Elder of Ziyon 07/10 Links Pt2: Dershowitz: Is the ‘Black Lives Matter’ Platform Antisemitic?; Melanie Phillips: Conversation the eclipse of liberalism and the failure of conservatism
Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, an organization that takes no position on BDS, told The Jewish Week in late 2018 that BDS is not about free speech. "Lawmakers from both parties are working together to erode the First Amendment in a joint effort to create a new political free speech exception for Israel," she wrote. "The potential ramifications of this effort are far-reaching and should provoke deep bipartisan alarm."
Jonathan Tobin, editor-in-chief of JNS, has also written quite often of the erroneous conflation of BDS with free speech. "Political speech is broadly defined in American law, and the courts have chosen to include activity like flag-burning or paying for political advertisements under that rubric. But it has never been defined as granting impunity to those who wish to discriminate against religious or racial groups in the course of conducting business," he wrote in a Dec. 18, 2018 column titled "Discrimination against the Jewish state isn't free speech."
The other concerning statement in Kreibich's position is: "Advocate for the end of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank through settlements." While the word "occupation" should have signaled concern to Kreibich's Jewish neighbors, it's just the tip of the iceberg. This statement shows that the candidate does not believe that Israel has the right to self-determination.
The territories to which Kreibich apparently refers are certainly disputed, but they have been part of Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War. It must then be assumed that she means the disputed territories must all be returned to the pre-1967 lines, regardless of Israel's self-determination through armed conflict. That is a position supported by Sanders and was a position supported by former President Barack Obama in the final months of his term, though not by current Democratic leadership and not even by the current leading Democratic candidate for president, former Vice President Joe Biden.
The IHRA definition includes as anti-Semitic "denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination."
Saying that she will "advocate for the end of Israeli occupation" means that to Kreibich, Jews do not have the right to self-determination. According to the IHRA, this is inherently anti-Semitic and provides ammunition to those who would demonize Israel and its right to exist.
In this day and age, editors and reporters at The Jewish Link have learned that it is no longer enough to go to Washington once or twice a year with NORPAC or AIPAC to advocate as a group for America to support Israel. Israel must be accepted as the only democracy in the Middle East and America's loyal ally since 1948, the establishment of the modern-day nation. Americans should know that Israel has a right to defend its borders and live in peace like any other country. In an era of rising anti-Semitism, xenophobia and violence, the need for American Jews to have a safe haven in the world is more important than ever.
It is incumbent upon every community member who cares about Israel and the survival of the Jewish people to read statements made by would-be elected leaders. This is not a time for complacency or quiet. If Jewish constituents care about the topic, then they must ask for representation from their elected leaders as well as explain, with specificity, why they cannot be supported with views like these.
A High Court judge has ruled that statements made by Jeremy Corbyn on BBC1's Andrew Marr Show in September 2018 could be held to be defamatory of the pro-Israel activist Richard Millett.
In a judgement delivered on Friday Mr Justice Saini rejected the claim by lawyers representing the former Labour leader that he was not referring to Mr Millett when he appeared on the programme and was asked to defend earlier remarks made about "Zionists" who, he believed, "do not understand English irony".
Handing down his judgement, Justice Saini concluded: "To summarise my rulings on the preliminary issues, I find that the words complained of referred to Mr Millett; that they bore a meaning defamatory of Mr Millett as identified above; and I find that the allegations were factual."
A June 23rd hearing at the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court took place to enable Mr Justice Saini to determine whether the meaning of Mr Corbyn's remarks on the show justified a libel action.
The libel case revolves around an appearance by Mr Corbyn on the BBC1's Andrew Marr Show in September 2018.
Mr. Millett launched a libel action alleging that the words spoken by Mr Corbyn in the programme were defamatory of him and their publication caused and is likely to cause serious harm to his reputation.
Mark Lewis, of Patron Law, who is representing Mr Millett told the JC: "The judge rejected the argument that Mr Corbyn was not referring to Richard Millett when he appeared on the Marr Show defending his 'irony statement'.
"The Court accepted that these were factual allegations that have a defamatory meaning."
In February 1943, Stanisława and Henryk Budziszewski decided to help a family of Jewish escapees at their farm in the Polish village of Żebry-Laskowiec where they lived with their three sons, Wacław, Stanisław, and Konstanty. The Jewish family consisted of a husband and wife — shopkeepers from the nearby village of Nur — along with their three children. Their surname remains unknown.
Everyone in the local villages knew that hiding Jews was illegal and, if discovered, the crime brought a sure death penalty.
The Jews were successfully hidden for just two weeks before they were discovered by German gendarmes and the Gestapo in the Budziszewskis' farm, covered in hay in one of the barns. The adults in the Polish family were separated and interrogated; Waclaw, aged just 18, lied to the Germans and claimed that he had been helping the Jews without his parents' knowledge.
The Jews were deported and murdered at an unknown location. Wacław was sent to the Stutthof concentration camp, where he died on April 1, 1943. The rest of the Budziszewski family was sent to perform forced labor for the Third Reich.
Recently, the Budziszewskis are among 17 cases identified and honored by Poland's Pilecki Institute as part of a project launched in March 2019 entitled Called by Name.
According to the Pilecki Institute website, the project is "devoted to persons of Polish nationality who were murdered for providing help to Jews during the German occupation." Once identified, the rescuers are honored with a ceremony in which a memorial stone is unveiled in their name.
While the honor sounds admirable enough, numerous scholars claim that the initiative launched by the Pilecki Institute — an entity founded in 2017 with government funds — is part of an organized campaign to whitewash Poland's wartime narrative and portray ordinary Poles as rescuers of Jews while ignoring their many acts of betrayal and anti-Semitism.
I was pleased to have a long video conversation (in two parts) with John O'Sullivan, former senior policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher and now president of the Danube Institute, a think-tank based in Hungary.
Our conversation started by talking about my early years at The Guardian newspaper and my experiences while working there which led me to break with the left. We discussed my play, Traitors (yes, I did write one and it was actually performed at a fringe theatre in London in 1986), my experience of antisemitism which led me to write that play and then, some 15 years later, my shattering conclusion that British Jews had been living in a 50-year fools' paradise.
We also discussed why English patriotism has become so controversial, the demoralisation of the west and the failure of conservatism to resist the destruction of liberalism by the virus of cultural totalitarianism. Which brought us to our present day's revolutionary moment with the Black Lives Matter riots and disturbances.
On July 4, 1976, Israeli commandos rescued hostages from an Air France flight that was hijacked by a group of Arab and German terrorists and diverted to Entebbe, Uganda. Mossad agent Avner Avraham and special forces officer Rami Sherman recently spoke about what they experienced.
En route to Entebbe, British-Israeli nurse Patricia Martel deliberately cut herself and, bleeding profusely, claimed she was having a miscarriage. The hijackers let her off when the plane stopped in Benghazi in Libya to refuel. Sherman said, "She flew back to London from Benghazi and was immediately met by agents of MI6 and Mossad. They gave her thousands of photographs. She identified the terrorists, told how many there were and what kind of weapons they had."
Avner Abraham recalled that Uganda's brutal ruler, Idi Amin, had received Israeli military training when he was a soldier. One of his former trainers got on the line and "spoke with him on the telephone five times" to glean what was on his mind. An Israeli engineer showed up with blueprints of the airport terminal where the hostages were being held. His company had won the tender to construct the building. Another enterprising Israeli, using a small Cessna propeller plane, flew repeatedly over the airport taking photographs and flew back home to deliver them.
During the raid on Entebbe, another Israeli commando detachment raided a nearby Ugandan airbase and destroyed 11 MiG fighters parked there to assure they would not be scrambled in pursuit.
