where he gives his take on the Trump plan, is a conspiracy theory: the plan, according to Beinart, is nothing more than a way for Trump to attract the evangelical vote that he already has. (If anything, evangelicals would prefer Israel annex the entire Judea and Samaria.)
But Beinart really went off the rails when Jared Kushner said on TV that Palestinians had screwed up every opportunity they have had to gain a state.
Kushner's opinion is hard to dispute. The last offer by Olmert to Abbas not only met all his demands but exceeded them - and Abbas still rejected it. Don't ask me; ask Saeb Erakat:
How can anyone justify rejecting everything you say you want? How can that not be considered a screw-up?
But to Beinart, this is not only a racist opinion - it is one that Kushner clearly learned from the racist Orthodox rabbis and other teachers, and camp counselors. Yes, Orthodox Jewry is inherently racist, according to Beinart.
This opinion would fit in very well in any neo-Nazi publication.
Beinart is so upset at Kushner's using the word "screwed up" that he used today's Daf Yomi Talmud study as a means to give him "mussar" (ethical direction):
Beinart's self-righteousness not to humiliate anyone clearly doesn't extend to his own tweets and retweets. After all, according to Beinart, Kushner is guilty of "humiliating" Palestinians by using the word "screwed up" but Beinart is allowed to call Kushner patronizing, ignorant and racist.
I have a feeling that Forward editor in chief Jodi Rudoren is relieved not to have to worry about Beinart embarrassing her publication any more.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
First, divest yourself from the idea that this plan is just a trick to divert attention from Trump's impeachment or Bibi's indictment. The document describing it is 181 pages long. It is not a diversion. I am not interested in the question of whether its release now will help Trump (I suspect it won't matter) or Bibi (it's unclear). Also, if you are one of my readers who hates Trump – if I still have any, after proposing that he get the Nobel Peace Prize – please put that aside. This paragraph is the last one in this post that will mention him. I want to focus on the proposal itself.
I will not pretend to have read all 181 pages yet. But the broad outline of the proposal, including maps, is contained in the first 40-odd pages. It is a thoughtful attempt to arrive at a solution, and it takes into account the failure of previous efforts. There is a huge amount of material here, and I could write essays about the presuppositions and the implications of every page, but I will try to limit myself to describing the proposal in general terms and discussing its significance in the long and depressing saga of the "peace process." In recent years, proposals have centered around the ideas first expressed in the Clinton parameters of 2000-1, which envision most of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza as a Palestinian entity, with swaps to allow the large settlement blocs to continue to exist. The new proposal diverges sharply from these plans.
Summary of the plan
The plan (the official name is "Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People") is a two-state solution which preserves the original intention of UN Security Council Resolution 242, in which Israel withdraws from some of the territory taken in 1967, while keeping secure boundaries. The Palestinian "state" here is more like Rabin's vision of something "less than a state," because Palestine will be demilitarized, and its borders and airspace will be controlled by Israel for an unlimited time.
The plan is intended as a statement of concepts, although it is a pretty detailed one. It calls for an Israeli-Palestinian negotiation whose product will be a final "peace agreement" with all the details worked out. During the period of negotiations, Israel will freeze construction or expansion of settlements (for a maximum of four years) in those areas that are defined as Palestinian in the plan.
The agreement would create a "state" of Palestine that encompasses most of today's Areas A and B and some of Area C. Israel will receive most of Area C, including the Jordan Valley. 97% of Palestinians will find themselves in Palestine and 97% of Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria will be in Israel. The remainder will be in Palestinian enclaves in Israel, or Israeli enclaves in Palestine. Enclaves will be under civil control of their respective governments, but Israel will be responsible for security in both cases. Israel will provide land swaps (attached to Gaza along the border with Egypt) which will give Palestine roughly the same area as the pre-1967 "West Bank" and Gaza. There will be a high-speed rail link (on the map it is shown as a tunnel) between the eastern part of Palestine and Gaza, and special roads across the Jordan Valley to the Allenby Bridge with Jordan. Infrastructure will be built to ensure that Israeli and Palestinian enclaves are not isolated. It's possible that some Israeli Arab communities in the "Arab Triangle" near Umm al-Fahm might be included in Palestine.
In no case will any Jews or Arabs be required to move from their homes, a principle that diverges significantly from previous plans which included the removal of Jewish settlements.
I've included the two "conceptual maps" from the proposal at the end of this post. They show the borders and other features envisioned by the proposal.
Jerusalem will continue to be the capital of Israel, and Israel will continue to provide security for the holy sites of all the religions. The city will not be re-divided along the 1949 armistice line, but the areas east and north of the existing security barrier ("including Kafr Aqab, the eastern part of Shuafat and Abu Dis") will become the capital of the State of Palestine, and may be renamed "Al Quds" or whatever the Palestinians decide. Arabs living in Jerusalem inside the security barrier will have the option to become citizens of Israel or Palestine, or retain the status of Permanent Resident of Israel (most Jerusalem Arabs chose this status after 1967 rather than becoming citizens).
The "Vision" provides for an economic plan to provide for a viable Palestinian state rather than one that relies on international donors. I won't discuss this here.
Overall security for both states will be Israel's responsibility from Day One, "with the aspiration that the Palestinians will be responsible for as much of their internal security as possible, subject to the provisions of this Vision."
Israel will retain control of airspace and electromagnetic spectrum from the river to the sea. Special arrangements will be made to protect Ben-Gurion airport from nearby Palestinian areas.
The State of Palestine will be expected to take serious measures to prevent terrorism, which should be evaluated in terms "no less stringent" than those applied to Jordan or Egypt.
The Israeli Navy will be able to block the import of "prohibited weapons and weapon-making materials" to Palestine, including of course Gaza. Palestine will be demilitarized, and Israel will have the right to destroy any Palestinian facility used for hostile purposes. There is a list of weapons and systems that the Palestinians are forbidden to procure. Palestine will not be allowed to make agreements with any state or organization that threatens Israel's security. Any expansion of Palestinian security capabilities will require Israel's permission. Israel retains the right to "engage in necessary security measures" to maintain demilitarization and fight terrorism, including incursions into Palestinian territory. There will be "early warning stations" manned by Israeli security personnel in Palestine.
Gaza has always been problematic, and with the Hamas takeover in 2007, it became a hostile enclave which has caused several small wars. The plan explicitly calls for the removal of Hamas, saying that Israel will not be required to meet any of its obligations under the agreement unless the Palestinian Authority is in control of Gaza, Hamas and other terrorist factions are disarmed, and Gaza is demilitarized. If Hamas will "play any role" in the government of Palestine, it must first agree to "explicitly recognizing the State of Israel, committing to nonviolence, and accepting previous agreements and obligations between the parties, including the disarming of all terrorist groups."
The plan calls for Israel to release Palestinian (not Israeli Arab) prisoners held in Israeli jails, except those convicted of murder or conspiracy to commit murder.
There will be no "right of return" to Israel for people with Palestinian refugee status. Those registered as refugees with UNRWA will have the option of absorption into the State of Palestine or their present host countries, or to a limited extent, to other Organization of Islamic Cooperation states that agree to take them. Once the agreement is signed, Palestinian refugee status and UNRWA will cease to exist.
The Palestinian state will not necessarily be created upon the signing of the agreement; the transition from the Palestinian Authority to the State of Palestine will occur only after the Palestinians have created a Western-style democracy and legal and banking systems, and have stopped incitement and education for hatred in its schools and other institutions. Palestinians will be required to "create a culture of peace" which will not glorify terrorism or martyrdom, and will not deny the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state.
The agreement will include mutual recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people and Palestine as the nation state of the Palestinian people. It will end all claims between the two, and this will be proposed as Security Council and General Assembly resolutions in the UN.
During the period of negotiations or for a maximum of four years, Israel will commit not to build or expand settlements in those areas of Judea and Samaria that are proposed to become part of Palestine. This "settlement freeze" does not apply to settlements in the Jordan Valley, eastern Jerusalem inside the security barrier, or other areas that are expected to become part of Israel. It does apply to Israeli enclaves in Palestinian areas. This is different from previous "freezes" which were applied to the entire area across the Green Line.
At the same time, Palestinians will agree not to join international organizations without permission from Israel, will end its legal actions (e.g., in the International Criminal Court) against Israel, and end the "pay-to-slay" program.
The US will agree to reopen the PLO mission in Washington and provide various kinds of aid.
What do the Palestinians think?
Of course they vehemently reject it. They couldn't possibly accept the plan without almost as many caveats are there are items in it. The proposed Palestinian "state" is no more a state than Vatican City. The requirements to end what we consider incitement (and they consider education in the fundamental principles of the Palestinian Movement) will be unacceptable to them. Pay-to-slay is inviolable. The "right of return" has always been sacrosanct. Hamas will never disarm. And Palestinians have never been prepared to admit that Israel belongs to the Jewish people, not one inch of it.
