Elder of Ziyon 04/17 Links Pt2: Google Algorithm Continues To Spread Antisemitism And Holocaust Denial; Congresswomen to Speak at Anti-Israel Group’s ‘Online Gala’
On Google's image search (images.google.com), benign search terms relating to Jews or Yiddish phrases yield alarmingly hateful and inciting results. Antisemitic and racist caricatures appear among top search results leading to white supremacist and conspiracy websites. Moreover, Google's search algorithm, which suggests additional search terms for the user to click on in order to narrow the search, includes primarily white supremacist and antisemitic terminology, leading the user toward further misinformation and other hateful content.
The following report shows the terms suggested by Google image search after inputting the Yiddish exclamation of surprise "oy vey," along with the terms "Shoah" – Holocaust – and others.
"Oy Vey"
After searching images.google.com with the term "oy vey", the engine suggests numerous additional related search terms. The first suggestions include: "merchant," "shoah," "6 trillion," "shlomo," and "6 million." Many of the images yielded by the search originate on platforms that are popular with white supremacists and neo-Nazis, including 4Chan, 8Chan, Reddit, and others. Clicking on these images will direct the user to those websites.
One of the antisemitic images that appear among the first search results for the term "Oy Vey," originally from the online forum Reddit, shows popular white supremacist meme Pepe the Frog, here depicted as a Jewish caricature, with the text: "Knowing you would jew your own friends in a heartbeat."
The Happy Merchant
The first suggestion, "merchant," is paired with a thumbnail depicting a popular antisemitic caricature of a Jew, called the happy merchant, or simply the merchant. Clicking on the suggestion yields endless iterations of the antisemitic meme.
The results after clicking the suggested term "merchant."
Some examples of the images include the merchant character being sprayed with a can marked with a Star of David and the text "Jew-B-Gone." The merchant is depicted as weeping and saying "Oy Vey! It's like second Shoah!" The text on the bottom of the image reads: "Exterminates 99.99% of pesky rodents!" This image appears twice in the first three rows of search results. When clicking on the image, the Google algorithm suggests similar images, including one titled "Backstabbing Jew", depicting the Merchant hugging another figure and brandishing a knife behind their back.
One of the first results yielded by adding the suggested term "merchant."
Another result in the search above is a comic strip depicting the merchant brokering a trade of African slaves to the U.S. Africans are also represented in the comic with a racist stereotype,
Another of the first results yielded by adding the suggested term "merchant" is a racist and antisemitic depiction of the Jew as slave trader.
"Shoah" "Shoah," referring to the Jewish Holocaust, is accompanied by a thumbnail of the same merchant caricature rendered on a pizza in a reference to the conspiracy theory known as Pizzagate.[1] Clicking on the suggestion yields similarly antisemitic results.
One of the first images is a caricature of a grotesque Jewish figure, shown with a bag of money labeled "Your tax dollars," standing in a crematorium. The text around the image reads: "If you see this image while scrolling the first page you have been visited by the JEW OF OTHERWORLDLY GREED[;] Great riches and prosperity will come to you but only if you post 'Muh six million, it's a whole new shoah!' in this thread[.] Oy very, it's a whole new shoah!"
CAMERA researchers Tricia Miller, Ph.D. and Dexter Van Zile recently spoke at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention. They spoke at Media Summit organized by Proclaiming Justice to the Nations led by Laurie Cardoza-Moore.
Miller spoke about how Palestinian Christians have offered a distorted view of the Arab-Israeli conflict and have promoted an anti-Jewish replacement theology in their campaign to delegitimize Israel. Van Zile spoke about how Christian peace organization such as the World Council of Churches and Churches for Middle East Peace have facilitated the spread of antisemitism in the United States and Europe. Other speakers included Sandra Alfonsi, Andrew Bostom, Rev. Jeffrey Jemison, Rabbi Jonathan Hausman, Jan Markell, and Carol Swain.
Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, a Christian organization dedicated to countering the demonization of Israel has posted the videos of the talks from the media summit on its YouTube channel.
In addition to these talks, CAMERA researchers Sean Durns and Dexter Van Zile spoke recently about Rick Steves' indifference toward the suffering of Baha'is in Iran.
Dexter Van Zile speaks about the role churches and Christian peacemaking organizations such as Churches for Middle East Peace and the World Council of Churches have helped mainstream Jew-hatred in a post-Holocaust world.
When Human Rights Supports Terrorism
Last week, the New York Times published an exposé on Hind Khoudary, a Palestinian researcher and journalist who informed Hamas about a peace activist's 'crime' of hosting Zoom calls with Israeli peace activists. The New York Times failed to mention that Khoudary was an employee of Amnesty International. This is not the first time employees of the "human rights" organization have supported terrorists. Context matters. Details matter. And the media owe the public all the facts.
The internationally recognized Working Definition of Antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) emphatically affirms that criticisms of Israel and antisemitism are not mutually exclusive. The IHRA is made up of 33 democratic countries, including Australia.
The IHRA definition says that when criticism of Israel: is couched in terms which employ or appeal to negative stereotypes of Jewish people generally; or denies the Jewish people their right to self-determination; Â or applies double standards by requiring of Israel standards of behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation; or holds Jews collectively responsible for actions of the State of Israel; then the line has been crossed. It's antisemitism.
So, when law-abiding Australian Jews who support Israel are accused of being more loyal to Israel than Australia, it's antisemitism. When Jews are said to have inordinate control over the media, economy, and government as a means of supporting Israel, it's antisemitism.
Claiming that the State of Israel is a racist endeavor - smearing Israel as an "apartheid state" - is a way of denying the legitimacy of a Jewish state and thus denying Jewish people their right to national self-determination.
On April 4, 1920, the Nebi Musa riots in Jerusalem, named for the Muslim festival memorializing the birth of Moses, left five Jews dead, 211 injured, and at least two women raped. As Bruce Hoffman documented in his 2015 book Anonymous Soldiers: "A large Arab crowd had gathered just outside Jaffa Gate. Egged on by tendentious speakers from the nearby Arab Club, the crowd began to chant the rhyming Arabic couplet: 'Palestine is our land, the Jews are our dogs!'"