The idea of the database started in a conversation in the mid-1980s between Bernard Lewis and a Turkish friend, Nuri Arlasiz, collector of Ottoman art who wanted to save the Jewish cemeteries of Istanbul from being plundered or destroyed by natural causes. Jews lived in many towns in Asia Minor and each had its own cemetery. Arlasiz asked Lewis for help to save them. Around the same time, a number of Jews in Istanbul organized events commemorating the 500th anniversary of Spanish Jewish settlement in Istanbul, ancestors who had been expelled from Spain in 1492, and left for the Ottoman Empire. The events were headed by an industrialist named Jak Kamhi, born into a Jewish family in Istanbul, who was involved in public diplomacy and for a time advisor to the prime minister. Lewis agreed with the idea but had a different point of view, proposing that the Jewish cemeteries should be documented since they would have little chance of surviving without a live Jewish community.
Lewis consulted with Professor Minna Rozan, then head of the diaspora research center at Tel Aviv university, and later professor in the history department at Haifa University, who had written on the history of the Jewish community in Istanbul, and the transformation of the Greek speaking Jewish community of Byzantine Constantinople into an ethnically diverse Ottoman Jewish community. The Romaniote Greek speaking Jews, in the eastern Mediterranean, Balkans and Anatolia, were distinct from the Sephardic Jews.
As a result Minna Rozan went to Istanbul in 1987 to examine whether Lewis's idea was feasible, and a plan was worked out by an agreement among a Turkish group, the Quincentennial Foundation, and the Annenberg Institute in Philadelphia, then directed by Lewis. Rozan, taking a sabbatical from her position at Tel Aviv University, spent two years 1988-1990 documenting the Jewish cemeteries in Turkey with a research team who sorted through over 100,000 photos of 61,022 tombstones to establish the database. Emphasis was put on the most ancient tombstones and those threatened by neglect or urban expansion. Some cemeteries have been destroyed, wholly or partially, by construction of the ring road around Istanbul.
When the resources available at Annenberg Institute ended, Lewis himself through Tel Aviv supported the project with a very generous gift which enabled the digitizing of the photos.
The research covers 28 different cemeteries, including a Karaite one in Istanbul and the Italian one in Istanbul, as well as those from communities in Western and Eastern Anatolia which ceased to exist after 20th century wars and immigration. The digitized database involves contents of the gravestones, the materials used, and ornamental elements. It claims to be the largest tombstone database in the world, coveting 400 years of Turkish-Jewish life. Any user can peruse the database to find a specific gravestone.
How gratifying that the Jewish heritage is not being erased.
In 2016 I wrote an op-ed demanding that Black Lives Matter rescind the portion of its platform that describes Israel as an "apartheid state" involved in "genocide … against the Palestinian people." I pointed out that the platform refers to no other country but Israel, despite the egregious records of many foreign countries with regard to police brutality. It is now four years later and these provisions of the platform remain intact. Defenders of Black Lives Matter argue that the inclusion of this critique against Israel in not antisemitic; it is merely anti-Zionist.
As a law professor for 50 years I frequently used "hypothetical cases" — the students called them "hypos" — to deepen the analysis of a problem. So please consider the following hypo: Imagine a world in which there was only one Black African nation — a nation built largely by previously enslaved Black men and women. Imagine further that this singular Black nation had a good record on the environment, on gay rights, on gender equality, on human rights, and on defending itself against attack from predominantly white nations. But as with all nations, the Black Nation was far from perfect. It had its flaws and imperfections.
Now imagine further that do-gooder organizations in America and around the world were to single out the Black nation for unique condemnation. For example, imagine that an environmental group or a gay rights group were to publish a platform in which it criticized the environmental and gay rights policies of its own nation, but then went out of its way to single out only the Black nation from among all the other polluters and homophobic countries of the world?
Would anyone hesitate to describe the singling out of the world's only Black nation for unique condemnation as an act of bigotry, motivated by anti-Black racism? If that is the case, how is it different when Black Lives Matter singles out the only nation state of the Jewish people for unique and undeserved condemnation? Is not the application of a double standard based on religion as bad as a double standard based on race?
Criticizing Israel for its imperfections is not only fair, it is desirable. But only when it is based on a single standard of comparison with other nations of the world. Condemning the nation state of the Jewish people alone, in a world with far greater offenders, cannot be justified by any moral principle. It is antisemitic, pure and simple. And the Black Lives Matter platform is guilty of the serious sin and crime of antisemitism.
Message to ESNP: Anti-Semitism Isn't 'Controversial'; It's Jew-Hatred
Former NFL player and current Fox Sports analyst Shannon Sharpe and former NBA player and Showtime podcast host Stephen Jackson both have ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a notorious anti-Semite.
Farrakhan has described Jews as "satanic," railed against interracial marriage — which he claimed "mongrelized" the black race — and has said "Hitler was a very great man." Sharpe and Stephen Jackson have both faced criticism for their responses to Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver DeSean Jackson's promotion of Farrakhan and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories online.
Among the material that DeSean Jackson spread to his 1.1 million followers on Instagram was a fake quote attributed to Adolf Hitler claiming that Jews are deceiving America from finding out that black people are "the real Children of Israel."
Stephen Jackson said Wednesday that DeSean Jackson had told "the truth" by spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories: "He's speaking the truth. You know he don't hate nobody, but he's speaking the truth of the facts that he knows and trying to educate others."
The former NBA player has repeatedly promoted Farrakhan to his nearly 900,000 Instagram followers.
Jackson promoted Farrakhan's Independence Day speech where the Nation of Islam leader accused Dr. Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates of trying to "depopulate the Earth" through the development of a coronavirus vaccine.
"I will be there front and center. Nobody loves black people more and nobody has more knowledge about the things we need to be liberated. [Farrakhan] is educating me on how to be a great leader and how to develop the community," Jackson wrote in a July 3 Instagram post.
This reminded me to do a search for that BBC Website page about how Islamic slavery is Good Akshewally. It's somehow back up online.https://t.co/aUXKzhvPBl
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) 26 other churches, sent to the US Congress in opposition to Israel accepting sovereignty in the Biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria.
The letter was a response supporting the position of Bishop Sani Ibrahim Azar of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land as expressed in his letter titled "Liberation, Not Annexation." In his letter, Bishop Azar accused Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and US President Trump of taking " advantage of the current global health crisis to move forward with plans to annex West Bank settlements and the Jordan Valley."
The Bishop inaccurately states, "This unilateral action—taken without negotiations and consultation with Palestinian leaders—ignores long-standing peace accords agreed upon under international sponsorship and guarantees. Annexation violates international law and is certain to have severe consequences for Israeli and Palestinian people."
Trump's peace plan, officially called "Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People", was presented to the Palestinian Authority, which rejected it outright and cut off all ties with Israel and the US. The plan does not violate any international laws and is in compliance with UN Resolution242 establishing the ground rules for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and how it relates to Judea and Samaria.
In her response, ELCA Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton took the Bishop's anti-Israel stance quite a bit further. Eaton joined 26 other U.S. Christian leaders in a letter to Congress asking it "to wield its power of the purse and not allow any United States funds provided to Israel until the "occupation" ended.
In the letter, The Rev. Rafael Malpica Padilla, executive director of ELCA Global Mission, said that there was a connection between the Israeli government's "repressive tactics against Palestinians" and racism in the US.
A tweet on Wednesday by the New York City government encouraging participation in the 2020 US Census prompted a fierce backlash over the fact it included an emoji of a Palestinian flag while omitting an Israeli one.
🇨🇺 🇨🇳 🇲🇽 🇬🇭 🇰🇷 🇯🇲 🇫🇷 🇨🇦 🇦🇺 🇰🇪 🇧🇷 🇵🇸 🇬🇷 🇵🇪 🇿🇦 No matter where you're from, if you live here, you're a New Yorker. We all count in the census. #GetCountedNYChttps://t.co/oguP2T8G2y
"No matter where you're from, if you live here, you're a New Yorker. We all count in the census," the tweet said, featuring 15 flags.
