Elder of Ziyon 07/17 Links Pt2: Want to fight racism? Begin by resisting BLM ideology; Soros’s Multi-Front War Against Israel; Zach Banner Tackles Anti-Semitism and Racism
Indeed, the recent surge of anti-Semitic comments from some African-American athletes and celebrities like DeSean Jackson, Nick Cannon and Ice Cube were largely ignored by BLM activists rather than condemned. While there were some blacks who did speak out, like basketball Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabaar and sports commentator Jemele Hill, they were the honorable exceptions who proved the rule and testified to the acceptance of Jew-hatred among many blacks. Jewish groups, some of which are diffident about confronting African-Americans about anti-Semitism, aren't likely to rally BLM advocates to confront this issue, let alone seek its sources, such as the widespread influence of hatemonger Louis Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam.
Unfortunately, many liberal Jews are not only failing to see the inherent problems that arise from backing radical BLM ideas like demonizing all police, but they are also buying into the group's dangerous ideas about the perils of "whiteness," which represent a particular threat to Jews as well as undermine black aspirations for advancement.
Accepting the ideological constructs behind the idea of White Fragility—the bestselling book that is a modern patent nostrum of foolishness about race—sends well-meaning people down a rabbit hole of rigid racialism that discards Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s hopes for a race-blind society. And yet that is exactly what many Jews are doing in this overheated post-George Floyd atmosphere.
In the past, Jews have played a constructive role in the struggle for civil rights—whether by marching with Dr. King or funding African-American education precisely because their efforts were aimed at raising up African-Americans, not abasing themselves at the altar of race.
That is why rather than jumping on the BLM bandwagon, those who claim to represent Jewish interests should be holding that movement to account for its damaging ideology, as well as its anti-Zionist connections and passivity about the growth of anti-Semitism among African-Americans.
Racism is real. But so is the danger of aligning with a movement whose goals are antithetical to the values that are responsible for the tremendous advances towards a better society that the civil-rights movement supported by blacks and Jews in the past achieved.
Let's begin by referring to the following excerpts from what appears to be a ground-breaking development: "…In what is being hailed as an "unprecedented" event, a senior Saudi Arabian researcher has had an article published in an Israeli journal--in Hebrew.
The essay aims to correct what its author, Prof. Mohammed Ibrahim Alghbban, head of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and Hebrew Studies at the Department of Modern Languages and Translation at King Saud University in Riyadh, calls 'erroneous misperceptions about the origins of Islam and distorted understanding of manuscripts' written by the Prophet Muhammad…Alghbban writes that Islam's founder did not clash with Jews on religious grounds, rather only on politics…"
While it certainly is good news to hear about Arab scholars learning the Hebrew language, teaching it to others (for perhaps good and not-so-good reasons), and more, Alghbban's assessment appears to be a whitewash of the actual Jihad waged against Medina's (the second holiest city in Islam) founders--Jews--who fled the earlier Roman wars for their independence in Judea and escaping into the nearby Arabian Peninsula for refuge.
Jews had a long history in the Arabian Peninsula prior to the birth of Muhammad in the 7th century C. E.
Yemen had several Jewish kings in the centuries leading up to Muhammad's era, and over a thousand years earlier, the Queen of Saba--Sheba--who visited King Solomon, legends say, married him, ruled over southern Arabia and Ethiopia as well.
The Saudi professor claims that Muhammad's problems with the Medina Jews stemmed only from political concerns.
The problem is that any student of Islam knows, however, that Muhammad was as much a political as a religious leader--and those who opposed him, in either of those categories, often wound up beheaded or enslaved.
The comparison with coverage of Adelson, likewise discussed by Feinreich in the article noted above, also illustrates how much the media enable Soros in his cynical use of accusations of anti-Semitism to silence criticism. They parrot his complaints in this vein even as they themselves use anti-Semitic tropes to attack Adelson.
Among the many examples of such attacks, a number of which are cited by Feinreich, are The Huffington Post's 2015 headline, "Tonight's GOP Debate: Sheldon Adelson's Malignant Tentacles," and the op-ed under the headline. Author Richard North Patterson asserts in the piece that "...Adelson means not only to pick the party's nominee, but to dictate his thoughts." And: "More than anyone else, it is Adelson - not voters, candidates, or experts on the Middle East - who dictates what Republicans dare to think and say about our relationship to Israel, the Palestinians on the West Bank, and the complex government of Iran." And, "To Adelson's God, Israel's solution to the Palestinians is biblically ordained: annexation of the West Bank and subjugation of its peoples." And, "...he's 'the richest Jew in the world' and, as such, determined to bend the world to his views." It is not hard to imagine the charges of anti-Semitism that comparable statements about Soros would elicit from him and his circle and the media outlets that support his activities. But such attacks on Adelson apparently fail to merit such a response.