What does the Left think?
Leftist organizations in Israel and the US oppose the agreement because of the small size of the proposed Palestinian state and the limitations on its sovereignty, and – in the case of the American Left – because they hate the president and have to oppose anything he does.
What does the Right think?
Many members of the Israeli Right oppose any Palestinian state, because they believe that the restrictions on sovereignty and militarization ultimately aren't maintainable, and the result of allowing its creation would be another terror entity on our border. They also disagree in principle with any concession of territory that's part of the Land of Israel. But some think it's worth the gamble in order to restart building in at least part of Judea and Samaria, and to obtain sovereignty in the Jordan Valley and other parts of Area C.
What do I think?
The plan can't possibly be translated into an agreement that the Palestinians would agree with, even as a pretense. It pays lip service to the idea that Palestinians want normal lives in a well-run, economically flourishing state. Certainly there are those that do want this, but the leadership and what Barry Rubin, z"l, used to refer to as "the young men with guns" who determine what happens on the street do not feel this way. In Palestinian politics and culture, nothing overrides the prime objective, which is the removal of the Jewish presence from the land that Palestinians believe belongs to them alone. Anyone who says different may be held accountable by the young men with guns. To accept the plan would be to betray their Palestinian identity and their Islamic religion in return for an attenuated, emasculated "state" that would be dependent on the hated Jews.
Having said that, I think the authors of the plan understand Palestinian political culture, and what they want to do is help the West to stop appeasing it. The proposal breaks the sterile consensus that has developed since Oslo, in which the conflict is seen as entirely Israel's fault, nothing is expected from the Palestinians, and "solutions" are just different approaches to forcing Israel to make concessions. One example of this is that for the first time since 2000, the proposal rejects the holiness of the 1949 armistice lines, and calls for secure borders instead. In my opinion, the paradigm shift embodied in the proposal is its most important feature.
The objection that a Palestinian state, once created, would not remain benign and demilitarized is definitely a concern, but it will not become relevant for some time. Judging by the conditions placed on the Palestinians before they will be granted whatever bit of sovereignty they will have, it's hard to imagine that it will actually come into being. Accepting the deal now would allow to Israel to take actions immediately, like building in areas that are expected to be part of Israel, annexing the Jordan Valley, and applying Israeli law to existing Jewish communities.
The significance of the deal, therefore, is not that it will ever be fully implemented. It is that it will change people's thinking about the conflict, freeing Israel from the chains of the Oslo/Clinton paradigm.
Israelis, therefore, should welcome the change in direction and take the opportunities offered, even if they have problems with specific parts of the program.
The PM promised to bring the program to the Cabinet for approval on Sunday, and I would be happy to see this.
Maps
How the proposal views the final configurations of Israel and Palestine:
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Unfortunately, de Blasio's effort to explain anti-Semitism as merely right-wing does not make him unique. As anti-Semitism has reared its ugly head, liberals have gone out of their way to categorize it in a way that fits neatly with their partisan interests.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose campaign has provided a safe haven to anti-Semites of the Left, argued that the spike in anti-Semitic attacks nationwide was "a result of a dangerous political ideology that targets Jews and anyone who does not fit a narrow vision of a whites-only America."
One of Sanders's prized endorsements came from Rep. Ilhan Omar, who has brought anti-Semitic conspiracies about all-powerful Jewish puppet masters to the halls of Congress. She has claimed that Israel "hypnotized the world," that congressional support for Israel was "all about the Benjamins," and that her critics "push for allegiance to a foreign country."
Yet Omar's communications director, Jeremy Slevin, had the temerity to rant on Twitter, "Anti-semitism is a right-wing force Anti-semitism is a right-wing force Anti-semitism is a right-wing force Anti-semitism is a right-wing force Anti-semitism is a right-wing force Anti-semitism is a right-wing force Anti-semitism is a right-wing force."
If ever there were a reason to kill off the myth that hatred of Jews is an exclusively right-wing phenomenon, it would be the deadly attacks on Jews in the New York area during the holiday season. On Dec. 10, a shooting at a kosher grocery store in Jersey City, New Jersey, killed three. One of the assailants turned out to be a member of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, a revelation that awkwardly forced Rep. Rashida Tlaib to delete a condolence tweet that claimed "white supremacy kills." On Dec. 28, an African American male invaded the home of a rabbi during a Hanukkah celebration, slashing five with a machete.
From college campuses, to the streets of New York, to the ugly corners of the internet, to the poison coming from the U.K. Labour Party, to the inferno of hatred sweeping through Europe, the targeting of Jews is not confined to any one political group. There are right-wing anti-Semites for sure, but anti-Semitism is also a burgeoning problem on the Left. What's more, the pure hatred of Jews is often not identified with any ideology at all. It is, as scholars have pointed out for years, a virus that mutates and adapts according to the time and place.
The trope that anti-Semitism is a right-wing phenomenon also made politicians such as de Blasio and Omar appear as if they were living in a parallel universe. A passing awareness of the violent Jew-hatred in Europe explodes the myth. "The identity of the German synagogue attacker may have sounded familiar to American Jews, who have endured multiple attacks by far-right extremists over the past year," reported the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in October after an armed man tried to break into a synagogue in Halle. "But the suspect's identity was more surprising for Jews in Western Europe."
Why? "The murder of two people in Halle on Yom Kippur was the first lethal anti-Semitic assault in decades in that region by a far-right extremist. Most of the terrorist attacks against Jews there over the past 30 years have been carried out by radical Muslims."
In Toms River, the Orthodox areas see vehicles from the police department on patrols, affording them an extra level of protection as they spend their days in prayer and celebration. In Jackson, Reina and Nixon focused on denying permits for Jews who sought to build sukkot, the small huts Jews put on their porches or in their yards for a week during the holiday of that name.
Sadly, the Toms River approach seems to be more the exception than the rule.
The same sort of denial of a Jew's right to live wherever he or she might choose played itself out in other New Jersey towns such as Mahwah, where the town council passed two ordinances that one resident characterized as intended to "keep the Hasidic Jewish people from moving into Mahwah." The state attorney general agreed. Mahwah eventually repealed those ordinances as part of a settlement that also included an agreement to notify the attorney general's office before passing any further ordinances of that sort over the next four years and to release a public statement that it would enforce laws in a "non-discriminatory manner."
It also continues to play out in upstate New York towns such as Chester, where Attorney General Tish James just filed suit against the town for what she called a "campaign to deny housing to members of the Jewish community" by "blocking the construction of homes [solely] to prevent a religious group from living" there. At issue is a 117-acre piece of property the town already had granted permits for — before it learned that Hasidic Jews bought the property from the original owner.
That would not do. Former town supervisor Alexander Jamieson said at a May 2018 public meeting that officials are "doing what we can to alleviate 432 Hasidic houses in the town of Chester," a sentiment echoed by the current supervisor, Robert Valentine, at the same meeting. So, they have been denying the building permits, unapologetic about their intent, with Valentine even telling the New York Times in July that "if there was any way we could choose who could live there, we would do it. But we can't."
The concept of the shtetl is a throwback to old Europe. So are special laws designed to restrict where Jews can live and what they can build. Let's hope America's flirtation with heading down Europe's path ends there.
Ahlam Ahmad al-Tamimi is the most wanted woman in the world, with a $5 million bounty for information that leads to her arrest or conviction.
Tamimi is accused by U.S. officials of conspiring to use--and using--a weapon of mass destruction, and masterminding a brazen Hamas terrorist attack that killed 15 – including eight children and two Americans, one of whom was pregnant.
Despite being on the run from American authorities, Tamimi has been hiding in plain sight for years-- under the eye of one of the United States' longest and closest allies in the Middle East: Jordan.
This image provided by the FBI is the most wanted poster for Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, a Jordanian woman charged in connection with a 2001 bombing of a Jerusalem pizza restaurant that killed 15 people and injured dozens of others. The case against Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi was filed under seal in 2013 but announced publicly by the Justice Department on March 14, 2017. (FBI via AP) (The Associated Press)
Despite requests from Washington, the Kingdom has been publicly steadfast in its refusal to extradite Tamimi, who at just 20 years old masterminded the suicide bombing on the Sbarro pizza restaurant in Jerusalem three weeks before planes struck the U.S on Sept. 11, 2001.
The attack claimed the lives of two Americans, 15-year-old Malki Roth, and Shoshana Yehudit Greenbaum, who was five months pregnant with her first child at the time. In addition to the two murdered Americans and the unborn infant, four more U.S. nationals were among the some 122 injured. At least one of the victims remains in a vegetative state.
For Roth's parents, the fight for some semblance of justice has already been a long one – and the bumpy road stretches on.
In Arab and Muslim lands, anti-Semitism is often expressed as both hatred of Jews and hatred of Israel, and is very frequently bolstered by Holocaust denial. Delegitimizing the Jewish state can serve as a means to reverse the humiliation, degradation, and oppression of Muslims.
