Elder of Ziyon 05/15 Links Pt2: Ruthie Blum: A portrait of viral antisemitism; A Light Unto the Nations: Israel’s Lifesaving Aid in the Face of Global Crises; A Celebration of Israel's 72nd Independence Day #Israel72
If history has taught us anything, it is that antisemitism is not simply a mild psychiatric disorder – since Jews are a tiny minority in every country in the world other than Israel, which itself is minuscule in relative terms; it is, rather, a symptom of Stage Four societal cancer. No amount of alcogel can sanitize that dirty little secret.
Which brings us back to the other plague – the one that has most of humanity living in limbo, keeping what is deemed a safe, six-foot distance from strangers, friends and family alike. Oh, and scrubbing our hands like Lady Macbeth, while draped in accessories befitting a brain surgeon.
Whether panic over the coronavirus was or still is warranted remains to be seen. This is something that will not be determined fully until the wave has blown over and/or a vaccine is available. It is difficult, if not impossible, to analyze the data properly in the midst of the commotion.
The same cannot be said about antisemitism. No, hatred of Jews and Israel has a proven record of death and destruction on a mass scale. All additional statistics on that score are the fault of new perpetrators and the passive response to them on the part of the willfully ignorant, apathetic or criminally negligent ostriches among us.
It is hard to fathom how Hitlerian rhetoric and Holocaust imagery elicit less of a reaction than a virus that appears to be running its course. A common mantra these days is that "We're all in this together." Well, if enabling antisemites to disperse their poison beyond borders forbidden to travelers with the sniffles constitutes solidarity, the world really is in the throes of a fatal illness. And that's not a cartoon characterization of the situation.
Nor is the fact that Jewish scientists in Israel and abroad are working tirelessly around the clock to come up with an antidote to the coronavirus. The rest of us would do well, in the meantime, to focus on finding a remedy for a far greater killer – one that mutates and metastasizes exponentially with each passing minute.
Israel Advocacy Movement: Greatest threat to Jewish existence | J-TV's Ollie Anisfeld and Joseph Cohen
There are three main factions within the anti-Zionist, pro-Palestine camp: The Muslim Brotherhood and neo-Ottoman Islamist camp, the Iranian revolutionaries and their "resistance camp" and the Arab nationalists and leftist camp. All have close links with various Palestinian groups.
All three factions, of course, share the anti-Israel rhetoric and dream of regaining Al-Aqsa mosque. Nevertheless, each faction within this eclectic camp has a different outlook for the future of Palestine. Some advocate a future Islamist Palestine that would be part of a grand Ottoman caliphate. Others dream of a revolutionary Palestine loyal to the Iranian Islamic regime. The third group dreams of a leftist nationalist Palestinian utopia.
None of them, however, will ever address the tough questions about their future beloved Palestine. How will they reconcile their conflicting views on the future Palestinian state? How will post-Israel Palestine avoid the fate of post-Saddam Iraq or post Arab Spring Syria? Will the allies of the various Palestinian factions leave the Palestinian people to decide their fate, or will they try to impose their vision in exchange for financial and political support?
Will Hamas, Fatah and the other Palestinian factions that failed to unite under occupation reconcile their differences after "liberation"? Will the Islamists in post-Israel Palestine accept the secularists and liberals, or turn against them as the Mullahs did in Iran, and as Erdogan did in Turkey? How will Islamists treat minorities, such as the Bahai community in Israel? What will the future of their beautiful Temple in Haifa? be? Will the prominent Palestinian diaspora, including Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and activist Linda Sarsour, leave their prestigious careers in the US and "return" to campaign relentlessly for the "right to return to Palestine" and serve their beloved new state?
These are tough questions, so let's ask an easier one: Who will control the Al-Aqsa Mosque after the imaginary end of Israel? Hamas? Fatah? Jordan? Turkey? Iran? Will the mostly Sunni Palestinians allow Shia Muslims to practice and celebrate the death of Hussein inside Al-Aqsa Mosque? Or will Shia be labelled "apostates"?
I once asked a hardcore pro-Palestine Islamist those questions. He was angrily dismissive. "It doesn't matter," he said. "What matters is that we destroy the Zionist State first, then think of the day after."
StandWithUs: A Light Unto the Nations: Israel's Lifesaving Aid in the Face of Global Crises
Join Rachel Wallace, IsraAID's director of outreach and engagement, for a stimulating conversation on IsraAID's life-saving work, worldwide projects, and response to COVID-19.
The Israel Institute for Biological Research has filed patent requests for eight types of coronavirus antibodies that it has isolated, Defense Minister Naftali Bennett announced on Friday. The antibodies will be used for the development of a future drug to treat the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, COVID-19.
Bennett said he was briefed on the development by Shmuel Shapira, who heads IIBR's Ness Ziona facility. He called the move "another important step in developing a cure. IIBR is working around the clock to find a life-saving solution."
Earlier this month, the Defense Ministry revealed that IIBR had completed a groundbreaking scientific development, identifying an antibody that neutralizes the coronavirus, a development that Bennett called "a major breakthrough."
That scientific breakthrough had three key parameters: The antibody is monoclonal, new and refined, and contains an exceptionally low proportion of harmful proteins; the institute has demonstrated the ability of the antibody to neutralize the novel coronavirus; and the antibody was specifically tested on the aggressive coronavirus.
"Based on comprehensive scientific publications from around the globe, it appears that the IIBR is the first institution to achieve a scientific breakthrough that meets all three of the aforementioned parameters simultaneously," the Defense Ministry said in a statement on behalf of the institute.
Throughout the COVID-19 outbreak, one of the greatest mysteries to confound researchers has been figuring out why the disease leaves some people almost completely unharmed, while others suffer serious conditions and die.
The answer, according to Israeli scientists, is that lungs of the worst-affected patients become riddled with immune cells that exacerbate the pathogen's impact instead of fighting it. In patients who are less affected by the disease, this doesn't happen, says the team from the Weizmann Institute of Science.
"In most cases the immune system helps recovery," said Amir Giladi of Weizmann's Department of Immunology. "But for some reason, and this represents the real mystery of coronavirus, this is turned around, and the immune system is not your helper, but rather makes the disease more intense."
He is part of a Weizmann team that set out to pinpoint when things start to go downhill for the worst-stricken patients, hoping that drug companies will be able to use their research to develop therapies to stop the disease.
The pharmaceutical industry is currently struggling to understand the best way to counter COVID-19's impact, but Giladi is "hopeful" that his research will move things forward by "providing a 'target' in the body for intervention."
The team worked with Zheng Zhang from Shenzhen Third People's Hospital in Shenzhen, China, who provided data, and has concluded that lungs of the worst-affected patients have been cleared of normal, helpful, immune cells and colonized by immune cells that instead cause harm. Findings have been peer reviewed and published in the journal Cell.
Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon found another alternative in place of the UN's Science Technology and Innovation (STI) Forum that Israel was appointed to lead this year, but was later cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Before the coronavirus outbreak took hold, Israel and Ghana were elected to head the UN's STI Forum. However, once the coronavirus pandemic became an issue, the UN cancelled all high-level forums, leading the Israeli ambassador to find a new, more relevant alternative.
With the goal of combating the coronavirus, Danon decided to initiate a refocused digital conference on aiding innovation and technological tools. The two-day conference began on Thursday and continued through Friday, during which world renowned experts spoke on the connections between technological innovation, the fight against coronavirus and the fulfillment of UN development goals.
"This initiative is widely supported by the United Nations, mainly because of groundbreaking Israeli innovation, and I have no doubt that it will contribute to the global struggle against the coronavirus, and further strengthen Israel's position within the UN," Danon said.
The forum held a session on "The Science of COVID-19" lead by Israeli Nobel Prize Winner, Professor Ada Yonat, as well as another session on technological response to the virus, which was attended by Israeli scientist Dr. Kira Radinsky, recognized worldwide for technological advancements in predictive analysis.
