Elder of Ziyon 01/17 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The west mourns the Jewish dead. But what about the living?; Keep an eye out for Israel Derangement Syndrome; The British Jews Who Want to Go Back to Germany
At Yad Vashem in Jerusalem on Jan. 23, some 46 political leaders and royals, including Britain's Prince Charles, will be attending the fifth World Holocaust Forum to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
At this and doubtless other such memorial events, many eloquent, important and heartfelt observations will be made about the evils of Nazism and Jew-hatred. In today's climate, however, there's something disquieting about such memorializing.
Given the eruption of physical and verbal attacks on Jews in Britain, America and Europe, it might be said that it's never been so important to remember the horrors of the Holocaust.
But the west is now teeming with Holocaust memorials and museums, while schools have been imparting Holocaust education since the 1980s. And yet never since the defeat of Nazism has there been such an epidemic of Jew-hatred in western society.
Moreover, some of the countries that will be represented at Yad Vashem support people who want to kill Jews. They fund the Palestinians, who pump out murderous anti-Jewish and anti-Israel incitement.
Some of these countries have also turned a blind eye for years to the Iranian regime's genocidal agenda towards Israel and the Jewish diaspora, and have even been trying to continue to funnel billions of dollars into Iran in defiance of U.S. sanctions.
To put it bluntly, it might appear that while the west beats its collective breast over dead Jews, it is largely indifferent to the mortal threats currently posed to the living ones.
At the very least, it's clear that all this Holocaust memorializing and education hasn't put antisemitism back in its putrid box.
Indeed, such Jew-hatred is propagated most perversely among liberals, who constantly flaunt their anti-racist and anti-Nazi credentials.
I am not a psychiatrist, but I've observed a kind of psychosis in far-left activists of the West who claim to be progressives championing the Palestinian cause: Israel Derangement Syndrome, or IDS.
Sufferers of this insidious illness don't rationally advocate for Palestinians and criticise Israeli policies, in the same way they'd criticise other states. They are doctrinaire cultists possessed of an unadulterated, unhinged hatred for Israel, which they see as a uniquely evil state that must be eradicated. Until then, it will be their all-consuming, defining cause; never mind the Uyghurs, Kurds or Iranian women. In indulging in the delusion that the end (of Israel) goal will eventually occur, they are complicit in perpetuating the conflict and emboldening the despotic regimes that act against the interests of the very people they purport to champion, the Palestinians.
Corbynism is the most recent prominent example of IDS. While we will no longer be bombarded with its leader's sneering visage, the animosity towards Israel that its dogmatism exemplifies, replete with conspiracism and terrorist sympathising, is unlikely to fade. And it is rising across the Atlantic.
The hallmarks of this anti-Israeli posturing cult include such garb as 'free Palestine' t-shirts, keffiyehs, and snazzy accessories daubed with Palestinian flags. Their social media is flooded with memes and Electronic Intifada articles about evil Israel, and little else. They proudly quote token anti-Israel Jews like Noam Chomsky. In their special language 'peace and justice' is code for 'end of Israel' and 'resistance' is code for 'terrorism'. And they think they're clever, rhyming 'resistance is justified' with 'apartheid' and 'genocide' in their street mob chants.
The derangement that Israel is the root of all evil requires certain tropes and conspiracy theories — such as that Israel was behind 9/11 and Isis — to make sense of a world that is too complex, nuanced, uncertain and daunting, for their ideology to accommodate. But when, despite their best efforts, Israel can't be blamed for the Palestinian plight, you will not hear a whimper from them. Not about the Palestinians living in Lebanon who are denied citizenship, excluded from social services and prohibited from owning property and entering over 20 professions. Nor that Palestinians are among the worst affected by the Syrian civil war and that their community in Yarmouk has been decimated. Nothing about the Gazans whose protests against Hamas are brutally suppressed, or LGBT groups, women's organisations and journalists increasingly persecuted by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. They'll excoriate Israel (never Egypt) for the blockade on the Gaza strip and the poverty of its people, but ignore the fact that, despite the blockade and poverty, Hamas spends tens of millions building sophisticated tunnels under Israel and firing thousands of rockets at it, instead of building hospitals. And when President Abbas recently announced that he won't allow the building of a US-funded field hospital in Gaza, silence.
The Op-Ed also pointed out that King was clearly against against attacks on Zionists. Lewis wrote that "During an appearance at Harvard University shortly before his death, a student stood up and asked King to address himself to the issue of Zionism. The question was clearly hostile. King responded, 'When people criticize Zionists they mean Jews, you are talking anti-Semitism.'" (This is not to be confused with a widely circulated hoax letter said to be written by King.)
Clarence B. Jones, a friend and advisor to King, likewise recalled King's opposition to anti-Zionism. "I can say with absolute certainty that Martin abhorred anti-Semitism in all its forms, including anti-Zionism," he explained in a 2008 Op-Ed. Jones elaborated on that point in What Would Martin Say?, a book he co-authored with Joel Engel. Mainstream reporters, he argues, have given a pass to anti-Semitism by black leaders like Al Sharpton because they buy the rationale that Israel's existence is a provocation to Arabs. "Martin, for one, could see this coming after the Six-Day War in 1967, which is why he warned repeatedly that anti-Semitism would soon be disguised as anti-Zionism."
While King would surely support better circumstances for both Israelis and Palestinians, it seems clear that he was unambiguously opposed to the Israel-bashing that counts as pro-Palestinian advocacy today. His strong statement about Israel's right to exist suggests he recognized the centrality of this issue to the conflict. And judging by his views on anti-Zionism, he would be outraged by the idea that an avowed anti-Zionist like Omar Barghouti, who openly calls for replacing Israel with a state in which Jews will be a minority, pretends King would back boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.
Over the years, Mossad and Military Intelligence personnel, journalists and academics have published articles and books and been interviewed in the media about Marwan, the Mossad and the blunders of the Yom Kippur War.
Now, after much mulling, Dubi agreed to speak publicly for the first time, in an exclusive interview to Haaretz, and give his account of his meetings with Marwan and the secret ties he developed with him. For his personal safety, however, Dubi, who will turn 86 this year, does not want his full name to be published. For more than a quarter of a century he was Marwan's sole handler, holding about 100 meetings with him in hotel rooms and in secured safe houses. The chief venue for their encounters, which added up to many hundreds of hours, was London, but in some cases they met in Rome, Paris and Palma de Mallorca.
Over the years, the two found a common language and came to respect one another, but Dubi never allowed himself to forget that this was not a friendship but a relationship based on vested interests. His mission was to supply information about the intentions and capabilities of Egypt, Israel's greatest and bitterest enemy, at the time. Marwan, for his part, was driven by a range of motives: a need for money, admiration and respect for the Mossad, personal frustration and a desire for revenge.
The primary motive will probably remain an enigma. On June 27, 2007, Marwan's body was found lying in the garden of yellow roses below his fifth-floor apartment in London. The London police found it difficult to determine unequivocally whether he committed suicide, fell from his balcony or was pushed by someone who staged the event to make it look like suicide. Former senior personnel of the Mossad and MI have no doubt that the "someone" would have been agents of Egyptian intelligence, who decided to take belated revenge for his betrayal of the homeland. Later, former Mossad chief Zvi Zamir accused Maj. Gen. Eli Zeira, former head of Military Intelligence, of direct responsibility for Marwan's death, alleging that Zeira had acted tirelessly to get Marwan's name made public, until that finally happened in 2002.
It had been Zeira who, as late as the morning of October 6, 1973, predicted a "low probability" of war. In the wake of the war, the special committee of inquiry headed by Supreme Court President Shimon Agranat found Zeira responsible for the intel failure leading up to the war and he was forced to resign. For the past 25 years, Zeira has been attempting to repair his reputation, in part by trying to shift responsibility for the intelligence failure onto the Mossad. To that end, he has been the chief purveyor of the theory that Ashraf Marwan was a double agent. By his logic, if the Mossad and its chief decided to work with a duplicitous player such as Marwan, then they could be blamed for Israel's failure to anticipate the Arab attack that October day.
So what is going on? The driving forces behind this petition include three Yachad supporters – who all sit on the relevant Division. That's right, Yachad are now so entrenched, they can have three of their own on a single committee.
One of these – incredibly – is someone who advertised the Kaddish for Hamas event. That's right, we have no standards at all now, he is a Deputy – 'looking after British Jews'. Already we know that on a committee of just 16 we have at least 3 Yachad entryists working to influence a Division leader with a risible knowledge of Israeli politics.
What possible motive could Yachad supporters have to want this survey – unless they were pretty certain the results would support their own cause?
And this survey certainly will do that. They have ensured that the designers of the left-leaning survey of 2015 are behind this one too.
What happens if? What happens if the results skew to the left (which they will)? Are we really meant to believe that some leftists won't leak it for political expediency?
Worse still – they can then apply 'legitimate' pressure on the Board to issue more frequent condemnations of Israel. This is probably a key motivation. After all, if it turns out that a large enough proportion of the Deputies have an issue with 'settlements' (a loaded word not clearly explained in the survey) will the Board then begin to offer public criticism of Israel when new settlements are announced?
If you say 'no', you are being short-sighted. The hard-left don't ever rest – they destroy from within – it is what they do. If you don't believe me – go and look at what they did to the Labour Party. The BoD will criticise – you will complain – and they will point to their survey as justification. What will you be able to do? Nothing. It will be too late.
The very fact that it is the hard-left pushing it should set off warning bells. Does the United Synagogue for example – really want to be funding a Yachad survey that will almost certainly be used to justify more frequent criticism of Israel by the Board of Deputies? I very much doubt it.
Three nights before the British elections, London was teetering in the state of anxious discomposure that had become its new normal. Soon, the Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson would win an overwhelming mandate, breaking the deadlock in Parliament and setting him up to pass his preferred Brexit option with ease. Although Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn would wind up losing in a landslide rejection of his politics, he would not resign the leadership of the party, and the existential need for clarity and safe harbor felt by British Jews would not be assuaged by the outcome of the election. And on this night, the Wiener Holocaust Library, located on Russell Square, was hosting an emotionally charged event titled "My Father was a Wandering European: Triple Loyalties in Brexit Britain: British, Jewish, European."