One can cite similar statements about Adelson from, for example, The New York Times. Times columnist Thomas Friedman, for whom attacking Adelson, and Israel, is something of a personal obsession, wrote in 2015, under the title "Is it Sheldon Adelson's World?" "...it is troubling that one man, with a willingness and ability to give away great sums, can now tilt Israeli and American politics his way at the same time." And in a 2014 column: "Adelson personifies everything that is poisoning our democracy..." In a more generic invoking of an anti-Semitic trope, Friedman in a 2011 column explained that the standing ovation Benjamin Netanyahu had recently received in Congress was not a reflection of agreement with his views but rather "was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby."
While apparently having no problem with the use in its pages of anti-Semitic tropes directed against Adelson or "the Israel lobby," the Times has run a number of news articles and op-eds on Soros as a victim of anti-Semitism. A Times op-ed by Soros's son Alexander in October, 2018, asserts that his father's liberal philanthropic exertions have exposed him to "the poison of anti-Semitism." He characterizes anti-Semitism in America as coming exclusively from the Right, "white supremacists and nationalists," regurgitates the absurd but often heard association of the anti-Semitic Right with President Trump, and says nothing of the much more mainstreamed anti-Semitism emanating from the Left, including from groups and individuals supported by him and his father.
The Times has for much of the last century ignored anti-Semitism and has written of it recently only in the service of some political objective, as in its promotion of politics of Soros's variety. And Soros, again, is no less cynical in his invoking of anti-Semitism, doing so to silence critics even as he deploys it to advance his own agenda.
And, once more, central to that agenda is his hostility to Israel. His jaundiced attitude towards other Jews is not as monochromatic as his anti-Zionism. As indicated in the list of anti-Israel organizations and individuals he supports, there are Jews and Jewish groups among them, the major test being that they share, and act upon, his anti-Israel animus. There is little such nuance, however, in that animus.
It is not hard to comprehend why some Jews would be eager to distance themselves from an identity that has been and continues to be so vilified and that not long ago marked its holders for slaughter on an unprecedented scale. Each individual is free to choose his or her communal affiliations, or at least such freedom ought to be an element of any truly open society. But to move from disassociating oneself from the Jewish quest for national self-determination and its realization in Israel to supporting those who would undermine and ultimately annihilate the Jewish state, and to do so while claiming a higher purpose, to take the path that Soros has forged for himself, is not a course that would be chosen by any truly moral human being but rather the mark of a moral cripple.
More concerning is why citizens of Louisville want an "ally" like Sarsour furthering the cause of justice for Breonna Taylor. Sarsour, an unapologetic bigot, shares the BLM cause only insofar as she can use it to promote her own anti-Israel and anti-Semitic agenda. Sarsour's and Tamika Mallory's anti-Semitism (and continued support of other anti-Semites such as Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam) prompted many local chapters of the Women's March they are credited with helping found to break away from the national organization. Mallory and Sarsour have both been removed from the Women's March board.
That hasn't dampened their enthusiasm for exclusionary bigotry. In an announcement about a Juneteenth rally for racial justice that Sarsour helped organize through another one of her activist organizations, MPower Change, promotional materials said the rally was "open to all, minus cops & Zionists."
In another recent speech, Sarsour claimed, falsely, that an Anti-Defamation League-sponsored program in Israel for law enforcement led to American police officers harming black Americans. "I'll give you an example of something that they do," she said, "If you are part of a criminal justice reform movement, if you believe in the idea of ending police brutality and the misconduct of law enforcement officers across the country, then you do not support an organization that takes police officers from America, funds their trips, takes them to Israel so they can be trained by the Israeli police and military, and then they come back here and do what? Stop and frisk, killing unarmed black people across the country."
The message seems to be spreading to other BLM supporters. During a recent BLM protest in Washington, D.C., marchers chanted "Israel, we know you, you murder children, too." And as Algemeiner reported, on the anniversary of the Louis Farrakhan-sponsored Million Man March, Sarsour said, "The same people who justify the massacres of Palestinian people and call it collateral damage are the same people who justify the murder of black young men and women."
Sarsour's eagerness to attach her noxious views about Israel and Jews to the BLM moment has brought her increased visibility. Her and Mallory's arrests this week no doubt brought in a lot of earned media and donations for their organization. But BLM leaders and the many corporations and individuals who have been donating money to the cause might want to consider whether anti-Semites like Sarsour are really the allies they want to embrace.
One of the many remarkable things about this story is that Banner didn't actually know what the term "anti-Semitism" even meant before that morning. "I'm just gonna be honest with you man, before this ... When I was reading that article from ESPN, I had to Google what 'anti-Semitic' was," he told me. For Banner, like many people, the terminology surrounding Jews and Judaism was confusing, even as he had the best of intentions toward Jewish people. "You use the term 'Jew,'" he asked me during our conversation. "Is that, I mean, me being of African American descent, is that similar to us using the N-word? Like, only [for] Jewish people? Would you suggest me never to use the word 'Jew'?" As it turned out, this was why he had been careful to refer only to "the Jewish community" in his videos. I reassured him on this front, but was also reminded that in our era of microaggressions and hyperattention to language surrounding minority groups, sometimes it's important to take a step back and focus on a person's intentions rather than their packaging.