Commenting on the global cooperation that the event ignited, Danon said, "in a time of global crisis, uniting to share knowledge with the international community is important and the right thing to do."
The US Senate has introduced legislation to enhance partnerships between American and Israeli companies on COVID-19 projects, thus lessening US dependence on China for life-saving medications and treatments.
The bipartisan legislation was introduced on Wednesday as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, on a whirlwind eight-hour visit to Israel, criticized China while praising Israel.
"You're a great partner," Pompeo said in an appearance with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before their meeting in Jerusalem. "You share your information, unlike some other countries that try and obfuscate and hide information. And we'll talk about that country, too."
The US has pressed Israel to reconsider allowing Chinese investment in national projects, including work on the Haifa Port, where the US Sixth Fleet is anchored, and building the Sorek 2 water desalination plant on the Mediterranean coast in central Israel.
Following Pompeo's visit to Israel, a senior State Department official told reporters that China is "not a reliable partner," and that while Pompeo doesn't have a problem with countries having relationships or trading with China, the pandemic is different.
"I think COVID sort of highlights the dangers of dealing with states that are not transparent, that don't have fair trade practices, that really leverage and torque their trade to leverage certain things out of their trade partners," the official said.
Mefaked Ilan, Ari Fuld's HY"D commander in an elite reserves paratrooper unit, reminisced about Ari with Ari's wife Miriam, on Friday.
Ilan came to the town of Efrat to receive a donation of custom-designed masks for all the soldier's in Ari's paratrooper unit. The masks were donated by The Ari Fuld Project and have the logo of the unit imprinted on them.
Ilan told the JewishPress.com, "Ari's family and friends will never forget him and his legacy for a moment. What better represents Ari's ideals than donating comfortable Corona defense masks that allow the soldiers to continue their mission during these days of the Coronavirus, as well as expressing the magnitude of Ari's personality to the Orev paratrooper platoon which he served in and loved so much."
This past Yom HaZikaron, Israel's Memorial Day, The Ari Fuld Project donated masks to the counter-terrorist unit in Efrat where Ari also served.
Also on this past Yom HaZikaron, an archivist for the Israeli government discovered a letter written by Ari Fuld to Minister Rechavam "Gandhi" Ze'evi, who was a retired IDF Major General.
Arrive four hours early, in a mask and without any escort. Get checked for a fever, disinfect your hands, watch out for the fleet of robotic cleaners, and again disinfect your hands.
This is what passengers leaving Israel should expect to encounter, according to a pilot program launched on Thursday, as air travel slowly returns to normal after weeks of very few flights.
The idea, the Airport Authority said, is to create a "coronavirus-free area" at Ben Gurion Airport, already well-known for its rigid security. Similar measures aimed at preventing contagion could be adopted by airports around the world, and Israel has been conferring about them with authorities in Europe and the United States, said Shmuel Zakai, Ben Gurion's managing director.
Representatives from the French embassy, for example, were checking documents of French passengers at check-in so they would not have to enter quarantine after returning home.
"This kind of process we will see more and more," Zakai said.
The challenge will be enacting policies that are not too much of a burden.
Chinese Ambassador to Israel's op-ed in JPost today is making waves - He compares anti-China sentiment to antisemites blaming Jews for plagues.
I must have missed the part when Jews disappeared doctors who tried to warn the world about the plague.https://t.co/wKalZaZI0L
In December 2013, after the American Studies Association endorsed a boycott of Israel, George Washington University joined many other institutions in opposing the boycott. The language was rather tepid, to be sure: the University affirmed that it would continue its "multiple academic, research and programmatic relationships with Israeli institutions" and "explore new ones," on the grounds that "academic exchanges and conversations lead to better understanding between nations and people of differing views."
Why, then, has George Washington University appointed a vocal supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement as interim dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs? Ilana Feldman has said that calls for a conversation of the sort GWU issued in 2013 are contemptible, "a call for inaction and support of the status quo under the guise of "moderate" action." At the same time, she has indicated that opposition of the sort BDS has encountered—well over 200 colleges and universities issued statements against the boycott—has to do with "more money . . . being devoted to shutting down criticism of Israel." Feldman not only supported the ultimately failed effort to win the American Anthropological Association for BDS. She was among the organizers of the effort.
Colleges and universities have many good reasons to reject the BDS movement, quite apart from its willingness regularly to swim in anti-Semitic waters. Academic supporters of BDS are expected to oppose study abroad programs based at Israeli universities and to refuse to write letters of recommendation for students who choose to participate in them. They should shun conferences based at Israeli universities, faculty exchange programs that involve those universities, and research projects funded in whole or in part by Israel or what boycott guidelines call Israel's lobby groups.
Our commitment to academic freedom requires us to tolerate such views among our faculty members, even if they would corrode our universities. They do not require us to accept supporters of BDS as high-level administrators of schools of international affairs. Indeed, David Bernstein at the Volokh conspiracy argues that supporters of BDS should, if they are to be deans, "publicly and contractually disavow any intention of adhering to BDS position while serving as administrators: no boycotting Israeli academic institutions, no discrimination against students or faculty who have ties to Israeli institutions or academic journals."
George Washington University is standing by an interim dean at its foreign policy school who has come under fire for past actions supporting the boycott Israel movement.
A campus group, GW for Israel, launched a petition this week calling for the university to reconsider its recent naming of Ilana Feldman as the interim dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs, the prestigious private Washington, D.C., university's training school for diplomats and other foreign policy specialists.
Feldman, an anthropology scholar, is currently the school's vice dean and will serve until a replacement is named. She has joined in calling on the American Anthropological Association to boycott Israeli academic institutions, most recently in 2018.
"Dr. Ilana Feldman has been an active faculty member at the Elliott School of International Affairs since 2007," the University's provost, Brian Blake, said Thursday in an email to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. "As vice dean, Dr. Feldman has demonstrated her leadership ability and her respect for and commitment to all students, faculty and staff of the Elliott School community. Dr. Feldman's appointment as interim dean was made based on strong support within the Elliott School, including from the current dean, the Dean's Council, as well as a number of faculty."
George Washington University is on the record as opposing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, or BDS.
The GW for Israel group named a number of instances that Feldman has backed the boycott Israel movement and argued that her past involvement has the effect of isolating Israeli and pro-Israel students at the university.
Missouri lawmakers on Thursday passed a bill to ban the state from doing business with companies that boycott Israel.
The GOP-led House approved the measure 95-40 on Thursday, the day before their Friday deadline to pass bills this year.
Lawmakers are rushing to pass as many bills as possible after taking several weeks off over concerns about spreading the coronavirus. They returned to the Capitol days before Gov. Mike Parson's statewide stay-at-home order expired May 3.
Many are not wearing masks, but some are.
The boycott bill is in response to a Palestinian-led boycott movement against Israel.
The BDS movement promotes boycotts, divestment and sanctions of Israeli institutions and businesses in what it says is a nonviolent campaign against Israeli abuses against Palestinians. Israel says the campaign masks a deeper goal of delegitimizing and even destroying the country.
The Missouri bill would require companies to sign a contract pledging not to boycott Israel in order to do business with Missouri. It wouldn't apply to contracts worth less than $100,000 or companies with fewer than 10 employees.
At least 27 other states have passed similar policies, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Republican Rep. Holly Rehder led the Senate bill through the House. She said doing anything to support the boycott movement goes against Missouri's economic policies and would be "absurd."
"The legislature has taken bold action to combat the insidious and hateful BDS movement that singles out Israel and encourages punitive actions against its economy and citizens, said Nancy Lisker, director of the American Jewish Committee St. Louis Region.
The ongoing case against Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan became mired in even more controversy when one of his accusers filed a complaint over her identity being stolen and illegally published by a rogue French intelligence agent, Le Parisien reported.