When trying to make sense of Arab violence in the Middle East, Western analysts tend to fall back on predictable cliches: riots result from resentment, oppression, poverty, or perhaps "ancient hatreds"; where the riots involve Palestinians, they are also the result of frustrated national aspirations.
In the case of the Nebi Musa riots, none of these explanations fit. To the extent that national aspirations were involved, they had nothing to do with Palestinian statehood, and everything to do with the incorporation of Palestinian Arabs into Greater Syria. The riots were an attempt to influence Arab opinion by showing support for Syrian rule of the territory.
Moreover, the British rewarded Haj Amin al-Husseini, who addressed the crowd before the riots, by creating the position of grand mufti of Jerusalem for him. He concluded that the risks of instigating pogroms were low, and resorted to this tactic in 1929 and then again from 1936 to 1939.
Within days of becoming the first Allied Medical Officer to enter the German "horror camp" of Bergen-Belsen, Brigadier H.L. Glyn Hughes set about creating the largest hospital in Europe. In the course of fighting typhus and starvation at Bergen-Belsen, the British officer began using an unusual set of parameters in making his plans: death rates, alongside numbers of mass graves and typhus-infected barracks. In her new book, All the Horrors of War: A Jewish Girl, a British Doctor, and the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, author Bernice Lerner juxtaposes the feats orchestrated by Hughes with the plight of her own mother, one of the inmates liberated by the officer.
When Hughes arrived with the British army, he was forced to make immediate decisions about triage. In addition to the corpses stacked everywhere, there were 60,000 survivors who needed urgent medical attention. "His highly focused plan involved placing inmates into one of three categories," wrote Lerner. "Those likely to survive, those likely to die, and those for whom immediate care would mean the difference between life and death." Assisted by army staff and 97 British medical students, Hughes coped with hundreds of daily fatalities well past the camp's April 15 liberation.
The army took control of a hospital near the camp and emptied its German patients to make room for camp victims. Hughes also authorized "tours" of Bergen-Belsen for German leaders from the region, hundreds of whom were forced to witness what had been done in their name.
"Belsen was unique in its vile treatment of human beings," said Hughes after the war. "Nothing like it had happened before in the history of mankind. The victims of this infamous behavior have been reduced to a condition of subhuman existence, and there we were, a mere handful of war-weary men trying to save those who could still be saved and to allay the sea of suffering and the depths of agony."
The BBC's brief descriptions of the San Remo conference in the above timelines do not clarify that the Mandate for Palestine created at that conference under the Covenant of the League of Nations (and subsequently included the Treaty of Sèvres) incorporated the Balfour Declaration. The BBC's claim that Britain's task was "to prepare it [Palestine] for self-rule" erases the fact that the text of the Mandate charged the Mandatory with creating conditions "as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home".
Two and a half years ago the BBC devoted copious coverage to the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, overwhelmingly framing it as an 'injustice' and promoting the view that Britain should apologise for the century-old document.
To date, however, BBC audiences have seen no coverage of the centenary of the San Remo Conference at which the Balfour Declaration was incorporated into the Mandate for Palestine that was unanimously approved two years later by the Council of the League of Nations.
Obviously BBC audiences cannot fully understand the history behind the much reported Arab-Israeli conflict if they are denied the information which explains how an expression of British policy – which the corporation did consider it appropriate to cover very widely in the autumn of 2017 – became a binding international agreement.
Islamist groups, like many others, are doing what they can to adjust to life during the coronavirus. Conferences and fundraising dinners are off the table, so many are turning to online gatherings.
American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), a group that in many ways mirrors the defunct Hamas-support network in the US, is holding an "online gala" Saturday evening. Despite the rhetoric common at AMP events, the "Beyond Quarantine: Palestine Connects Us" event will feature two Democratic congresswomen.
Debbie Dingell of Michigan and California's Barbara Lee appear as speakers on AMP's promotions for the gala. Neither representative responded to requests for comment.
AMP has co-sponsored rallies featuring the chant, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." In that vision, Israel is erased from the map.
AMP's fall convention featured the head of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) equating "racism, Islamophobia and Zionism." Antisemitic political activist Linda Sarsour, who has blamed Jews for police shootings of unarmed black people, spread another lie when she told the same AMP convention that Israel was "built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everybody else."
A year earlier, CAIR San Francisco chapter director Zahra Billoo told the AMP convention she was, "not going to legitimize a country [Israel] that I don't believe has a right to exist."
Democratic representative Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) continues to push cash from her campaign committee to her now-husband's consulting firm.
Omar's new committee filings, posted Wednesday afternoon, show that during the first three months of the year, the campaign paid $292,905 to the E Street Group. E Street is a political consulting firm owned by Omar's husband, Tim Mynett. The cash, which reportedly went toward an array of services that included fundraising and advertisements, accounted for over 40 percent of the campaign's $674,892 in disbursements. Omar raised $456,374 during the quarter.
Omar's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Omar campaign also doled out $525,000 last year to Mynett's firm, its top vendor. At the time, Omar and Mynett were married to different people, but Mynett's wife alleged they were having an affair. The two denied that they had a romantic relationship. Omar's campaign and the E Street Group also faced accusations of using campaign funds on personal travel.
Rumors of an affair between Omar and Mynett garnered headlines after divorce papers from Mynett's ex-wife, Dr. Beth Mynett, were made public last summer.
"Days prior to defendant's devastating and shocking declaration of love for Rep. Omar and admission of their affair, he and Rep. Omar took the parties' son to dinner to formally meet for the first time at the family's favorite neighborhood restaurant while plaintiff was out of town," the divorce papers said. "Rep. Omar gave the parties' son a gift and the defendant later brought her back inside the family's home."
Omar denied the affair and said she was not separated from her then-husband Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi. "I have no interest in allowing the conversation about my personal life to continue and so I have no desire to discuss it," she said.