So if he didn't know the technical term for anti-Semitism, how did Banner know so much about the Jewish experience? His education began at the University of Southern California. "My first encounter with a Jewish person was at USC," he said. He remembers being flummoxed when learning for the first time about anti-Jewish prejudice in his classes. "When I got there, they're teaching me about the quote-unquote 'racial characteristics' that people try to identify like the big nose and, you know, things like that, and I still to this day don't get it."
Campus was also where he found the people he calls his "Jewish family members"—his brothers at the historically Jewish fraternity Zeta Beta Tau. When one of them first invited him to join, he was naturally a little confused. "I was like, 'Hey man, isn't that like a white fraternity?'" he recalled. "And he said, 'Well, no, nationally it's Jewish, but you know we have definitely a lot more ... We have a broad range of different ethnicities, racial groups, cultures, within the fraternity. I'd like you to see that.' And it was very true. We had some Black guys. I wasn't the only one of African American descent there. We also had—one of my pledge brothers is Muslim. We had a couple dudes from Asia. So it was really a brotherhood. But there was a good portion of Jewish people in it, Jewish bros in it."
Banner learned a lot about the backgrounds of his brothers, in part because he preferred to have conversations about personal matters, rather than everything reverting back to football. "I personally like picking and asking questions about people's upbringing," he said, "because I'm probably the only athlete in the room, more than likely, and I hate talking about myself."
"People [are] usually just, like, 'How's football?'" But "no one wants to talk about work. You know what I mean? I don't wanna talk about work. You don't wanna talk about work."
This was how Banner, a star football player of African American and Chamorro descent, got his crash course on the Jewish experience. "I'm picking their brains about this," he said. "I have a baseline knowledge of the Holocaust, I have a baseline knowledge of World War II. I know about, you know, the Nazi movement and things like that, genocide and that, but when I hear these stories, from a Jewish person, it's very very passionate. I learned so many different things."
If there is one silver lining to this, it is that several prominent Black writers and activists, such as Kareem Abdul Jabbar, have publicly slammed and repudiated Farrakhan. We must hope those in the Black community like Jabbar prevail in this debate — which is a debate only the Black community can have. But the problem of Farrakhan cannot be solved without solving the larger problem of Black antisemitism.
In the early 1960s, the great African-American writer and activist James Baldwin — who was not entirely free of antisemitism himself — tried to get to the bottom of it all.
"In the American context," Baldwin wrote, "the most ironical thing about Negro anti-Semitism is that the Negro is really condemning the Jew for having become an American white man. … The Jew profits from his status in America, and he must expect Negroes to distrust him for it. The Jew does not realize that the credential he offers, the fact that he has been despised and slaughtered, does not increase the Negro's understanding. It increases the Negro's rage."
To Baldwin, then, Black antisemitism was at its core driven by two factors: that to Blacks, the Jew was white, and therefore part of the problem; and that Jews did not think of themselves as white.
Putting aside the fact that a very large number of Jews are not white, the problem with this is that while it may be true that Black people believe the Jews are white and therefore benefit from white racism, the racists have always disagreed. White supremacists in the US have never believed that the Jews were "white," and to the extent that they have seen Jews as superior to Black people, it is only in our supposed preternatural genius at using Black people as a weapon to destroy white people.
It is true that the otherness of Jews in America, and elsewhere, is not the same as that of a Black person. A Black person wears that otherness on their face, every day for all to see. With a handful of exceptions, he cannot "pass," even if he wanted to. The ability of the Jew to blend in, to be unidentifiable, is thus to the Black person a privilege he cannot enjoy.
But the Jews do not by any means always "pass." Some of us do wear it on our faces. I have been "made" as a Jew several times, as have many of my friends. In one case for one of those friends, the results were quite egregious. And many of us wear it on our bodies through the kippah, the black suit, the shtreimel or the tzitzit: precisely those "visible Jews" who have recently been the object of assaults by people of color in New York and New Jersey.
American Jews are making a mistake. When Philadelphia Eagles football player DeSean Jackson made blatantly antisemitic remarks, Jewish Patriots player Julian Edelman invited him to visit Auschwitz. In fact, Jackson has accepted an invitation from Edward Mosberg, a Holocaust survivor. That's OK. He will, in all likelihood, learn something about Jewish history in Europe, about the Holocaust and about not throwing Hitler's name around like a football.
But that isn't where the problem lies. It lies with the erasure of American Jewish history, and for American Jews to suggest the answer is in Poland is unhelpful.
TV personality Nick Cannon believes the problem of race in America goes "as deep as the Rothschilds, centralized banking, the 13 families, the bloodlines that control everything even outside of America." Cannon worries about "giving too much power to the 'they,'" and they turn out to be "the Illuminati, the Zionists, the Rothschilds."