Ramadan, a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford's St. Anthony's College and grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, is currently facing four charges of rape in France. The two initial charges were made by feminist activist Henda Ayari, with the other one being a disabled woman identified only as "Christelle."
However, Ramadan's supporters reportedly uncovered Christelle's identity in 2018 after hiring an active member of France's internal intelligence agency Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure (DGSE), identified only as "Haurus," to comb through the Dark Web for information. This agent has reportedly fallen into disgrace for selling information, according to a report accessed by Le Parisien, and the agent has since been indicted.
In 2019, Christelle sought legal action to stop Ramadan from publicizing her identity in his book, titled Devoir de vérité or Duty of Truth, which mentions her name no less than 84 times. However, her first name and birthdate was reportedly released to, and published by, the Muslim Post, a Tunis-based news outlet that has published many articles in Ramadan's defense.
Christelle's lawyer, Eric Morain, now wants to request the admission of evidence from the Haurus case into the case against Ramadan. Speaking to Le Parisien, Morain referred to the actions as "foul-smelling" and said that it was part of an effort to pressure and scare his client with threats into silence.
"Investigations must be carried out to find out if these foul-smelling practices are the work of Tariq Ramadan and his entourage, even if it seems obvious," he said.
"In this case, there have been many pressures and threats on the victims to scare them and silence them. The disclosure of identities and addresses is part of these methods."
Qatar is spending billions of dollars to infiltrate the American education system as part of a propaganda effort that legal advocates say violates federal statutes and warrants a full-scale investigation, according to a nonpublic memorandum sent from an investigative group to the State Department and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The Qatar Foundation (QF), a state-controlled entity tasked with promoting the country's interests, has spent at least $1.5 billion since 2012 to fund a range of educational initiatives at 28 universities across America, making it one of the education system's most prolific foreign funders, according to information obtained by the Lawfare Project, a U.S.-based legal group that has been petitioning American universities to turn over information about their financial relationships with Qatar.
Foreign funding of American universities has been a concern for some time, with countries such as Qatar, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and others injecting billions into their budgets. The Education Department found in late 2019 that several schools failed to report more than $1.3 billion in foreign funds. Qatar's emergence as one of the leading foreign funders has generated concerns about anti-Israel and anti-Semitic bias working its way into the classroom.
The Lawfare Project's investigation, which has been provided to the Trump administration, "reveals considerable Qatari infiltration in the American education system and the media," according to a copy of the investigative materials viewed by the Free Beacon. "This infiltration, funded and organized through QF and [Qatar Foundation International], has turned American universities and primary and secondary school teachers into de facto agents of the Qatari government, conveying its political (and anti-Semitic) views to students and the general population without any acknowledgment of the origins of these views."
An antisemitic rally where an Israeli flag was torched caused German lawmakers on Thursday to pass legislation outlawing the burning of all foreign flags within the borders of the federal republic.
The Jerusalem Post reviewed the 16-page change in German to law that imposes a criminal penalty that could lead to a three year prison term for flag burning.
The Social Democratic Party faction wrote in the proposed law ahead of its passage "that the draft law and the coalition factions' amendment were not about restricting freedom of expression. Rather, a clear criminal law barrier should be set and a gap in criminal law should be closed. It was unbearable and unacceptable for the flag of the State of Israel to be burned in public."
The main triggering event for the legislation was a 2017 demonstration in Berlin, in which 2,500 people, most of whom were German Muslims, protested against US President Donald Trump's decision to relocate the US embassy to Israel's capital, Jerusalem. The protestors torched an Israeli flag, prompting police at the time to initiate investigations into 11 people in connection with the flag burning.
According to the "justification" section of the legislation, the law to criminalize flag burning was extended "to any disparaging destruction of flags of foreign countries." According to the justification, this is intended to react to events in December 2017: "A public demonstration in Berlin in that participants burned the Israeli flag and chanted corresponding slogans had become an antisemitic rally."
Why would @jvplive (a Jewish group claiming they promote peace, it's right there in their name) share a hateful TikTok featuring a song saying "My blood is Palestinian?" pic.twitter.com/xUoy15YVVS
— The Mossad: Espionage at = 2 metres (@TheMossadIL) May 14, 2020
Looking to end the longstanding Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all, CNN will give climate change activist and Middle East expert Greta Thunberg an hour of airtime to lay out her peace plan.
The network announced that the Special, which will air next week during prime time, will follow her appearance on an expert panel discussing COVID-19. Although she has never formally studied or worked in Israel or the Middle East, network executives are confident that she will have little trouble getting the two sides to a durable final status agreement.
"Countless world leaders, diplomats, kings, and businessmen have tried to broker a compromise between these two peoples and their seemingly intractable positions," CNN President Jeffrey Zucker said in a statement. "But one thing has never been tried, and that is having an angry teenager pout at both nations' leaders until a peace deal is signed, and we are pretty sure that is what has been missing."
Already, Thunberg has come out swinging at both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
"Mr. Netanyahu keeps building illegal Israeli settlements in occupied territory on what will one day be a Palestinian state. How dare you?" Thunberg declared. "And Mr. Abbas, you say you want peace but refuse to negotiate without preconditions. You have stolen my future and ripped apart my childhood with your empty words!"
A new hashtag on Twitter gained popularity Thursday that appears to liken the coronavirus to the large-scale immigration of Jews to Mandate Palestine, prior to the onset of the 1948 Israeli War of Independence and the subsequent Palestinian exodus.
#Covid1948, an alleged reference to both the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the events of 1948 in Mandatory Palestine, seems to imply that the in-gathering and return of Jews to the region was akin to the spread of a virus for Palestinians in the area, with many Twitter users sharing a a highly-criticized map revealing a shrinking "Palestine" from 1947 to today.
The map has been criticized by academic experts as misleading by ignoring historical context, including that Britain ruled over Mandatory Palestine from 1917 to 1948, debates on the causes of the Palestinian exodus and territorial changes due to multiple wars between Israel and its neighbors.
Other Twitter users also shared pictures of Gaza following IDF Operation Protective Edge in 2014, in addition to memes, cartoons and drawings that show both anti-Zionist and antisemitic themes and caricatures.
The Associated Press yesterday concealed from readers that Israel has fully withdrawn from the Gaza Strip, giving uninformed readers the false impression that Israel remains in control of the coastal territory. In the May 13 article, "Despite virus, Pompeo talks West Bank annexation in Israel," Ilan Ben-Zion wrote: Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek these territories as part of a future independent state. In the decades since, Israel has built settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem that now house nearly 700,000 Israelis. Most of the international community considers these settlements a violation of international law and obstacles to peace.
Nowhere does the passage note that Israel completely withdrew every last soldier and civilian from the Gaza Strip in 2005, a fact quite relevant to aspirations of a independent Palestinian state.
Uninformed readers would have no way of knowing that Israel currently has no presence in the coastal territory (aside, of course, from the two mentally-ill civilians being held captive in a violation of international law, along with the bodies of two Israeli soldiers). Indeed, the language "Palestinians seek these territories" wrongly indicates that the Palestinians currently do not have the Gaza Strip, which is in fact ruled by the Palestinian Hamas organization, a designated terror group.
Separately, the same article opens by stating as fact that Israeli army fire killed a Palestinian teen yesterday in the West Bank, though the army has yet to confirm the Palestinian claim.
This can't be real… 🧐
Can it?
Al-Jazeera just told the world that Israeli doctors saved a Palestinian infant's life.
Two men who allegedly killed and robbed a Holocaust survivor in her Paris apartment will stand trial for murder that was aggravated by anti-Semitic hatred, Paris prosecutors said.
The charred body of Mireille Knoll, 85, was discovered in her apartment on March 23, 2018.
Yacine Mihoub, 28, a son of Knol's neighbor who had known her all his life, and his friend Alex Carrimbacus, 22, were indicted Thursday. Carrimbacus has a history of psychiatric problems.