Many Twitter users were quick to respond with emojis and images of Israeli flags.
"NYC is one of the most Jewish cities in the world," one commenter wrote. "But City Hall doesn't include an Israeli flag in this tweet. We all know exactly what's going on here."
A subsequent tweet included an Israeli flag, among others that were left out of the first one.
🇯🇵 🇳🇬 🇮🇱 🇮🇪 🇧🇩 🇷🇺 🇦🇷 🇪🇹 🇬🇧 🇪🇬 🇵🇹 🇮🇹 🇸🇾 🇵🇷 🇹🇷 We come from many places but we're one city — and we need EVERYONE to get counted in the census. #GetCountedNYChttps://t.co/oguP2T8G2y
That's just one of the glaring canards contained in a recent statement (drafted by poet Sara M. Saleh along with academics Dr Micaela Sahhar and Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah) signed by innumerable Australian academics, artists and activists, well-known and obscure, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, Muslim and non-Muslim, that appears in the radical left Australian literary journal Overland, created in 1954.
Signatories include academics Linda Briskman, Bassam Dally, John Docker and his son Ned Curthoys, Ann E. Fink, Gary Foley, Ghassan Hage, Jake Lynch, Peter Manning, Stuart Rees, Nick Riemer, Peter Slezak, and Marcelo Svirsky; broadcaster and writer Yassmin Abdel-Magied; feminist Sara Dowse; playwright Samah Sabawi, journalist Maher Mughrabi (features editor, The Age newspaper), and poet Sunniya Wajahat.
Bizarrely, one high profile signatory, ABC and BBC media favourite Ms Abdel-Magied, who should need no introduction to most readers (see here if you need to), is a participant in this forthcoming "Festival of Jewish Arts and Music" forum!
But I digress.
Most of the signatories' names will be instantly recognisable to watchers of anti-Israel initiatives in Australia. If not, googling should pay dividends. It certainly did for me in the case of Susan Stryker, an American gender studies professor in the United States who, it turns out, is not currently based here but was a visiting professor on an Australia campus in 2004.
The statement, inter alia (emphasis added): ...... From Minneapolis to Jerusalem to Gadigal land, all sites of recent state-sanctioned violence, we affirm the critical ongoing and historic solidarities between different movements against systemic and institutionalised state violence, systemic oppression, and brutality. Palestinians in Australia are positioned as settlers of colour and have proudly sought and affirmed solidarity with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in our indivisible anti-colonial struggles....'
In the new institute they created a "European Centre for Palestinian Studies" with high profile anti-Israel activists Ilan Pappe and Ghada Karmi leading the way.
So now you have 'history' being taught under the umbrella of an Islamic centre- funded from the UAE. pic.twitter.com/swwmK5ylRK
There are countless - academics - produced from conveyor belts such as this - they become key names in anti-Israel activism around the world. Another easy example from Exeter is Yara Hawari - and with each passing year there are more. pic.twitter.com/0Lwn1b1seT
A leading Jewish group criticized Poland's public broadcaster on Friday for its "hateful" role in a tight presidential election race that pits the conservative incumbent against the liberal mayor of Warsaw. AJC Central Europe, an advocacy group, pointed to a report on public broadcaster TVP's flagship news show on Thursday that asked if opposition candidate Rafal Trzaskowski would "comply with Jewish demands," touching on the sensitive issue of Jewish property restitution.
Home to one of the world's largest Jewish communities before World War Two, Poland is the only European Union country that has not legislated on restoring property to pre-war Jewish owners or their descendants, despite U.S. pressure.
"What's wrong with Polish public TV?... Yesterday it again warned against 'satisfying Jewish demands'. Is that b/c you assume this hateful campaign would speak to many Poles? Think abt what message that sends," the AJC tweeted.
In a statement to Reuters, the AJC said it had been shocked by Polish public television's use of "antisemitic tropes."
"It's one thing when such messages are spread by fringe far-right groups. It's something quite different when this is done by state TV funded with taxpayers' money," it said.
An article published in The Sun, and it's Scottish brand, "Holy city Bethlehem is shut down for 48 hours as surge in coronavirus infections hits Palestine's West Bank", June 27th, included the following sentence: Meanwhile, in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian enclave blockaded by Israel, 72 people have tested positive for coronavirus, with one death.
As we pointed out to editors, the sentence omits the fact that Gaza is also blockaded by Egypt – a blockade that is actually far more restrictive than Israel's. Further, we noted, previous articles at these publications have correctly informed readers that both Israel and Egypt enforce a blockade.
Our complaint was upheld, and the sentences were amended in both articles – which now read: Meanwhile, in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian enclave blockaded by Israel and Egypt, 72 people have tested positive for coronavirus, with one death.
THE death of Adelaide man Fredrick Toben, who was jailed in Australia for violating court orders over his Holocaust denial, has triggered memories for communal leader Jeremy Jones who was involved in a major legal victory against him.
Toben, 76, who had immigrated to Australia from Germany in 1954, died on June 29 after a long illness.
Jones, who is now the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council's director of international and of community affairs, represented the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) in a landmark Australian court case which outlawed articles denying the Holocaust on Toben's website.
The 2002 Federal Court ruling enforced a finding two years earlier by the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission that Toben had contravened Section 18C of the federal Racial Discrimination Act in publishing material on his Adelaide Institute website that racially vilified Jews. In a separate matter, Toben's Tasmanian associate Olga Scully was found to have disseminated antisemitic material in breach of 18C.
Toben was ordered to remove the contents from his website and apologise. Although he issued an apology five years later, his website continued to publish the offensive material, and in 2009 Jones, representing ECAJ, brought a contempt of court action against him. Toben was found guilty of 24 charges of contempt of court and sentenced to three months' jail, which he served after losing an appeal.
The Chief Rabbi of Munich, Rabbi Shmuel Aharon Brodman, was attacked on Thursday evening by four Muslims who shouted derogatory remarks toward him.
Rabbi Brodman, a member of the Conference of European Rabbis, called the police who launched a manhunt for the attackers.
Yaakov Hagoel, Vice Chairman of the World Zionist Organization, responded to the anti-Semitic attack, "Anti-Semitic incidents have become routine and part of the daily routine that Jews around the world are going through."
"Unfortunately, as I have said, once we can roam the streets again after the coronavirus passes, anti-Semitic incidents will rise and become even more physical and violent, and here we are witnessing an anti-Semitic attack. I urge the authorities to deal with the perpetrators. Jewish blood is not cheap," added Hagoel.
Last year, a rabbi and his two sons were spit on and verbally attacked as they left a synagogue in Munich.
In 2019, Germany recorded the highest number of anti-Semitic crimes nationwide since 2001. Police registered 2,032 anti-Semitic crimes, including two killings, up 13% from 2018.
THE Victorian Department of Education has launched a full investigation following allegations of "horrific" antisemitic bullying levelled against students and teachers at a state secondary school.
The incidents are said to have occurred over the past five years at Brighton Secondary College experienced by two Jewish brothers, who only now feel able to voice their alleged ordeal since recently leaving the school.
The bullying claims include daily verbal abuse; physical harassment when the older Jewish brother was constantly victimised for wearing a kippah, which was forcibly removed from his head and desecrated; teachers who would not acknowledge the children's Israeli identity, instead labelling the boys "Palestinian"; cyberbullying and threats of stalking.
The boys and their mother claim they made countless reports to teachers, coordinators and the principal over the years, but they say no serious action has ever been taken. The mother also says she reported one incident to the Department of Education, but she did not receive a response.