Jackson, Cannon and others get their talking points from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. On his YouTube show, Cannon said, "Every time I've heard [Farrakhan] speak, it's positive, it's powerful, it's uplifting … for whatever reason, he's been demonized."
Farrakhan knows perfectly well that Hitler engineered the genocide of the Jewish people in Europe — no denial there. On the other hand, he thinks that the Jews were responsible for what happened to them. They brought it on themselves.
How? By being Jews — by doing all the nasty things Farrakhan and his ilk charge "the Jews" with doing. Those things don't bear repeating here or anywhere, but if the Jews did those things in Europe and they do those things in the United States (and, by the way, claim the "intersectionalists" who want to ride on well-founded concerns of African Americans, they do those things in Israel, too) well, then, can you blame Hitler for a little overreaction? Can you blame American antisemites for the violence in Los Angeles on Memorial Day weekend, or say, the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh? At Chabad of Poway?
I mean, really, if those Jews just wouldn't do what those Jews do …
What do they do? Well, you know, they are "termites" and all.
After days of silence, Fox television network defended host Nick Cannon, who has been under fire for an anti-Semitic tirade in which he accused Jewish people of controlling the global financial system.
Fox Entertainment spokesman Les Eisner said that the company is standing behind Cannon, who has been forced to issue multiple apologies since he posted a YouTube video on June 23 that included praise for anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Cannon also promoted age-old anti-Semitic canards about Jewish control, including claims that a secretive group of Jewish people controls the world's banking system.
Cannon's comments led ViacomCBS, producer of his MTV and VH1 show, to fire him. Cannon is also the host of Fox's The Masked Singer and is in talks for a new daytime television show produced by Lionsgate's Debmar-Mercury group, which has remained silent so far on his remarks.
Fox spokesman Eisner defended Cannon, saying the host is remorseful and currently educating himself about why his comments offended the American Jewish community. Initially, Cannon issued a non-apology, but he has since changed his tune.
"When we were made aware of Nick Cannon's interview with Richard Griffin on YouTube, we immediately began a dialogue with Nick," Eisner said in a statement. "He is clear and remorseful that his words were wrong and lacked both understanding and context, and inadvertently promoted hate. This was important for us to observe."
"Nick has sincerely apologized, and quickly taken steps to educate himself and make amends," Eisner claimed. "On that basis and given a belief that this moment calls for dialogue, we will move forward with Nick and help him advance this important conversation, broadly. FOX condemns all forms of hate directed toward any community and we will combat bigotry of any kind."
Awesome how many verified accounts can just tweet stuff like this and it's nbd. https://t.co/dj7Eufwtqg
Former middle school principal Jamaal Bowman has toppled 16-term US Rep. Eliot Engel in New York's Democratic primary in another upset victory for the party's insurgent wing.
Many votes cast by mail in the race have yet to be counted, but an AP analysis of absentee ballots returned so far indicated Friday that Bowman's lead from votes cast in person is too large for Engel to overcome.
Bowman declared victory in the race on June 24, a day after the primary.
A political novice who has never held public office before, Bowman, 44, was a progressive African American challenger who said Engel, the 73-year-old chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, had lost touch with his economically and racially diverse district.
Engel, who is Jewish, is known as one of Capitol Hill's pro-Israel stalwarts and one of the most hawkish Democrats. He voted against the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and for the George W. Bush administration's Iraq war.
He earned his extraordinary win in a campaign season upended first by the coronavirus outbreak, then by protests over the death of George Floyd.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has endorsed Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) for re-election in Minnesota's 5th Congressional District, announced the senator on Wednesday.
"@IlhanMN is a woman of incredible strength. We need her leadership in Congress. I'm pleased to endorse her campaign for reelection," captioned the former Democratic presidential candidate, who was endorsed by Omar, in a Twitter post that includes a video of Sanders announcing his endorsement for Omar.
In the video, Sanders touts Omar as "one of the leaders in the Congress in fighting for economic and social and racial and environmental justice," while claiming that Omar "has been subjected to more vile and racist attacks than any other member of the Congress" and praising her for having "responded with incredible dignity and pride that should make the people of her state and her district extraordinarily proud of her."
Sanders went on to say that Omar is "a woman of incredible strength and dignity."
"We need Ilhan's leadership in the Congress," he continued. "We need her voice speaking out for justice."
The video was paid for by Sanders's principal campaign committee, Friends of Bernie Sanders.
The move comes one day after the congresswoman picked up an endorsement from U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Omar has perpetuated anti-Semitic tropes on Twitter and introduced a resolution in Congress that promotes boycotts of Israel, likening them to boycotts of Nazi Germany.
In February 2019, a month after being sworn in, Omar accused AIPAC of paying members of Congress to back Israel, saying it was "all about the Benjamins."