Carrimbacus had said during questioning that he and Mihoub targeted Knoll for robbery because she was Jewish, a claim denied by Mihoub. Both men have pleaded not guilty, AFP reported.
Sammy Ghozlan, the head of the National Bureau for Vigilance Against Antisemitism, said his group was "satisfied" with the indictment.
Ghozlan was among many critics of a 2019 court ruling that found the killer of another Jewish woman, Sarah Halimi, unfit to stand trial.
The suspected killer, Kobili Traore, was a Muslim who shouted about Allah and called Halimi, his neighbor, a "demon" as he pummeled her to death in her apartment in 2017. Halimi's daughter said that in 2015, Traore had called the daughter "dirty Jewess" in the building's elevator.
A judge accepted the prosecution's position that anti-Semitism motivated Traore to kill Halimi, but found him unfit to stand trial, citing a "psychotic episode" shortly before the incident that was deemed to be caused by smoking too much marijuana. The decision was upheld on appeal.
Police are investigating after the words "Zionist police state 2020" were found graffitied in at least two locations in Hackney in North London.
The antisemitic vandalism – either an allusion to the racist meme that 'Zionists' have outsized power or an association of Zionism with the emergency draconian rules in place during the pandemic – was sighted on a boat called 'Shalom' (meaning 'hello', or 'peace') on the River Lea and on a local map.
The graffiti was noticed by a journalist, Sophie Wilkinson, who said: "Seeing 'Zionist' as a pejorative term truly upset me. As a Jew, I am under as much 'state control' as the next person, and to suggest Jews gain from this crisis is not only absurd but is part of seemingly never-ending racist conspiracy theories against us. That the Hebrew word for 'peace' has been interpreted as a threat to this vandal speaks volumes to their lazy presumptions about Jews and power."
Campaign Against Antisemitism's analysis of Home Office statistics shows that an average of over three hate crimes are directed at Jews every single day in England and Wales, with Jews almost four times more likely to be targets of hate crimes than any other faith group.
Are the folk over at the Gap catalog clueless about the events of 1939-1945?
Pitt Griffin was among many Twitter cowboys who spotted the new gray and white short-sleeved shirt on the store's website that so resembled the death camp inmate uniforms.
Griffin announced: "The GAP has offered for sale a striped shirt that many have pointed out has distinct similarities to the shirt issued to concentration camp prisoners. And just to frost the stupidity they called it a 'camp shirt.'"
Yes, they really did. The product's name, I kid you not, is Camp Shirt in Poplin. In Hebrew, the name for Poland is Polin, so those of us who scanned the title quickly really did do a double take.
We looked it up, and Poplin is a fine but thick wool, cotton or silk fabric with a horizontal warp and a vertical weft made with twice the yarns.
So we can be certain the historic camp shirts probably weren't poplin.
OK, so far the above is just a glitch that could happen to any corporate giant that hires copywriters who aren't so strong in knowledge of 20th century atrocities. Indeed, the NY Post reminded us that in 2014, the clothing chain Zara apologized for its striped shirt that had a yellow Star of David emblazoned on the chest; and in 2007, Zara apologized for selling a handbag adorned by embroidered swastikas. If you say you're sorry, you can probably get away with it.
On April 11, 1945, U.S. Army chaplain Herschel Schacter was on the outskirts of Weimar, Germany, when he was told, "We just got word that our troops penetrated a place called Buchenwald. It's some kind of concentration camp." Schacter and his assistant, Pvt. Hyman Schulman, drove five miles to the site.
As he stepped through the front gate, his eye "caught a glimpse of a tall chimney with billowing smoke still curling upward." It was Buchenwald's crematorium. Schacter later recalled, "There I stood, face to face with piles of dead bodies strewn around, waiting to be shoveled into the furnace that was still hot."
A GI led the rabbi to a nearby prisoner barracks. "A foul odor hit me as I entered. I saw a series of shelves, hard cold planks of wood from floor to ceiling. There were hundreds of men and a few boys lying on stinking straw sacks, looking out at me from dazed and bewildered eyes, skin and bones, more dead than alive....Impulsively, instinctively, I shouted in Yiddish, 'Sholom aleichem Yidden, ihr zeit frei - Greetings, Jews, you are free!'"
Some 21,000 Jews remained alive in Buchenwald on its day of liberation. Prisoner Moshe Avital later recalled, "We crowded around him [Rabbi Schacter] and hugged and kissed him. And some asked him, 'Why did you take so long to come?'" At one point, Schacter found himself "paralyzed in front of a mound of corpses." He noticed a small movement from among the bodies and stepped closer. The eyes of a young boy stared out at him. The 8-year-old boy, known as "Lulek," was Israel Meir Lau, who grew up to become the chief rabbi of Israel.
With the permission of his superiors, Schacter returned to Buchenwald every day for the next 2 1/2 months, nursing the survivors back to life and serving as their liaison to the military authorities.
King David Primary School is, in some ways, a typical Jewish school. Students learn Hebrew and recite Jewish prayers every morning. They celebrate Jewish festivals, sing Jewish songs, and eat meals cooked in a kosher kitchen. What makes it unique is that about 75% of the students are Muslim.
King David is located in Birmingham, Britain's second-largest city, and has approximately 250 students aged 3 to 11, the age that virtually all U.K. schoolchildren move on to secondary school. It's the only Jewish school for at least 100 miles, in a city that's home to only 2,000 Jews, a significant fraction of whom do not practice.
Despite its small numbers today, Birmingham has one of the oldest Jewish communities in the U.K., present in the city since the early 1700s. In this period, Birmingham was an attractive destination for European Jews fleeing persecution on the continent; the church had comparatively little sway here, making it popular with nonconformists of all creeds. More Jews came to Britain during the 1800s, and Birmingham's community continued to grow—albeit not as quickly as communities in the north and south, swelled by migrants attempting to reach America via Liverpool or London only to run out of money before they could get there.
But that didn't stop a vibrant community from developing. The Hebrew National School opened in 1843, 37 years before primary school education became compulsory. It continued to grow alongside a Jewish community thriving by the 1930s. A wealth of Jewish clubs and events were dotted across the city, including an arts society, drama clubs, and a Jewish Lads' Brigade, as well as several synagogues.
Just two decades later, it was clear there would be challenges ahead. An extract from the 1952 Birmingham Jewish Recorder describes an "image of a community emerging so widely scattered geographically, and so diversified in its group associations, that it is scarcely possible to see the wood from the trees."
The next 10 years saw the Jewish population in the city decline from an estimated 10,000 to around 6,000, and the Hebrew National School, which moved sites in 1965, was renamed King David Primary School. The next 20 years saw the city's Jewish population decline further, to just 3,000. "A lot of people made aliyah … that's been a steady thing over the years," explained Mark Gee, who owned the last kosher butcher shop in Birmingham, which closed in 2013. "And children go off to university and don't come back to Birmingham." But the city is not an anomaly. "We used to deliver to Jewish shops in Nottingham, Leicester, Cardiff, and Oxford," said Gee. "All of these places used to have kosher butchers. Birmingham has lasted a lot longer than other communities outside of London and Manchester."
As the city's Jewish community shrank over the next 30 years, other religious groups saw their numbers increase, none more so than Birmingham's Islamic community. According to the most recent census data, by 2011, 1 in 5 Birmingham residents identified as Muslim—around half of whom were born overseas. Most of Birmingham's Islamic community is of Pakistani or Bangladeshi descent, but Muslims from a variety of different countries in Africa and the Middle East—including Yemen, Iran, and Somalia—also call Birmingham home.
A British-Jewish businessman and war hero is the first centenarian to appear in the Sunday Times Rich List of the richest individuals in the United Kingdom.
Tony Murray escaped Nazi-occupied France during World War II, joining Polish forces that headed to the United Kingdom.