The alleged incidents began when the older brother entered year 7. He was promptly given the nicknames "Jewboy" and "the Jew". The names stayed with him throughout his time at the school. Classmates would also throw coins on the ground, and say, "Look, the Jew will pick it up."
In year 8, while walking home one afternoon, a fellow student approached him and told him to, "Get in my oven." Another threatened to stalk him. A few weeks later, the Jewish student received a Hitler propaganda video sent to his school email address from an anonymous sender, captioned with the words, "Heil Hitler, Sieg Heil".
Audible, the online audio book store, has removed antisemitic books from offer after CAA draws them to attention of advertisers on the website.
Booktrust, the nation's largest children's reading charity, was being advertised on the website alongside audio book titles such as "Jewish-Zionist Warmongering".
After Campaign Against Antisemitism drew Booktrust's attention to this use of its brand, the titles were removed.
That is much better. Thanks to @BookTrust and everyone who retweeted us and contacted @AmazonUK!
Always feel free to send us a message on Twitter or e-mail contact@antisemitism.org if you see something antisemitic. pic.twitter.com/vsVj0OBJI2
— Campaign Against Antisemitism (@antisemitism) June 30, 2020
Online clothing retailer Shein sold a swastika necklace on its site, but quickly took it down after it received backlash on Twitter. The necklace, titled "Swastika," was priced $2.50. With many users expressing their disbelief at the fact that such an item could be sold by any company.
"In case u needed another reason to boycott Shein: they are selling SWASTIKA NECKLACES," One user tweeted. "This is ACTIVELY THREATENING to the Jewish community. I've seen you all posting about other issues but being silent on antisemitism - do NOT let Shein get away with this." A Shein spokesperson sent a response to the New York Post, in which they tried to explain the reasoning behind the controversial item.
"For the record, Shein was not selling a Nazi swastika pendant, the necklace is a Buddhist swastika which has symbolized spirituality and good fortune for more than a thousand years," the spokesperson told the New York Post. "The Nazi swastika has a different design, it is pointed clockwise and tilted at an angle. However, because we understand the two symbols can be confused and one is highly offensive, we have removed the product from our site."
The term for a counter-clockwise swastika is a sauvastika. The swastika was used as a symbol of the Nazi Party in Germany. Today, it represents the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust at the hand of the Nazis.
A memorial to Albanians who rescued Jews during the Holocaust, established jointly by the US and Albania, was dedicated on Thursday, with the US ambassador to Albania calling the country's legacy of rescuing Jews "an inspiring story of humanity, courage, and honor."
The memorial in the Grand Park of Tirana was established by the US Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad and the Municipality of Tirana, and marks Albania's almost unique place in the history of the Holocaust.
According to Israel's Holocaust memorial and museum Yad Vashem, some 600-1,800 Jews fled to Albania during the Holocaust. After the Germans conquered the country in 1943, Albanians refused to hand over lists of Jews, provided Jews with documents allowing them to hide within the general population and took other measures that led to the survival of almost the entire Jewish community, with more Jews remaining in Albania after the war than before.
Many attribute this accomplishment to the concept of besa, a code of honor in Albanian society that demands ethical action and respect for life, especially on behalf of guests and those in need.
US Ambassador Yuri Kim said at the dedication of the memorial, "After Hitler's rise to power, Albanian families sheltered hundreds of Jewish people from around Europe, saving them from Nazi forces. People from all walks of life, Muslims, Christians, elites, peasants, teachers, government officials, and clergy — an entire nation — worked to rescue Jews. It is an inspiring story of humanity, courage, and honor."
Sometime around 160,000 to 120,000 years ago, early man began to string together painted shells and display them, according to a new international, interdisciplinary study published in the open-sourced PLOS One journal this week.
The authors, a team of scientists led by Tel Aviv University's Daniella E. Bar-Yosef Mayer and University of Haifa's Iris Groman-Yaroslavski, performed "use-wear" experiments on bittersweet clam (Glycymeris) shell collections excavated in two northern Israel caves. They discovered that the naturally occurring holes in the bi-valve shells showed proof of having been strung on flax twine, apparently to form early humans' first necklaces.
Until now, the earliest potential example of string use was in the form of fibers found on an eagle talon recently found in Krapina, Croatia, dating to 130,000 years ago.
Early humans migrated out of Africa — potentially during a Levantine Ice Age — circa 200,000 years ago. With their arrival to the Israeli caves, also came their shell collections. In the new study, the authors suggest that the clam shells — which were abundantly found on the beaches not far from the Carmel Mountain caves — were chosen precisely because of their easily strung holes.
"Our data suggest that sometime within the time range of 160 and 120 ka BP the technology for making strings emerged, and that this technology boosted the collection of naturally perforated shells for display, a practice common to this day," write the authors in the article, "On holes and strings: Earliest displays of human adornment in the Middle Palaeolithic."
The authors describe a progression in shell choice: The shells found in the Misliya Cave, which date to 240,000–160,000 years ago, are intact and presumably not used for decorative purposes. In the Qafzeh Cave collection, circa 120,000 years ago, the vast majority of shells were perforated.
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.
I was asked yesterday if it would be possible to add a "print" feature to my articles without the stuff on the sidebars.
I found a solution.
Now, below each article, you can see a widget:
Click on that and you can print the article, or create a PDF. (The email feature isn't so great, it just links to the article.)
For those who don't have time to read articles during the week, this is a good way to read them on Shabbat for those Shabbat observers who are so inclined.
In this woke version of reality, humanity is divided into two groups: white oppressors and indigenous people of color straining under the yoke of white atrocities. And in delineating this stark division between the bad and the good, Jews must accept that they are among the former and irredeemably white. The only thing for them to do is to admit guilt and to struggle against the systemic racist system into which they assimilated into in the United States.
As The Forward noted in an article about the controversy stirred up by Rabbi Kahn, Israel's Consul General to New York Dani Dayan, recently noted that both Jews and Palestinian Arabs are indigenous to Israel, and that peace will only happen when the latter finally recognize this fact rather than insisting that Jews have no sovereign rights in any part of the country. By lending support to the idea that Jews aren't indigenous, Kahn is actually undermining chances of peace in the Middle East rather than promoting it.
The fact that the Jewish people are indigenous to the land of Israel, to which their ties date back thousands of years and were reaffirmed with continuous settlement, as well as prayers throughout the ages, is irrelevant to the woke. So is the fact that the majority of Israeli Jews are not white or European, but descended from people who were forced to flee their homes in the Arab and Muslim worlds after Israel's creation in numbers that were greater than those Palestinian Arabs who fled Israel during the War of Independence. Yet as far as the rabbi is concerned, Jews who speak of being indigenous are stealing victim status that belongs only to Arabs and other people of color.
Perhaps Rabbi Kahn thinks the semantics here is important because the assertion of indigenous status distracts us from the sufferings of African-Americans or Palestinians. But his scolding of Jews for having the effrontery to claim ownership of this word has implications that go beyond his repellent pedantry and ideological inflexibility.
That's because telling Jews they are not indigenous to Israel is akin to branding them imperialist colonizers in their ancient homeland. And once you step down that path you aren't just virtue signaling your concern for the oppressed; you're also implicitly declaring that Zionism and the existence of the one Jewish state on the planet are illegitimate.
The redefinition of words with plain meanings in order to weaponize them for ideological purposes is key to the Orwellian process by which the woke suppress not only free speech, but the rights of those they consider white oppressors. In effect, what Rabbi Andy is doing when he lectures us about "white Jewishness" and who can be considered indigenous is canceling the entire Jewish people.
The only possible response to such despicable wordplay is to refuse to play by woke rules. There can be no compromise with intersectional canceling. It's time to make it clear to the self-righteous Rabbi Andys of American Jewish life that we won't accept their lectures or their politicized language lying down. The alternative is to consent to a denial of Jewish rights whose ultimate purpose is the sort of tragedy that ought to horrify a nice young rabbi a lot more than how to define a word.