In Eastern Europe, right-wing, nationalist parties have taken control, often rewriting Holocaust history, and often with the support of groups that are strongly anti-Semitic and have adopted Nazi slogans and agendas. In Western Europe, anti-Semitism is found among right-wing forces; within political parties on the left, especially in Britain; and among elements of the Muslim community.
But for now, the democracies of Western Europe are strong enough to withstand the pressure. And in America, the episodes of anti-Semitic speech and violence, though they've greatly proliferated in the past few years, have begun to mobilize communities and governmental agencies to protect Jews from violence. This won't stop anti-Semitism's continuing growth, but it will control it. Despite a long history of bias at many levels, from academia to boardrooms, Jews in America have established themselves during the past century in every sphere of American life, and the American tradition of tolerance will remain far more powerful than its manifestations of prejudice.
So although Jews face ongoing violence, it is not of a level that will, in the foreseeable future, result in massive death. In Europe and the United States, there might be limited outbursts. Should Iran develop nuclear weapons, it could, in a moment of irrationality, launch them to try to obliterate the Jewish state, which its leaders repeatedly have vowed to destroy and which is home to nearly half of the world's Jews; but Iran's fear that it could be devastated in return by a nuclear-armed Israel would almost surely keep such a cataclysmic possibility in check. In short, despite the rise in worldwide anti-Semitism, a repeat of the Holocaust—major mass murder—is, though possible, unlikely in the foreseeable future.
As we mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I wish I could be more upbeat than that. But I'm not. I'm a physician. I know that one can manage a chronic disease, one can treat it, one can often prevent its complications, but one can rarely cure it—and one can't ever be sure that it won't become, at some point, catastrophic.
According to the ADL, antisemitic attitudes "have remained constant in America, with 11 percent of American adults — about 28 million people — harboring deeply ingrained anti-Semitic attitudes by agreeing with six or more common tropes about Jews covered in the survey. Longstanding stereotypes about 'Jewish power' in business and the 'dual loyalty' canard — the notion that Jews are more loyal to Israel than to their home country — remain deeply entrenched and are especially widespread."
Jonathan Greenblatt — the ADL's CEO — observed that "[I]n recent times, we've been horrified by an uptick in antisemitic violence."
He continued: "Our research finds that this uptick is being caused not by a change in attitudes among most Americans. Rather, more of the millions of Americans holding antisemitic views are feeling emboldened to act on their hate."
Key poll findings include: 24 percent of Americans agreed with the statement "Jews are more loyal to Israel than to America." 31 percent believed that Jewish employers go out of their way to hire other Jews. 17 percent said that "the movie and television industries are pretty much run by Jews." 27 percent said they believed that Jews killed Jesus Christ.
At the same time, the survey revealed that most Americans retained a positive view of their Jewish fellow citizens. In particular, 79 percent of Americans believed that "Jews place a strong emphasis on the importance of family life" and 66 percent felt that "Jews have contributed much to the cultural life of America."
The new BBC documentary about the question of bombing Auschwitz deserves an award — for creative fiction. Through omissions, distortions, and "reenactments" of conversations with imaginary dialogue inserted for effect, the BBC has made a shambles of the historical record concerning this important issue.
The film, Bombing Auschwitz, was broadcast in the United States by PBS on January 21 and is being screened at various venues. It purports to tell the story of what it calls the "debate" in 1944 over "one of the great moral dilemmas of the 20th century" — that is, whether to bomb the gas chambers at Auschwitz, despite the risk that some inmates might be harmed.
In fact, there was no such "debate." There were a few individuals who privately expressed qualms. But they did so long after the Roosevelt administration had repeatedly rejected the bombing requests, on completely different grounds.
US officials did not cite the danger of harming inmates when they turned down the bombing requests. That was not a consideration. The first such requests — and many of the later ones — asked for the bombing of the railways and bridges leading to the camp, and striking such targets obviously did not endanger civilians.
Rescue advocates sought those bombings because hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were being deported in cattle cars across those tracks and bridges, destined for Auschwitz. Damaging the transport routes would have interrupted the mass murder process.
Remarkably, the requests and rejections concerning bombing the railways and bridges are not discussed in the film. In fact, some of the requests that were made to bomb the railways are misleadingly presented in the film as requests to "bomb Auschwitz." The BBC has, in effect, whited-out the actual historical record, and replaced it with a distorted narrative that suits its creators' agenda.
Secrets of the Dead: Bombing Auschwitz (Youtube video, could be deleted)
"We consider the ouster of Andrew Young as a hostile act toward the black community." — Richard Hatcher, mayor of Gary, Indiana
"The issue right now is not Jews and blacks. The issue is the Middle East." — Andy Young
Andrew Young would be out of character if he did not attempt to play down the ethnic frictions that have been exposed by his sudden resignation as the American Ambassador to the United Nations. Young was known as a conciliator during the Civil Rights era. It was this instinct that led him to the fateful meeting with the representative of the Palestinian Liberation Organization that precipitated his downfall. But Young's considerable talent will be hard-pressed to soothe the troubled waters of relations between Jews and blacks. It should be said now that the conflict is real and that its origins go far beyond the boundaries of international diplomacy.
Anyone who has followed the disintegration of the civil rights alliance in recent years knows that open conflict was inevitable. Blacks and Jews in this country have been on a collision course for more than a decade. The only surprise is Andy Young serving as unwilling catalyst for the escalation of hostilities. Any number of other events could have triggered the confrontations: the war against affirmative action waged by the major Jewish organizations; the role of Jewish-controlled institutions in perpetuating racial stereotypes; and the political relationship of Israel to southern Africa.
It is dishonest to suggest that Andy Young's color had nothing to with the uproar he caused as U.N. Ambassador. As a black man, he articulated a view of the world shared by many blacks and some whites in this county and elsewhere. The objections to Young's statements came from people who take a different view of world events, a view that has long been dominant in Western countries, but whose credibility has come under intense pressure as the balance of power in the world has begun to shift.
The resignation of Andrew Young therefore, is metaphor: for a struggle between competing ethnic groups; for relations between the "haves" and "have-nots" here and elsewhere; and for differing visions of the future. The conflict between blacks and Jews reflects the fact that these two groups have made their alliances with opposing camps in an international struggle for power.
"Anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools." — August Bebel, German socialist and leader of the Social Democrats in the late 19th century
Obviously, the fury of black people at Andy Young's departure reflects a decade or more of increasing tensions between blacks and Jews. What is perhaps less obvious is how much the entire incident reflects deteriorating relations between Jews and non-Jews generally. Any useful discussion of black-Jewish conflict must begin by acknowledging two basic realities. One is that American Jews are white and predominantly middle class, and so tend to have a white middle-class perspective on racial issues. The other is that blacks are part of the gentile majority and so tend to share the misconceptions about Jews and the overt or unconscious anti-Jewish attitudes that permeate our culture. Unfortunately, neither group has been eager to accept its share of responsibility for the conflict. If Jews have often minimized their privileges and denied or rationalized their racism, blacks have regularly dismissed Jewish protest against anti-Semitism in the black community as at best oversensitivity, at worst racist paranoia. And in the end, guess who benefits from all the bitterness? Hint: the answer isn't blacks or Jews.
Blacks have repeatedly argued that black hostility toward Jews is simply the logical result of Jews' behavior, either as landlords, teachers, and other representatives of white authority in black neighborhoods, or as political opponents of black goals. As a Jew who stands considerably left of the mainstream Jewish organizations, let alone neo-conservative intellectuals — and as a feminist who supports affirmative action for women as well as minorities — I don't think it's that simple. To attack a ripoff landlord with standard anti-Semitic rhetoric about greedy, exploitative Jews is to imply that the problem is the iniquity of Jews rather than the race and class of white landlords. (When blacks protest the behavior of white cops, who are rarely Jewish, they don't feel compelled to mention the officers' ethnic backgrounds.) Black criticism of Jewish politics invites the same objection. At worst Jews have been no more hostile to black power than the rest of the white population, though most people couldn't withdraw from the civil rights movement since they hadn't been involved in it in the first place. While the resistance of Jewish organizations to affirmative action has been to some extent based on fear of maximum quotas for Jews, it has much more to do with the fact that most Jewish men share with most other white men the belief that affirmative action is illegitimate "reverse discrimination." In fighting community control, the Ocean Hill–Brownsville teachers were acting not as Jews but as white people whose livelihood was threatened. Besides, on all these issues a significant number of Jewish liberals and radicals has supported blacks and opposed the Jewish establishment. So why have blacks made such a point of singling out Jews for criticism?