This coming from @RashidaTlaib@RepRashida, a Member of Congress who compared Israel to Nazi Germany, supports full throttled BDS and throws out Antisemitic tropes with careless ease?https://t.co/t3gtNP1h32
Perhaps the nastiest demonisation from Ms Winter is the allegation that Israel 'attempts to censor textbooks' of Palestinian children. Presumably this comes from Canavan. It shows the disinformation which NEU visitors to Judea and Samaria are fed. And at home the NEU (in truth its prececessor the NUT) is in bed with the antisemitic Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
What is in Palestinian textbooks? Well an 11th grade history book described the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre by Palestinian terrorists in which 11 Israeli athletes were murdered as 'a strike at Zionist interests abroad.' As for Mathematics, calculus is taught by counting the number of dead Hamas terrorists in Palestinian uprisings. Israel would be perfectly justified in criticising this perversion of education.
I contacted Impact-SE. The statement 'Israel attempts to censor textbooks' is a lie.
Israel does not (and of course cannot) intervene regarding Palestine Authority-issued schoolbooks in Judea/Samaria and Gaza, taught in PA and UNRWA schools to 1.3 million children. The PA is an independent authority as is UNWRA. Nor does it interfere in private Jerusalem schools. Arabic-language schools in Jerusalem, served by the Jerusalem Municipality and paid for by Israeli taxpayers, have historically refused to study the excellent Israeli curriculum in Arabic studied in Arabic language schools across Israel, but insist on studying the extremist Palestinian Curriculum.
Respecting the wish to include a distinct Palestinian national identity but equally sensitive to their responsibility that Palestinian students should not be indoctrinated by the hate and radicalisation in the PA curriculum (that has been condemned inter alia by the UN, European Parliament, UK and Norwegian governments), the Jerusalem municipality offers (not forces!) alternative textbooks which meet UNESCO peace and tolerance standards.
The demonisation of Israel – in the form of straight lies, or omitting the security rationale, for example for checkpoints or the security fence – has been the breeding ground of much of the antisemitism evident in the Labour Party. If Keir Starmer is serious about tackling it then he must address Labour MPs like Bethan Winter who give currency to the demonising lies. This should be a recommendation of the EHRC. But we all know it won't be ……………
Lloyd Russell-Moyle, the Shadow Minister for Natural Environment and Air Quality, has resigned from the Labour frontbench, citing a "campaign by the right-wing media" and targeted abuse.
It comes days after he was forced to apologise after it was revealed that he had called Zionism, the movement to give Jews the same right to self-determination as all other peoples, "a dangerous nationalist idea".
Mr Russell-Moyle has a terrible record on antisemitism, having defended Melanie Melvin, who had tweeted that a Syrian gas attack had been "filmed by the BBC at Pinewood on the orders of Mrs May and the Israeli lobby" and Rebecca Massey who had claimed that "Israel has [the] Tory [and] Labour parties under control", backed Ken Livingstone and declared that the "Israel lobby manufactured the UK Labour Party's antisemitism crisis".
He has also shared a leaked dossier designed to blame Labour's antisemitism crisis on anti-Corbyn factions within the Party. The unredacted version that he and others shared led to details of antisemitism complainants being shared on neo-Nazi and white supremacist websites.
A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: "It was deeply disappointing that Sir Keir Starmer appointed Mr Russell-Moyle to his Shadow Cabinet, given his record. Mr Russell-Moyle should still face disciplinary proceedings over his past conduct."
A campaign launched by an Instagram account called "Astagfirvlah," also spelled "Astagfirollah," accuses Google and Apple of "officially removing" Palestine from their maps.
Wednesday's Instagram post sparked widespread criticism on social media, accusing both companies of trying to obliterate the Palestinian identity and change facts to satisfy American and Israeli goals.
Tweets emerged. One said: "Today #Israel came to cancel the annexation of #Palestine?! Today is also the same day #Applemaps and #GoogleMaps removed #Palestine from there worldwide maps?! I stand with you forever and always!! #FreePalestine!!! Please speak up!! And share!! #istandforjustice."
Others said: "As you can see, @Google removed 'Palestine' from its maps" and "Removing #Palestine from the map doesn't mean it ceases to exist. #PalestineIsHere."
Eyad Rifai, head of Sada Social Center, which monitors social media violations against Palestinian content, affirmed to The Media Line that Palestine was not identified as such on these maps, but rather as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
He added that since the beginning of 2020, Google had begun to remove the names of Palestinian cities and roads from its maps while keeping Israeli roads – which put Palestinians in danger if they followed directions based on the maps and ended up in an Israeli settlement.
"We have been working and sending letters to several parties to include Palestine in accordance with the laws of the United Nations," Rifai stated.