The collective mood inside the lecture hall was as bleak as the London weather. The audience of middle class professionals was impeccably polite. We had gathered to learn how British Jews might become German. Or Czech. Or Austrian. Or Polish. The discussion centered on the passportization of the children and grandchildren of the British Jews who had fled Germany and Nazi-occupied Central Europe in the midst of the Holocaust. The tremendous irony of the children and grandchildren of the German Jews who had fled Hitler being welcomed to Germany, now widely considered to be the heart and last great hope for placid liberal democracy in Europe, was lost on no one in the audience.
British Jewry had found itself in a situation unprecedented in modern times: caught between the twin threats of an institutionally anti-Semitic Labour led by Jeremy Corbyn, and with the looming Brexit, the loss of their European identity and rights on the other hand. The circumstances would be familiar to Jewish communities in Russia and Turkey, who live in a state of siege, a fraught political situation raging around them. But the situation feels utterly new to Britain's Jews and, therefore, rather terrifying for some, including British descendants of German Jews. One of the speakers, Sotheby's head of restitution in Europe, Richard Aronowitz-Mercer, mournfully exclaimed that he did not know what he had lost "until I did, which we are all about to."
Article 116 of the German Basic Law allows for the reinstatement of German citizenship for the descendants of individuals who had had it stripped from them by Nazi edict. A representative of the German Embassy was on hand to offer advice to British citizens concerned about language requirements (answer: there are none) and other bureaucratic formalities. Many of the British Jews now filing their application with the German Embassy are the descendants of those smuggled out of Germany as part of the Kindertransport, which extracted around 10,000 children in the wake of Kristallnacht. Many had relatives killed or their entire extended family massacred by the state or the local collaborators of the nations that they are now petitioning for citizenship.
As law professor David Schraub notes: "The Whiteness of the Jewish figure served to cleanse, even validate, arguments that otherwise would reek in their antisemitic familiarity."
In fact, a perceived all-encompassing Jewish power, or cabal, is one of the few tropes that unites extremists on the right and left. In November, white supremacist Patrick Little of Idaho declared his candidacy for the general election, running as a Republican. He told the Idaho Press that "the only way to challenge Jewish power in this country is with local elections." He also said that the "top priority" for the Jewish people is to displace white people specifically, adding that the Jews control the media, entertainment industry and politics.
Along these same lines on the left, British Parliament member Angela Ormerod of the Labour Party was suspended in 2018 after a tweeting that "Jews control media."
From ancient through medieval times, the fear of a secret Jewish conspiracy to dominate both the economy and government was used to justify antisemitic violence. Later, the Nazis capitalized on old Christian themes of secret Jewish dominance to propagandize and mobilize support for their Jewish liquidation program. Today, that fear has been expanded by modern anti-Semites to the point of caricature to include the media, global markets and geopolitical stability.
Framed according to this trope, a paradox develops: Not only is the Jewish experience lost in whiteness, but Jewishness serves to epitomize whiteness' vilest iteration. A white Jew is not only powerful but hyper powerful. He is not only exploitative and manipulative but the arch puppeteer, controlling world affairs.
While intersectionality can be a valuable tool, it has been ineffective in the case of "white Jews." The result is a dangerous distortion of the Jewish experience — its history, diversity and challenges.
Although Jewish skin comes in every shade — reflecting the diversity of a people that spans the globe and is all at once an ethnicity, nation and religion — some of its whitest members endured a genocidal program that prompted the world to proclaim Never Again.
An intersectional approach can prove useful only if the two identities are separated and if the Jewish experience is articulated rather than subsumed or dismissed. Fighting antisemitism will begin when the complexity of Jewish experience is properly portrayed rather than lost in skin color.
One after the other, kings, presidents, prime ministers and other leaders of 46 different countries will land at Ben-Gurion Airport's Terminal 1, which will be closed to commercial flights, and head to their hotels in the capital.
This unprecedented number of high-level foreign delegations will be in Jerusalem to mark 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, as part of the Fifth World Holocaust Forum, in an event titled "Remembering the Holocaust: Fighting Antisemitism," hosted by President Reuven Rivlin and Yad Vashem.
It's "the biggest event since the establishment of the state," Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a video message on Thursday.
Yad Vashem invited every country that was under Nazi occupation, every country that was an Allied power, plus Germany.
President's Residence director-general Harel Tubi says the numbers went beyond what he had expected, which was perhaps a dozen leaders. Tubi credited personal letters from Rivlin to all of the heads of state for bringing in nearly everyone invited.
According to Tubi, the value of the event goes beyond the amount of visitors; it's the message that matters. The theme of the event ties remembering the past, the Holocaust, with a mission for the present and future, fighting antisemitism, he said.
"Everyone is uniting around the message of fighting antisemitism," Tubi stated. "It shows that this is not just a problem for Jews and Israel, but one of the society in which it is developing; and therefore, when countries come here and show concern about this phenomenon," it sends a message to their home populations.
Wow, this is quite the list!
Kings, Princes, Presidents, Prime Ministers, Governor Generals and even a Grand Duke, are all coming to #Israel next week, to take part in #Holocaust Remembrance Day events! pic.twitter.com/9Z4NjqWtYH
Next Thursday is supposed to mark another diplomatic triumph for Israeli diplomacy. On January 23, the Fifth World Holocaust Forum will convene at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz death camp. According to Yad Vashem and the World Holocaust Forum, 45 heads of state will travel to Jerusalem for the conference as President Reuven Rivlin's guests.
But unless something changes in the next few days, the event won't be a diplomatic triumph. The conference, titled, "Remembering the Holocaust, Fighting Anti-Semitism," will mark the end of the golden era of Israeli diplomacy.
This isn't the fault of the guests. They are an impressive lot. Along with Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US Vice President Mike Pence, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Prince Charles, French President Emmanuel Macron and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier are scheduled to deliver remarks at the event.
The problem is with who won't be at the event. Polish President Andrzej Duda announced last week that he will not be attending. Duda's decision doesn't owe to lack of interest. He made no effort to hide how it important he felt it would be to attend the conference. Indeed, as Israel Hayom reported this last week, Duda was so eager to come that he was willing to leave the World Economic Forum early to fly to Jerusalem just for the conference. And it isn't that Netanyahu didn't want him to come. Netanyahu wants very much for Duda to come because Israel has a profound interest in Duda's attendance.
Were Duda to participate in the event at Yad Vashem conference, his presence would mark the end of the two-year crisis in Polish-Israeli ties. The crisis was precipitated in January 2018 with the Polish parliament's passage of a law that criminalized criticism of Polish collaboration with the Nazis during the Holocaust. Lawbreakers were subject to up to three years imprisonment.
The law was widely reviled as a bid to rewrite the history of the Holocaust. Its passage provoked a massive outcry in the Jewish world. Israel joined the protests. A crisis in Polish-Israel relations ensued. It took months of delicate and complicated diplomacy led by Netanyahu and his Polish counterpart Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki to figure out a way out of the dispute. In June 2018 the Polish parliament amended the law and revoked the possibility of imprisonment for transgressors.
The crisis appeared resolved. Israel and Poland resumed their close bilateral relations, much to both sides' satisfaction and benefit.
Michael Morris, a curator at New York's Museum of Jewish Heritage, was trying to fulfill a run-of-the mill request when he uncovered a treasure trove of eyewitness depictions of the Holocaust, drawn in pencil, ink and crayon.
"It was a light bulb moment," said Morris, who put together an exhibit of art created by some of the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazi regime.
"Rendering Witness: Holocaust-Era Art as Testimony," which opens this week at the lower Manhattan museum, comes at a time when US antisemitic hate crimes have spiked and memories of the horrors of the Holocaust are fading.
"This exhibition stands against and educates about the dangers of antisemitism, racism, bigotry of any kind," said Morris, describing the 21 powerful depictions of the Holocaust, mostly by Jewish prisoners.
It all started with another institution's request to borrow some of the pieces in the museum's collection. As Morris reviewed the dozens of works in its vaults, he knew immediately that it was high time for the museum to mount an exhibition of its own.
"Behind the statistics, and behind the numbers and behind the scenes where we see hundreds of thousands of people in concentration camps, these are actual people who had multi-faceted lives," Morris said.
Among them was a 12-year-old girl, Helga Weissova, who brought art supplies with her when she was sent to Terezin Ghetto and concentration camp, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) north of Prague in the Czech Republic, in October 1944. Before Weissova was deported from Terezin to Auschwitz, the infamous slave-labor camp in southern Poland, she gave her drawings to her uncle, a fellow prisoner who hid them behind a wall.
The show features her 1943 work in colored pencil on paper, "Transport Leaving Terezin," which shows gun-toting guards ushering a huddled group of prisoners carrying suitcases.
Weissova is now in her 90s and living in Prague, but many of the artists never made it out of the deadly camps.
The vast majority of the individuals on what is often referred to as the Ładoś List perished, and it is likely that many if not most of them never even received the forged papers. But this is no way detracts from the Bernese Group's monumental attempt to save lives at a time when much of the free world was turning a blind eye to the desperate plight of European Jewry. Moreover, Ambassador Kumoch estimates that the names on this list constitute only a fraction of the more than 8,000 such false documents he believes to have been created, but for which only anecdotal documentation has been located.
To be sure, we cannot and must not overlook those Poles who killed Jews or handed them over to the Germans to be killed, or who profiteered shamelessly from the ghettoization and deportation of their Jewish compatriots. At the same time, however, it is equally critical to emphasize that there were thousands of Poles who risked their lives to hide and save Jews, and that the London-based Polish government in exile was one of European Jewry's few allies during the Holocaust years. Żegota, the underground Polish Council to Aid Jews that saved a few thousand Jews by spiriting them out of ghettos, providing them with false identity papers, and giving them refuge, operated under the auspices of the government in exile. We must also not lose sight of the fact that Żegota–like the Bernese Group for that matter–was a joint Polish-Jewish enterprise, with Polish Catholics and Polish Jews represented in its leadership.
Speaking before the monument to the heroes of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the Polish capital on April 18, 2018, World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder noted that between 1939 and 1945 when Poland was occupied by Nazi Germany, Jews and Poles both fought the Germans, "Polish Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and, one year later, Polish Catholics in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. In many cases, they fought side-by-side. That is the special bond that cannot be broken by anyone."