As Joel Dreyfuss noted in last week's Voice, disillusionment is a factor; Jews have talked a better line and had a better record on race than other whites, and groups with a history of oppression are always supposed to be more sensitive to each other's aspirations, although, as James Baldwin put it, "if people did learn from history, history would be very different." The disillusionment is compounded when Jews invoke their status as an oppressed people to avoid confronting their racism (though blacks have committed the same evasion in reverse). It is also convenient and tempting to vent one's anger at a visible and relatively vulnerable minority. But the main impetus to black resentment of Jews as Jews seems to be that black people do not perceive Jews as vulnerable. Dreyfuss argues that the issue for blacks is Jewish power; he claims that "American Jews exert an economic, political, and intellectual influence on this country far out of proportion to their numbers" and repeats the familiar allegation that Jews dominate the media. (h/t Zvi)
In his speech at Yad Vashem during last week's Holocaust-commemoration activities, Vladimir Putin spoke of the millions of Soviet Jews murdered by Germany and, naturally, of the role of the Red Army in defeating the Third Reich. He then made a point of mentioning the collaboration of Lithuanians, Latvians, and Ukrainians with the Nazis. To Izabella Taborovsky, this was not a good-faith effort to draw attention to historical truths that some have been eager to cover up, but an attempt to use the past as a cudgel against Putin's enemies. Citing other recent rhetoric from the Kremlin as well, Tabarovksy identifies a message that should be worrisome to Jews:
The truth is that ethnic Russians also collaborated with the Nazis. . . . And millions of ethnic Ukrainians fought the Nazis as part of the Red Army. The countries that Putin likes to cast as collaborators also had people who saved Jews. Meanwhile, the Soviet regime massacred tens of thousands of Polish officers and intellectuals at Katyn as part of its occupation of Poland—a war crime, and an unhealed wound for Poles.
Putin's divisions into "us"—the Russians who fought the Nazis and were the Nazis' victims—and "them"—all the others who collaborated—is a crude and self-serving simplification, despite the fact that Lithuania, Ukraine, and other governments have recently engaged in unforgivable glorification of wartime Nazi collaborators and Holocaust distortion, making themselves easy marks for Putin's propaganda.
Perhaps even worse, while Putin presents himself as a fighter for historical truth, no other country has done more in the postwar period to prevent the world from learning the truth about the Holocaust than the Soviet Union. According to the Israeli Holocaust historian Kiril Feferman, Russia's KGB archives contain rich amounts of information about the Holocaust that have yet to come to light. But they remain sealed.
There are troubling signs that Russia will continue to use the Holocaust and the rise in anti-Semitism to advance its foreign-policy interests—and to instrumentalize Jews in this effort. At a recent roundtable in Moscow which brought together a group of prominent Russian historians and foreign-policy analysts to discuss how Russia could best use history to improve its image, the speakers zeroed in on the Jews—specifically Israelis, "world Jewry" and the "Jewish lobby in Washington"—as potential allies.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has pardoned an Israeli-American woman jailed in Russia on drug charges, the Kremlin said Wednesday.
The Kremlin said a presidential decree pardoning Naama Issachar on "humanitarian principles" was effective immediately.
"This is the moment I waited for almost a year," Issachar's mother Yaffa said in response to the Kremlin announcement. "Right now all I want is to hug my daughter Naama."
She thanked Putin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was set to takeoff for Moscow on Wednesday from Washington.
Netanyahu thanked "my friend" Putin for her pardoning her and said he was looking forward to meeting the Russian leader on Thursday.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz also hailed Issachar's release.
"I, like all Israeli residents, are delighted by the joy of the mother Yaffa and the Issachar family on Naama's return home," Katz said in a statement.
Israeli President Rivlin at German Parliament: "Cannot Ignore New-Old Antisemitism"
German President Steinmeier: "Must Find New Ways to Remember the Holocaust"
Two German politicians were at the center of a bitter domestic row on Tuesday after they drew attention to the dangers posed by antisemitism within the country's Muslim community.
Parliamentarian Friedrich Merz — who represents the governing CDU Party in the Bundestag — declared in a tweet on Monday afternoon to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day that antisemitism in Germany had risen in tandem with the arrival of over 600,000 refugees fleeing from the civil war in Syria.
Merz commented that "75 years after [the] liberation of Auschwitz, we again experience antisemitism — mostly from the right, but also due to immigration from 2015/16."
He pointed out: "Many bring hatred of Jews with them, which is preached in their home countries. There must be no tolerance for that either."
Merz's comments followed earlier remarks by his CDU colleague, Philipp Amthor, along similar lines. During a TV interview to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Amthor said that it was "also clear, and this must not be forgotten, that antisemitism is of course particularly strongly represented in Muslim cultural circles."
Both politicians faced strong criticism from across Germany's political spectrum.
Footage of one of the most celebrated Polish resistance fighters describing the Holocaust as humanity's "second original sin" was widely shared this week, as the world marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp.
"My faith makes me say that humanity has committed a second original sin by allowing the Holocaust," said the late Jan Karski — a devout Catholic who publicized the facts of the Nazi extermination of the Jews at great personal risk — in an address to Holocaust scholars at the US State Department in 1981.
"This sin will haunt humanity until the end of the world. It haunts me. I want it to stay that way," Karski said.
The video was being promoted by the Jan Karski Society — an NGO based in the Polish city of Kielce that promotes ethnic and religious tolerance in tribute to Karski's legendary career.
"The Jan Karski Society believes that these words should be heard even louder today," the group said in a statement on Monday.
Born Jan Kozielewski in 1914 in Lodz, Karski fought in the Polish army in 1939 when he was captured by the German invading forces. While being deported to a POW camp, Karski escaped, and went on to serve the Polish underground resistance.
On Capitol Hill Wednesday afternoon, Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) will criticize the Quincy Institute and the BDS movement for driving an increase in antisemitism across the country.
In a draft speech obtained by Jewish Insider, Cotton cites the recent attacks against Jews in Brooklyn and Monsey, N.Y., in addition to FBI and New York Police Department statistics that show a rapid rise in antisemitic crime.
Calling antisemitism an "ancient hatred," Cotton says, "It festers on Internet message boards and social media. It festers in Washington think tanks like the Quincy Institute, an isolationist blame America first money pit for so-called 'scholars' who've written that American foreign policy could be fixed if only it were rid of the malign influence of Jewish money. It festers even on elite college campuses, which incubate the radical Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement—a movement to wage economic warfare against the Jewish state."
The Quincy Institute — founded in 2019 and funded by the unlikely pairing of George Soros and Charles Koch — calls for an end to American military intervention and a refocus on diplomatic strategy. Neorealist scholars John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, who in 2007 jointly published the controversial book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, are both non-resident scholars at the institute. A Cotton aide told JI, "No think tank with this level of funding has engaged in such a tight embrace of outright anti-Semites and their ideas."
These experts are less vocal, however, about other ethnic foreign policy lobbies in the United States. In fact, the Quincy Institute's cofounder and executive vice president, Trita Parsi, is also the founder of the National Iranian American Council, which has battled accusations that it serves as a mouthpiece for the Iranian government.
The managing director of the Quincy Institute, Sarah Leah Whitson, has helped fundraise for the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), the largest Armenian lobbying organization in the United States. ANCA advocates for the Armenian annexation of Nagorno-Karabakh, an area within the borders of Azerbaijan that the U.N. and the International Criminal Court consider Armenian-occupied Azeri territory.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Whitson, as the former director of Middle East and North Africa for Human Rights Watch (HRW), made a fundraising pitch while in Saudi Arabia intended to entice Arab donors by playing to their animosity toward Israel.
Pressed repeatedly at the time by the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, the head of HRW, Kenneth Roth, did not deny the allegation that, in Goldberg's words, Whitson was "attempting to raise funds from Saudis … in part by highlighting her organization's investigations of Israel, and its war with Israel's 'supporters,' who are liars and deceivers. It appears as if Human Rights Watch, in the pursuit of dollars, has compromised its integrity."
While there is no inherent relationship between isolationism and anti-Semitism and Israel, according to Eugene Kontorovich, a professor of law at George Mason University, many Quincy scholars have singled out Jews and Israel for special opprobrium. "In America, every interest group lobbies for its own interest. If they're not blaming [the National Iranian American Council] for all of America's problems in the Middle East, it does seem a particular demonization of Jews and of Israel," Kontorovich said.
The Koch-funded group will be holding an event in Washington next month featuring Whitson and Matt Duss, the national security adviser to Bernie Sanders, who, as a blogger alongside Clifton at ThinkProgress, defended Freeman during his short-lived battle to join the Obama administration. Freeman, he argued, was forced to withdraw because he voiced "some inconvenient truths about the Israel-Palestine conflict and represent[ed] a challenge to the treasured neoconservative myth that U.S. and Israeli interests are identical," Duss said.
Iran's Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has been doing some impressive bipartisan lobbying. Politicians from across the spectrum, from Former Secretary of State John Kerry to Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), are all taking their turns to meet with him. Their common goal: Get President Donald Trump to end his "maximum pressure" campaign against the hostile Tehran regime.