Likewise, Mynett denied the affair and claimed the rumors were an attempt to ruin his career. "Since the time of Mr. Mynett's departure from the marital home, Ms. Mynett began a negative campaign against Mr. Mynett, seemingly in an effort to ruin his career and permanently damage his relationship with [his son] and his step-daughter," court papers said.
Omar announced via an Instagram post in March that she and Mynett were married.
A Conservative councillor and former Lord Mayor of Portsmouth has been suspended by his Party after reportedly baking a swastika into a hot cross bun and posting the image on social media.
Cllr Lee Mason baked a batch of the oven pastries over Easter, each emblazoned with an expletive or symbol, and put a photograph on Snapchat.
However, he denied that he baked a hot cross bun with a swastika and insisted that the photograph must have been altered online somehow. He admitted that the other buns, words and symbols were unaltered.
A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: "Next week the Jewish community will be observing Yom HaShoah, remembering the six million Jewish men, women and children slaughtered during the Holocaust just for being Jewish. Whether the emblazoning of a swastika on a hot cross bun was meant as a celebration of the abominable Nazi regime or a joke, the Jewish community and local residents in Portsmouth expect better from their representatives, and the Conservative Party must investigate this councillor's conduct immediately. We welcome his suspension pending that investigation."
In yet another instance of a civil society institution in the US becoming infected with the virus of anti-Zionism, a group called "Psychologists for Social Responsibility" (PsySR) is currently holding a vote to determine if it should enlist in the campaign to target Israel with boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS).
The Chicago-based organization, which was founded in the early 1980s as a response to the threat of nuclear war, recently promoted and hosted a Zoom presentation where its members were indoctrinated into the ideology of BDS.
Sadly, there is no evidence that Psychologists for Social Responsibility has promoted any real discussion about the issue; instead, they have allowed anti-Israel activists to promote their one-sided and distorted narrative about the Jewish state.
The story PsySR is telling its members about BDS is that it is a call from "Palestinian civil society for those in solidarity to join in the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement to bring international pressure for Israel to end its oppression and brutal military occupation of Palestinians."
Let's get real. "Palestinian civil society" is a junk phrase used to describe the front organizations that the Palestinian Authority uses to sell its anti-Israel message to gullible Westerners. These organizations are not independent, but operate under the thumb of Palestinian Authority functionaries — or worse.
The membership of the Palestinian BDS National Committee includes an umbrella group called Palestinian National and Islamic Forces. Members of this group include Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or the PFLP for short. These are terrorist organizations whose members have murdered Israeli civilians.
The essence of Morgan's article is evident in two paragraphs which include overt Nazi analogies:
"This kind of counterintuitive renaissance is surprisingly commonplace where people feel their human rights are under intense restrictions. At Melinka, a former Chilean prison camp, prisoners ran a weekly circus. At Heart Mountain, a US Japanese internment camp, captives sumowrestled and performed Bon Odori folk dances. Even amid the infamous Nazi horror of Auschwitz, prisoners passed around poetry and composed music, risking torture if they were caught. As Salsaa put it: "As soon as there is a space to live, people will fill it with life."
Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, agrees. "Liberty of mind becomes important when liberty of movement is gone. It's like a rejection of detention. It's not surprising that this accelerated in Bethlehem after the wall went up. If my life is limited, it'll be the fullest life possible within those limits," she said. "The restrictions are used to break the will, so it feels almost like a foundational assertion of humanity to still be people capable of adding to the world."
The implied comparison of Bethlehem to a concentration camp and the suggestion that the anti-terrorist fence was built to limit "liberty of movement" and "break the will" rather than to protect Israeli citizens from Palestinian terrorists is of course both factually inaccurate and deeply offensive.
This is far from the first time (see 'related articles' below) that BBC Travel has published partisan politicised articles presented under the veneer of 'life-style' content. Usually written by freelancers, such reports often fail to meet the BBC's supposed editorial standards of accuracy and impartiality.
An April 10th article in The Times ("How coronavirus will change the world forever") by their Diplomatic Correspondent Catherine Philp included the following sentences: The leaders of Israel and Hungary have seized for themselves powers almost unthinkable in a democracy, sweeping aside the authority of parliament, the courts and elections. Will they ever give them back?
As we tweeted to the journalist, and argued in a complaint to Times editors, there is absolutely no truth whatsoever to Philp's assertion that Israel has swept aside the authority of the Knesset, courts and elections.
Here are a few basic facts that are more than sufficient to disprove Philp's claim:
The Knesset: A new Knesset (following the early March elections) was sworn in on March 16 and, on April 7, voted to pass a NIS 90 billion virus aid package.
In what way has the Knesset's authority been "swept aside"?
The Courts: Though the courts are only partially functioning, due, of course, to COVID-19, the Supreme Court has been active, and, as you no doubt recall, ruled against Netanyahu's party in late March with regard to the refusal of Yuli Edelstein to hold a vote to choose his successor. Though Edelstein resigned to avoid following the court's order, the court then overruled the Knesset rule that such a resignation only takes effect after 48 hours, suspending his powers immediately, and temporarily transferring them to Labour's Amir Peretz. Despite the drama of that legal battle, the Supreme Court's authority prevailed.
It what way has the court's authority been "swept aside"?
A Maryland man accused of painting a swastika on a local synagogue had firebombed a nearby church as part of his plan to target multiple houses of worship to worship Satan, police said.
Andrew Costas, 28, of Rockville was arrested this week in connection with the anti-Semitic vandalism on March 28 at the Tikvat Israel Congregation in his hometown and the hurling of firebombs on April 8 at St. Catherine Laboure Roman Catholic Church in Wheaton. He is a facing a hate crime charge among other charges.
Police say Costas told his girlfriend that he was the Antichrist and planned to cause damage to 10 churches and three synagogues. The total, 13, has symbolic significance in Satanist circles and literature.
According to police, Costas is the individual seen in a surveillance camera video parking his car outside the synagogue, walking up and spraying paint on the outside wall. Police said the man painted swastikas and hateful slogans.