As we approach the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau on Jan. 27, 1945, it is important for us to remember that Jewish and non-Jewish Poles were victimized by the Hitlerite invaders of their country. Indeed, Polish Christians constituted the second largest group of those who perished at the largest and most notorious Nazi German death camp: According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 960,000 Jews were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau, as were 70,000 Poles and 21,000 Roma.
It is in this tragic context that the members of the Bernese Group must be recognized as a shining example of how Catholic Poles and Jewish Poles joined together in a desperate altruistic, almost quixotic initiative to try to save Jewish lives. And we owe Ambassador Kumoch and his colleagues an enormous debt of gratitude for their yeoman's work in documenting this remarkable episode and integrating it into the historiography of the Holocaust.
On January 17, 1945 – 75 years ago – Raoul Wallenberg was arrested by the Soviet military intelligence apparatus, never to be seen again.
Born in Sweden in 1912, Wallenberg, was a scion of one of the most powerful and influential families in his country. His father, a naval officer, had died before he was born and he was raised by his mother, Maj and his step-father, Fredrik von Dardel, with care and love, under the close supervision of his paternal grandfather, Gustaf Wallenberg, an experienced diplomat.
Both the first cousins of his late father, Marcus and Jacob, were in charge of the Wallenberg economic empire at the time, with major stakes in Swedish industrial and financial sectors. Following the advice of his grandfather, young Wallenberg pursued a degree in architecture from Michigan University and gained experience in trade and finance in South Africa and Haifa (during the British Mandate period, before the founding of the State of Israel).
It is believed that Raoul wanted to work in his family's business concern, but while Jacob kept a cordial relationship with his young second cousin, the latter ended-up working with Koloman Lauer, a seasoned Jew from Hungary, who had set-up a successful international trade company.
Prompted by Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., President Roosevelt in early 1944, set-up the War Refugee Board (WRB), a US executive agency with the mission to save the lives of civilians being slaughtered by the Axis. Coincidentally, Morgenthau's own father, Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Sr., was one of the personalities who decades earlier denounced the great tragedy of the Armenian genocide.
Ahead of next week's International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Israel's Holocaust Survivors' Rights Authority at the Ministry of Finance released statistics on the survivors of the Nazi genocide living in the Jewish state.
Channel 13 reported that the number of survivors is dwindling as they pass away. Today, there are approximately 192,000 recognized survivors living in Israel. Last year, 14,800 of them died.
Of the living survivors, 64% were born in Europe, including 36% from the former Soviet Union, 18% from Romania and 6% from Poland.
Among the non-European survivors, 18% are from Morocco and Algeria and suffered under the Nazi-sponsored rule of the Vichy French regime. Another 11% survived the 1941 antisemitic pogrom in Iraq called the Farhud.
The authority spends more than 4 billion shekels yearly on Holocaust survivors in Israel, who receive monthly benefits of up to 6,000 shekels.
With the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz extermination camp less than two weeks away, senior State Department diplomats on Wednesday outlined the US commitment to remembering the Nazi Holocaust and aiding survivors of the slaughter.
"I wish I could say that humanity had learned its lessons from the Holocaust and that the lessons were permanent, and that we have moved on," Cherrie Daniels — special envoy for Holocaust issues in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs — remarked at a special briefing in Washington, DC. "But I think the recent resurgence of antisemitism around the world and here at home is a reality that we cannot deny or ignore."
Daniels emphasized the importance placed by US policy on material restitution to Holocaust victims.
"We're committed to help the 80,000 or so survivors of the Holocaust who live here in the United States achieve a measure of justice […] when it comes to the material losses suffered during the Holocaust," she told reporters. "We develop and implement US policy to return Holocaust-era assets to their rightful owners, compensation for wrongs committed during the Holocaust."
Daniels — who will be a member of the US delegation at the Auschwitz commemoration ceremonies in Poland on Jan. 27 — also highlighted the American commitment to helping Jewish communities around the world, "especially in Europe, protect Jewish cultural and religious sites."
In 11 days' time the world will mark the 75th anniversary of humankind's greatest crime. This year's Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD), on Monday 27 January, will be a landmark moment as we reflect on its legacy as the last remaining survivors leave us.
To mark this moment, Jewish News will be issuing a dedicated 80-page HMD edition on the day itself. It will be the first time Jewish News has published on a Monday.
This unique edition is being created by a special panel of second and third generation guest editors and, crucially, non-Jewish Holocaust educators. They are: Holocaust Educational Trust regional ambassadors Jaya Pathak and Jack Nicholls; the Association for Jewish Refugees' Debra Barnes; Natasha Isaac, nominated by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust; Shannon Johnson, nominated by the Anne Frank Trust; Jude Williams, an educator on March of the Living and nominated by the National Holocaust Centre; BBC filmmaker Hannah Gelbart, nominated by the '45 Aid Society and TV presenter Rob Rinder.
This remarkable group was brought together, over a period of many months, by the newspaper's news editor Justin Cohen.
During an insightful and often moving editorial meeting last month, each set out their personal vision for this unique project.
Next week's edition will consider the rise in digital hate and unpick the anatomy of online denial; investigate second generation trauma and take a fascinating look at remembrance innovation and the harnessing of virtual reality to tell survivors' stories for centuries to come.
It will show how Jewish life thrived before the Nazis, speak to a prisoner and liberator of Bergen Belsen and contemplate the power of personal artefacts – a pen, a comb, a candlestick – handed down from generation to generation. It will tell the poignant story of Auschwitz on 27 January 1945, from the last sunrise under tyranny to the arrival of Russian soldiers.
It will celebrate the Righteous Gentiles and show how are they selected, where they live, what they did and what they risked.
A week remains until the 75th anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation, an event which will draw more than 40 heads of state to Jerusalem. The Jerusalem Post's sister publication, Maariv, has found out that despite the efforts to bring dignitaries such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prince Charles, there are still issues between Yad Vashem and the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO). Yad Vashem has decided that there will be no WJRO representation at the event.
WJRO CEO Nachliel Dison attacked Yad Vashem's decision while attending a World Zionist Organization convention in Jerusalem. "I don't understand why an organization like Yad Vashem refuses to deal with a subject as critical as returning property. We all know that each pillage of Jewish property and the refusal to return it stems from antisemitism, in the context of the Holocaust and after it," Dison said.
"You ask the Polish, for example: 'Why did you take Jewish property?' and they say that for years Jews have taken their property and deceived them, so it's actually Polish property and not Jewish," he said.
WJRO was founded by Jewish organizations to focus on property restitution, mostly in Eastern Europe. Most of the effort is concentrated in working in the relevant countries and pushing for laws that will allow Holocaust survivors and their descendants to reclaim property that was seized during the Holocaust and subsequently nationalized by communist regimes. The organization also promotes the establishment of foundations to support the well-being of Holocaust survivors, using reparations funds.
Ukraine's parliament for the first time commemorated the Holocaust ahead of the international date in memory of the victims.
The Verkohvna Rada in Kyiv held a memorial ceremony on Thursday ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27. The date was designated in 2005 by the United Nations. On that day, Red Army troops liberated the Auschwitz camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. This year is the liberation's 75th anniversary.
"The Holocaust was a disaster not only for the Jewish people but for the whole world and specifically the Ukrainian people," lawmaker Daniel Gatmanzov said in his address.
Memorial candles were lit and a minute's silence was observed.
Among those on hand was Israel's ambassador, Joel Lion, who in recent years has protested the glorification of Nazi collaborators in Ukraine, including by some officials.
Last week, Gennady Nadolenko, the head of Ukraine's diplomatic mission in Tel Aviv, issued the first public reaction to Lion's protests.
The subject is related to "internal issues of Ukrainian politics" and Israel's protests about it are "counterproductive," Nadolenko told Israeli diplomats, according to the new site Jewish.ru.
Poland and Lithuania are working together to defend themselves against a Russian historical offensive that seeks to minimize Soviet responsibility for the outbreak of World War II, their foreign ministers said Thursday.
Linas Linkevicius of Lithuania and Jacek Czaputowicz of Poland described recent Russian statements that put blame on Poland for start of World War II as disinformation that they perceive as a threat to their nations.
"We will not let the Kremlin manipulate history so easily and spread lies," Linkevicius said after meeting Czaputowicz in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and other top Russian officials have made repeated statements in recent weeks blaming Poland — which was the first victim of World War II — for some role in sparking the conflict. The Russian comments have also sought to stress Polish anti-Semitism as a trigger for the conflict.
Historians in the West say the Russian claims are baseless.
World War II began in 1939 when Poland was invaded first by Nazi Germany, then by the Soviet Union two weeks later. The dual occupation came days after the two totalitarian states signed a pact with a secret protocol to carve up Poland, the Baltic states and Finland.
People ask me how I keep going in a job confronting evil dictatorships at the UN.
Because of notes like these:
"Please accept this gift in memory of 2 sisters who died in the Shoah because no one spoke up for them. Thank you to UN Watch for being their voice in today's world." pic.twitter.com/kyIqCtYPZ7
Grasping the dais for support, 95-year-old Holocaust survivor Josef Konigsberg broke into tears. He is the only living person in Germany able to recount firsthand the bravery of Helmut Kleinicke, who was posthumously awarded the designation of Righteous Among the Nations at the Israeli Embassy in Berlin on January 14.
"This is one of the most beautiful days of my life," Konigsberg said, locking eyes with Kleinicke's daughter, Juta Scheffzek, who was seated not far from him. "Thank you, thank you."
The recognition of Righteous Among the Nations is bestowed by Israel's Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem to those who are verified to have risked their lives to save Jews during World War II. Israeli Ambassador to Germany Jeremy Issacharoff presented Scheffzek with a certificate together with Konigsberg, which Scheffzek accepted on her father's behalf.
Kleinicke, a Nazi party member, was only publicly acknowledged in recent years as the savior of perhaps hundreds of Jews at the height of the Holocaust. He is just the 628th German to be given the recognition, and one of the only recipients who was also a member of the Nazi party.
For reasons not entirely clear — perhaps out of modesty, or possibly to avoid standing out for what was then a controversial distinction in postwar Germany — Kleinicke kept quiet about his heroism until his death in 1979 at the age of 72. He said little to his daughter about his wartime activities, and sent no reply to the three survivors who wrote him after the war's conclusion.
The Chelsea soccer club in England marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day with a commemorative mural of Jewish players and prisoners of war who were sent to a Nazi camp.