Last year, this leftist-libertarian alliance was codified into a new "non-interventionist" think tank, the Quincy Institute. On its board is Trita Parsi, a man who has for decades worked behind the scenes — often in tandem with Iranian officials, including Javad Zarif — to weaken America's resistance to Iranian aggression and nuclear ambitions.
In the weeks since the killing of terrorist mastermind Qassem Soleimani, agitation by the Iranian regime's apologists has reached a crescendo. In response, I asked Adelle Nazarian, senior media fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy in Washington, D.C. and fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, India, to tell us more.
What follows is a question-and-answer interview with Nazarian.
Who is Trita Parsi? Nazarian: Trita Parsi is the Iranian-born founder of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying group that is allegedly the lobbying extension and arm of the Iranian regime. That would be the same Iranian regime rife with corruption, terrorism, and the murder of its own people. Parsi and NIAC's support for the Iranian regime is in violation of FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act ] law and they were instrumental in helping pass the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear deal. Parsi is an activist who has maintained a close relationship with Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and was a lead advisor to the Obama administration throughout the process of executing the JCPOA. NIAC falsely claims it supports the full spectrum of Iranian interests, but it actually only cares about pushing the regime's interests. NIAC is at odds with Iran's Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, his supporters, and any Iranians who do not share the dictatorial vision of the Iranian regime. If Iran's regime falls, it will be seen as the failure of Trita Parsi.
A lobbying group with alleged ties to the Islamic Republic of Iran is exerting its influence in Congress amid heightened U.S.-Iranian tensions over recent deadly episodes, including the American drone killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
In recent weeks the Washington, D.C.-based National Iranian American Council, which played a pivotal backstage role in securing the Obama-era nuclear deal abandoned by President Trump, has worked in public and behind the scenes to shape America's response to the conflict.
On Jan. 7, after Iran fired missiles at U.S. military bases in Iraq, the group issued a statement saying, "Donald Trump owns this 100%."
The next day, Jan. 8, it co-hosted a "No War With Iran Strategy Call" that featured presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, along with Reps. Barbara Lee and Ro Khanna, both California Democrats. Days before Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders had this post-debate flareup on Jan. 14, they were in agreement on a "No War With Iran Strategy Call" co-hosted by the group that worked behind the scenes to sell the Obama nuclear deal with Iran.
On Dec. 12, weeks before the crisis was touched off by an Iranian-led attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, the lobbying group backed a letter sent to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin by 17 Democratic members of Congress, urging the Trump administration to lift economic sanctions on Iran.
A Muslim community leader accused of having financial ties to Hamas donated to Rep. Rashida Tlaib's (D., Mich.) campaign last month, records show.
Salah Sarsour, an alleged Hamas sympathizer who once boasted about meeting a Muslim Brotherhood leader known for advocating violence against Jews, donated $1,000 to Tlaib's reelection campaign on Dec. 12, the Federal Election Commission's website shows. He also donated $500 on Sept. 29 to Democratic congressional candidate Rush Darwish, a Palestinian American who supports boycotts against Israel.
Sarsour is a national board member of American Muslims for Palestine, a group the Anti-Defamation League has described as "the leading organization providing anti-Zionist training and education to students and Muslim community organizations in the country."
Sarsour has been an outspoken critic of Israel. He once posted on his Facebook page in support of radical Egyptian preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi.
Al-Qaradawi has advocated terrorism against Israel and has been linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, an extremist organization designated as a terrorist group by several countries.
Baroness Deech has warned political leaders against "passive acts of commemoration" on Holocaust Memorial Day, calling instead for them "to commit to protecting Jewish communities from violence and hatred."
Writing in The House magazine, Baroness Deech noted that "the Holocaust is a collective trauma for the Jewish people. The unbearable knowledge of what occurred has affected, informed and inspired Jews and the State of Israel." However, she warned that Holocaust Memorial Day "must be about more than remembrance: it must be about action."
Baroness Deech, who is an honorary patron of Campaign Against Antisemitism, observed the appalling rise in antisemitic crime. Indeed Campaign Against Antisemitism's analysis of Home Office statistics shows that an average of over three hate crimes are directed at Jews every single day in England and Wales, with Jews almost four times more likely to be targets of hate crimes than any other faith group.
She also noted the full statutory investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) into antisemitism in the Labour Party, which is the largest political party in Europe. The EHRC launched its investigation on 28th May 2019 following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.
All Members of Parliament have reportedly signed up to the International Definition of Antisemitism, with the exception of Labour's Graham Stringer, Tahir Ali, Andy McDonald and Grahame Morris, apparently "despite repeated attempts to contact them," according to the All Party Group Against Antisemitism, which organised the campaign.
Sinn Fein's seven MPs, who do not take their seats in Parliament, have also not signed up.
The welcome near-unanimity of the House of Commons on how to define and identify antisemitism is a turnaround from the summer of 2018, when Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party, including at least one current leadership contender, opposed the Party's adoption of the Definition.
Signing up to the Definition is an important first step in tackling antisemitism, however the Definition must now be used and appropriate policies adopted and implemented by all public bodies, local authorities and universities in order to combat anti-Jewish hatred.
Proponents of anti-Israel BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) campaigns are exploiting debates about mass surveillance and facial recognition software to target Microsoft and an Israeli company, AnyVision. In June 2019, Microsoft invested in AnyVision, which develops "recognition platforms," and in July, an article in Haaretz's TheMarker claimed that AnyVision is part of a "confidential" project with the Israeli army where "Cameras deep inside the West Bank try to spot and monitor potential Palestinian assailants."
Thereafter, a leading BDS organization in the United States, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) launched the "dropanyvision" website, meant to pressure Microsoft to "cut all Microsoft investment in AnyVision." As of January 28, 2020, a JVP petition has over 21,000 signatories.
Other major pro-BDS groups are involved in the campaign, including JVP "allies" Palestinian BDS National Committee and American Friends Service Committee, as well as Human Rights Watch (HRW).
Tellingly, in making their cases against the company, these NGOs distort the facts and use standard BDS talking points. JVP emphasizes that AnyVision is "led by former Israeli military and intelligence personnel" – as if this is inherently problematic, and not common in many tech companies. Likewise, "The Palestinian BDS National Committee appeals to people of conscience to boycott and divest from AnyVision until it ends its violations of human rights worldwide." An HRW official told Forbes, "It's not just privacy risk but a privacy risk associated with a minority group that has suffered repression and persecution for a long time. There are special considerations of discrimination there."
The University of Warwick has been condemned by Andrew Percy MP in the House of Commons for refusing to adopt the International Definition of Antisemitism.
Mr Percy, who co-chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism, urged public bodies to adopt the Definition in comments in Parliament last week, saying that "this applies to universities as well where we have a big problem with antisemitism on campuses". In particular, he singled out "universities like Warwick, whose Vice-Chancellor is refusing to sign up" to the Definition.
The Vice-Chancellor declined to adopt the Definition because it did not offer "any added value," declaring that the university would not "formally adopt individual definitions of specific forms of discriminatory behaviour." The Vice-Chancellor explained that "to adopt one would inevitably lead to the adoption of a whole series of such definitions." The university, however, would be "mindful" of the Definition.
The decision was criticised by the Warwick Jewish Israeli Society, which, following Mr Percy's comments, reiterated its call on the university to adopt the Definition. The president of the Society said that the reference to the university's refusal to adopt the Definition in the House of Commons "is a damning indictment of our university", adding: "Enough is enough. The university should finally listen to Jewish students and adopt the Definition without delay."
The Sheffield branch of the University and College Union (UCU) has been criticised for holding an event to mark Holocaust Memorial Day featuring a controversial Jewish academic who holds unrepresentative views regarding the International Definition of Antisemitism.
The event was in fact billed as an evaluation of the Definition. The speaker was Brian Klug, a Senior Research Fellow at St Benet's Hall, University of Oxford, who defended the Labour Party's unacceptable substitute for the Definition.
Among the critics was Holocaust survivor and founder trustee of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, Agnes Grunwald-Spier MBE, who insisted that she was "not raising the issue…because I object to controversial views being expressed in a university – on the contrary," but rather because Dr Klug is reportedly opposed to the adoption of the Definition by universities – "a very useful tool in controlling hate speech against Jews" – his opinions will not be balanced at the event and it is inappropriate to use Holocaust Memorial Day to promote divisive views. "I also object," she said, "to a day which is supposed to reflect on the lessons of the Holocaust and to remember the many victims of the Nazis and subsequent genocides being hijacked in this manner."
In an article featured in the Catholic Register on January 23, Michael Swan, Associate Editor at the Register, penned a one-sided portrayal of the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict" depicting Gaza as an "open-air prison" and Israelis as usurpers of Palestinian land.