While Israelis are increasingly alarmed by the government's loss of control over the coronavirus crisis, different events suggest that the country may have pulled off a spectacular advance in the battle against another intractable foe.
Over the past couple of weeks, there has been a succession of mysterious explosions in Iran.
At the end of last month, there was a major explosion in the Khojir missile factory near Tehran and at a power plant in Shiraz, which plunged the city into darkness. There has also been an explosion at a Tehran clinic, and other major fires in power plants and a petrochemical factory.
The most significant event, however, was an explosion and fire last week at Iran's centrifuge assembly plant in Natanz.
According to the former U.N. nuclear inspector David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington D.C., this destroyed nearly three-quarters of Iran's main centrifuge assembly hall.
No one has claimed responsibility for these events. But the explosions at Khojir and Natanz required the kind of sophisticated intelligence, coordination and operational skill that suggest the involvement of a foreign power. Many experts assume that, in these at least, Israel was a principal actor.
The two sites were important elements in Iran's infrastructure of warfare against Israel and the west.
Khojir, which is said to have a network of underground tunnels, is suspected of involvement in the production of ballistic missiles. Intelligence experts agree that the explosion there seemed to be the result of an Israeli cyber-attack. The Kuwaiti newspaper al-Jarida, however, claimed that an airstrike by an Israeli F-35 stealth jet was involved.
The Natanz centrifuge hall, buried deep under concrete and enmeshed steel roof, was inaugurated in 2018 in order to make the advanced centrifuges needed to make an atomic bomb. Albright writes that it was thought to be Iran's only clean-room operation set up for the mass assembly of these centrifuges.
Beinart wrote, "The essence of Zionism is not a Jewish state in the land of Israel; it is a Jewish home in the land of Israel, a thriving Jewish society that both offers Jews refuge and enriches the entire Jewish world."
He is wrong. For most practicing Zionists — who live here and decide what Zionism is — the essence is indeed a Jewish state. In Beinart's imaginary world, substituting the Jewish State for a far-fetched idea of a Jewish home is not such a big deal. But it is.
Beinart writes that the urgent need for new ideas is based on the moral call to prevent the "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians. He wrote, "Today, Israeli leaders find the status quo tolerable. But when Palestinian violence reveals that it is not, those leaders — having made separation impossible — could inch closer to policies of mass expulsion."
Maybe. Probably not. We've managed a long time and with a lot of violence without resorting to ethnic cleansing. But even if you accept the necessity of Beinart's warning, there is a much simpler way to prevent a catastrophe. Convince the Palestinians to refrain from the "violence" that could trigger "mass expulsion."
Another problem is that a one-state solution does not preclude the option of ethnic cleansing. See Yugoslavia as an example.
On the plus side, what Beinart says is largely unimportant. He is not the first to propose a one-state solution, and probably won't be the last. He will try to pitch his latest gimmick to a new generation of Jews (anyone for a book deal?). He will find some takers among radical American left-wingers. But where he gets it wrong again is that one of the main reasons Israeli Jews want a state is because they don't wish to be the world's pawns. Israel is armed to the teeth. It is savvy, tough and resilient. And if Beinart or any of his self-righteous friends want to take our state away, they can come for it. Let's see how far they get.
They have come from everywhere, these Jews of Zionism—from Germany to Ethiopia to Poland to Morocco to France to Iraq to the former Soviet Union and a thousand other places. And most have come because their "equal rights" in those places proved nonexistent in the face of a millennia of hatred. In Israel, often for the first time in history, they are citizens with rights. And they enjoy those rights because, and only because, of Zionism.
Thankfully, I did not flee persecution when I came to Israel. I came out of love and a belief in the idea of the Jewish state. And it was only thanks to that state that I am what I am now. From the Israeli teachers, friends, and fellow students who helped me earn two degrees despite the struggle to learn Hebrew simultaneously; to my generous and forgiving landlord, who defines the word tzadik; to the Israeli writers, editors, and mentors who thought my voice was, or at least might be, important—it was only thanks to Jewish and, yes, Zionist solidarity, sympathy, and collective and individual loyalty that I was able to achieve anything. I needed Zionism, and it was there for me.
In his privilege, however, Peter Beinart believes he does not need Zionism. And in that same privilege, he cannot see these Jews of Zionism. He cannot see us, does not care about us, does not believe in us, and cannot love us. Instead, Beinart wants to liberate himself from us.
But there is something he does not know, but I think I do know: We are Zionists because we were not privileged. And in not being privileged, we needed each other. We needed the dignity and empowerment and the capacity for mutual aid and self-defense that only a state could give us.
Perhaps Beinart is right that he does not need what we need, but I doubt it. Equality is a fine thing, but for the Jews it has proved fleeting and conditional. If you're good, Beinart says, you might be able to be equal to Palestinians in a shared state. If you're bad, Beinart threatens, we will leave you at the mercy of a nationalist movement dedicated to your ethnic cleansing and a theo-Nazi movement dedicated to your genocide. And only we decide when you're good.
What we Jews of Zionism know, however, is that in our return and redemption, we have rendered such judgments moot. In the contest of history, the racist argument has lost, and the Zionist argument has won. And against this reality, Jews of privilege like Beinart may struggle mightily, but it is unlikely they will be any different from those who so long ago howled to be returned to bondage in Egypt.
For we Jews of Zionism, our answer to them and to Beinart is a simple one. As one of us once said, "We do not have to apologize for anything. We are a people like all other peoples. We are what we are. We are good for ourselves. We will not change and we do not want to."
Simply put: There is only one way through this story of indefinite occupation and an enduring conflict, and it includes the validation of the story of the Jewish people, which includes its transformation by Zionism in the 20th century. Beinart makes light in the opening of his essay of those Jews whose Judaism is premised on pro-Israelism; I agree that this can become thin, and coercive. But it is not crazy to me that the single most transformative event of Jewish history since Yavne would have a lingering, commanding effect on many of us. We invalidate our own history and our own story at our peril, especially if we do so in order to validate the story of Palestinians.
This is a further irony: The counterhistory, the revolutionary turnabout that Beinart seeks, remedies the Jewish past and present in order to make room for the story of Palestinians, suggesting that the two—in their current and authentic forms—are irreconcilable! How can we envision a shared future for Israelis and Palestinians when we have to suppress and transform one in order to accommodate the other? Two states, for all their failings, grant each people a right to their story and a right to their destiny.
Beinart's second-to-last paragraph is his truest. I believe deeply that our redemption as the Jewish people, and the integrity of our national story, cannot be complete with the continued oppression of the Palestinian people, the denial of their history and their future, and with the prevention of their redemption. But the only way forward is through our Zionism, and not in its flattening. We are the inheritors of a revolutionary moment of Jewish history, the third generation since Yavne. I am not prepared to allow today to be Yavne and in so doing to make 1948 into hurban for the Jewish people, as it was for Palestinians. Perhaps our best wisdom, still, is one of the key intellectual legacies of the sages of Yavne themselves: When two claim a garment, and both can validate their claims, and neither can be falsified: Let them bear witness, and let them divide it.
There are other questions with no good answers. Beinart's utopia, alas, would be in the real world. And like it or not, in the real Middle East there is an urgent need to consider the regional security situation – or to put it bluntly, to have an army. If the Jews were a minority in the state, or lived in some Autonomous Levantine Oblast within the state – two scenarios that Beinart envisions as possibilities – who would be in charge of the state's army? Who would decide how hard the country should work to prevent, say, Iranian money from flowing to Islamic Jihad or other questionable Palestinian groups? Who would decide how to address threats from Hezbollah, or whether to respond to cross border attacks on Jewish towns? Would it be in the new country's interest to defend its cold-peace partner to the east, the Kingdom of Jordan, in which more than half the population is believed to be Palestinian, from an internal Palestinian revolt? Or, rather, might those in charge prefer to help that revolt and scrap the current Jordanian regime?