The mural was unveiled Wednesday on a wall outside of the West Stand at Stamford Bridge and is part of Chelsea's Say No to Antisemitism campaign being funded by the club's Russian-Israeli owner, Roman Abramovich.
"By sharing the images of these three individual football players on our stadium, we hope to inspire future generations to always fight against anti-Semitism, discrimination and racism, wherever they find it," Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck was quoted as saying about the event in a statement on the club's website.
The mural features three portraits.
Julius Hirsch, a German Jewish international footballer, was murdered sometime after 1943 at the Auschwitz Nazi camp in occupied Poland. Also depicted is Árpád Weisz, a Hungarian Jewish football player who was murdered there in 1944.
The third portrait is of Ron Jones, known as the "Goalkeeper of Auschwitz," who was a British prisoner of war at Auschwitz. He survived the camp.
CNN may have prevented their star anchor from interviewing Vice President Mike Pence on the sidelines of the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, taking place in Israel next week.
According to an item in the New York Post's Page Six, the White House offered CNN's Wolf Blitzer an exclusive interview with Pence during his visit to Jerusalem next week, but the cable news network declined.
Blitzer, whose parents are Holocaust survivors and paternal grandparents were killed in Auschwitz, eagerly agreed to do the interview but CNN President Jeff Zucker nixed the idea.
Why? He reportedly decided impeachment coverage was far more important than running a story favorable to the Trump administration.
"Zucker stepped in and said Wolf isn't going anywhere because the network will be 'all impeachment, all of the time' next week. CNN's anti-Trump bias is so intense, they can't even broadcast a sympathetic interview for Holocaust remembrance," a source told the Post.
On a gray Monday morning, Allison Josephs stood outside a tent on the corner of 106th Street and Third Avenue in East Harlem hawking coffee and rugelach. She wasn't looking for signatures on a petition or looking to sell anything. She was just trying to introduce herself to her fellow New Yorkers, as an Orthodox Jew.
"When you meet everyday people, I think that's where the shared commonalities come out," said Josephs during a lull in the foot traffic.
After the recent wave of anti-Semitic attacks on Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn and the deadly attacks in suburban Monsey and in Jersey City, Josephs wanted to do something. So she came to this street corner in Harlem, an area with few Jewish residents, to stand with several other women in wigs, customary for married Orthodox women, and men in yarmulkes and engage non-Jewish New Yorkers in conversation. A pop up test in Harlem encouraged passersby to stop and have a coffee and conversation with a Jew. Shira Hanau/JW
"This is where the Monsey attacker was found after the attack," said Josephs, referring to Harlem generally. (The alleged perpetrator, Grafton Thomas, was arrested in West Harlem.) "So there's some symbolism here."
Josephs is the founder of Jew in the City, an organization dedicated to reversing negative stereotypes about Orthodox Jews. Banners hung from the tent that read "Meet A Jew, Make A Friend." A sign next to it explained the different groups that make up Orthodox Jews, delineating the differences between Modern Orthodox, yeshivishe and chasidic Jews.
The facts are —the members of the ACPC did belong to various Protestant denominations that have diverse views on Zionism, and there are liberal Protestants who did, and do, debate the merits of Zionism. However, it is disingenuous to conflate diversity among denominations in general with the specific case of the ACPC's members' position on Zionism. There is absolutely no basis for Weiss' allegation that members of the ACPC lacked consensus concerning Zionism.
At best, this is a glaring example of flawed logic and at worst, it is an insidious attempt by the author to minimize the ACPC's efforts on behalf of a Jewish homeland.
When the CCP and the APC merged to create the ACPC, the mission of the ACPC remained true to the original Zionist missions of both preceding organizations.
The history of the ACPC makes it clear that the establishment of the Children's Memorial Forest was part of the ACPC's clearly defined Zionist mission – a mission that remained true to those of the CCP and the APC – the two organizations that combined to form the ACPC. The CCP had existed for the purpose of helping with the settlement of Jews in Palestine, which it believed was the home of the Jewish people. The APC organized influential political figures and sponsored resolutions that called for Jewish immigration to Palestine.Working in cooperation with other organizations, including the CCP, the APC succeeded in having the U.S. Congress adopt a resolution supporting the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine. When the CCP and the APC merged to create the ACPC, the mission of the ACPC remained true to the original Zionist missions of both preceding organizations. Its members were intently focused on the establishment of the State of Israel. The ACPC was disbanded a few years after Israel was founded because its goal had been accomplished.
Contrary to Weiss' attempt to minimize the ACPC's Zionist mission and belittle its support for a Jewish homeland, the reality is that this organization was quite politically influential and effective in its efforts on behalf of the establishment of a Jewish homeland. It was also successful in enlisting prominent Protestant leaders from various denominations in the Zionist cause. Furthermore, the relationship between the ACPC and the JNF fundamentally changed Jewish-Christian relations for the better through their ground-breaking cooperation at a point in history when this was a particularly difficult feat to accomplish.
The article distorts a positive example of post-Holocaust, interfaith cooperation as well as the entire Zionist mission of the JNF to denigrate Zionism in general. The question is – why would a scholarly journal of a premier Holocaust museum allow its pages to be used as a vehicle for what amounts to nothing but anti-Zionist propaganda?
The head of Israel's consulate in the southern German city of Munich slammed a cancelled peace conference for stoking antisemitism because it excluded a German Jewish councilman opposed to BDS.
"A form of Israel-related antisemitism," said Sandra Simovich, the Israeli diplomat, about the Munich Peace Conference's decision to bar city councilman Marian Offman from participating in the event, according to a Thursday article in the Munich daily Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Simovich said the exclusion of Offmann is "completely unacceptable." The organizers announced on their website on Thursday they have pulled the plug on the conference because of the controversy.
The main conference organizer Thomas Rödl has been embroiled in charges that he and the organizers engaged in antisemitic conduct by denying entry to a Jewish politician while permitting non-Jewish politicians to attend the event.
Greetings and Salutations from Medinat Tel Aviv! We understand that a certain "satire site" in Israel wrote some not-so-nice things about you. In a nutshell, that your reaction to the slow-motion pogrom going on in New York has been muted by the fact that the assailants were not in fact wearing MAGA hats and/or driving pickup trucks. Basically saying that when it comes to choosing between standing up for your fellow Jews and being Wokety Woke, you voted "Present".
We also note Elder of Ziyon's report that your lawyer notified PreOccupied Territory that in so many words you will sue the shit out of him the satirical article was not immediately recognizable as satire and that he needed to retract said article or face possible legal action for defamation of character.
As a free speech advocate and artist here is our response to your threats against a fellow writer: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE LET US HELP YOU. We will turn States Evidence. We will wear a wire. We will sell him out faster than Vanilla Ice sold out in the 90's. We will provide so much dirt that Takashi-69 will urge us to "Stop Snitching".
Why are we doing this? Because we believe in Tikkun Olam. Not because, and we cannot stress the point enough, that this is somehow an opportunity for us to eliminate our chief rival in the highly lucrative world of Anglo-infused Israeli satire. Definitely not that. Tikkun Olam! (Kind of off topic, but who is your favorite figure skater? Ours is Tonya Harding!)
High on the wall of a German church where Martin Luther once preached, an ugly remnant of centuries of anti-Semitism is now at the center of a court battle.
The so-called "Judensau," or "Jew pig," sculpture on the Town Church in Wittenberg dates back to around 1300. It is perhaps the best-known of more than 20 such relics from the Middle Ages, in various forms and varying states of repair, that still adorn churches across Germany and elsewhere in Europe.
Located about 4 meters (13 feet) above the ground on a corner of the church, it depicts people identifiable by their headwear as Jews suckling on the teats of a sow, while a rabbi lifts the animal's tail. In 1570, after the Protestant Reformation, an inscription referring to an anti-Jewish tract by Luther was added.
Judaism considers pigs impure, and no one disputes that the sculpture is deliberately offensive. But there is strong disagreement about what consequences that should have and what to do with the relief.
A court in the eastern city of Naumburg will consider on Tuesday a Jewish man's bid to make the parish take it down.
A Florida man who has presented himself as a child Holocaust survivor has withdrawn as a plaintiff in a trial against a former Nazi concentration camp guard.
Moshe Peter Loth made headlines in November when he hugged defendant Bruno Dey during his trial in Hamburg, Germany.
Loth has told journalists over the years that his grandmother and mother were both imprisoned in the Stutthof camp where Dey worked, turned in by his own grandfather, whom he described as a Nazi. Loth also claimed to have received information from the Red Cross that he was born in the camp.
But information provided to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency by four major Holocaust archives showed that the woman Loth identified as his mother — Helene Anna Flood — was released from the camp one month after she was taken there and several months before Loth was born.
Loth wrote in a statement to the court dated Saturday that he would withdraw from the case, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported.
"Please accept my most sincere apologies for having caused any problems," Loth wrote in the statement. The court, he wrote, "must work for justice."
The New York Department of Education (DOE) will organize field trips to New York City's Museum of Jewish Heritage–A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in Lower Manhattan for eighth- and 10th-grade students from the neighborhoods of Williamsburg, Crown Heights and Borough Park in Brooklyn as part of an ongoing effort to combat antisemitism, it was announced on Wednesday.
Currently, the museum is featuring an exhibit on Auschwitz through August.
The museum will also provide up to four free tickets to family members of public-school students with an ID card or another proof of enrollment. The DOE is paying for the cost of the field trips, while the museum and its donors will fund the free tickets for families, the New York Post reported.
"The lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten, and we're grateful to the Museum of Jewish Heritage for expanding our partnership," said Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza. "As a former social-studies teacher, I know how important it is for students to learn about the past in order to understand the world around them."
He added, "In the wake of recent antisemitic attacks in our city, we're committed to helping students and school communities engage in thoughtful and respectful dialogue, and the Museum of Jewish Heritage is instrumental in achieving that goal."
The museum visits are the second step in the new anti-hate crimes curriculum for New York City public schools introduced by city officials recently, according to the New York Post. Earlier this month, city officials rolled out new lesson plans for teachers to lead classroom discussions about the Holocaust, coupled with the dangers of discrimination and bias.
Israel Is My Playground - Fabio Wibmer
Israel is full of history, but the small country is also home to some incredible, and striking natural settings.