Costas and his girlfriend, Rebecca Matathias of Brookville, Maryland, are facing second-degree arson charges. He is being held until his trial. Matathias, who is in her early 20s, also was arrested but is out on bail.
Costas was charged with damaging property because of a person's religious beliefs – a hate crime — and defacing a religious facility and malicious destruction.
A prominent US Jewish civil rights group criticized a judge's decision on Friday to release a man accused of attempting to burn down a Jewish community-run assisted living facility into the custody of his mother.
John Michael Rathbun, 36, was charged on Wednesday in a criminal complaint in a federal court in Springfield, Massachusetts, with two counts of attempted arson. Rathbun is alleged to have ignited a five-gallon plastic gas canister outside Ruth's House, an assisted-living home in Longmeadow, on the morning of April 2.
Federal prosecutors said that Rathbun's DNA matched bloodstains that were found on the handle of the canister and on a partly-charred Christian religious pamphlet that had been stuffed in the nozzle as a fuse. Rathbun's mother told federal agents that she prints and distributes Christian pamphlets, but did not recognize the one in the gas canister found outside Ruth's House.
Magistrate Judge Katherine Robertson's decision to return Rathbun to his mother's home was strongly criticized by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which pointed out that she resided within a five-minute drive of Ruth's Place, in addition to three synagogues and a Jewish community center.
Calling Robertson's decision "irresponsible," the ADL said that the allegations against Rathbun meant that he remained a "clear and present danger to the community."
"Releasing this individual whose DNA-evidence was found at the scene, and who allegedly engaged in on-line platforms that included antisemitic and racial threats of violence, undermines the safety and security of the entire community," the ADL's New England office said in a statement.
Ford Motor Co. has hired IDF Col. (ret.) Gil Gur Arie, 44, to become chief of Ford's global data insight and analytics on May 1.
Ford equipped all new vehicles with cellular connectivity last year and has said it will outfit new models with high-speed 4G LTE modems this year.
The connections provide a portal into the vehicle for drivers to receive software updates and marketing information, while giving automakers a huge cache of data on how its vehicles are operating.
Analyzing that data smartly gives carmakers an edge in deciphering what drivers desire and will pay for in their cars.
A World War II veteran and his wife of nearly eight decades who had tested positive for COVID-19 died together on the same day.
David and Muriel Cohen died within hours of each other at a Longmeadow nursing home on April 10.
Muriel, 97, had tested positive for the virus and David, 102, had been sick but his test results came back negative.
The couple decided to remain together even as the Jewish Nursing Home tried to transfer residents who were infected to a separate unit.
Fran Grosnick, their daughter, gave the nursing home permission to let her parents stay together.
"The only time they'd ever been separated was when my father served in World War II, and when my sister and I were born," she told The Boston Globe. "Otherwise they were always together."
David Cohen served as a radio operator in the Army during World War II. He was also a liberator at the Ohrdruf concentration camp in Germany. Photos he took during the liberation are displayed at the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington DC.
As a child in Hungary, Arie Even survived the Holocaust by taking shelter along with his mother and brother after his father was shipped to a notorious concentration camp.
Even's well-connected grandfather found them refuge in a Swiss-protected home in Budapest before they were rushed to another shelter, under the cover of night, thanks to the Swedish embassy and the efforts of famed diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved tens of thousands of Jews before mysteriously disappearing. The next day, Even's grandfather was shot to death and his body was dumped in the Danube River.
Later in life, Even overcame multiple heart attacks, surgeries and even a brush with a cholera epidemic during a family visit to Spain. But he couldn't escape the wrath of the global coronavirus pandemic that has been plaguing the globe.
On March 20, the 88-year-old became Israel's first coronavirus fatality after he was infected by a visiting social worker at his Jerusalem assisted-living facility.
Despite building a thriving family of his own in Israel, with four children, 18 grandchildren and a great-grandchild, Even died alone. His loved ones were forced to keep their distance from his infectious virus and had to say goodbye over the phone.
In keeping with the Jewish practice of burying the dead quickly, his funeral was carried out the following day, at the end of the Sabbath. His youngest child, representing the family, was one of only a handful of people who were allowed to attend — from a distance — as he was lowered to the ground by Jewish religious authorities wearing biohazard suits.
It's impossible to picture six million people; to read six million names; to know six million stories. But by reading one story, saying one name, sharing one person's legacy, you keep a memory alive. Share the stories of persecution, of survival, and of resilience as #WeRemember. pic.twitter.com/f7qhSHIgMY
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.
This has been going around. It is not apparently from a Palestinian prisoner but, from what I can see, perhaps Jordan.
You can see in the end that the man of the hour is shot, apparently in the head, by one of the people celebrating him.
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.
Since the onset of the pandemic, all democratically elected governments have made their share of mistakes in contending with it. But the struggles of the governments of Italy, Israel, Taiwan, the US, and all the rest share a common key feature: Their top priority is to protect the lives and wellbeing of their citizens.
In contrast, we see that like the Palestinian regimes, authoritarian regimes in China, Iran, and beyond have busied themselves with principally trying to exploit the pandemic for their own benefit.
China, the source of the coronavirus, is hiding much of what it knows about the origins of the pandemic and vastly underreporting their virus infection and death rates. The Chinese hide this vital information to present themselves as more competent in handling the virus than the "bungling democracies" struggling to contain it. And to build their conspiracy theory that the US is the source of the pandemic. At the same time, China has ratcheted up its threats against Taiwan and has allegedly tested another nuclear weapon.
Iran is also publishing false data about its coronavirus infection and death rates. Whereas the official numbers claim that 4,700 Iranians have died from the coronavirus, Iranian opposition forces allege that thirty thousand Iranians have died.
Like the Palestinians and the Chinese, the Iranians accuse Israel and the US of inventing and spreading the virus. After they rejected a US offer for humanitarian assistance to fight the coronavirus, the Iranians began using the pandemic as a fundraising tool.
They demand assistance from the International Monetary Fund and the European Union and exploit the political cleavages in the US to pressure the Trump administration to cancel the US economic sanctions on Iran. All the while, Iran is threatening US forces in Iraq and continuing its uranium enrichment activities.