Naturally, there was no mention made of Jewish connections to Judea and Samaria and Israel's legal rights to the areas in questions and to control lands seized in a defensive war against annihilation, until peace is procured with the Palestinian-Arabs and until secure and recognized borders are brokered.
The article entitled "Israeli-Palestinian peace slipping away" featured a photo depicting an armed Israeli soldier scuffling with a Palestinian man during "protests" in Ramallah. Naturally, there was no context about what initiated this incident.
The article describes how Richard Gagnon, the President of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, went on a recent trip to the region describing Gaza as "an open air prison" and Gazans as Israel's prisoners. The article fails to contextual how the Egyptian-Israeli blockade of Gaza is UN-approved, legal and is designed to prevent and thwart terror attacks emanating from Gaza, a territory ruled by Iranian-sponsored Hamas terrorists. It's a given that the article failed to mention the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of humanitarian aid that Israel facilitates to Gaza. Gagnon, also wants Canada to recognize the non-existent state of "Palestine," but there was no mention in the article about how the Palestinians do not have effective and defined control of the lands in question, nor the required institutions for statehood. Just because Canada doesn't recognize that the Palestinians have a state, does not mean that Canada (and the European Union) don't recognize the Palestinian right to self determination as Mr. Swan erroneously claims.
The reference to the execution of Jesus Christ by Roman "occupiers" has a clear editorial objective: to evoke a moral and historical comparison between the persecution of Christ and the persecution of Palestinians. Though not going as far as some anti-Israel activists do in explicitly framing Christ, a Jew from Judea, as 'Palestinian', readers would likely come away with the idea that, just as Christ, 2000 years ago in 'Palestine', was oppressed and killed for advocating on behalf of "human rights", Israelis today are committing similar crimes against (putatively 'human rights seeking') Palestinians in the Hamas ruled enclave.
To Private Eye, the Jewish state, unique among the family of nations, is failing to uphold basic norms of human rights and dignity that it "took 2000 years" to achieve.
The logic is warped in so many ways, the least of which its absence of any mention of the human rights abuses of Hamas, a proscribed terror group whose leaders openly call for the mass murder of Jews, fire rockets at civilian populations, persecute and murder gays, and arrest and torture political opponents.
Moreover, note how the writer evokes Christ, Christianity and Christmas, yet ignores the Islamist regime's oppression of Christians in the Strip, the numbers of whom have decreased dramatically since they took control of the territory. Their suggestion, in the last line of the article, that families of Palestinian Muslims killed during border riots, many of whom were supporters of Islamist extremist terror groups such as Hamas, want anything "for Christmas" may cynically serve its rhetorical ends, but is dishonest to the point of journalistic malice.
The IHRA working definition of antisemitism includes "Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination" as one possible manifestation of antisemitism. The BBC however did not bother to clarify to audiences that calling for "the eradication of the State of Israel" is hence antisemitic, despite the Iranian regime's claim to the contrary.
BBC audiences are frequently exposed to the corporation's unquestioning amplification of the Iranian regime's denials of pursuit of nuclear weapons. The BBC continues to uncritically promote that mantra despite evidence to the contrary which includes a December 2015 report produced by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which stated that:
"…the agency "assesses that a range of activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device were conducted in Iran prior to the end of 2003 as a coordinated effort, and some activities took place" up to 2009."
Notably, the BBC's 'impartiality' box ticking excluded any mention of the relevant subject of the Iranian regime's longstanding record of Holocaust denial – a topic described by the corporation in 2013 as 'taking issue' with the Holocaust.
The all too common BBC practice of uncritically promoting the disinformation of authoritarian regimes (such as Iran, Russia and Syria) without providing audiences with the background information necessary to put that propaganda into its correct perspective obviously obstructs the fulfilment of the BBC's first public purpose of helping its funding public to "understand and engage with the world around them".
US Attorney General William Barr said in a meeting addressing Jewish leaders on Tuesday that the US government has "zero tolerance" for antisemitism amid the recent rise in attacks against Jews, especially in New York.
"I'm extremely distressed by the upsurge in violence, hate crimes committed against the Jewish community," he told the group in Brooklyn, NY. "This administration is going to have zero tolerance for this kind of violence."
Among those at the meeting were UJA Federation of New York CEO Eric Goldstein and Rabbi Meir Soloveichik of Congregation Shearith Israel.
The nation's top law-enforcement official announced he had directed all federal prosecutors to improve their relationships with the Jewish community, such as designating a liaison to handle matters to that demographic in their jurisdiction.
Additionally, Barr indicated interest for the federal government to further involve itself in handling hate crimes, including ones that would usually be prosecuted by local or state authorities, according to Orthodox Union executive vice president Allen Fagin, who was at the meeting.
"Eight young men came careening out of a side street. One snatched a yeshiva boy's glasses and spun them into the street … another dumped the [Jewish] newsboy's [papers] into the gutter; as yet another yanked as he had seen in the newsreels, an old, spidery Jew by his beard."
This scene, which sounds as if it could have taken place this week in Crown Heights or Williamsburg, actually appears in the autobiography of the late, award-winning journalist Nat Hentoff, recalling the wave of violent assaults on Jews in Boston in 1938.
Hentoff, then a student at Northeastern University, was an eyewitness to what the New York City newspaper PM described as an "organized campaign of terrorism" against Jewish residents of Boston's Roxbury, Mattapan, and Dorchester neighborhoods in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
The perpetrators were Irish Catholic youths, who were inspired by the rabble-rousing "Christian Front" organization and Father Charles Coughlin, the antisemitic priest whose hate-filled radio show drew millions of listeners each week.
As the harassment and beatings of Jews in the streets of Boston reached epidemic levels in 1943, 100 Jewish boys and girls, ages 12 to 16, sent a poignant petition to the mayor.
The violence "makes us sometimes doubt that this is a democratic land," the children wrote. "We cannot walk on the streets, whether at night or in the daytime, without fear of being beaten by a group of non-Jewish boys." They pointed out that the environment had become so dangerous for Jews that Jewish Girl Scout troupes and other social clubs had been forced to stop meeting.
As world leaders marked Holocaust Remembrance Day and the liberation of Auschwitz 75 years ago, police in Finland were investigating a case of neo-Nazis denying the Holocaust and burning the Israeli flag.
On Sunday a small group of neo-Nazis convened outside Tampere railway station in the south of the country, where they read out a prepared statement on the Holocaust, News Now Finland has reported.
According to the media outlet, the group, members of Kohti Vapautta! (Toward Freedom!), posted a Holocaust-denying statement to their website in which they claimed there is "no conclusive evidence to support the allegation of genocide," and that "no body of a Jew killed by poison gas has been found."
They furthermore claimed that German doctors gave life-saving treatment to Jews during the war, and that eyewitness accounts of the death camps were nothing more than "propaganda." They concluded their protest by burning an Israeli flag.
On Monday, which marked Holocaust Remembrance Day, a synagogue in Turku in south-west Finland was daubed with red paint. According to News Now Finland, Jewish community leaders reported the incident to police.
The New York-based Sabra Dipping Company will be breaking down barriers during one of the commercial breaks of this upcoming Super Bowl, when the Kansas City Chiefs take on the San Francisco 49ers February 2.
The makers of the well-known brand of hummus are to make history by featuring a commercial depicting drag queens in their already anticipated and widely discussed advertisement on Super Bowl Sunday - a first for the exorbitantly priced commercial periods of America's most revered sporting event of the year. This company will also feature celebrities, such as T-Pain and Real Housewives of New Jersey Rivals Teresa Giudice and Caroline Manzo.
"We're bringing a diverse group of personalities to the table and demonstrating just how incredibly versatile, relevant and relatable hummus is today. We think we've got something for everyone," said Jason Levine, chief marketing officer for Sabra.
In a teaser for the companies first Super Bowl ad campaign, two alumni contestants from RuPaul's Drag Race - Kim Chi and Miz Cracker - can be seen getting ready for a performance purportedly at the Super Bowl itself.
Commercial breaks are the primary trigger for viewers to reach for their remote controls and switch between television channels. That is, except on one occasion: the Super Bowl.
A total of 98.2 million Americans tuned in last year to watch the New England Patriots defeat the Los Angeles Rams, the most-watched broadcast by far in the US in 2019. The Super Bowl will be streamed online in 4K for the first time this year, which is expected to boost viewership of the annual championship game.
One 30-second advertisement during Sunday's highly anticipated Super Bowl LIV clash between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs was sold for as much as $5.6 million, according to broadcaster FOX. The game at Miami's Hard Rock Stadium will kick off at 6:30 p.m.
To stand out from the crowd, consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble decided to partner with Israeli start-up eko to develop a first-of-its-kind, interactive commercial. The star-studded 60-second ad is scheduled to be broadcast during the fourth quarter of the game.