In Israel is My Playground, Fabio Wibmer makes the most of both settings. The freerider tests his new Canyon on the stair gaps and trials moves of the urban Israeli environment. Castles, rooftops and rails are all fair game.
From there, Wibmer heads to the desert for some proper freeriding. Big cliffs and loose desert slopes make for surprisingly good riding.
"Really, my life here is so wonderful," Quentin Tarantino tells Yediot Aharonot in a wide-ranging interview published Friday about his life in Israel.
The director is married to Israeli singer/model Daniella Pick, who is pregnant with their first child, and he said he doesn't just feel at home in Tel Aviv — it really is his home now.
"I have some short trips [back to the US] planned for the [Oscar] awards ceremony. And of course, we'll be here for the birth and after." Tarantino answered questions almost every aspect of his life and career, on everything from how he feels about his latest movie, Once Upon a Time . .. in Hollywood, getting 10 Oscar nominations last week ("It's fun just to be a nominee") to his plans to learn Hebrew.
According to the article, the Tarantinos live in tony Ramat Aviv Gimmel, and not near Kikar Ha Medina, as has been previously reported.
Uxorious Tarantino says, "I have a beautiful wife and she's great." He is excited about the birth of the baby and he describes his life with Pick: He writes, she makes lunch, he writes more and they watch movies together. "Really, it's very, very pleasant."
Today I prayed at the Western Wall in Jerusalem that God will continue to bless Israel and that God continue to strengthen the bond between Texas and Israel.
Very moved by this week's dedication ceremony of Beyt Dakir, the Museum of Moroccan #Jewish Heritage in Essaouira, in the presence of His Majesty King Mohammed VI of #Moroccopic.twitter.com/Xc4zl4Kz5Y
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.
Eugene Kontorovich, testifying before Congress this week in the hearing "Confronting the Rise in Anti-Semitic Domestic Terrorism", submitted his statement that included a legal argument that BDS is discriminatory against Jews that I had never heard before.
It makes no difference that these calls to boycott are aimed at Israel, rather than at Jews per se. Israel is the largest Jewish community in the world and is home to the plurality—and soon the majority—of the world's Jews. Refusals to deal that target Israel alone and not any other country offer a clear proxy for engaging in anti-Semitism under the cloak of political legitimacy. Partial boycotts are boycotts. Furthermore, discrimination need not be 100% congruent with the targeted class to be discrimination. Anti-discrimination laws make it clear that the use of proxies for race, sexual orientation, and so forth can be discriminatory.
Proxy discrimination is a form of facial discrimination. It arises when the defendant enacts a law or policy that treats individuals differently on the basis of seemingly neutral criteria that are so closely associated with the disfavored group that discrimination on the basis of such criteria is, constructively, facial discrimination against the disfavored group. For example, discriminating against individuals with gray hair is a proxy for age discrimination because "the 'fit' between age and gray hair is sufficiently close."
Some young people have grey hair, many older people do not. But to say that you are only discriminating against hair color and not age is obviously disingenuous because there is an obvious correlation between the two. Similarly, boycotting Israel, as the only Jewish state and the only state with a majority Jewish population, especially when other states whose egregious human rights violations do not attract any sort of boycott, is in effect antisemitic.
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.
ON JUNE 29, nine days after Neda's cruel end, Iran's Guardian Council conducted a "vote recount" at the behest of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei – who had declared Ahmadinejad's victory a "divine assessment" – and concluded, of course, that the election results were sound.
Shouts of "death to the dictator" from balconies throughout Iran ensued. Though the chanting was in Farsi, placards denouncing Ahmadinejad all were written in English – a clear signal of the protesters' plea for outside sympathy and aid.
Unfortunately for the trapped and subjugated Iranian people, however, the administration in Washington was now headed by Barack Obama. Obama had entered the White House a mere few months earlier with the aim of reversing the policies of his predecessor, George W. Bush, especially those relating to the Middle East in general and the Iranian threat in particular.
Believing that the path to ridding Iran of its nuclear and hegemonic ambitions would be through goodwill gestures to the mullahs, Obama not only abandoned the Bush-coined term "axis of evil" to define state sponsors of terrorism – with Iran at the top of the list – but referred to the militia-monitored election process there as a "robust debate."
He then continued to stress that America was going to engage in diplomacy with the Islamic Republic, regardless of who was at the helm.
Well, the proud "leader from behind" certainly kept his word on that one. As the regime in Tehran jailed, tortured and mowed down enough demonstrators to make the others recoil in fear – and Neda's image faded from global consciousness – Obama got busy with his P5+1 counterparts in China, France, Britain, Russia and Germany orchestrating and pushing for the bogus nuclear deal with Iran that was reached in July 2015.
Surveying the anti-government protests in Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran, as well as the refusal of the Syrian revolutionaries to surrender, the Canadian journalist Terry Glavin writes:
There is a revolution going on. It has been underway in fits and starts for years. It unites Lebanese, Syrians, Iranians, and Iraqis. Its object is the sundering of a bloody Khomeinist despotism that runs from the [Islamist dictatorship] in Tehran through the Assad regime in Damascus to Hizballah in Lebanon, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, and the Hashd al-Shaabi militias in Iraq, which have now insinuated themselves into every branch of the Iraqi state.
It's all very well for Canada's Justin Trudeau and the United Kingdom's Boris Johnson and Germany's Angela Merkel and France's Emmanuel Macron to want to force Tehran to get back in line with Barack Obama's nuclear-rapprochement arrangement, which Donald Trump has renounced. But the genie will not be put back in the bottle so easily.
It was Obama's nuclear deal that freed up [Iran's] Quds Force to enforce its ghastly Khomeinist hegemony throughout the region in the first place, and now, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani is warning that European soldiers in the region, not just American soldiers, may soon find themselves on the Quds Force's target list. Counseling a return to the Obama-era status quo is not a call to de-escalation. Don't believe it.
It is profoundly ill-advised. It may suit the purposes of some Canadian and European firms that are scraping for a place for themselves in the Iranian economy, much of which is owned and controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. But it would be a profound betrayal of the people of Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Iraq, who have already known little but betrayal from six successive Democratic and Republican administrations in the United States, and from the "West" generally, Canada included.
Britain's finance ministry on Friday said it had added Lebanon's entire Hezbollah movement to its list of terrorist groups subject to asset freezing.
The ministry previously only targeted the Shiite organisation's military wing but has now listed the whole group after the government designated it a terrorist organisation last March.
The change requires any individual or institution in Britain with accounts or financial services connected to Hezbollah to suspend them or face prosecution.
The group had "publicly denied a distinction between its military and political wings," the Treasury said in a notice posted on its website.
"The group in its entirety is assessed to be concerned in terrorism and was proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UK in March 2019," it added.
"This listing includes the Military Wing, the Jihad Council and all units reporting to it, including the External Security Organisation."
A finance ministry spokesman said the change followed its annual review of the asset freezing register, and brought it into line with the 2019 decision by the interior minister to blacklist all of Hezbollah.
"The UK remains committed to the stability of Lebanon and the region, and we continue to work closely with our Lebanese partners," the spokesman added.
Regardless of the prospects for success, it's now or never with the Trump plan. With only a year left in what will either be Trump's first or only term in office, the scheme is either going to have to be announced soon or forever be consigned to the dustbin of history.
But there's a better reason than that for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and O'Brien to publish the plan. Despite the fact that it will not lead to negotiations, it's important that a US government go on record on the issue in a manner consistent with the reality of the Middle East, rather than the fantasies that have been the foundation of all past American efforts.
For decades, the foreign-policy establishment has taken it as a given that the region will be embroiled in conflict unless Israel is made to retreat to the lines of June 1967, and a Palestinian state put in place alongside it. But lately, the Arab world's tacit renunciation of the Palestinian cause in the face of more important threats from Iran and Islamist terror groups show that assumption to be a fallacy.
The same is true for the notion that the appeasement of Palestinian territorial demands must be continued, regardless of whether the alleged moderates of Fatah and the Islamists of Hamas are ready to end their century-long war with Zionism and cease working for Israel's destruction.
Whatever you may think of Trump, his foreign policy has recognized that the obstacle to peace has been Palestinian intransigence and not Israeli policies. He has also understood that actions that reinforce Palestinian fantasies about Israel's destruction – like the United States not recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, or former President Barack Obama's desire for more "daylight" between America and Israel – make peace impossible.
A year from now, a new Democratic administration determined to restore Obama's policies may be about to take office. Still, it is important for the current administration to lay down a marker on peace that is rooted in realism, not the kind of magical thinking that actually fueled terror and intransigence in the past. Trump's ultimate place in history on other issues notwithstanding, it will be to his credit if he can leave his successors a Middle East blueprint that makes far more sense that the ones his predecessors handed down to him.
The interim head of the UN agency that aids Palestinian refugees on Thursday accused pro-Israel groups of lobbying foreign parliaments to stop donations, even as it struggled to recover from losing United States funding in 2018.
Christian Saunders, in an interview with Reuters in his Gaza office, also said Israel was seeking to replace United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) services for Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem with those of its own.
UNRWA has faced budgetary difficulties since 2018, when the United States, its biggest donor, halted its annual aid of $360 million. The United States and Israel have both accused UNRWA of mismanagement and anti-Israeli incitement.
Last November, UNRWA commissioner-general Pierre Krahenbuhl resigned amid an investigation into misconduct allegations.
In the interview, Saunders, now acting commissioner-general, said the inquiry by the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services was complete and Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had confirmed there had been no corruption or misuse of funds.
More than 120 members of Congress privately issued letters of support to a controversial Islamic-American advocacy group known for its involvement in one of America's most prominent terrorism financing cases, according to a copy of these official communications obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), an advocacy group with deep ties to the anti-Israel movement in America, touted its support among congressional leaders during its 2019 gala conference in November in Washington, D.C. Prominent opponents of the pro-Israel community, including anti-Israel activist Linda Sarsour and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.), headlined the conference.
A copy of CAIR's conference agenda, obtained by the Free Beacon and published here for the first time, includes well over 100 letters from Democratic and Republican members of Congress, all of whom expressed their support for the controversial organization. Democrats issued the majority of the letters, with only two coming from Republican members of Congress.
The breadth of congressional support for CAIR is likely to generate concern in the pro-Israel community, which has long been at odds with the advocacy group due to its promotion of anti-Israel activists and causes.