On July 12, the Atlantic published an article by Graham Allison which was mostly about President Trump, but that still managed to include misinformation about Israel and its Prime Minister. ("Trump Might Not Want to Relinquish Power.") Allison wrote: Putin, Xi, Netanyahu, and Trump all differ from one another in many ways, of course. But each has reasons to avoid relinquishing his hold on power. Putin, Xi, and Netanyahu genuinely have grand ambitions. Each wants to expand his country's formal borders—Russia's into Ukraine, Israel's into the West Bank, China's to reintegrate Hong Kong and Taiwan.
The Atlantic's Editor-in-Chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, who once lived in Israel and published a column in the Jerusalem Post, surely knows that Israel has never had a "formal border" between itself and the West Bank. In 1949, temporary armistice lines were agreed upon between Israel and Jordan. Israel's territorial victory in 1967 also did not create a "formal border."
As CAMERA has explained before: The Green Line… served as an armistice demarcation line between Israel and Jordan. The armistice line was established April 3, 1949 by Article III of the Israel-Jordan Armistice Agreement and was never the "border" between Israel and the West Bank.
On the contrary, the agreement specifically notes that the lines are not borders: "The Armistice Demarcation Lines defined in articles V and VI of this Agreement are agreed upon by the Parties without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either Party relating thereto."
In short, the word "border" implies legality, political significance and permanence that does not apply in this circumstance.
Yet, despite multiple contacts from CAMERA, the Atlantic has so far failed to correct its error. Why would a reputable publication let such a false claim stand?
Listeners were not informed that it is Hizballah itself which is obstructing UNIFIL's mission or that Israel has not been alone in raising that issue: the United Nations has done so too.
One may have assumed that the BBC's correspondent would at that point expand on the topic of UN Security Council resolution 1701 and the consequences of UNIFIL's failure to meet its objectives but instead Bateman changed the subject.
Bateman: "Amid Lebanon's economic crisis Hizballah chief Hassan Nasrallah appeared on TV last week. He warned of dangerous consequences for the region over Israel's recent plans to annex Palestinian territories."
Not only has Israel not yet presented any such "plans" but the area potentially concerned is not – and never has been – "Palestinian territories" but parts of Area C, which under the terms of the Oslo Accords remained under Israeli control pending negotiations.
Failing to provide listeners with an accurate and impartial view of the nature and extent of Hizballah's influence in Lebanon or to explain what exactly the terror organisation is supposedly 'resisting', Bateman went on to introduce the first of two non-local contributors to his report.
The leader of France's main far-left political party is being accused of espousing an antisemitic trope during a recent radio interview.
Asked by his interviewer whether police should "be like Jesus on the cross and not reply" when provoked by demonstrators, Jean-Luc Mélenchon — head of the LFI (La France Insoumise) party — replied, "Listen, I don't know if Jesus was on the cross. I know who put him there, it seems that it was his own compatriots" — an apparent reference to Jews.
French Jewish parliamentarian Meyer Habib reacted on Twitter, writing, "No Mr. Mélenchon! A bit of history: Jesus Christ was condemned to death by crucifixion by the Roman Ponce Pilate, not by his Jewish compatriots (21'32)! The temptation was perhaps too strong to recycle the age-old antisemitic deicide trope."
The LFI currently holds 17 of the 577 seats in the French National Assembly. In the first round of the 2017 presidential election, Melenchon won 7 million votes — nearly 20 percent of the total number cast.
Last month, as reported by The Algemeiner, the 68-year-old Mélenchon was criticized for dismissing chants of "Dirty Jews!" that were heard at an anti-racism demonstration in Paris as "gossip."
The municipal council of Moissac sometimes calls its placid French town overlooking the Tarn River, near Toulouse, "the city of the Righteous Among the Nations."
It's a reference to how hundreds of locals during the Holocaust helped resistance activists rescue about 500 Jewish children — an occurrence that Yad Vashem, Israel's national Holocaust museum, has defined as "an exceptional episode in the history of World War II." Righteous Among the Nations is the title that the State of Israel gives to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.
In 2013, Yad Vashem helped inaugurate a Righteous Among the Nations square with plaques in the center of the town of 12,000, which the museum has trumpeted and has been featured in the French press.
Now Moissac is again making headlines, but for a much different reason: Its new mayor, Romain Lopez, has been accused of making anti-Semitic statements and is part of the far-right National Rally party founded by the Holocaust denier Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Late last month, Lopez won a whopping 62 percent of the vote. In 2015, he wrote on Twitter dismissively about figures on anti-Semitism presented in the French parliament by a Jewish scholar and Holocaust survivor, Serge Klarsfeld.
"The apostles of the persecution complex don't know what to invent next," Lopez wrote.
Lopez, who is only 31, has denied the comment reflected any anti-Semitic bias but nonetheless apologized for its dismissive tone.
Genesis Philanthropy Group (GPG) and Beit Lohamei Hagetaot – Ghetto Fighters' House Museum – have launched an educational program for Israeli high school students that will incorporate the story of the Holocaust of Soviet Jewry and the memory of the heroism of Jewish fighters against the Nazis as an alternative to traditional visits to Holocaust sites in Poland.