Through their behavior, the Palestinians show that peace is a dead issue. Israel has permanent, vital interests in Judea and Samaria. It needs to secure those interests by applying its sovereign laws wherever it deems necessary, and bar the PA from operating in its territory.
More broadly, through their conduct, the Palestinians, like their authoritarian brethren in China, Iran and beyond, drive home the difference between democracies and dictatorships.
There are good guys and bad guys in this world. In the future, when we get confused about who is on which side, all we will need to do to figure out where justice lies is look back at how the each behaved during the coronavirus pandemic.
The death toll in Israel from the coronavirus rose to 150 Friday afternoon, an increase of seven from the previous evening.
One of the victims, a 96-year-old woman, was the eighth fatality from the Maon Horim assisted living facility in Jerusalem, the Walla news site reported.
Roughly one-third of the COVID-19 fatalities in Israel were residents of elderly living centers.
In addition, a 76-year-old woman succumbed to the coronavirus at Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, the hospital said, adding that she had preexisting illnesses.
An 84-year-old woman died at the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, the hospital announced, adding that she also suffered from preexisting medical conditions.
A 66-year-old man from Haifa died at the city's Carmel Medical Center, the hospital's first fatality from COVID-19.
A man, 70, died at the Mayanei Hayeshua Medical Center in Bnei Brak and a 90-year-old woman died in the Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan.
There were no further details given on the identities of the victims.
The positive coronavirus test results for 14 nursing home residents who have been in isolated hospital wards were mistaken, Hebrew-language media reported Friday, with second test results coming back negative.
The elderly residents of an old-age home in Ashdod had been tested at the Weizmann Institute, and the test results of 29 further residents of the "Beit Hadar" assisted living facility in the coastal city are now also being re-examined, Channel 13 news reported.
The Health Ministry told the broadcaster in a statement that an investigation has been opened and that the elderly residents have been isolated in the hospital to reduce the possibility of them becoming infected while a decision is made about their future care.
"There was a suspicion of a problem in one of the stages of the laboratory diagnostic process. The issue is currently undergoing a thorough investigation. Repeat tests on additional patients and caregivers will be made as needed," the ministry said. "The patients who have been transferred to the hospitals are now in isolation, and the appropriate place for their continued care is being examined so that they do not become infected."
Nine of the patients confirmed to not have COVID-19 were hospitalized at Assuta Medical Center in Ashdod and the rest at Barzilai hospital in Ashkelon and Kaplan hospital in Rehovot.
They were in special quarantined wards for coronavirus patients alongside confirmed carriers.
3 million surgical masks for Magen David Adom (MDA) and other essential institutions arrived in Israel on Thursday from China, donated by Israeli-Russian tech investor and philanthropist Yuri Milner and his wife Julia.
Now based in Silicon Valley, Milner made a fortune as an early investor in many giants of the tech industry.
Israel's Consul-General in San Francisco Shlomi Kofman said, "It is moving to see Israelis across the ocean supporting their country during this difficult period."
'Close and unprecedented' was how the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OCHA) described Israeli-Palestinian cooperation in its first 'COVID-19 Emergency Situation Report' on 24 March. This has not stopped antisemites and anti-Zionists the world over trying to exploit the pandemic to demonise the Jewish people and Israel. Cary Nelson examines the phenomenon, focusing on a recent letter published in the medical journal The Lancet before being withdrawn. Blaming The Jews Again
As Gaza was acquiring its first two cases of the coronavirus in March 2020, the world's longest hatred inevitably found local expression. A Palestinian newspaper in Gaza published a cartoon Star of David adapted to mimic the virus, at once combining malice and contempt.
The star is blue; it bristles with a score of the protein extensions or spikes characteristic of COVID-19 graphic representations. Judaism, not simply Zionism, the text declares, is 'the most dangerous virus for humanity.' The same month the virulently anti-Zionist publication Mondoweiss, edited in the US, printed a cartoon by the well-known and prolific political artist Carlos Latuff showing multiple coronaviruses weaponised by Israel to attack Palestinians.
An elderly and obviously distressed Palestinian woman wearing a headscarf and draped in the Palestinian flag faces a curved line of huge corona viruses resembling mines at sea. The curved security barrier is behind her with an Israeli soldier holding a machine gun leaning over it. Above him a helicopter circles. Other soldiers recede along the wall into the distance until reaching a guard tower topped by an Israeli flag. Frail enough to be balancing on a cane, she is nonetheless encircled by hostile forces. Her expression is anxious and puzzled. The caption announces 'Israel and coronavirus unite against occupied native Palestinians.'[i]
The facts at issue were irrelevant to both artists. If Palestinians were suffering, Israel must be to blame. If the Trump administration insisted on designating the pandemic's source as the 'Chinese Virus' or the 'Wuhan Virus,' for the worldwide anti-Zionist movement it would effectively be the Jewish virus. A pandemic of signification immediately acquired an anti-Semitic constituency. The Trump's administration's nomenclature meanwhile gave license to anti-Asian aggression.
For its part, the Independent Voices Canada website in March announced an ongoing series of dispatches: 'The brutal siege of Gaza, and the ongoing occupation of the West Bank, are tinderboxes for the Coronavirus.' By March 27, the IVC website was highlighting a dispatch from Khalil Abu Yahia, a 24 year-old English teacher in Gaza City: 'The sad thing that we are thinking here in Gaza is that Israel is going to get away with this: they will not be held accountable for our health. Because if you ask yourself why we're suffering, and why we're not getting proper treatment for the virus, it's because we weren't born to Jewish mothers.'[ii]
Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phillip Murphy said the Bill of Rights was not on his mind when he issued his executive orders mandating his state's response to the coronavirus.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson pressed Murphy on the constitutionality of his recent executive orders that deem liquor stores essential and business and churches nonessential, which Murphy said he did not consider.