US presidential debates, though long, are not deep. The candidates have 75 seconds to answer questions, 45 seconds for responses and rebuttals, and 15 seconds for clarifications. It is a format that encourages superficial, sensationalist comments. Not being a topic of that type of discussion is not a bad thing.
But this situation is not likely to last through the campaign until November. After the nominating conventions in the summer, when it becomes Trump vs the Democratic nominee, Israel will be an issue – regardless of what is going on here at the time – because Trump will want to make his strong support of Israel an issue.
Trump, unlike those running in the Democratic race now, will want his pro-Israel bona fides trumpeted far and wide, because this is something that his base – first and foremost the Evangelicals – wants and appreciates.
While none of the Democratic candidates have an interest in making Israel a campaign issue now, Trump will want to do so later in the year. Some are making the argument that his apparent interest in releasing his long-awaited peace plan, the "Deal of the Century," before Israel's elections on March 3 is not to give a boost to Netanyahu – as many have opined – but, rather, to help himself with his base.
In any event, while Israel was completely ignored in Tuesday's debate and has not been an issue in the Democratic race, that will change when the race between the two parties' nominees begins. And then Israel will likely find itself in an uncomfortable position: a wedge issue in an ugly political campaign.
Democratic presidential candidates hoping to win the endorsement of The New York Times are being interrogated by Times editors about whether they'll commit to shutting down the American embassy in Israel's capital.
President Donald Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem in May 2018, fulfilling a campaign promise and finally bringing America into compliance with the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995. The widely predicted violent reaction by regional Arabs rapidly fizzled out. But the Times editorial board members appear to be nursing a grudge about the matter, at least to judge by their questions to the Democratic presidential candidates.
Undoing the embassy move has emerged as a standard topic in the Times endorsement interviews, as much a part of the routine as questions on more traditional Democratic platform planks such as reproductive rights or antitrust enforcement against technology companies.
The Times has been trickling out transcripts of the candidate interviews in advance of its theatrical reveal of the newspaper's endorsement, which is scheduled for Jan. 19.
The funniest of these interactions has been the Times interview with Amy Klobuchar, a senator from Minnesota. The Times deputy editorial page editor, Kathleen Kingsbury, asks Klobuchar, "President Trump has made several unilateral moves in relations to Israel. Things like moving the American Embassy to Jerusalem. If you took over would you reverse them as president?"
Klobuchar answered in part, "I would not reverse the embassy change."
Kingsbury wouldn't let it go: "I do actually want to go back to something you just said, to follow up. Why wouldn't you move the embassy back?"
A Muslim Iraqi refugee has launched her bid to enter Congress - and plans to unseat Ilhan Omar as the Representative for Minneapolis in the process.
Dalia al-Aquidi is tired of hearing the Democratic representative play a divisive identity politics game, so she has joined a growing field of Republicans determined to take the Somalian-born congresswoman out at the next election.
"She's spreading hatred, and she is spreading racism throughout not only her district, not only her state, but throughout the whole country, and this is very important," al-Aqidi, 51, told the New York Post on Thursday after announcing her bid. "She's hurting the moderate Muslims; Muslims like myself. She doesn't represent me as a Muslim."
Speaking to Fox News, she added: "She needs to be stopped. I truly believe that I'm strong enough to beat her at her own game."
With the death of Sultan Qaboos Al Said of Oman, at the age of 79, Israel lost a long-time friend and strategic partner.
Britain initiated diplomatic ties between Israel and Oman during the 1970s, when Oman was dealing with an invasion from Yemen into the southern part of the country.
Following the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of 1979, Oman, along with Sudan, were the only Arab League members not to boycott Egypt over normalizing relations with Israel.
In 1994, Qaboos hosted then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the first known trip by an Israeli leader to an Arab Gulf state.
In 1996, Qaboos invited then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres to inaugurate an Israeli trade office and the Middle East Desalination Research Center in Muscat. He also introduced Peres to the then-Emir of Qatar.
In 2018, Qaboos invited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Muscat.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson emphatically pledged on Wednesday to "stamp out the resurgence of antisemitism."
Johnson — during Prime Minister's Questions at the House of Commons — was asked by Conservative MP Andrew Percy whether, in light of the approaching International Holocaust Remembrance Day, he would "commit to more action to stamp out antisemitism and all intolerance in this country."
The prime minister replied, "We are in the government and in the House — I think across the House — wanting to do absolutely everything we can to stamp out the resurgence of antisemitism."
"As someone who's now 55-years-old," he said, "I find it absolutely incredible that in the 21st century we have antisemitism rising again in this country."
"It is a disgrace and we must stamp it out," the prime minister emphasized.
On Tuesday, another statement rejecting antisemitism was made in the House of Lords.
The newly-installed Lord John Mann, a former Labour MP who was outspoken against antisemitism in the party under the rule of Jeremy Corbyn, said December's elections — in which Labour was resoundingly defeated — showed the "true face of this country."
Mann hailed the defeat of two virulently anti-Israel MPs, Christopher Williamson and George Galloway, both widely seen as antisemitic.
Italian opposition leader Matteo Salvini of the League Party held an event on combating anti-Semitism at the Senate in Rome on Thursday. Salvini called on Italy to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism, and plans to propose the criminalization of anti-Semitic hate speech.
"It seems he is thinking of taking far stronger action on anti-Semitism than many of his European counterparts," said Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs President Dore Gold. Gold called the event an "important meeting" because "Salvini as a national figure in Italy taking on anti-Semitism is a big deal. He sets a tone now for conservative politics across Europe. That is something I hope others imitate."
Gold recounted that when he was director-general of the Israel Foreign Ministry, there were constant deliberations about Israeli relations with right-wing parties in Europe like the League.
"What I feel is that when somebody shows friendship for our most fundamental interests, we have to reciprocate. When I got the request to come to Salvini's seminar, I immediately said 'yes.' I think that will help promote more sympathetic views of Israel and our most important interests in future contacts with Europe. Imagine if he goes out on a limb and no one from Israel comes. That would be terrible," Gold said.
At the event, Gold said, "In recent years there has been a veritable explosion in the number of anti-Semitic incidents...in the heart of Western civilization." He called to combat anti-Semitism from the "Red-Green Alliance," including Iranian influence around the world. He also pointed to connections between European NGOs and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, recognized as a terrorist organization in Europe.
"Victory begins with defense," says Brig. Gen. Ran Kochav, commander of the IDF's air defense program.
"It's not the victory itself, but that's where it begins. My role is to allow the captain to stay calm while making decisions – not to attack based on public opinion or casualties, but calmly. The air defenses have racked up some 2,000 interceptions. Imagine what would have happened if those missiles had fallen and each one of them had killed someone. We would have been at war long ago."
Q: Have we become addicted to defense?
"The division and brigade commanders are angry with me. They say that I'm the reason they aren't on maneuvers. I think they're wrong. We should maneuver in the Gaza Strip for every rocket fired from Gaza? We should head to Damascus over every missile fired at Mount Hermon? If missiles are fired from Iraq, should we deploy there? The courage in launching an action isn't in the action itself, but in making the decision."
Q: Perhaps your phenomenal success has freed the captain from having to make a decision.
"The fact is, in Operation Protective Edge we launched an offensive. This year, too, with Operation Black Belt [in the Gaza Strip]. But we decided when we would launch the attack, and we were well–prepared, and we succeeded. That's proof we aren't addicted.
"Defense is the base. You can't win in soccer or basketball without defense. It's the starting point that allows for victory."
Israeli aircraft attacked targets in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday for the second day in a row, as tensions rose on the volatile border.
The strikes came in response to explosives-laden balloons that were sent from Gaza into Israel earlier in the day.
"A short time ago an IDF combat helicopter attacked infrastructure used for underground activity by the Hamas terror organization in the northern Gaza Strip. The attack was carried out in response to explosive balloons sent from the Gaza Strip into Israel territory today," the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement.
There were no immediate reports from Gaza on damage or casualties in the strikes.
Video published by Israel's Kan news purported to show Hamas members leaving a post ahead of the strike.
Earlier Thursday, at least two clusters of balloons carrying explosive devices were apparently launched from the Strip into southern Israel, with one of them detonating soon after impact, police said.
One of the clusters landed in an open field and the other got tangled in a tree.
Police sappers were called to the scenes in the Sdot Negev region east of Gaza.
Several hundred Muslim worshipers fomented unrest at Jerusalem's Temple Mount Friday following pre-dawn morning prayers, police said.
Authorities said officers broke up a procession that included nationalistic chants at the holy site, after some 8,000 people concluded morning prayers.
"Police will not allow disorderly conduct at the Temple Mount and will act to prevent any unrest or nationalist calls," a statement from police said.
The Hamas terror group had on Wednesday called for Palestinians to "mobilize" during Friday's prayers against the "defilement" of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Hebron's Tomb of the Patriarchs by "the Zionist occupation." The group said Israeli authorities must be warned that "our sanctities are a red line that cannot be tolerated."
On Friday it welcomed the unrest at the compound, with a spokesman saying the morning prayers "support our people in their campaign against the Zionist occupation and thwart its racist plans."
A survey of young people from around the world shows that young Israelis are less optimistic than any other group about resolving the conflict in their region, the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot reported on Thursday.
The poll conducted by the Red Cross showed that 65% of Israeli millennials believed that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would never be resolved.
Only 8% said that conflict would end sometime in the next 20 years, and an even lower 4.5% predicted it would end within the next five years.
Young Palestinians, on the other hand, were slightly more optimistic, although 52% said that the conflict would never end.
At the same time, 17% said the conflict would be resolved in their lifetimes, 11% in the next 20 years and only 5% in the next five years.
Regarding the ethics of war, a full 82% of young Israelis believed wars must be limited, and 61% felt soldiers must avoid harming civilians as much as possible. A similar 59% of young Palestinians agreed.
Only 32% of Israelis said that the military should do whatever is necessary to accomplish its goals, without regard to civilian casualties, while 22% of Palestinians felt the same way.
An amusement park in the southern Gaza Strip recently unveiled a train ride that seeks to simulate a journey from the isolated coastal enclave to Jerusalem's Old City, home to a number of Islamic holy sites.
The ride, which spans 550 meters and features two elevated tracks, is the newest attraction at the Asdaa City theme park in Khan Younis. It was built on land that formerly belonged to the Ganei Tal settlement, which was evacuated after Israel decided to withdraw from Gaza in 2005.