There are countless other contingencies in which Beinart's utopia would be sharply divided along ethnic lines. On such life-and-death questions, Beinart punts: Just trust me.
Beinart wants us to trust, too, that in his future utopia Hezbollah, Hamas, obscene levels of antisemitism in the Arab world, the fantasy of sending the Jews "back where they came from," and other such inconveniences, might dry up under his regime.
But how is it that the same man who can breezily imagine such a utopia can't also bring himself to imagine, for example, that the current array of Jewish settlements in the West Bank might not preclude a two-state solution? Or that a functioning Palestinian state on 95 percent of the West Bank, which he dismisses as impossible in his essay, is actually possible? Or that a Palestinian state with some limits to its sovereignty might work just as well for Palestinians as he envisions Jewish non-sovereignty working for Jews?
These are the scenarios that Beinart insists are non-starters. And the thought that Israel might insist on them, he explains, is what demanded his prophetic vision of a one-state solution. But those scenarios are no less realistic than the unitary state he prescribes. To the contrary, they are as easy to imagine as Mahmoud Abbas's signature on the peace offer floated by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
It's just that Peter Beinart doesn't want to imagine it. And that's because, although he insists his dream of wiping the Jewish state from the map is an authentically Zionist vision, those words are just a flimsy cover for the fact that he, unlike an overwhelming majority of Jews worldwide, is an anti-Zionist.
Is all nice for Peter Beinart to basically say from his cushy NY home that if Palestinians launch another intifada or violence and murder Jews, "oopsies." This is not Zionism, but whitewashing terror.
He is so detached from reality, it's as if he is living on another planet! https://t.co/KQCyaJ09rK
The plan can also be regarded as a reflection or acknowledgment of reality, as it stands today. Perhaps this is one of the reasons it was met with such vehement resistance, from many directions. It set out clear and attainable goals for the Palestinians in order to achieve recognized statehood – their ultimate stated desire. These goals include – but are not limited to – freedom of the press, freedom of religion, transparency of government and the disarmament of terrorists and the recognition of the right of the State of Israel to exist.
The international community regularly condemns Israel for alleged moral offenses, but has thus far overlooked the premise that a Palestinian state seeks to be"judenrein." This is a Nazi term used to describe a geographic location as cleansed from Jews.
It has overlooked the fact that Palestinian government officials are reportedly billionaires, while the Palestinian economy is on the brink of collapse, year after year. It has overlooked the fact that Abbas was elected to a four-year term 13 years ago, and that an entire generation of today's children – tomorrow's leaders – have been poisoned by toxic antisemitic rhetoric, not only preached by PA leadership and religious clergy, but ensconced in the textbooks used by every single Palestinian pupil. This double standard in expectation and application of principles of law, morality and human rights undermines and weakens the Palestinian people and decreases the chance for a better future.
The possibility integral to this plan exposes and confronts displays of bigotry, moving beyond barely minimal expectations which have guided processes thus far. It recognizes that the Palestinians are capable of succeeding and stabilizing the region. A state, as contemplated by the vision for peace, if ever achieved, would allow the greatest opportunities for all people in the region, Israelis and Palestinians.
As we turn our attention to addressing urgent coronavirus-related matters and before the window of opportunity seals shut – in the interests of both Israelis and Palestinians and in the interests of peace – we should at least consider casting the personal aside. The potential paradigm shift inherent to the plan, places Israelis and Palestinians as two peoples with a shared desire and means of achieving it.
This is something on which peace-seeking individuals the world over might be able to agree. Herein lies the power if and when it can be seized. Herein lies the pity if and when it will be wasted.
In a telephone call on Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to nix plans to annex parts of the West Bank.
Such a move, Macron told Netanyahu, would "contravene international law and jeopardize the possibility of a two-state solution as the basis of a fair and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians."
Macron also reiterated France's "unfailing commitment" to Israel's security and he expressed his "attachment to the friendship" between the two countries, a statement from Macron's office said.
A statement from Netanyahu's office noted the prime minister had "clarified" to Macron that Israel was "acting according to international law."
Netanyahu was said to have "emphasized that the formulas of the past have led to 53 years of failure," predicting that "a return to them will lead to additional failure."
"Israel is prepared to hold peace negotiations on the basis of [US] President [Donald] Trump's plan, which has new ideas that enable genuine progress," the statement added. "It is the Palestinian refusal to conduct negotiations based on this plan and on the plans of the past that is preventing progress."
A coalition of progressive pro-Israel groups in the United States announced its support Thursday for a proposed Senate amendment that would ban Israel from using US military aid to annex parts of the West Bank.
Eight member organizations of the Progressive Israel Network, an umbrella association of 10 liberal Zionist groups, argued that the measure would ensure American assistance is directed toward Israel's security and not a deleterious action that would harm the prospects of peace.
"All those who value human rights and Israeli democracy, support a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and want to see an end to decades of occupation should agree that it would be unacceptable for US tax dollars to help foot the bill for an act as extreme and destructive as unilateral annexation," they said in a statement.
The signatories included the liberal Middle East advocacy groups J Street, the New Israel Fund, Americans for Peace Now, the rabbinic group T'ruah, and others.
Arab League Military Advisor Mahmoud Khalifa: Israel Wants to Expand from the Nile to the Euphrates, in Line with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion pic.twitter.com/rylIx5ucV0
Israel's outgoing Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon reflected on his last five years in office and plans for the future during his final press briefing on Tuesday.
Danon's first move upon returning to Israel will be to visit his mother, who he has not seen in almost a year, he said.
Regarding the next step in his career, he shared advice that former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley gave him, which is to take "time before making any commitments."
So, he said, "I'm going to go back to Israel and enjoy it. Relax and take my time before making any decisions."
"But for sure, I will stay involved; that is my nature," he added. "For the last 20 years, I was involved in public life. [Now] I will be more vocal than I was in the UN because when I was in office, I had to represent the Israeli government always. Now when I become a private citizen, I will be able to speak openly and express my views, and actually promote my views like I used to do before I was in diplomacy."
A former Knesset member from the Likud Party, he previously served as minister of science, technology and space, and as deputy minister of defense. Regional Cooperation Minister Gilad Erdan will replace Danon at the end of July. In January, Erdan will take over Ron Dermer's position as Israel's ambassador to the United States as well.
Danon noted that his "lowest moment in the last five years [was] the moment the US decided to abandon Israel" at the UN Security Council under the Obama administration, when it supported Resolution 2334 against Israel. He further accused the Obama administration of working behind the scenes to promote that resolution, which condemned Israel's presence in Judea and Samaria, as well as eastern Jerusalem.
Nevertheless, the ambassador strongly feels that "no one can jeopardize the bond" between America and Israel.
The Woke progressives in the West love Hamas. But how do Palestinians feel?
When asked if they want the Palestinian Authority to take over Gaza...
Closures will be imposed on neighborhoods across the country starting Friday afternoon, government ministers decided Thursday night, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted for the first time that Israel had reopened its economy too quickly after the first wave of the virus.
The closures went into effect in neighborhoods in Jerusalem, Beit Shemesh, Lod, Ramle and Kiryat Malachi starting today at 1 p.m. The closures will be in effect for a week.
On Thursday night, Netanyahu admitted that Israel had opened its economy too quickly after the first wave of the virus.
"Looking back, as part of trial and error, it can be said that this last step was premature," the prime minister said. "Many urged us to do it, to open up the economy unhindered. This has not stopped these same people from asking us today, 'Why did you open this way?'"
He said that Israel opened up "because we listened to your hardships and wanted to put as many of you back into the workforce as possible."