"As I noted before, 15 congregants at a synagogue in New Jersey were arrested and charged for being in a synagogue together. Now, the Bill of Rights, as you well know, protects Americans' right, enshrines their right, to practice their religion as they see fit and to congregate together, to assemble peacefully. By what authority did you nullify the Bill of Rights in issuing this order? How do you have the power to do that?" Carlson asked.
"That's above my pay grade, Tucker," Murphy responded, saying he "wasn't thinking of the Bill of Rights when we did this."
"Well, I can tell," Tucker interjected.
"Here's the thing, we know we need to stay away from each other, number one. Number two, we do have broad authority within the state. And number three, we would never do that without coordinating, discussing, and hashing it out with the leaders, the variety of the leaders of the faith of New Jersey," Murphy later said.
Authorities in other states have faced blowback for strict executive orders that limit outdoor social activities and gatherings. The Raleigh Police Department faced massive online opposition after categorizing protesting as a "nonessential activity."
In an essay published last fall, Michael Doran called to task U.S. presidents and policymakers from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama for pursuing the creation of a Palestinian state despite the fact that such a goal is both unrealistic and inimical to American interests. Responding to Doran, Tarek Osman partially concedes some of his points, but contends that geopolitical circumstances are likely to change, and that one could imagine a new situation that would militate in favor of Israeli territorial concessions. Doran rebuts this argument. (Free registration may be required.)
The question . . . is not whether power dynamics might change in the future but whether they are likely to do so. In this case, they are not. For the two-state solution to become viable, Hamas must collapse, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank must craft a shared vision of the future, and then they must march in lockstep toward a compromise with Israel. The number of stars that must align for this vision to become reality is too great to count.
In support of his belief that the two-state solution is within reach, Osman invokes the memory of Yitzḥak Rabin. A seasoned military man and political leader, Rabin was no starry-eyed peacemaker, and yet he was still ready to make painful compromises. Osman's depiction of Rabin echoes that presented by the former U.S. president Bill Clinton, who often laments that were it not for Rabin's assassination, the Israelis and the Palestinians would have signed a peace agreement.
This is a saccharine myth that ignores the chasm between Rabin's and Clinton's positions. The vision Rabin pursued was not compatible with the parameters Clinton presented to negotiators in 2000, which proposed a Palestinian state in 94 to 96 percent of the West Bank and Palestinian sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and eastern Jerusalem. In a speech made before the Knesset a month before his assassination, Rabin described the Palestinian entity that he expected to emerge from the Oslo Accords. It would be, he explained, "less than a state." It would accept Israeli control over the Jordan Valley and a unified Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty. Rabin's vision was, on the other hand, far more compatible with the so-called "deal of the century"—the peace plan that the Trump administration recently announced.
More than ever before, Washington's interests lie in building Israeli power to shore up the battered U.S. regional security structure, not in tearing it down in the pursuit of a peace fantasy. In this context, it is the responsibility of Palestinian leaders . . . to prove that their nationalism can promote international peace and stability.
Nearly 20 years ago, comedian Larry Miller (not Dennis Miller, as some believe) explained the Mideast conflict better than any expert. He said: "Five hundred million Arabs; five million Jews. Think of all the Arab countries as a football field, and Israel as a pack of matches sitting in the middle of it. And now these same folks swear that if Israel gives them half of that pack of matches, everyone will be pals."
Miller reminded people of the history that two-state advocates ignore, such as the fact that Gaza was occupied by Egypt, and the West Bank was controlled by Jordan. Now the Palestinians say they want their own country. "No, they don't," observed Miller. "They could've had their own country any time in the last 30 years, especially … at Camp David. But if you have your own country, you have to have traffic lights and garbage trucks and chambers of commerce, and, worse, you actually have to figure out some way to make a living. That's no fun. No, they want what all the other Jew haters in the region want: Israel."
Just in time for Passover, Jackie Mason also had some words of wisdom. In an interview with Brigit Grant for the Jewish News, Mason noted that "Jews are often the biggest supporters and unwitting allies of antisemitism. If you go to any university today you'll find a 'Professor Silverstein' preaching about intersectionality, being 'woke,' and the oppression of the Palestinian people."
Mason observed that "all you ever hear is if only Israel didn't do this or that the Palestinians would act differently" and suggested that those professors and BDS advocates should contemplate "what would happen IF the Palestinians… Didn't fire rockets into towns in Israel; Acknowledged the Jews' right to exist in their ancestral homeland; Remembered with the Arab states and the rest of the world that they rejected the partition plan in 1947 and invaded with five armies; Remember the hundreds of thousands of Sephardic Jews who were ejected from Arab countries and sent into exile;" and many other facts.
Then there's Bill Maher, who said of the BDS movement after Israel banned Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from visiting the country: "It's a bulls— purity test by people who want to appear woke but actually slept through history class."
Maher quoted one of the BDS movement's leaders, Omar Barghouti, who said, "No Palestinian, rational Palestinian, not a sell-out Palestinian, would ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine." Maher added: "So that's where that comes from, this movement, someone who doesn't even want a Jewish state at all. Somehow this side never gets presented in the American media."
Several incidents that have recently occurred between Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have brought the decades-long conflict between the two back into focus.
The recent uptick in activity began March 26 when a drone was detected crossing into Israeli air space from Lebanon and was subsequently shot down by the IDF.
According to an IDF statement, "A drone belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization was shot down after it crossed into Israeli airspace from Lebanon."
After the incident, Hezbollah did not publicly respond to the downing of one of their alleged drones.
The second incident involved the release of footage with a tacit threat by the IDF from its Twitter account on April 10. According to the statement, the head of the Syrian Armed Forces 1st Corps, Luau Ali Ahmad Assad, was observed visiting Hezbollah positions in southern Syria with head of Hezbollah's southern command, Hajj Hashem.
"Look closely. See the man with white hair? That's the head of the Syrian Armed Forces 1st Corps, Luau Ali Ahmad Assad. He's visiting Hezbollah positions in Syria. Our message: We see you. Consider this a warning. We won't allow Hezbollah to entrench itself militarily in Syria," the IDF Twitter statement read.