It took more than two years to construct and was named "The Train of Return to Jerusalem," according to Wael al-Khalili, the chairman of Asdaa's board of directors.
"This was the dream of every Palestinian in Gaza and now it has become a reality with the efforts of the Palestinian minds that built this project," he said in a post on the amusement park's Facebook page in early January.
While Israel controls Jerusalem and considers it to be a part of its sovereign territory, the Palestinians view it as their capital and a key center of Palestinian culture.
Before ascending to the train tracks, visitors see a large sign with the number 99, resembling the distance in kilometers from Asdaa to Jerusalem.
In Parliamentary Session, Jordanian MP Ghazi Al-Hawamleh Opposes Jordan's Gas Deal with Israel, Exclaims in Several Languages: No to Israeli Gas! No to the Gas of the Jews! pic.twitter.com/e9SXqgykUT
A January 13 article in the UK outlet The Times ("Prayers to be held as Jews mark return of synagogue") touched upon the fact that over 99% of Egypt's Jewish population left the country in the years following World War II: During the liberal era in Egypt in the first half of the 20th century, Jews played important roles in Egyptian political, economic, and cultural life, with 25,000 of the country's estimated population of 80,000 Jews living in Alexandria. Nearly all left after the founding of Israel in 1948 and during subsequent conflicts between the two countries. Magda Haroun, the head of the community in Egypt, says only five remain, all of them elderly women, plus another 100 who converted at some point to Christianity or Islam.
But this fails to note precisely why nearly 80,000 Jews left: the government's imprisonment, torture, and expulsion of Jews; anti-Jewish violence; and other anti-Jewish policies that made it impossible for Jews to stay.
The website of JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa) provides a good summary: With the establishment of Israel in 1948, the Egyptian government began enforcing aggressive and repressive measures against Jews including; confiscation of property, imprisonments, torture, and institutionalized discrimination. Riots against Jews were common leaving many injured and some dead. Black Saturday on January 26, 1952 started as a demonstration against the British and resulted in riots against Jews which left 500 businesses destroyed and many Jews injured or dead.
Gamal Abdel Nasser was appointed the second President of Egypt, from 1956 until his death in 1970, and with his rule began widespread pan-Arabism and worsening conditions for the Jews. The Suez Crisis in 1956 was an attack on Egypt by the French, British, and Israelis. As a result, Nasser declared that the Jews were enemies of the state and the massive expulsion of the Jews continued with 25,000 Jews fleeing. Jews were given two days to evacuate their property, which was later confiscated by the government, and were forced to leave with one bag and no more than twenty dollars in hand. Nearly 1,000 of those who remained in Egypt were imprisoned or tortured. Jewish refugees who had once prospered in Egypt were left with nearly nothing.
Turkey's Religious Affairs Presidency places the blame on the internet. "There is a lot of misinformation on the Internet. We are often shocked at the queries (the department receives from citizens)... they ask us if one can be a Muslim theist," said Ekrem Keleş, head of Supreme Board of Religious Affairs.
The AKP's effort to forge a new generation of young religious conservatives has been undermined by the party's own actions, offered İhsan Eliaçık, a left-wing Islamic theologian and a fierce critic of Erdoğan. "People saw that even though they claimed to be Muslims, they committed the worst sins," Eliaçık told Financial Times, accusing the ruling party of human rights abuses and corruption.
Erdoğan's government boasts of operating a huge network of state institutions for religious education, including the Education Ministry, Quranic courses and the Religious Affairs General Directorate. The state employs 100,000 imams, 40,000 Quran teachers, 3,000 religious orators and 1,250 muftis. There are 5,000 imam schools (of secondary school and high school level). Apparently this big army of Muslim faith purveyors has failed to impress many Turks. According to a survey by Ipsos, an international pollster, only 12% of Turks trust Islamic clerics, an embarrassing figure -- less than half the 26% of Turks who expressed trust in total strangers. The only less-trusted profession in Turkey, according to Ipsos, are politicians (only 11% trust them).
Half the population of Turkey is under the age of 32 -- a young population. Many of these young Turks are, it seems, pushing back against Erdoğan's state-imposed Islamization.
The more Erdoğan uses the state's police power to indoctrinate young Turks in favor of devout political Islam, the more they tend to put a distance between themselves and Erdoğan's "devout generations" campaign.
Perhaps Erdoğan's best service to his country is to show young Turks what it actually means to live under an Islamist regime.
France will deploy the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier and its battle group from January to April to support French military operations in Middle East, Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday.
"The aircraft carrier will support Chammal operations (in the Middle East) from January to April 2020 before deploying to the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea", Macron said at a New Year speech to the French military.
The deployment comes amid growing tensions between Iran and the United States and French concerns that the fight against Islamic State militants may be weakened within that context.
I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Israeli experts in security, intelligence, international law, history and politics, in off-the-record conversations about Israel's current "war between the wars" with Iran and its challenges in managing its interests at home and abroad. With the demise of Iranian military chief Qasem Soleimani in a US airstrike at Baghdad International Airport, Israel and its experts are reassessing their strategies regarding Iran.
The one common denominator expressed by all the experts was the importance of maintaining the strength of the US-Israel relationship. As former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eizenkot wrote in a recent policy paper, Guidelines for Israel's National Security Strategy, the special US-Israel relationship is a "cornerstone of the overall Israeli effort to attain national security by political means."
Every authority I spoke with was concerned about the hyper-polarization of American politics, with Israel becoming a partisan issue. That relationship will now be put to the test as everything in the Middle East has now changed and is more unpredictable with the assassination of the architect of Iran's hegemonic ambitions who created the world's most dangerous terrorist organization while perfecting asymmetric warfare.
Soleimani, who commanded the overseas Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, wrought destruction, death, civil war, and committed war crimes across the region, was justifiably eliminated.
Critics of US President Donald Trump, aside from making news by criticizing virtually everything he does, rightly worried about how Iran would respond, as did Israel, but targeting Soleimani – "the epitome of evil," as Gen. David Petraeus described him a decade ago – should rise above partisanship.
The US was within its rights to pre-emptively strike a proven master terrorist with imminent plans to kill more Americans. It is now only a matter of time before the Israel-bashers further test the "unbreakable relationship," claiming that the US is doing Israel's work, the tail wagging the dog, and drawing Washington into another Middle East war.
On the nuclear front, the IDF does not believe that Iran is currently interested in rapidly "breaking out" and developing an atomic bomb as quickly as possible. Though the military sees Iran's ongoing violations of the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as a troubling development, it does not assess that Iran is inclined to race toward a weapon.
Following Soleimani's death, Tehran announced it would no longer abide by the limits on quantities and levels of enrichment for uranium of the JCPOA — the latest in a line of violations of the agreement since US President Donald Trump abandoned the deal in 2018. Israel believes that these violations are not meant to signify an effort to develop a nuclear bomb as quickly as possible, but are rather meant to serve as a form of pressure on the other signatories of the JCPOA.
However, should it choose to "break out" rapidly, by the fall of 2020 Iran would be able to produce the 1,300 kilograms (2,900 pounds) of low-enriched uranium needed to get the 25 kilograms (55 pounds) of highly enriched uranium necessary for a bomb, assuming it continued at current projected rates, according to Israeli assessments. The overall current assessment is that Iran is potentially two years from a bomb — the same time frame that has been assessed for some time.
For Iran, while there is relatively broad consensus on the importance of its nuclear program, it is facing increasing pressure domestically to abandon or limit its expansionism as American sanctions wreak havoc on the Iranian economy.
The IDF sees the ongoing protests throughout Iran, which began in November, as the most significant challenge to the regime led by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei since the Islamic revolution that brought it to power in 1979.
US State Dept: Administration Continues Maximum Pressure Campaign Against Iranian Regime
Bottom line: We can diminish the nefarious influence of the Islamic Republic, but we can't end it without ending the regime. Even a weakened regime in Iran continues to pose a national security threat to the US.
Now imagine a world in which Iranians have an accountable government that upholds their dignity and pursues prosperity. A world where Iran functions as a normal nation-state and works with Israel and the US as partners. Such a change would make it dramatically easier for us to decrease our regional footprint.
America can't "fix" Iran. It can't create a new regime for the Iranians. And no one expects that after the "nation-building" disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Team Trump can assist Iranians — foremost, by not rushing to ink a new nuclear deal with a regime that is losing its grip by the day. Such a deal could stabilize the regime's finances and prolong its life.
The policy of maximum economic pressure should continue, as it buys time for the opposition to organize itself around a clear vision for Iran's future, one that is inclusive and nationalistic. More pressure on the regime will provide a space for Iranians inside and outside the country to merge their efforts and create the leadership that will be necessary to replace Iran's current rulers.
Contrary to anti-Trump pundits' claims, Trump's words and deeds haven't unified Iranians behind the regime. His most recent tweet in Persian, for example, was the most-liked tweet in that language in Twitter's history. By continuing the economic pressure and steering clear of the regime's bazaar-style nuclear tricks, Trump has a great chance of success. Success that only the likes of Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt have achieved in the history of American foreign policy.
Tehran's propaganda tries to sell Soleimani as a kind of superman who, almost single-handedly, brought Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and parts of Afghanistan and Yemen under Iranian control. Facts, however, offer a different portrait of the late general. Soleimani joined the Islamic revolution in 1980 at age 27. With no proper training, Soleimani found himself in command of a division of raw recruits. Under his command, Iranian forces suffered three of their biggest defeats in operations Al-Fajr 8, and Karbala I and Karbala II.
However, Soleimani, demonstrating his genius for networking and self-promotion, scored a lasting victory when he attached himself to Ali Khamenei, the mullah who was to become the Islamic Republic's "Supreme Guide." Thanks to Khamenei's support, Soleimani succeeded in securing an independent fiefdom in the Quds Force which, though formally part of the Revolutionary Guard, has its own separate budget and chain of command and is answerable to no one but Khamenei.
Soleimani seized control of Tehran's foreign policy in Arab countries, Afghanistan, North Korea, South America, and even Russia. Inside Iran, Soleimani built a state within the state. The Quds Force operates 25 jetties in five Iranian ports for its "imports and exports," with no intervention by the relevant authorities. A levy on imports of foreign cars is reserved for a special fund, controlled by the Quds Force, to cover expenditures in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and help pro-Iran Palestinian groups.