The educational program portraying the Holocaust of Soviet Jewry will be conducted in small groups and will be tailored to the needs of each participating school in consultation with the school's educational staff.
The program will include lectures, workshops and introductory films that provide an overview of the Holocaust on Soviet territories. This includes a guided tour of the museum's relevant exhibitions, video testimonies of survivors and fighters, the "Bielski Brothers workshop" dedicated to the legendary family of Jewish partisans, a workshop about the Righteous Among the Nations, and a "Portable Gaming Workshop" complete with visual escape room sets which will use escape room methods to explore the individual life stories of five individuals who lived in the former Soviet Union territories during the Holocaust.
Due to the restrictions imposed by the coronavirus on the traditional visits to Holocaust sites in Poland, Beit Lohamei Hagetaot, supported by GPG, will design an alternative seminar for 11th and 12th graders, which will be conducted at the museum of Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot and the vicinity. In addition to the educational program, the seminar will include encounters with veterans and Holocaust survivors from the former Soviet Union, guest speakers, and visits to historical sites around the Western Galilee.
French political leaders, Holocaust memorials and museums and Jewish organizations marked on Thursday the anniversary of the 1942 Vel D'Hiv roundup, in which over 13,000 Jews were arrested in Paris by French authorities and deported to Nazi death camps.
According to Yad Vashem, 4,500 French policemen took part in the operation, imprisoning some 13,000 Jews — including 4,000 children — in the Velodrome d'Hiver stadium in crowded and unsanitary conditions. They were then taken to concentration camps near Paris.
At the camps, children were separated from their parents, who were mostly sent to Auschwitz and murdered. Some 3,000 children were left behind, and in September were deported to Auschwitz as well, where they were killed.
For decades, the French government and much of the public blamed the roundup on the Germans and denied any responsibility. In 1995, however, French President Jacques Chirac publicly apologized for the roundup, and in 2017 current President Emmanuel Macron admitted French responsibility for it.
To commemorate the anniversary on Thursday, Macron tweeted, "On July 16 and 17, 1942, over thirteen thousand Jews were arrested. By French people, by the French State. Because they were Jews."
"Over eight thousand were detained at Vel d'Hiv before being deported to Auschwitz," he noted. "Never forget."
Les 16 et 17 juillet 1942, plus de treize-mille Juifs furent arrêtés. Par des Français, par l'État français. Parce qu'ils étaient Juifs. Plus de huit-mille furent détenus au Vel d'Hiv avant d'être déportés à Auschwitz. N'oublions jamais.
The UK Holocaust Museum tweeted some of the facts about the roundup, noting, "Many ordinary citizens openly welcomed the persecution, with some people clapping as the raids took place, as well as some looting of the newly empty homes."
"The Jewish people were interned at the velodrome for 5 days under appalling conditions," it added. "There were no toilets or washing facilities. The roof was shut and the heat was oppressive. Some people were driven to take their own lives and many were shot by those guarding them."
Wiesel finishes his travels through America's past and heads now to "take a stroll through the land of the future, which is also a province of Disneyland" and describes the (now-closed) House of the Future shortly after it opened in the Summer of 1957: "Futuristic man will live such a wonderful life! Everything will come to him so, so easily! If someone knocks at the door, you won't have to go to see who it is: He will appear on the screen of your television. If the telephone rings, you'll be able to see the person you're speaking with and not just hear his voice. And a thousand other such conveniences will turn your house into a royal palace and transform you yourself into a lazy, fat, lonely king."
Several times in the article, Wiesel reflects on his appreciation of Walt Disney—"the person who created this land, this universe, must be a genius, a rare genius"—and then shares the anecdote that he was told of how Walt Disney often walks around Disneyland in disguise. Wiesel understands why: "If one wants to calm his nerves and forget the bitter realities of daily life, there is no better-suited place to do so than Disneyland. In Disneyland, the land of children's dreams, everything is simple, beautiful, good. There, no one screams at his fellow, no one is exploited by his fellow, no one's fortune derives from his fellow's misfortune. If children had the right to vote, they would vote Disney their president. And the whole world would look different."
Wiesel concludes his description of visiting Disneyland with a story from four years earlier, when he was a journalist covering the Cannes Film Festival on the French Riviera and had the opportunity to interview Walt Disney in person after the latter had been awarded the French Légion d'Honneur in honor of his cinematographic contributions. (Wiesel would himself later receive this same award in 1984, two years before he won the Nobel Peace Prize.)
At a ceremony that was flowing with champagne, surrounded by screenwriters, producers, and film personalities from around the world, Elie Wiesel approached Walt Disney and asked: "The whole world loves you; your children's films have brought you honor, renown, and anything one could wish for. I want to ask you: What is your goal? What do you want—what would you want—to achieve with your film work?"