Serving in the Royal Air Force as a navigator, Murray, who was born Gaston Jacques Kalifa in Paris in 1920, flew dozens of missions in North Africa, according to an article about him Monday in the Jewish Chronicle.
Murray returned to France after World War II, during which his father was murdered at Auschwitz. He took control of the family's construction firm, accumulating an estimated wealth of $2.8 billion. Later he moved back to the United Kingdom.
His family businesses include London Security, a fire extinguisher firm, and Andrew Sykes Group, a heating giant.
Murray, who has been on the list for many consecutive years, is the oldest person on the list since 2014. But he is not high up on the list of 1,000 wealthy Britons.
While most of the country's youth are confined to their homes because of the coronavirus outbreak, an Israeli teen took the extra free time on his hands to develop an app helping dieting youngsters or those fighting conditions, such as diabetes or celiac, to monitor their daily calorie intake.
Thirteen-year-old Ido Kalman from Herzliya has recently launched an app called "Pahme-Kama", which roughly translates to "how many calories."
Users can simply type the kind of food they wish to eat and the app will provide them with information about its nutritional value.
"I have been dealing with diabetes for years," said Kalman. "I never knew exactly how many calories there were in what I ate. Now, if I want to grab some fruit and cannot remember how many calories there are in it, the app provides me with that information on the spot."
The teenager said that the prolonged shelter-in-place orders, which left schools nationwide shuttered, have given him much free time to work on his app.
"My schedule is more flexible now that I don't have to spend six to seven hours a day at school, and I can focus on developing the app," said Kalman. The youngster said that he spends most of his time watching television with his family.
A Celebration of Israel's 72nd Independence Day | #Israel72
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It isn't. It is a photo of the Gestapo concentration camp Mittelbau-Dora.
They said Deir Yassin started the mass exodus of Palestinians.
It didn't. They started to flee in December 1947, starting with the upper and middle class. Later the rumors about Deir Yassin hastened many to leave but part of the reason was that their leaders had already fled.
The video shows a graphic indicating Lydda (Lod) and Ramle are across the Green Line.
They are, of course, in Israel, and they still have significant numbers of Arabs.
The video claims that somehow Jordan was "gifted" with the West Bank.
No, it annexed it and this annexation was not recognized by nearly all the nations of the world. (In this case TRT might have meant that the UK gave Jordan political cover for the annexation.)
The video is filled with similar errors and lies. But Turkey positions TRT World as a kind of BBC that can be trusted.
Declaring Israeli sovereignty in the Jordan Valley - with its obvious strategic significance and relatively small population of Palestinians - is a demand shared across the Israeli political mainstream.
Israel can even plausibly claim that extending sovereignty to the area between the West Bank ridgeline and the Jordan River would be a coordinated move, rather than a unilateral one: The U.S. peace plan framework foresees permanent Israeli control over the area and doesn't condition a change in status on any peace agreement with the Palestinians.
A significant share of Israeli leaders, and the people who elect them, believe they now live in a region where the consequences of such a move are manageable. By their logic, the Arab states need Israel too much to scuttle relations over what amounts to less than a quarter of the West Bank, especially when such action would be consistent with an American peace plan that most regional governments have endorsed.
American recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and relocation of its embassy there, as well as endorsement of Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights, were moves that were long believed to be too provocative to ever carry out. Instead, when they happened, they were all relative nonevents.
Dore Gold, Israel's former ambassador to the UN, director-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and confidante to both Benjamin Netanyahu and the late Ariel Sharon, was one of a small number of Israelis outside of government who routinely consulted with Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman about the U.S. peace plan. "I was in it to try to help formulate a plan that would provide a consensus basis for Israel's future borders," Gold recalled.
The Jordan Valley was hardly a new issue for Gold. In 1997, he accompanied Netanyahu to the Map Room of the White House, where they presented President Clinton's peace process team with an "interest map" of the West Bank that highlighted areas Israel believed to be of critical importance, the Jordan Valley included.
Until the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, it was believed Saddam Hussein's army could cross the Kingdom of Jordan and reach Israeli-controlled territory in 36 hours. Even with that scenario foreclosed, Gold thought Israeli planners needed to work across a longer time scale than the life of a single leader or even a single regime. "Military planning, especially strategic planning, should never be scenario-specific," Gold said.
"I personally had the view, which got backing from the prime minister's office, that in places like the Jordan Valley where Israel had the highest security interests, it would have to seek actual sovereignty over the territory." This argument repudiated decades of peace process doctrine, which defaulted to treating the valley as territory in a future Palestinian state.
American Zionist Movement: The Path to Independence and Recognition: Why San Remo Matters
Join the American Zionist Movement and the Israel Forever Foundation to celebrate the 72nd anniversary of the May 14, 1948 Declaration of the State of Israel, its immediate recognition by the United States, and to mark the important Centennial of the San Remo Conference.
The claim that the restoration of Jewish sovereignty over parts of the West Bank would destroy the possibility of a Palestinian state is untrue. Every serious Middle East peace plan has accepted the eventual incorporation into Israel of the major settlement blocs to safeguard its security.
It is the Palestinians who have destroyed the possibility of a Palestinian state. Offered it repeatedly from the 1930s onwards, they have refused it every time. Nine decades of the Palestinians rejecting the two-state solution might possibly mean that the Jews aren't the obstacle.
Opposition to the "annexation" is driven by the belief that Israel illegally occupies these territories. But this is untrue. As several legal experts have pointed out over the years, the Jews are the only people to have a legal and moral right to this land. In 1922, the international community gave them the never-abrogated right to settle what is now Israel and the disputed territories. Restoring Israeli sovereignty to parts of Judea and Samaria will therefore actually correct a historic act of illegality. And it will help protect Israel against its existential enemies.
On Sunday, Saudi journalist Abdelhameed al-Ghoban gave an interview to the BBC in Arabic. His remarks, which were translated by MEMRI, were devoid of nuance.
"Today, the public is informed. There is a deluge [of opinions] against the Palestinian cause. It is no longer just public support for normalization and building ties with Israel. [Our] public has turned against the Palestinians in general. Unfortunately, the Palestinians have lost. The Palestinians have not contributed anything. We can say that they are emotional people whose behavior is governed by their feelings."
Al-Ghoban added, "It is in our strategic interest, and in keeping with our future economic interests, to maintain real relations with Israel. Israel is an advanced country and we can benefit from it."
Al-Ghoban's remarks are not a lone voice in the wilderness. During the Ramadan Muslim holy month, Saudi television networks broadcast two series that portray Jews and Israelis in a positive light.
Palestinian leaders are beside themselves at what they view as pan-Arab abandonment. In remarks to Israel Hayom this week, a senior Palestinian official bitterly referred to the mild criticisms of US President Donald Trump's peace plan and of Israel's plan to apply its sovereignty to its communities in Judea and Samaria and to the Jordan Valley as no more than "lip service."
Israeli leftist groups are hanging their hopes for torpedoing Israel's sovereignty plans on the European Union. France's plan, supported by Luxemburg, Belgium and Ireland to impose EU sanctions on Israel in the event it implements its sovereignty plan was widely reported this week.
But like the Palestinians, Israeli leftists are likely to be disappointed. EU rules require all decisions to be made by consensus. And there is no consensus on sanctioning Israel.
Amidst that backdrop, there is nothing provocative about asserting sovereignty over contested land to which one has a superior legal claim — especially with the legal backing of the most pro-Israel administration in U.S. history. The Trump administration previously gave its imprimatur to Israel's similar sovereignty assertion over the Golan Heights, and there is no reason why any "annexation" could not conform to the contours of the administration's peace plan that it unveiled in January.