The prime minister then encouraged the public to "wear masks. Studies show that when two people wear masks and stay two meters apart, the chance of getting infected is nil. So, I ask for your cooperation."
The Israeli government imposed lockdowns on nearly a dozen neighborhoods in five different cities across the country Friday afternoon.
Beginning at 1:00 p.m. Friday, police sealed off neighborhoods in Jerusalem, Beit Shemesh, Lod, Ramle, and Kiryat Malachi.
The closures, which severely limit movement into and out of the affected neighborhoods, is set to last one week, ending next Friday at 8:00 a.m. Business operation will also be severely limited in the affected areas.
The affected neighborhoods include the Romema, Kiryat Sanz, Belz, and Mattersdorf neighborhoods in Jerusalem; the neighborhoods of Nahala V'Menucha and Kaneh HaBossem in Beit Shemesh; Lod's Ganei Ya'ar and Sach neighorhoods; the Amidar-Bilu neighborhood in Ramle; and the Ahuzat Rotner and Chabad neighborhoods in Kiryat Malachi.
In addition, the partial restrictions on three Lod neighborhoods - Harakevet, Shanir, and Neve Shalom - will be extended for five extra days, ending on Wednesday at 8:00 a.m.
Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Leon criticized the decision to impose lockdowns on parts of the capital, saying the "solution to the coronavirus pandemic is to isolate the sick people."
"But the minute you impose a lockdown, it causes mass infection. These people will go out and infect whoever is in the neighborhood."
Jewish Agency for Israel Chairman Isaac Herzog on Wednesday told Jewish leaders from abroad that the coronavirus has claimed the lives of some 2,200 Diaspora Jews, not counting those from the United States and Russia—the two countries with the largest Jewish populations after Israel.
In an online briefing, Herzog said that the Jewish Agency has distributed some $10 million in interest-free loans to organizations in 23 countries whose Jewish communities were hit particularly hard financially as a result of COVID-19 lockdowns.
Two days earlier, Herzog discussed other effects of the pandemic in a meeting of the Knesset Committee for Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs, estimating that 250,000 Jews will immigrate to Israel within the next three to five years.
"This is a historic challenge that must be taken advantage of, and the government must understand the importance of the hour and prepare a national plan to absorb this wave," Herzog told the Committee on Monday, adding that the number of people who have contacted the Jewish Agency about aliyah from English-speaking countries has increased by 50 percent, and by 70 percent from French-speaking nations.
The front page of the June 26 issue of Der Yid, one of the most widely circulated Yiddish newspapers among New York's ultra-Orthodox communities, made the point loud and clear.
"And so it was after the plague."
Those words, lifted from a verse in the Torah and printed alongside photos of large gatherings of unmasked ultra-Orthodox men, had a clear implication: After months of funerals and fear, the modern-day pandemic had passed and the time had come to gather again.
That sentiment appears to be guiding life in Brooklyn's ultra-Orthodox communities, where nearly four months after the virus first arrived, synagogues and camps are open, religious schools resumed classes before closing for summer break and wedding halls are packed again, sometimes in violation of city and state rules designed to slow the spread of disease.
Continued gatherings of ultra-Orthodox Jews drew criticism from New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and others in the city this spring who said the communities were not doing their part to stop the spread of the virus. But inside the communities, the overwhelming perception is that most people have had the virus and may now be immune.
"That's the feeling, that they've had it, everybody they know has had it, and the people they know who haven't had it have some kind of immunity that we just don't understand yet," one Williamsburg health administrator said.
If community members' assumptions are correct — and that's a big if, as much is not yet known about whether and how COVID-19 infections provide later immunity — Brooklyn's Jewish neighborhoods would stand alone. Even in the few places, such as Sweden, that have explicitly pursued a strategy of trying to reach herd immunity, antibody tests show that most of the population there has not yet been infected.
The Israeli military and the Foreign Ministry on Friday hosted 12 foreign diplomats and ambassadors on a tour of the northern border, as Israel seeks to build international support for an expanded mandate for the United Nations' peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon.
The UN Security Council renews the mandate of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL, on an annual basis, with the next renewal set to take place at the end of August.
In a joint statement, the army and Foreign Ministry said the diplomats were given briefings by top military brass, including the commander of the division responsible for the Lebanese border, as well as officials responsible for ties with international forces. They also toured a tunnel dug beneath the border by the Hezbollah terror group for offensive purposes and uncovered during last year's Operation Northern Shield.
The statement did not name the diplomats but said they came from countries with influence at the UN and those who contribute to the force. Among the diplomats on the tour were ambassadors from France, Italy and Ghana.
Currently, the force comprises members from 41 countries and is led by Irish Major General Michael Beary.
The Israeli military arrested three suspects attempting to cross Israel's border from Lebanon overnight Thursday-Friday.
The incident did not appear to be related to terror.
"A short time ago, IDF lookouts identified three suspects who tried to cross the fence on the Lebanon border. The suspects were identified and monitored by forces that arrived on the scene immediately," the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement.
"The suspects were arrested and questioned in the field. The IDF will continue to act to prevent every attempt to cross the border and violate Israeli sovereignty," the statement said.
The Ynet news site reported that the suspects were Sudanese nationals seeking work.
The IDF in recent months has seen a spate of attempts by African migrants attempting to cross the frontier.
The migrants appear to be coming to the Jewish state in search of work in light of the ongoing Lebanese economic crisis, which has left many of the country's foreign workers unemployed or underpaid.
Hezbollah's Military Media published a record of last night's event at the #Lebanon-#Israel border including the three Sudanese migrants who were arrested by the IDF and returned to a check point to be taken by Lebanese forces. pic.twitter.com/iZCPgiSgnd
Hundreds of people gathered in the West Bank on Friday for the funeral of Palestinian man Ibraheem Yakoub, who was allegedly shot by IDF Home Front Command soldiers a day earlier.
A spokesperson for the IDF said on Thursday that Home Front Command trrops opened fire after the Palestinian and another man started throwing fire bombs at a guard post near the settlement of Ariel.
Rescuers Without Borders (formerly Hatzalah) Judea and Samaria reported after the incident that one Palestinian had been shot in the leg and received treatment from emergency crews, but said the other suspect had escaped.
Palestinian officials dismissed the report and said the man had been walking with friends when he was shot dead.
People at the funeral in the village of Salfit carried Palestinian flags and chanted "Allahu Akbar", or God is greatest.
Tensions have been high in the West Bank in recent weeks as Israel weighs a plan to annex part of the territory that Palestinians seek for a future state.
🇵🇸 Palestinian President Abbas congratulates Vladimir Putin after Russian constitutional amendments approved in nationwide vote enable Putin to stay in power for 16 more years.https://t.co/Yb1n7Bao8d
🇵🇸 Palestinian President Abbas himself is now in 16th year of his 4-year term. pic.twitter.com/ueQ3rrdxmf
Hamas Cleric Iyad Abu Funun: Every Bullet, Stone, and Revolutionary Act or Act of Self-Sacrifice Must Be Directed at the Enemy's Heart; All Palestinians, Regardless of Faction, Will Embrace Such Acts pic.twitter.com/OYkuItDO3s
For the sixth anniversary of the 2014 #Gaza war, al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades published a video touting their accomplishments. In an excerpt, a militant speaks in Hebrew to convey a message — albeit quite poorly. #Israelpic.twitter.com/vHxhTsz61S
On February 27, Erdogan's government was on the threshold of executing its threat to flood Europe with millions of (mostly Syrian) migrants ... Hundreds of thousands of migrants began flocking to the border. By the next day, Greece was not only operating 52 Navy ships to guard its islands close to Turkey; it had also mobilized additional troops on land. Its security forces were able to block 10,000 migrants from entering Greece by way of the Turkish land border.