The third and most serious event took place April 15. The incident occurred in the Syrian town of Jdaidit Yabws, near the Lebanese border.
According to an al Jarida report "An Israeli drone targeted a convoy of Lebanese Hezbollah inside the Syrian territories near the border."
The report went into further detail saying "A source in Tehran stated that a [Hezbollah] party leader named Imad Karimi was the target, and that the first missile did not hit the car, which allowed its passengers to flee before the second missile succeeded in hitting it."
A passenger in a car targeted in a Wednesday airstrike in Syria attributed to Israel was Mustafa Mughniyeh, the son of slain senior Hizbullah military commander Imad Mughniyeh who was killed in a 2008 car bombing, Al-Arabiya reported Thursday. Mustafa survived the attack.
Mustafa Mughniyeh has been identified as a senior Hizbullah commander playing an active role in the terror group's efforts to establish a permanent military presence along the Syrian Golan Heights.
An agreement with Russia was supposed to push Iranian and Tehran-backed militias, including Hizbullah, dozens of kilometers away from the border.
Egyptian-Canadian writer Said Shoaib said in a March 23, 2020 interview on Mehwar TV (Egypt) that the time has come to stop giving ideological support for Islamists in the West, which he said are led by the Muslim Brotherhood. He said that organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood are responsible for spreading lies about Muslims in Canada being persecuted, that there is no systematic anti-Muslim discrimination in Canada, and that some people in the West are naturally afraid of Islam because of Islamic terrorism. He also said that the purpose of his book Erdoğan's Islam is to tell Muslims that the Islamists are only pretending that they want to build a free and just country. Furthermore, Shoaib said that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan shares the Muslim Brotherhood's beliefs that imperialism is a part of Islam. Shoaib added: "If we do not abandon the idea of Islam as a country and a Caliphate, then the Islamists will remain in control of the Middle East."
"There Is No Systematic Discrimination Against Muslims In The Law Or Constitution"
Said Shoaib: "It is time to stop giving ideological support for the Islamists [in the West]... I am talking about Islamists, and they are led by the Muslim Brotherhood – the Muslim Brotherhood is the most organized [Islamist] group, but they are all one and the same. It is time to stop supporting them ideologically.
"They say, for example, that Muslims in Canada are persecuted. That is a lie. Islamic centers tell lies and the religious institutions come and say: 'Look, Islamophobia!' But these are all lies. I am not talking about the West in general. I am talking about what I have experienced in Canada. There is no systematic discrimination against Muslims in the law or constitution. If you want to build a mosque, the same laws apply for building a synagogue, a Buddhist place of worship, or a church – most Canadians are Christians." [...] "People Are Afraid Of Muslims And Of Islam Because Of The Terror Attacks That Some Muslims Have Carried Out"
Interviewer: "In the West – Europe and America – nobody talks about hostility towards Muslims?"
Said Shoaib: "No"
Interviewer: "So there is none?"
Said Shoaib: "People are afraid of Muslims and of Islam because of the terror attacks that some Muslims have carried out. This fear is natural. I am not making excuses and some mistakes might be made. I am not talking about the governments, since they have a different logic, with which one can agree or disagree. I am talking about the society.
"As a Muslim in Canada, I have not experienced any discrimination, and if this does take place, I would be lucky, because then I would receive a lot of compensation."
Earlier this month, the Palestinian Authority's official spokesperson claimed Israel is "striving for the epidemic's spread in Palestine." As usual, Palestinian leaders intend to blame it all on the Jews. Israel's enemies never miss an opportunity to criticize the Jewish state, even if it means using a global public health emergency to "coronawash" the failures of Palestinian leadership.
The Palestinians have received more development and humanitarian assistance over the last 30 years than any other group in history. Yet they completely lack the organization and infrastructure needed to combat this pandemic. The PA in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza have both squandered billions of dollars of aid that was meant to build a public health system, spending the money instead on corruption, incitement, and terrorism.
Shortages of medical supplies are not the result of any action or inaction taken by Israel. Medical supplies pass through Gaza's borders with Israel and Egypt every day, while the West Bank has virtually no restrictions on medical imports from Israel or Jordan.
The real story is that in the West Bank, the PA steals foreign aid money for its own enrichment. In Gaza, Hamas uses it to build rockets and terror tunnels. Both groups steal the people's money, rather than make investments in healthcare, and the Palestinian people pay the price.
PA continues terror and Martyrdom promotion – through official TV and radio: "Palestine is etched on the heart of the fetus, a proud Martyr in his mother's womb" - song teaching that Palestinian children are destined to die as Martyrs
Last month, Haniyeh said that while Hamas has a "strategic relation" with Iran, it also maintains ties with Turkey and several other countries. "We need Arabs and Muslims to stand with us against the Deal of the Century," Haniyeh explained, referring to US President Donald Trump's recently unveiled plan for Middle East peace. "All Palestinian factions are entitled to preserve their strategy. Hamas believes that Palestine is from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea. Hamas will not recognize Israel."
Erdogan's reported willingness to host the Hamas leadership most likely comes from his longstanding support for the Muslim Brotherhood.
Erdogan's ties to the Muslim Brotherhood go back to the 1970s, when he was one of the trusted political pupils of Necmettin Erbakan, the father of Islamism in Turkey.
Lorenzo Vidino, director of George Washington University's Program on Extremism, pointed out that since the July 2013 overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi as president of Egypt, Erdogan has sought to provide a safe haven for "persecuted" members of the movement.
The Ahval news website noted, in addition, that the dozens of Muslim Brotherhood figures living in exile today in Turkey are some of the movement's most powerful and influential figures. "These Brotherhood leaders and their relatives live a comfortable life, under the protection of the Erdogan administration, the website revealed.
As Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, Erdogan's reported readiness to welcome its leaders into Turkey comes as no surprise. It seems that Erdogan is trying to help the Muslim Brotherhood extend its influence across more regions while serving as the spiritual leader of the movement.
If the reports about Erdogan's readiness to invite Hamas leaders to live in Turkey are true, that would also turn Erdogan into the spiritual father of a terrorist group that seeks to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamic state.