What's more, the "annexation" critics also suffer from a remarkably short memory. Many of the same fears — especially that dusty canard about the Arab streets erupting — were raised when the administration moved the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Those howls of protest were met by a deafening silence from the rest of the Arab world. Realpolitik dominates, these days, in Sunni Arab capitals from Cairo to Riyadh. The looming threat of the hegemonic Shiite Iranian regime hovers like a poltergeist over the entire region, resulting in unprecedented cooperation between states like Saudi Arabia and Israel. The leading Arab states have largely abandoned the Palestinian cause: Saudi Arabia's statement it released after the unveiling of Trump's peace plan was more pro-Israel than was Joe Biden's.
The blunt reality is that if the Palestinians ever wish to have their own state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, their people and kleptocratic leadership alike must first accept defeat and accept Israel's lasting legitimacy. Simply put, the Palestinians must admit defeat in their century-long civilizational jihad to destroy the Jewish state. Israel applying sovereignty to these contested areas will thus not merely bring the status of Israeli Jews living there out of legal limbo, a tangible benefit, but will further the substantive geopolitical goal of long-term peace.
The Trump administration should also enthusiastically encourage prompt "annexation" as fully consonant with its overarching foreign policy strategy. Trump has boldly staked out a "America First" realist foreign policy, much to the chagrin of the intellectually sclerotic neoliberals of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment. What could be more realist than proclaiming to the world that the United States has no vested security interest in nation-building a new Islamist terrorist state any time soon — and that our national interest is instead best advanced by bolstering the legal, geographic and strategic position of an indispensable ally?
The Trump administration's recent rhetoric on "annexation" has been a mixed bag. But it is not too late to change course. Policymakers ought to not overthink this: There is a clear outcome that is both better for Israel and better for America. Now set forth and do it.
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin declared in October 1995, "The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term." This demand mirrors the U.S. peace plan, which would allow Israel to declare sovereignty over the Jordan Valley.
Israelis of all backgrounds and ideologies long have believed the conflict never was about territory. The question that motivated Palestinian rejectionism was always about Jewish sovereignty over any territory in their indigenous and ancestral homeland, and not about where and how much.
Israelis are tired of waiting for a Palestinian leader who will free his people from rejectionism, so they want to end the deadlock by declaring sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria which are vital to Israel from a security, national, and historic vantage point. It will show the Palestinians that rejectionism has consequences. None of these steps precludes making a deal in the future if a Palestinian leader decides to do so. Until such time, Israel must take steps that it sees as being in its best interests, with broad support from the Israeli public.
If Israel applies its laws to West Bank settlements, it should be part of Israel and Palestinians working together towards fulfilling US President Donald Trump's peace plan, State Department Spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a briefing with Israeli journalists on Friday.
During Secretary of State MIke Pompeo's visit to Israel this week, he reiterated that "annexation is up to Israel," but that "we think these discussions should be part of the peace process, part of discussions between the Israelis and the Palestinians," Ortagus said.
The State Department Spokeswoman emphasized this point more than once, saying: "We really think annexation should be part of a peace process where Palestinians should have a say."
The Trump administration has sent mixed messages about the conditions for Israel to go forward with annexation.
Friedman said in an interview to The Jerusalem Post last week that Israel could proceed with annexation as long as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shows that he is open and committed to talks with the Palestinians. He did not say the Palestinians would have to agree, stating: "If the Palestinians refuse to show up, I'm not sure what else the prime minister can do. But I think there ought to be an unequivocal communication to the Palestinians that they are invited to negotiate in good faith on the president's vision."
The Trump administration's "Vision for Peace" would allow Israel to apply its laws to all settlements and the Jordan Valley, comprising 30% of the West Bank, and for a Palestinian state to be established in the other 70% under certain conditions, such as stopping incitement and granting its citizens civil rights. If the conditions are met, the Palestinians would also receive a massive economic aid package.
Ortagus pointed out that the joint US-Israel committee to map out those borders, fled by US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman is ongoing.
Jordan's King Abdullah has warned that should Israel move forward with plans to annex parts of the West Bank, it would lead to a "massive conflict" with his country, and did not rule out pulling out of Amman's peace deal with the Jewish state.
In an interview published Friday by the German daily Der Spiegel, Abdullah insisted that a two-state solution was "the only way forward" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
""What would happen if the Palestinian National Authority collapsed? There would be more chaos and extremism in the region. If Israel really annexed the West Bank in July, it would lead to a massive conflict with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan," he said, when asked by his interviewer about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's intention to "take advantage of the opportunity that [US President Donald] Trump has created to seize large parts of Palestine."
"I don't want to make threats and create an atmosphere of loggerheads, but we are considering all options. We agree with many countries in Europe and the international community that the law of strength should not apply in the Middle East," the king added, when asked if his country — one of only two Arab nations, along with Egypt, to have signed a peace deal with Israel — could suspend that treaty.
Jordan has a large Palestinian population and is deeply invested in promoting a two-state solution. "Leaders who advocate a one-state solution do not understand what that would mean," he told the German daily.
The king's comments echoed remarks he made in a September 2019 interview, warning that a West Bank annexation would have "a major impact on the Israeli-Jordanian relationship." At the time, he stopped short of threatening to cut diplomatic ties.
My organization, Im Tirtzu, has become famous (some would say infamous) for our calling out the lies, misrepresentations and deliberate distortions attached to marking "Nakba Day." Palestinian and other Arabs use May 15, the secular calendar date of Israel's Independence, to bemoan the "Nakba" - literally, the catastrophe - the so-called heartless uprooting and displacement of Arabs.
Our book, Nakba Nonsense, has become a standard reference piece for those seeking the facts about this turbulent time. Conveniently missing from the distorted Palestinian Arab narrative is the massive evacuation of wealthy Arabs way before May 15, followed by the widespread voluntary flight of Arabs who were advised by Arab leaders to leave their homes temporarily so as to not get in the way of the massacre of the Jews.
As befits most Palestinian Arab commemorations, Nakba Day is typically marked with riots and violent protests. This in and of itself should shed some light on the claims of a "peaceful people brutally uprooted."
This year, however, is likely to be a bit different, thanks to the Coronavirus. As much as the Palestinian leadership would love to throw darts at Israel, however they can, even they might feel a sense of responsibility to mute the activities of the day in the name of public health considerations.
Of course, nature abhors a vacuum, and it would seem just downright wrong not to mark Nakba Day. In that spirit, let me propose an all weather, virus-resistant form of marking the Nakba.
The real Nakba: the Nakba of the Jews of Arab lands.
In one of the most cruel, calculated and ultimately self-destructive acts of modern history, the declaration of Israel's Independence was universally accompanied by the mass persecution of the Jews in Arab lands.
Most egregious was the expulsion of the Jews of Iraq, the oldest Jewish community in the world outside of the Land of Israel. True, Iraqi Jews suffered a barbaric pogrom known as the Farhud during Shavuot 194, in which 180 Jews were murdered in Bagdad, but the Jews of Iraq saw themselves as integral to and integrated in their society. They played an essential economic and social role.
This only reiterates why @UNRWA is one of single greatest impediments to peace, as long as they continue to indulge the Palestinians delusions that Israel's creation was a 'catastrophe' & they can still destroy us. #KeyToPeacehttps://t.co/7wtTgNVN66
The Senate this week passed legislation urging President Trump to issue sanctions against those responsible for China's actions against its Uighur Muslim minority as the president and his GOP allies have ramped up pressure on China over its handling of the coronavirus.
The bill introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) calls for the Trump administration to issue sanctions over the "gross human rights violations" against Uighurs and other Muslim groups in the country. It would condemn the internment of Uighurs and other Muslim groups in China's Xinjiang region and call for the country to close the camps. The U.S. would also revoke the visas of any officials found to have taken part in the internment of the groups, among other measures.
"The Chinese Government and Communist Party's systematic, ongoing efforts to wipe out the ethnic and cultural identities of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang is horrific and will be a stain on humanity should we refuse to act," Rubio said in a statement after the Senate passage.
The bill was passed by unanimous consent in the Senate without a roll-call vote. It now must be passed by the House before being sent to the White House for approval.