The new blackmail will not work for a number of reasons. First, because many migrants in Turkey have learned from experience that the Turkish-Greek border can no longer easily be crossed. And second, because the Greek security forces are now better equipped and better prepared to confront a new wave of migrants.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday formally reconverted Istanbul's sixth-century iconic Hagia Sophia into a mosque and declared it open to Muslim worship, hours after a high court annulled a 1934 decision that had turned it into a museum.
The decision to reconvert Hagia Sophia — a former cathedral that was turned into a mosque after Istanbul's conquest by the Ottoman Empire and had served as a museum for 86 years — sparked deep dismay among Orthodox Christians.
But there was jubilation outside Hagia Sophia. Dozens of people who awaited the court's ruling outside chanted "Allah is great!" when the news came out.
Turkey's high administrative court threw its weight behind a petition brought by a religious group and annulled the 1934 Cabinet decision that turned the site into a museum. Within hours, Erdogan signed a decree handing over Hagia Sophia to Turkey's Religious Affairs Presidency.
Erdogan has demanded that the the hugely symbolic world heritage site should be turned back into a mosque despite widespread international criticism, including from the United States and Orthodox Christian leaders. The move could also deepen tensions with neighboring Greece.
Cypriot Foreign Minister Nikos Christodoulides, a Greek Cypriot, posted on his official Twitter account that Cyprus "strongly condemns Turkey's actions on Hagia Sophia in its effort to distract domestic opinion and calls on Turkey to respect its international obligations."
Ahead of the 26th anniversary of Hezbollah's AMIA bombing, the Anti-Defamation League sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, urging him to designate Hezbollah as an Entity of Particular Concern for International Religious Freedom, "due to its ongoing efforts to destroy Israel and target Jewish communities."
Eighty-five people were murdered, and hundreds were injured in the suicide bomb attack on the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association building in Buenos Aires on July 18, 1994. "Hezbollah is notoriously responsible for the single worst attack in recent decades against a Jewish communal institution anywhere in the world," the letter reads.
Sharon Nazarian, ADL's senior vice president for International Affairs, wrote Pompeo that not a single one of Iran's terrorist proxies has been added yet to this list. "We write to encourage you to designate Hezbollah as an Entity of Particular Concern under the Frank Wolf International Religious Freedom Act," she wrote.
The letter indicates that Christians comprised approximately 59% of Lebanon's population in 1932, but by last year this figure fell to an estimated 31%. "In recent decades, one major factor driving the disproportionate emigration of Christians from Lebanon has no doubt been Hezbollah's violent and intolerant agenda."
What the world is witnessing right now is someone – the United States, Israel or Saudi Arabia, possibly with Iranian dissident proxy help – hitting Iranian nuclear and conventional weapons and IRGC facilities practically at will. And they are doing it in a way that has virtually never been witnessed in recent memory.
The IRGC has had more than two weeks to root out the cell or cells that are making this happen and has gotten nowhere.
It is almost like the intelligence forces making these attacks happen are playing three-dimensional chess and the IRGC is playing only checkers.
Former cyber intelligence officials from the US and Israel have talked to The Jerusalem Post about the power of potential cyberattacks on Iran.
To the extent that these are cyberattacks, it might be more understandable that Tehran has caught no one and stopped nothing. Explosions perpetrated through a cyberattack could have been arranged months or even years ago to be activated now.
But even in the cyber arena, US and Israeli officials have been warning that after the 2010 Stuxnet attack, the regime heavily improved as a cyber power.
However, what we appear to be witnessing are the limits of a second-tier counterintelligence force. Up against a premier intelligence or cyber power, Iran is apparently close to being defenseless.
The questions remaining then, are how long these attacks can continue and whether Iran can cope with them or try to make some sort of secret contact to cut a deal to get them stopped.
If it does not, the message from whoever is making this happen is clear: Continued aggressive actions on nuclear and other fronts will lead to consequences that the ayatollahs had never imagined.
Why now? There are a number of possible reasons. It could be connected to accelerated work the Iranians are doing on their nuclear program, justifying their violations of the JCPOA by saying that the US withdrew from the accord, and the Europeans have not done enough to bypass the American sanctions.
It could be connected to the upcoming UN vote on whether – as the Americans want – the arms embargo clamped on the country should continue. Since the Iranians are so keen on getting this embargo lifted, they may mute any possible response to small-bore attacks on their homeland in order to deprive countries in the UN of a justification to extend the embargo.
And it could all be connected to the remaining window of opportunity to act before the US presidential elections in November. The Iranians are waiting anxiously for November, hoping US President Donald Trump is not reelected, and that Joe Biden – who has said he would like to get back into a nuclear deal with Iran – comes into office.
The Iranians at this time would not be served by a large-scale military response, since that would force Biden to take a more hawkish position toward the Islamic Republic than perhaps he would be naturally inclined.
Whoever is behind the recent attacks in Iran seems to be working on the assumption that – at least for the time being – Iran's hands are tied. A clear signal is also being sent that even with all the other dangers currently facing humanity, to allow the Iranians to march forward with their nuclear ambitions would be utter folly that would make the current threats facing the world seem minor in comparison.
Iran's regime made efforts to secure illicit goods for its nuclear program, adding new urgency to the crisis surrounding Tehran's alleged atomic weapons activity, the domestic intelligence service of the Federal Republic of Germany disclosed in its new report on Thursday.
According to the intelligence document reviewed by The Jerusalem Post, "In 2019, the BfV [federal domestic intelligence service] was only able to find occasional indications of Iranian proliferation-related procurement attempts for its nuclear program. Such indications arise when the methodological approach to the procurement of goods, [and] their application also in a nuclear program and/or available knowledge about the final recipient respectively to the inquiring point indicate a potential procurement background relevant to proliferation."
The report, however, said that "as far as a verification of these indications was possible, they did not provide any evidence of a violation of the JCPOA in Germany."
The Iranian regime will disintegrate the economies of Iran and Lebanon, and will see to it that ppl in those countries are impoverished in ways that can't be fixed for generations, because for the regime it's more important to fund terrorism, oppression, and illicit nuclear work. pic.twitter.com/7KAFcfuVjF
Iran has executed a prisoner for the crime of drinking alcohol despite repeated warnings against it. His death is one of 123 executions carried out by the Iranian regime in the first six months of this year.
The unnamed prisoner was executed in Mashhad Central Prison at dawn on July 9, having been sentenced to death for "drinking alcohol for the sixth time," according to the NGO Iran Human Rights (IHR).
Iran implements a legal system based on Islamic Sharia law and carries out 'hadud' punishments - those mandated by God in accordance with the Quran. Consequently, the Islamic Penal Code currently states: "Where anyone commits the same offense punishable by hadd (singular of hadud) three times, and each time the hadd punishment is executed upon him/her, the hadd punishment on the fourth occasion shall be the death penalty."
Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of IHR said: "with this execution, the Islamic Republic's judicial system has once again proven that its views are no different from those of ISIS."
Calling it a momentous step towards recognition of the LGBTQ+ community, Saudi Arabia announced that all homosexuals executed during pride month would be hung from a rainbow noose or beheaded with a rainbow-colored ax.
Though human rights activists said much further process remains necessary, the announcement marks a major step forward for gay equality in the kingdom.
"We have a thriving gay community here in Saudi Arabia, and this is our way of recognizing and celebrating it," Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman told The Mideast Beast.
Though gay citizens face oppression throughout the region, many Middle Eastern regimes have marked Pride Month by incorporating the rainbow flag. Even ISIS has released a rainbow version of its classic black-and-white emblem.
"We certainly believe that homosexuality betrays the will of Allah and will immediately put to death anyone we suspect of being gay," ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi explained. "At the same time, we felt that completely ignoring pride month and not changing our logo to a rainbow would be perceived as a bit too aggressive."
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