It now remains to be seen whether the international community, including some Arab countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, demand that Turkey distances itself from Hamas.
A Hamas move to Turkey would mean the terrorist group would continue masterminding and carrying out terrorist attacks against Israel -- but this time, under the protective eyes of the Erdogan administration.
There was no social distancing in Gaza at this weeks grand opening of a new grocery store in the Hyper mall, the largest mall in Gaza, located in the Nusseirat refugee camp. Yes, really.
The management initially assured the Gaza public that all precautions were being taken to assure their safety and well being.
Photos were shown on social media of the staff appropriately masked and gloved.
Grand opening day looked very different. Inside the mall, there were local celebrities (actor and comedian Mahmoud Zuaiter) giveaways, and huge shoulder to shoulder crowds.
Yet there was no social distancing. In view of the coronavirus which has affected over 2,000,000 people worldwide and has left over a hundred thousand dead, this kind of mass gathering is foolhardy and irresponsible.
Its as if the Hamas terror group completely disregarded the health and welfare of the people of Gaza....
In the recent days, the Iranian regime mouthpiece Kayhan has devoted several editorials to explaining to the Iranian public why the coronavirus pandemic has befallen the world and the lessons that the world should derive from it. In an April 6, 2020 editorial the daily postulated that the coronavirus is a product of the godless Western civilization, which takes pride in science for its own sake and which also created the atom bomb and chemical weapons. Like senior regime officials,[1] this editorial accused the U.S. and Israel of manufacturing and spreading the coronavirus throughout the world "in order to rid it of the elderly and the poor." The pandemic, it added, exposes the wrongs that Western civilization has caused humanity, wrongs were perpetuated in order to preserve the superiority of Western civilization and culture while consigning Islamic civilization to obscurity. According to Kayhan, the coronavirus also exposes the inferiority of Western civilization and its leadership versus the superiority of Iran, which offers mankind the Islamic civilization and a new world order. The editorial praised the mobilization and solidarity of Iran's society and political and military leadership in fighting the disease, while contrasting it with the West, which is said is collapsing as its leaders resort to spreading lies and to stealing from each other in their desperate effort to control the pandemic. The editorial reiterated the Iranian regime's messaging of denying the Jewish Holocaust, which "has no basis," while calling America "the Great Satan" and Israel is a "malignant growth."
Unlike the April 6, 2020 editorial, which accused the U.S. and Israel of creating and spreading the virus, an April 13, 2020 editorial by Kayhan's editor-in-chief Hossein Shariatmadari stated that the virus was sent by God to humiliate the leaders of corrupt and enervated Western civilization and prove to mankind that it has no succor save for God. Like the April 6 editorial, this article, titled "The Coronavirus, the Virus with a Crown," claimed that the coronavirus exposes the hollowness and collapse of Western civilization, versus the superiority of Islamic civilization, which Iran promotes via the values of self-sacrifice and spiritual morality displayed by its leaders and citizens.
The following are excerpts from the two editorials.
Kayhan, April 6: "This Pandemic Bears The Stench Of Faithless Science And Of A Godless, Arrogant World – Yet It Is The Postmodern West That Has Collapsed!"
Kayhan's April 6, 2020 editorial stated: "...We who believe in the pure Islam possess diverse, unending riches, and without this infinite treasure, we too would be oppressed and corrupted by problems. What protects us from the storm of events is the study [of Islam], which calms our hearts and eases our minds, and which gives us the hope to try harder...
"The world's entire population has been afflicted by this pandemic, and its strength has been exhausted… This pandemic bears the stench of faithless science and of a godless, arrogant world – yet it is the postmodern West that has collapsed! The very same godless science that invented the atom bomb, chemical [weapons], mustard [gas], the SARS [virus], and Stuxnet [the computer virus that targeted Iran], etc. is now inflicting the coronavirus upon humanity. This is the same secular science that does not believe in God. Science which covers up ignorance without aiming to improve the quality of life is a merchant of death and [serves] Satan. The West-struck ones [i.e., people blinded by the West] lied when they promoted science for science's sake and art for art's sake, and sold science and art to Pharaoh, Korah, and Zion before [they sold it to] us. The West-struck ones and their supporters, who described the ordinary [achievements] of the West as 'civilization' and the 'cradle of science,' considered the wizards and warlocks of the White House as roses and magic in Trump's decrepit body – like the wizards of Pharaoh's court.
Iran is still reeling from the U.S. killing of Maj.-Gen. Qassem Soleimani, as well as the erosion of public confidence following Tehran's initial attempt to conceal its responsibility for the downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane. Iran's leaders must now navigate the worsening pandemic, a weakening economy, lack of public confidence and the loss of a linchpin in the Islamic Republic's foreign operations. Yet until there is a real alternative to the reigning power, the bitter masses will prefer relative stability to anarchy
In the meantime, it doesn't seem as though Iran is changing its plans in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq or Yemen. It will continue igniting tension in these countries, even if the flame has slightly dimmed since Soleimani's killing. The attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq made clear that the Iranians are continuing to push their agenda, though less vigorously and perhaps less ably.
On China's Official Arabic-Language TV: COVID-19 Does Not Appear to Have Originated in China
Chinese vlogger "Ms. V" said in an episode of "China View" that was published by CGTN Arabic TV (China) on March 17, 2020 that the presence of multiple coronavirus strains in the United States, the coincidence between the initial coronavirus outbreak and the 2019 Military World Games in Wuhan in which the U.S. participated, the possibility that the U.S. may have had many coronavirus deaths that have been documented as influenza deaths, and the CDC's shut down of former U.S. biological weapons research lab Fort Detrick suggest that COVID-19 originated in the United States, and not in China.
Egyptian Islamic Preacher Mohammed Al-Hefnawi Al-Ansari: Thank You Coronavirus for Shutting Down Cinemas, Coffee Shops, and Whorehouses; May Allah Use This Virus to Annihilate the Infidels and Shiites pic.twitter.com/K58U5kXtjh
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