The bill was previously passed in the Senate in September, Bloomberg News reported. However, the House amended the legislation to block the export of devices that could be used for spying or restricting communications or movement of members of the groups. The Senate removed that language from the version of the bill passed Thursday.
China has worked to detain an unknown number of members of the minority population in what it says are "reeducation camps." Top administration officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have condemned the detainment, with Pompeo previously calling the effort an "attempt to erase its own citizens."
Congrats to 85 French leaders for endorsing @thearabcouncil's call to protect Arab citizens who champion peace and dialogue with Israelis. People-to-people relations are essential in curbing extremism and building public support for peace. https://t.co/rGamn4K0Ac
Nearly 25 years ago, Tom Goldman and Baruch Ben-Ygal forged a relationship that became stronger as the years passed.
Ben-Ygal saved Goldman from drowning at the 1997 Maccabiah Games in Israel when the bridge across the Yarkon River collapsed as the Australian team headed to the opening ceremony. The disaster killed four and injured more than 60 Australian athletes and other team delegates.
This week, Ben-Ygal suffered a tragedy: His only child, Amit, a 21-year-old Israeli soldier, was killed during a raid on a Palestinian village in the West Bank when an assailant hurled a large rock at his head.
"Baruch has been an honorary member of the Australian team in every Maccabiah since 1997," Goldman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. "In 2013, Amit helped out with the juniors also in an unofficial capacity. I am devastated."
Goldman had flown to Israel from Sydney eight years ago to attend Amit's bar mitzvah. Amit called Goldman his "grandfather."
The grave of St.-Sgt. Amit Ben Yigal who was killed in a West Bank operation on Monday night was sabotaged on Thursday, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit reported.
Digging marks were found on the grave, which is in Be'er Ya'acov, and the late soldier's father was called to the scene with a member of the IDF Rabbinical Corps and other IDF officials to ensure Ben Yigal's remains was not disturbed.
The IDF and Israel Police launched an investigation into the matter. The Defense Ministry placed Golani combatants at the scene to guard Ben Yigal's grave while the tomb is being sealed with concrete.
The initial investigation reportedly concluded the grave sabotage was not politically-motivated and was seemingly done by a mentally ill suspect. The suspect is still searched for by law enforcement.
St.-Sgt. Ben Yigal was killed by a concrete block thrown at him during an overnight raid in the village of Yabad located in the Palestinian Authority's Jenin Governorate, bordering the settlement of Mevo Dotan in the northwestern West Bank.
The 21-year-old sergeant was the only IDF soldier to have been killed since the beginning of the year. Yigal's killer is being searched for by Shin Bet and the IDF, as the military on high alert amid further attempted attacks on soldiers.
The #Gaza militant group Humat al Aqsa praises today's ramming attack against an IDF soldier. "The Humat al Aqsa Movement in Palestine blesses the heroic run over operation carried out by the martyr Baha al Awawdeh in the village of Dayr Samet," the statement read. #Israelpic.twitter.com/7l9TtE0gm2
The HRW report focuses on only three Arab towns in Israel – Jisr al-Zarqa, Qalansawa and Ein Mahel, with a total population of 50,000. It deliberately ignores the other two million or so Arab Israelis. Moreover, the report fails to mention that the housing crisis affects not only Arabs, but also Jews.
In 2015, the Israeli government decided to implement the Economic Development Plan, a multi-year plan of about $12.3 billion, targeting issues such as planning, employment, transportation and education in the Arab sector. This groundbreaking plan is the largest and most comprehensive ever advanced to close gaps for Israel's Arab society.... Hamas, meanwhile, has done virtually nothing to solve the debilitating housing crisis of the two million Palestinians living under its rule in the Gaza Strip.
This is the same Hamas that is now using the HRW report to shed crocodile tears over the alleged housing crisis in the Arab sector in Israel.... A terrorist group that has failed its own people on an epic level is pretending that it is worried about where Arabs in Israel will live.
The HRW report, which ignores Hamas's atrocities against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, is now being used by the terrorist group as "evidence" of why Israel should be destroyed and replaced with an Islamic state.
"[The Middle East is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than any other country in the region." – Robert L. Bernstein, The New York Times, October 19, 2009.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh threatened to kidnap more Israelis on Wednesday if a prisoner deal is not reached.
"A prisoner-exchange deal has a known price. Israel knows that. Either we will come to a respectable deal, or we will go to the other option, which is increasing our loot. Our arm is long," Haniyeh said according to a Ynet report.
Despite recent reports about the possibility of such an arrangement between Israel and Hamas, the reality is that there is no single, strong Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip who is free to make such decisions, wrote Pinhas Inbari, a veteran Arab-affairs correspondent and analyst for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
Reports about a pending prisoner-exchange deal between Israel and Hamas are gaining momentum.
According to Palestinian sources in Ramallah, however, major obstacles remain in the way, particularly within Hamas, said Inbari.
The terrorist network maintained by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in the West Bank has shown increased capacities and activity in recent months.
Growing financial and logistical support from Tehran to the PFLP has been reported since 2013.
The specific reason for Iran's renewed support for the PFLP relates to the Syrian civil war. Hamas strongly supported the Syrian rebellion, leading to a rupture in Tehran's support to it which has not been entirely repaired.
This led Tehran to look further afield in order to build armed networks in the West Bank. The PFLP strongly supported Assad throughout the war.
The PFLP is a small organization with a somewhat eccentric secular and leftist ideology possessing little appeal among the broad masses of the conservative, religious Palestinian population.
It possesses, nevertheless, a tight organizational structure, a cadre of fiercely loyal operatives, and a willingness to engage in violence.
The Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades publication of a military drill honoring Hassan Nasrallah, Ahmad Sa'adat, Abu Ali Mustafa, Geroge Habash and Qasem Soleimani. #Gazapic.twitter.com/kyUxgsfP7E
Kornet anti-tank missiles fired by Hezbollah at an Israeli military vehicle and position near the Lebanese border last September were launched from within territory in southern Lebanon controlled by an environmental organization, according to a report released Thursday that argues that the group is in fact a front for Hezbollah.
The group, Green Without Borders, has been accused of being a front for the Iran-backed terror organization several times in the past, by both the Israel Defense Forces and Israel's delegation to the United Nations.
The paper, published by Matthew Levitt and Samantha Stern of the US-based Washington Institute, takes these allegations further, identifying eight new locations along the border that belong to the group and further demonstrating the non-government organization's ties to Hezbollah.
Green Without Borders bills itself as being primarily dedicated to planting trees, fighting forest fires and environmentalism in general. At the same time, it also freely acknowledges its ties to the "resistance," or Hezbollah. The trees it plants in southern Lebanon are expressly meant to block Israeli surveillance cameras, to act as "a veil on the eyes of the enemy in addition to a wall behind which the resistance fighters protect themselves," the head of the organization, Hajj Zuhair Nahle, told Lebanon's Daily Star news outlet in 2017.
Such was the case last month when the group planted a number of trees on the Israeli side of the internationally recognized Blue Line — but on the Lebanese side of the border fence — prompting the IDF to take the unusual step of crossing into the buffer zone to remove them. This led to a tense standoff near the Israeli town of Metulla between the IDF and Lebanese Armed Forces on April 14, which was mediated by UN peacekeepers who eventually trimmed back the trees themselves.
Levitt and Stern's report does not include any newly discovered evidence unequivocally proving that Green Without Borders is a Hezbollah front in the form of admissions or documentation, instead making the case based on existing information from the organization, UN reports and conversations with Israeli military officials.
International organizations partnering with the Syrian regime are cutting off aid to the poorest and most vulnerable people in Syria during the global pandemic.
A recent report at Foreign Policy noted that the "United Nations informed its relief agencies several weeks ago that they were permitted to fund private charities operating in northeastern Syria only if they were registered in Damascus and authorized to work there by the Syrian government, which has proved unwilling, or unable, to meet the region's health needs."