The interactive commercial will first be aired on a dedicated website launched by P&G on Wednesday, enabling viewers to vote and control the story line. The most popular choices determined by viewers will then shape "in real time" the final ad broadcast to millions of viewers on Sunday evening.
The cast of the interactive ad includes actress Sofía Vergara and her son; Old Spice commercial star Isaiah Mustafa; actor Rob Riggle; Dawson's Creek actress Busy Philipps; and former Pittsburgh Steelers safety Troy Polamalu.
As the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak continues to spread, two Israeli companies are finalizing development of revolutionary antiviral reusable facemasks.
"Israel has technologies that can support controlling this epidemic," says Liat Goldhammer-Steinberg, CTO of Sonovia in Ramat Gan.
More than 100 people are reported dead from complications of Wuhan coronavirus, dubbed 2019-nCoV.
The virus is spread by air and direct contact. The World Health Organization reports approximately 4,200 cases of infection since December 31. Most of the cases are in China. A few have been confirmed in 15 additional countries.
Because there is no vaccine or treatment for 2019-nCoV, personal protective equipment is an important way to combat the transmission of the virus and avoid a pandemic.
Disposable facemasks cannot block all pathogens and do not kill them. A used and discarded mask can even become a vector for disease as the pathogens multiply in its fibers.
That's why washable, reusable masks with anti-pathogen properties could provide a potent prevention tool against the 2019-nCoV and other coronaviruses that have evolved into more severe illnesses, such as SARS and MERS.
Elisha Wiesel, the son and only child of the late Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, spoke to the New York Post about what it was like growing up with his famous father.
"Everybody wanted a piece of my father, so that was part of growing up for me," Elisha, who works for Mike Bloomberg's presidential campaign, recalls about his family's Upper West Side home that was always full of people coming and going.
The attention surrounding his father became overwhelming for Elisha when Elie was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1986. Elisha, who was 14 at the time, said, "I was obviously proud of and happy for my father, but it was difficult for me. I felt like the spotlight had just been turned up [in a way] that I didn't want."
The added attention led Elisha to rebel during his teen years. He pulled away from family and Judaism, he said, but nevertheless, his father's love for him was unconditional.
"He gave me as much space to be who I needed to be," said Elisha, noting that he first read Elie's book Night as a teen. "It was very much a subject matter that was discussed, but my father didn't want to push that on me. He felt that was a big burden to give a child. He tried to spare me where he could."
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Shai Glick, the founder of Btsalmo, is a really good guy who is working hard for human rights. He's not just working hard for the people of Israel, but for the wider world Jewish community. Yet Glick also believes that his work benefits humanity in general, as more Muslims are killed by extremists than any other people today. Fighting against incitement to terror helps these Muslims as much as it helps the Jews.
I decided that someone should tell the world about Shai Glick and the important almost unknown work of Btsalmo. But in the end, I decided to let Shai do the talking himself. In long form. Because I believe in giving a person a platform to say everything he wants to say about himself. Everything he wants to say to the world.
So here is where I let Shai step in to give you a bit of background information about himself, followed by our written question and answer session (with translation help from Sheri Oz of Israel Diaries):
My name is Shai Glick and I am 32 years old from Beit Shemesh, married to an amazing woman who supports me in all I do even though I can sometimes be very irritating, always singing and talking or just issuing public clarifications.
I am also the father of three children.
Shai Glick of Btsalmo
I was born in Jerusalem to a Haredi family that always was open to help and host people. I always knew that I needed to protect my people and while I studied in the American branch of the Mir Yeshiva. Immediately following my wedding, I was drafted into the army and I served in the 8200 Intelligence Unit.
During my army service I gained expertise in classified intelligence and truly became familiar with the intelligence situation. During Operation Protective Edge, I was assigned to intelligence. While in the IDF's underground command center (the "Bor") in the Kirya, I was exposed to the fact that there was a hospital in Gaza (Shifa) from which missiles were launched at us. At the same time, we were forbidden from responding to the launching site because there were patients there and I understood that we are the most ethical army in the world, even more than was necessary.
Our goal at Btsalmo is very, very simple.
Human rights – but true human rights.
The right for Israeli citizens to live without terrorism.
The right of the Jews to live without antisemitism and boycotts which are, in fact, Jew-hatred under the guise of freedom of expression – not hatred of Israelis but hatred of Jews.
The right to live. Our organization helps each and every human being in every possible domain with emphasis on the fight against incitement, boycott and terrorism.
It's unacceptable that every time terrorists are arrested, there are those who speak of their rights while nobody talks about the rights of their victims. It is insanity, pure and simple.
There are dozens of organizations that speak about the rights of terrorists and condemn those who challenge those rights (The Public Committee against Torture in Israel, Hamoked, Amnesty, The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Adalah, and more). This is not true only in Israel but around the globe. Everyone is constantly talking about the rights of terrorists and of Muslim religious leaders who incite terror. Who is talking about our right not to be hurt by them? About your right to walk in the street without being stabbed in the back?
Nobody!
***
Varda Epstein: You have a lot of famous people in your family. Tell us about your grandfather, your father, uncles. Anything you like about your family, as far back as you'd like to go. (We're listening.)
Shai Glick: I was born to a family with a good heart and with helpfulness in our blood and as I wrote above, we never ate alone. To this day, I remember breaking the Yom Kippur fast, everyone returning home hungry, but my mother waited for guests to arrive and only then did we begin to eat.
The guests were homeless. Everyone came to us.
This family tradition began with my great-grandfather, Shlomo Zalman Glick, who always worked for charity and when he immigrated to Israel he immediately set up a charitable organization that exists to this day.
My beloved grandfather, Professor Shimon Glick, always believed in helping others and made the change from being the high status department director in the United States to living in a "hole" in Beer Sheva, with the main focus of developing the Negev and helping people.
To this day, my grandfather has been awarded dozens of prizes for his work. My grandfather has held dozens of roles, among them, Dean of the Medical School in Beer Sheva and the introduction of an important dimension to the faculty – the human dimension. It was not only important to be a quality professional, but to be a good person, too.
And exactly because of this, my grandfather fought with all his strength against terrorist hunger strikes and took charge of this fight on behalf of the government. While most doctors were in favor of letting terrorists engage in hunger strikes, my grandfather was not. He understood that their hunger strikes could cause their deaths and lead to outbreaks of violence. He called for force feeding these terrorists because he truly understood the meaning of human rights.
By the way, my grandfather believed in preserving and saving lives and did not agree to such hunger strikes for any reason because hunger strikes are the opposite of supporting the preservation and saving of lives.
My father was the rabbi in an American yeshiva in the Neve Yaakov neighborhood of Jerusalem, and for the students of his yeshiva, our home was always their home.
Human rights was our way of life.
One of my uncles, Dr Yitzchak Glick, is a doctor whose life's work was saving thousands of lives every day and his center serves as a hospital for everyone regardless of ethnicity or origin. He founded a mini-hospital in Efrat that has provided medical services for tens of thousands of Jews and Palestinian Arabs in the region.
My uncle is a doctor and a kind of mukhtar to the entire region. He delivered the babies of hundreds of Palestinian women and travels freely in all the villages in the area. To me, that is true peace and co-existence.
Another uncle is Yehudah Glick, who works day and night to connect people to each other and to bring peace and shed light. Thank God, more and more people understand that the Temple Mount is a focus for peace and not terror, thanks to this uncle. At the beginning he was thought to be crazy, but today everyone understands that he is the one who is right and spoke wisely the whole time.
My uncle, Yehudah Glick, who never hurt a fly, was shot and seriously wounded by an Arab he had never met who had come to him for the express purpose of hurting a Jew. This is the result of incitement.
A moment before the incident, the terrorist told my uncle he was sorry, but that he had harmed Al Aqsa (the mosque on the Temple Mount). Then he shot him.
This terrorist was fed incitement the same as the murderer of Dafna Meir of Otniel. A 15-year-old adolescent saw an anti-Israel television program and immediately set out to find and stab her. During his interrogation, the terrorist admitted that he already regretted what he had done and confessed that he had been overwhelmed by the propaganda he saw on his television screen.
The same was true of the four 15-year-olds who threw rocks and murdered Alexander Leibovitz in Armon Hanatziv during Rosh Hashana. In their interrogation, they admitted that they had just emerged from a lecture in Um el Fahm given by the inciteful sheikh Raed Salah. The sheikh had filled them with the passionate belief that they had to protect the Al Aqsa Mosque from Jewish vandals. Right after the lecture they went out and murdered Leibovitz. They also expressed remorse for this but it was, of course, too late.
Shai Glick at a coexistence event
Varda Epstein: Elder of Ziyon wrote about a recent achievement of Btsalmo that impacted Israel's official high school curriculum for cinema. Can you tell us about that, please?