Hundreds of Iranian and Arab militants have enrolled in Western universities with scholarships from the Quds Force. The Quds Force runs banks, several shipping lines and an airline. Some analysts in Tehran believe that Khamenei was planning to make Soleimani president of the Islamic Republic in 2021.
Egyptian Cleric Muhammad Al-Zoghbi: Khamenei Was Crying at Soleimani's Funeral because Iran's Arms Have Been Cut off; This Is the End of the Iranian Regime pic.twitter.com/r2XQzxvR7h
Eleven U.S. service members reportedly received treatment for injuries that they sustained during the missile attack that Iran launched on January 8, 2020, which top officials stated at the time resulted in no causalities.
"No one was killed or wounded in the five barrages of multiple missiles that night, although several military personnel who were working were checked for concussions," The New York Times reported. "The absence of casualties seemed to be the result of luck and warnings."
Defense One reported that a spokesman for the U.S. military command in Baghdad said: "As previously stated, while no U.S. service members were killed in the Jan. 8 Iranian attack on Al Asad Air base, several were treated for concussion symptoms from the blast and are still being assessed."
"Out of an abundance of caution, some service members were transported from Al Asad Air Base, Iraq to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, others were sent to Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, for follow-on screening," said Col. Myles Caggins, spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve. "When deemed fit for duty, the service members are expected to return to Iraq following screening. The health and welfare of our personnel is a top priority and we will not discuss any individual's medical status."
A separate U.S. defense official speaking on background told Defense One that eleven Americans had been sent out of Iraq for treatment.
Probably the most overlooked aspect of the "flags on the sidewalk" phenomenon in Iran is that, as the regime paints those flags everywhere, hoping Iranians will step on them, it is basically symbolizing its – the regime's – effective "occupation" by its obsession with the Great Satan and the Little Satan.
Not focusing on that point is as it should be, of course. The nobility and honor of Iranians who refuse to tread on the foreign flags are what is most important. Americans and Israelis are awed to see such courageous signs of goodwill and respect. I know I speak for many when I say we wish we had more direct ways to convey our reciprocal admiration and support to the Iranian people.
But the "Trump effect" is still worth mentioning. In the U.S., it often manifests through something President Trump has said or tweeted (or is alleged to have said), which Trump himself doesn't bother to address further, but which his media and political opponents then spend days repeating and amplifying, as if they just can't help themselves.
A good example: the "sh**hole country" episode. There's a dispute as to whether Trump even used that expression during a meeting at the White House with congressional leaders (some who were present insist he didn't say it, and there was no clear video or audio evidence). But for days after the allegation was made – i.e., that Trump said it alluding negatively to poor, less-developed nations – the mainstream media said "sh**hole country" over and over and over and over again.
When they weren't saying it amongst themselves in news talk segments, they were interviewing Democratic politicians who repeated it indignantly in order to call out Trump. It was as if a spell had been cast on them all, and they couldn't break free of the compulsion to say "sh**hole country."
The barrage of repetitions was so noticeable, some on the right made video compilations of them. Trump, meanwhile, went on about his business, like the stock character in comedy who wanders through scenes unintentionally leaving mayhem in his wake.
Similar acts of defiance by people in Iran have been reported in recent years but the public refusal of large groups of students to walk on depictions of U.S. flags appears to be unprecedented.
Tehran University professor Sadegh Zibakalam, who in 2016 publicly refused to walk on U.S. and Israeli flags painted on the floor of a university building, reposted a video of his actions on his Instagram page while welcoming the recent public shows of defiance by Iranian students.
Zibakalam said in the past two years he's faced attacks from hard-liners who, he said, have called him a "traitor" and an "anti-revolutionary" for going to great lengths -- including climbing along a bannister -- to avoid stepping on U.S. and Israeli flags.
"When I saw that students in this country are not willing, like in the past, to step on American flags, the pain of all the insults [from people] went away," the outspoken Zibakalam said on Instagram on January 14.
Zibakalam said in an interview that his refusal to trample on the U.S. and Israeli flags had earned him praise from many ordinary Iranians.
"To put it bluntly, I had never received so much praise from Iranians," he said. "The volume of praise and approval was unbelievable."
Attention certain DC politicians & those refusing to condemn the murderous regime in #Iran
This is how the mullahs brainwash elementary schoolchildren for state TV propaganda. pic.twitter.com/x4v0BWBmsM
The Revolutionary Guards can take their fight beyond Iran's borders, the supreme leader said on Friday, responding to the U.S. killing of his country's most prominent commander and to anti-government unrest at home over the downing of an airliner.
In his first Friday prayers sermon in eight years, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also told thousands of Iranians who chanted "Death to America!" that European powers could not be trusted in Iran's nuclear standoff with Washington.
Iran's nuclear ambitions have been at the heart of a months-long crisis, which briefly erupted in January into tit-for-tat military strikes between Iran and the United States.
"Resistance must continue until the region is completely freed from the enemy's tyranny," Khamenei said, demanding that U.S. troops leave neighboring Iraq and the wider Middle East.
Washington's withdrawal in 2018 from Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers and the reimposition of U.S. sanctions that have crippled Iran's economy, led to the latest cycle of hostilities between Washington and Tehran, which have been at odds since the 1979 revolution toppled the U.S.-backed shah.
An official for the Iranian-sponsored Popular Mobilization Units declared in a video that Iraq is not a country for homosexuals or collaborators, and that his organization will obliterate government protestors.
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) posted a video on Thursday that revealed PMU Official Ali Al-Husseini's anti-gay diatribe. "Iraq is not a country for collaboration, espionage, Joker [gangs], or homosexuals," he said, according to MEMRI's translation. "Every day, I hear you call people filthy. [But] you are the filthy ones! Your families are filthy – filthy; You are the filthy ones! Your families are filthy. You were brought up in filth.
"You were brought up in the streets by the Baath [Party], by its female comrades, and by the filthy and accursed pro-Saddam Baathists," Husseini continued. "Inshallah [God willing], when we go to the squares for our million-man demonstration, we will end all this."
He continued, saying that, "If God so wills it, we will shut down [the anti-government protesters'] squares of prostitution, humiliation, Joker [gangs], spies, scandal and abasement. Our square is the square of resistance, heroes, mujahideen [jihadists], and rejection of the occupiers. Inshallah, we shall eliminate them and drive them out of Iraq, by the power of God, the Prophet's family, the mujahideen, and the resistance axis."
Amir Ali Hajizadeh is the IRGC officer commanding the forces that shot down the Ukrainian airliner. Pity his host, who had a child on that flight. Hajizadeh commandeered his living room to stage a press conference & exploit his grief as a political prop. pic.twitter.com/jpaTLoe9aO
Bernie Sanders, a top competitor in the Democratic primaries, has attacked Joe Biden for bringing "just a lot of baggage" into the race. But if past views are a major consideration, consider the baggage that Sanders drags into the campaign.
Go back over 40 years, to the start of Iran's long conflict with the United States. On April 1, 1979, the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran was proclaimed. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had returned to Iran from exile to assume command of the revolt, became Supreme Leader in December of that year. His rise was accelerated by the seizure on Nov. 4 of 52 American diplomats and citizens, and citizens of other countries, at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. The hostage crisis became the means by which the Ayatollah crushed political opponents in Iran. Dealing with the hostage taking became the overwhelming political crisis for President Jimmy Carter. It lasted 444 days.
Virtually all Americans—Democrats, Republicans and independents—united in support of the hostages and the international call for their freedom. One prominent political figure on the 2020 stage, then almost completely unknown, stood apart by joining a Marxist-Leninist party that not only pledged support for the Iranian theocracy, but also justified the hostage taking by insisting the hostages were all likely CIA agents. Who was that person? It was Bernie Sanders.
Sanders would like the public to believe, as an AP story put it, that "democratic socialism [is] the economic philosophy that has guided his political career." But that has not always been the case. In 1977, he left the tiny left-wing Liberty Union Party of Vermont that he'd co-founded, and in 1980 instead aligned himself with the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the self-proclaimed Trotskyist revolutionary party, became its presidential elector in Vermont, and campaigned for its candidates and platform that defended the Iranian hostage seizure.
In fact, the SWP's position on Iran is part of what distinguishes it from democratic socialist groups. When its presidential candidate, Andrew Pulley, came to speak at the University of Vermont in October 1980, Sanders chaired the meeting. Pulley attracted only 40 students to his rally, where he concentrated, according to the SWP's newspaper The Militant, "on the Iran-Iraq war," and condemned "anti-Iranian hysteria around the U.S. hostages." Military action against Iran was not at that point theoretical—Pulley's speech came six months after the attempt to free the hostages in Operation Eagle Claw had failed.
In his standard stump speech, Pulley condemned "Carter's war drive against the Iranian people," and said that the U.S. "was on the brink of war with Iran," which would be fought "to protect the oil and banking interests of the Rockefellers and other billionaires." Americans, he predicted, would soon "pay on the battlefields with our very own lives." Their criticism of the Ayatollah was intended "to get us ready for war." And, Pulley charged, the media who criticized those of us who were against "American imperialism" were "declared insane." As for the hostages, Pulley said "we can be sure that many of them are simply spies… or people assigned to protect the spies."
EXPOSED: @NBCNews contributor Hooman Majd, journalists' "oracle" on Iran, is deeply entangled with the Ayatollah Khamenei regime: accredited as Iran delegate to UN, flies on regime's jet with their top nuclear deal negotiators & more.
Abdul Hakim Awad, Member of Fatah Revolutionary Council: "Quds Force Commander" Is an Empty Title; Qasem Soleimani, Iran Have Done Nothing for Jerusalem pic.twitter.com/Hbd2X6K4ns
Former Kuwaiti Minister Ali Al-Baghli: Kuwaitis Who Convert to Judaism, Other Religions Should Not Lose Their Citizenship; Our Laws Does Not Forbid Conversion pic.twitter.com/AKp7yOspCC
During the First Gulf War, Iraqi Scud missiles rained down on Israeli cities. Mid performance by the #Israel Philharmonic, sirens went off, but the great violinist Isaac Stern was not to be deterred. 🇮🇱 🎷 Video: The Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archivepic.twitter.com/GXDWKudsKY
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