This gives the Syrian regime a veto over aid to eastern Syria and a way to use it as a weapon. Turkey and Russia collaborated in the effort, as Turkey turns off water to 460,000 people in eastern Syria, and Russia supports the Syrian regime. The report indicates how dictatorships and regimes that abuse human rights come first at controlling UN and international aid, enabling them to use it only for charities linked to them and using it to empower loyalists and sideline others.
The World Health Organization has also stopped supporting eastern Syria, an area of millions of people who are recovering from ISIS atrocities, as the WHO also works through the Syrian regime rather than providing equal access to people on the ground in a Syria divided by conflict. It now turns out that people of eastern Syria are being increasingly isolated by great powers who want them to stop working with the US and either be controlled by Turkey or by the Russian-backed Assad regime.
The report notes that the UN Security Council, "acting under pressure from Russia, shut down a UN-sanctioned humanitarian aid hub on January 10 at the Yaroubia crossing on the Iraqi-Syrian border. That deprived the UN of an explicit legal mandate to serve in the region." The crossing was used by the WHO and private groups, "delivering medical assistance into northeastern Syria."
When Iran and world powers concluded the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), President Barack Obama and senior officials in his administration repeatedly touted its key enforcement mechanism. If Iran violated the agreement, they said, the United States could unilaterally reimpose all sanctions enacted by the UN Security Council, even without the support of other countries such as Russia and China. Such a step would be known as a "snapback" mechanism.
The United States retains the right to initiate a snapback even though the Trump administration withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018. UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorsed the JCPOA, defines the term "participant state" to include the United States. A State Department legal opinion released in December 2019 maintains that the resolution does not envision a change in this definition even if Washington abandons the JCPOA.1 On the contrary, the JCPOA was specifically designed to facilitate a snapback if one of its parties believes, at any time, that Iran is engaging in significant nonperformance of the accord's provisions.
The conduct of the regime in Iran clearly amounts to significant non-performance of its JCPOA obligations. In 2018, the world learned that Iran had misled the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and breached its JCPOA nuclear disclosure commitments by concealing a secret nuclear weapons archive. Over the past year, Tehran has repeatedly and overtly violated the JCPOA, including by dramatically expanding its uranium enrichment activities and stockpiles of enriched uranium. According to the Institute for Science and International Security, these actions have brought Iran's breakout time – that is, the amount of time needed to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one nuclear weapon – to an estimated 3.8 months.2
The regime has also denied the IAEA's multiple requests for information and access to suspected nuclear sites, constituting both a breach of Iran's most fundamental obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in addition to significant non-performance of its JCPOA commitments.
This research memo compiles key statements by members of the Obama administration and by several Republican lawmakers in support of the snapback mechanism. The quotations indicate that the authors of the JCPOA specifically intended the use of the snapback mechanism for serious violations of the accord – precisely the type of violations that Iran is committing now. With this fact in mind, the Trump administration should invoke the snapback mechanism in order to hold Iran accountable for its nuclear misconduct.
In advance of Iran's National Persian Gulf day, which this year fell on April 29,[1] the Iranian regime stepped up its provocations against U.S. vessels in international waters in the Gulf, in an attempt to establish in the international community the perception that these waters are Iranian. On April 15, 11 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) speedboats harassed a formation of six U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships, getting within a few meters of them, refusing to heed warnings to move away, and "repeatedly conducted dangerous and harassing approaches," according to the U.S. Navy.[2]
On April 19, Iran stated that the presence of foreign forces, particularly U.S. forces, in the Gulf endangers security and stability in it, and issued a warning stating that there would be "a decisive response to any mistake" by the Americans. It added that it the U.S. vessels had been interfering with Iranian maneuvers that were underway and that they had disregarded instructions by Iran to leave the area.
Majlis National Security Committee chairman Mojtaba Zolnour set out, on May 5, Iran's version of events: "The Americans are looking for provocations in the region, and are saying that Iranian [speed] boats surrounded the American ship... [But what really happened was] the American ship blocked the path of an Iranian ship everywhere it wanted to go. We have noticed that if we do not respond to [the Americans] at the right time, they become even more impudent, and begin to carry out other operations. Therefore, the Iranian [speed]boats' blocking of the American vessels was in fact a response to the Americans' interference."[3]
A week after the incident, on April 22, President Trump tweeted: "I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea."
This explicit U.S. threat led the Iranian regime to stop harassing U.S. vessels in the Gulf and to direct its efforts into online media activity, and statements by regime officials, to establish the notion of "our sea" – "mare nostrum" – regarding the Persian Gulf, much as the ancient Romans considered the Mediterranean "mare nostrum." To this end, regime officials, headed by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and Iran's diplomatic corps, under the leadership of Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, as well as top military commanders, mobilized to instill the notion that the Persian Gulf – not the Arabian Gulf, as the Arab countries surrounding it consider it – is Iranian territory, that Iran is in charge of the Strait of Hormuz, and that the IRGC carries out legitimate and legal policing operations in it in order to keep traffic in it secure and safeguard Iran's borders. Based on this, they reiterated their demand that the U.S. immediately withdraw its forces from the region, claiming that they were causing the tension.
The Iranian Armed Forces general staff even warned the U.S. on April 28, as the Iranian regime prepared to mark National Persian Gulf Day, that "Iran will always defend its territorial integrity with readiness and clear strength, and any adventure, harassment, or provocative action will lead to a decisive response by the armed forces of the Islamic Republic – the results of which will be felt by the enemy forces, including America."[4]
Tehran Friday Sermon by Iranian Preacher Kazem Seddiqi: We Are Waiting for God to Punish Lowlife Trump for Killing Soleimani; Germany, Other Countries Owe Their Security to Hizbullah pic.twitter.com/XrAu8xu6Yr
Colonel Abolfazl Sarlak was one of the Iranian military commanders in Syria who was "martyred" last Sunday night in eastern Aleppo, Fars News reported Thirsday.
According to the Iranian news agency, Colonel Sarlak had fought from the beginning of the Syrian civil war alongside General Qasem Soleimani against the "infidels," and also spent many years fighting with Soleimani in Iraq as well. Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei And Qasem Soleimani
Qasem Soleimani was a hero of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and served from 1998 until his assassination by the US in 2020 as commander of its Quds Force, a division primarily responsible for extraterritorial military and clandestine operations. At the time of his death, Soleimani was considered the second most powerful man in Iran, after Ayatollah Khamenei. The ayatollah reportedly was grooming Soleimani to take his place.
According to Sarlak's comrades, "two days before his martyrdom, he told one of his friends that he had a dream in which Hajj Qasem himself had followed him in a car and was telling him to get ready to come meet him."
His wife, who lives with the couple's two young children in Aleppo, responded to the news of Sarlak's demise saying, "I was not at all surprised to hear about the martyrdom because I was collecting his things!" Apparently, she, too, saw General Qasem in a dream two days before her husband was taken to meet his 72 virgins.
So, from now on, if you see Qasem Soleimani in a dream – stay indoors.
A parliamentary motion to officially ban Iranian athletes from competing with their Israeli counterparts has pushed the country to the verge of becoming an outcast at international sports events.
Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979 , the country does not recognize Israel and, based on an unwritten law, has prohibited Iranian athletes to compete with their Israeli counterparts.
The "double-urgency" motion was approved on Tuesday, May 12, with 43 votes in favor and no "nay" votes, the chairman of the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, mid-ranking cleric Mojtaba Zolnouri, announced Tuesday.
If passed into law, the motion will "legally" ban Iranian athletes to compete with Israelis, forcing the country's sports to face a possible international boycott.
The motion is a response to what Zolnouri described as Israel's "hostile actions against regional and international peace and security."
Article 11 of the motion emphasizes that "any competition or sporting event, whether formal or preparatory," between Iranian athletes and sports teams with Israeli opponents is prohibited.
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