Shai Glick: It was the case in which I was exposed to the fact that whoever dreams about the destruction of Israel in fact teaches this idea, or more accurately, their terrorist propaganda films are taught in school. For me, the most important battle in our generation is the battle against terrorism.
Terror does not begin with the terrorist but with an atmosphere that leads to murder. Therefore, anyone who fans the flames, in my opinion, is the cause of death and terrorism and murder and must be arrested and put away for life. Certainly we should not teach our youth about him, or teach students about his writings or films.
What I did is simple. I turned to the Minister of Education and made him aware of all the writings of that Palestinian that call for our extermination. And he immediately removed the film from the list of educational films to be shown in schools.
I acted in a similar fashion regarding the play about the terrorist Walid Daka who viciously murdered the soldier Moshe Tamam. The play was called "A Parallel Time" and it was to be performed at Al-Midan in Haifa. The play appeared on the list of cultural activities for Israeli children and exposed them to the violent murderer who, under direct orders, killed an Israeli soldier who had been bound and restrained. This is a war crime.
I did the same regarding a play called "The Admission" that was supposed to be performed in Jaffa. I contacted the Minister of Education, Naftali Bennett. The play argues that Israel is guilty of the false "Nakba" the Arab word for "Disaster," which they use to describe the founding of the State of Israel. Both these plays were removed from the list of cultural events for school pupils.
I actually succeeded in closing Al-Midan Theatre entirely. The place disappeared into the trash bin of history. Jaffa Theatre, unfortunately, is still open in spite of the fact that it serves as a stage for incitement to terror and the boycotting of the Jewish State. The theatre participated in the past in the international Apartheid Week events of the BDS movement and continually hosts events calling for a boycott in conjunction with organizations such as Amnesty International, the Women's Coalition for Peace, and more.
Demonstrating for the cancellation of the screening of the film, Born in Deir Yassin. The film argues that a massacre was carried out against women and children by Etzel and Lehi soldiers. Because of the pressure Btsalmo brought to bear, the film received no prize and was not entered in the Oscars.
Varda Epstein: Haaretz accuses you of "silencing the left," and the truth is, they make you sound a bissel meshuga, a little crazy. Is shutting down a poetry reading by Dareen Tatour, for instance, shutting down free speech? Do you regret the article? How would you respond, if you could? (Here's your chance!)
Shai Glick: As I have already said, incitement and antisemitism are the biggest danger in the world and they hide, today, in a variety of disguises, for example, in films and programs, poems, Facebook, and on YouTube. For that reason, I fight them.
The battlefield today is not within the boundaries we have known in the past, but hidden in plain sight on YouTube and in films. The incitement we find there causes murder, and it is against that, which I fight.
I am proud to censor calls for murder that are framed within poetry, art and culture. In the end, they call for murder, period. In the past few years I have caused dozens of events to be cancelled, events that incite against Israeli soldiers and Israeli citizens. I have had festivals cancelled. I have caused the closure of a variety of venues. And I have made sure that many people will be investigated and imprisoned for incitement and I am proud of that. In my opinion, this is lifesaving. (A partial list of closures I am responsible for includes the Barbur Art Gallery, the Negev Co-Existence Forum, the Acco Festival, Al-Midan Theatre, along with many performances and terror-supporting events.)
Varda Epstein: Btsalmo has been working on pushing forward the demolition of the homes of Rina Shnerb's murderers. Doesn't the IDF order the demolition of a terrorist's house automatically in the case of murder? I know the terrorists' families always appeal and the courts delay, but usually it goes through, right? (Of course, they let the families take out the fixtures and stuff first and then they only fill a single room—the terrorist's bedroom—with cement. Then the PA rebuilds. Right? I mean, is it even a deterrent, such demolitions??)
Shai Glick: Terrorists do not wake up one morning to commit murder. There is an entire system behind them that causes them to do so. A large part of this system includes the family members who encourage and support terror along with the sheikhs and other religious leaders.
It is not a secret that many would be terrorists are apprehensive about what will happen to their families after a terror event. When they know that their families will be evicted from their homes, their homes destroyed, and that they will only suffer, the terror attack can often be prevented and lives saved.
Therefore, in spite of the fact that, unfortunately, in the terrorist's house there are infants who are not guilty of the acts of their fathers, the terrorist's environment must be destroyed in order to prevent all payment connected with the attack and all potential glorification of the terrorist by the presence of a mourning tent to which masses of people can come, something that can inspire other young people to follow in the footsteps of the terrorist.
There is a reason why terrorists fight to have their houses remain standing.
To this day, there have been hundreds of cases that, because of this fear, the terrorists did not carry out an attack or family members turned the potential terrorist in to the Israeli army before the attack, thus saving lives.
The demolition of a terrorist's home prevents terror attacks and therefore the equation is simple: demolition of the house equals human rights.
I believe in human rights and because of that I understand that we must totally destroy and punish the terrorist in order that all of us may live! The terrorists must be afraid and deterred and that is the only consideration, the only equation.
Shai in front of the Kfar Saba courthouse where he sued Breaking the Silence for libel
Varda Epstein: Tell us about the Israeli flag-flying issue with the Beit HaGefen Arab-Jewish Center in Haifa. What did Btsalmo do there? Should we be forcing unpatriotic people to be patriotic? Or is this about something else?
Shai Glick: We must remember one simple thing: those who are hurt most in the world by terror are not the Jews and not the Christians but the Muslims. It is simply insane how many Muslims are murdered. The killing has reached the millions in Syria, Yemen, Libya, Nigeria, Iran, Gaza and dozens of other places. Most Muslims are against terror but they have no power to change the situation. Anyone who voices opposition is killed. And unfortunately, most of the human rights organization silence the moderate Muslims. At Btsalmo, we work to strengthen the moderates and understand that victory will only be achieved when the moderates gain the upper hand over the extremists. We are working to integrate the moderates within Israeli society.
The fight to have the Israeli flag flying over Bet Hagefen, an Arab cultural center in Haifa, is based on the simple assertion that the Arabs are part of Israel. Yes, they are part of Israel and we must integrate them and give them the strength to fight the global war against extremism in the world. Because that is the truth: the extremists are not acting in the name of religion but in the name of murder and insanity. They kill their wives and sisters in the context of family honor or whatever they feel at the moment. They are murderers and not religious people. Period.
Lecturing on human right for members of the Film and Television Council
Varda Epstein: Tell us about the Heba Yazbak case. Where are you on that?
Shai Glick: Heba Yazbak is an excellent example of an antisemite in disguise and false human rights. She is a member of the Knesset but in actuality she supports terror, for example the brutal killing of women, children and infants. She does not care about simple people but about killers. And therefore she has to be in prison and not in the Knesset.
Btsalmo represents the families of the victims of the murderer Samir Kuntar, the Hezbollah terrorist who committed a vicious act of murder years ago. Yazbak supports this very murderer and glorifies him. Yes, the same killer of women and children.
And we approached the Attorney General and the Elections Committee in order to have Yazbak's candidacy cancelled and to have her investigated for criminal charges involving her support of terror. We hope that just as right-wing candidates were denied the right to run because of things they have said that were far less inflammatory than what she has said, that these bodies will deem Yazbak unsuitable to run in the next elections.
We have not yet received an official response but we know that the topic is under discussion at the highest levels and we believe that we will be successful.
Varda Epstein: Btsalmo was working on getting an anti-Israel activist bannedfrom speaking at the site of a former concentration camp. Tell us about that. Also, can you tell us why this is something we need to fight?
Shai Glick: As I have said, the world today is full of disguises. One such disguise is "freedom of expression." In the name of freedom of expression, Hitler would have had a free hand to incite and call for the Final Solution and to put on exhibitions together with Goebbels, his Propaganda Minister and he would have been protected in the name of freedom of expression in arts and culture. For that reason, I understand that we must fight boycotts, antisemitism, and hate because that is just like incitement to murder and therefore I fight it in every place where it raises its head, in every exhibit of antisemitism and boycott around the world, because that is what will cause the next Holocaust. That is today's battle and we must understand it and raise the resources needed to fight.
Shai with Tuvia Tenenbom
Varda Epstein: What's next for Shai Glick?
Shai Glick: My dream is to be like the New Israel Fund, but totally opposite. To found a national and international legal unit that will protect the rights of Jews everywhere, in Israel and the entire world, and that will give strength to moderate Arabs and encourage initiatives on their part and that will raise the voice of human rights around the world.
Unfortunately, that is extremely expensive and would require enormous resources. All the organizations operating opposite to the way Btsalmo anticipates operating, have hundreds of funders and governments, such as the European Union, Norway, Switzerland, Germany and more. There is no government that supports true human rights as Btsalmo understands them and far fewer sources of funding. But I believe that we will succeed and in another ten years the term "human rights" will mean human rights for all people but not for terrorists.
I will make a difference in this world. From Israel will emerge the understanding that human rights is the fight against terror!
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