Wiesel then writes: "Disney thought for a bit, fixing his large eyes on a far off, invisible point in space, and answered:
'Childhood. The goal of my work has always been to awaken a sense of youth in men, in adults. Because—the best part of man's life is his childhood.' "
Wiesel's ending places the Holocaust survivor next to Mickey Mouse, in a way that feels at once jarring and profound and that Walt Disney would certainly have appreciated:
"Difficult as it is to admit, I did not understand his words at the time. I do understand them better now, however, having been to Disneyland.
"Today, I visited not only Disneyland, but also—and especially—my childhood."
Cave carvings discovered unexpectedly at the Yehudiya Forest Nature Reserve on the Golan Heights are the subject of new research from the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Tel Hai Academic College.
The carvings were identified on ancient graves constructed from boulders, known as dolmens, that date back some 4,200 years, and appear to point to the existence of a mysterious civilization of builders that existed in northern Israel over four millennia ago.
The article discusses carvings found on walls of four different dolmens in the Galilee and Golan regions. The rock art sheds like on the culture that built them. Rangers from the Nature and Parks Authority at Yehudiya noted carvings depicting horned animals such as ibexes, antelopes, and wild cattle.
At another dolmen, the top stone was designed to resemble a human face, and a third dolmen features carvings of geometric shapes.
Most researchers believe that the enormous stone structures were built in the Middle Bronze Age, 4,000-5,000 years ago. Hundreds have been studied throughout the Golan and Galilee areas, but thus far the civilization responsible for them has not been the subject of much attention. In the past few years, the archaeological community has shown renewed interest in the dolmens of the Middle East, and research is yielding new and exciting findings.
Professor Agone Sharon, head of the MA program in Galilee Studies at Tel Hai Academic College, who published the article along with archaeologist Uri Berger of the Upper Galilee Department at the IAA, explained that "A few years ago, a panel bearing wall drawings was discovered in a huge dolmen in a field near Kibbutz Shamir. That was the first time rock art had been documented in the context of dolmens in the Middle East. Following that discovery, we started a research project to locate and document art on dolmens throughout the Land of Israel. We have covered dozens of dolmens throughout the Upper Galilee and the Golan Heights in an attempt to reveal the world of the members of this mystery culture, which existed here over 4,000 years ago and left only dolmens as proof of their rich culture."
Martin Steinberg's jeans-clad tush has recently become nearly as famous as Bruce Springsteen's, thanks to a new creative project currently going viral on social media.
Steinberg is among residents at a Jewish care home in North London who recently posed for photos inspired by famous record album covers from the 1950s through today. The photos — styled, shot and edited by the home's activities coordinator Robert Speker — have become a global sensation to the surprise and delight of the unlikely models.
With Sydmar Lodge in pandemic lockdown mode since March 12, Speker has been working harder than ever to keep the residents busy and upbeat. The album cover photoshoots are merely one of many outside-the-box activities the award-winning Speker has come up with during this period in which residents have been unable to receive even family members.
"It's only recently that we have begun to have window and garden visits," Speker told The Times of Israel by phone on July 16. 'Martin-Bruce' (Robert Speker/Sydmar Lodge)
Sydmar Lodge is an independent care home for approximately 50 individuals age 65 and up. People of all backgrounds are welcome to join the Sydmar Lodge community. However, the facility's observance of Shabbat, Jewish holidays and kosher dietary laws tends to attract mainly Jewish residents.
Speker, 41, is the sole Jewish staff member, and it therefore falls to him to assist residents with Jewish rituals. (This Passover, when residents were not permitted to leave their rooms, he loaded up a cart with wine, matzah, and a seder plate and went from door to door holding a quick mini-seder at each one.)
According to Speker the album cover project is in line with the way he usually interacts with the residents.
"This really isn't so different from other things we do. I tend to have madcap ideas and like to do things a bit differently. Laughter and fun is central to everything," Speker said.
Apparently the residents are game. So far, 10 have modeled for the project, and there is a waiting list. One extremely enthusiastic participant named Sheila Solomons has been photographed three times already.
Speker, who has worked at Sydmar Lodge for five and half years, decided to let Solomons pose for Rag'n'Bone Man's 2017 "Human" album after she had already wielded her cane like a smashed guitar on the cover of The Clash's "London Calling," and strummed it as Elvis did his guitar on the cover of his eponymous debut album.
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.
Daniel Paul Rubenstein found an interview that Jeffrey Goldberg had with Peter Beinart when he released his "Crisis of Zionism" book. (I'm sure that a new book is in the works.)
It is interesting to read what Beinart said then – already part of the progressive Zionist Left before he went full blown anti-Israel.
I disagreed with Tony Judt's essay in 2003 arguing for a binational state. That should be evident from my essay, which is all about saving liberal Zionism.
…In general, I think American Jewish leaders and commentators have become far too promiscuous about throwing around words like anti-Israel. In my mind, you're anti-Israel if you want Israel to disappear as a Jewish state. Being a harsh critic is something very different, and even if you believe someone is insufficiently attentive to Israeli security, that merely makes them wrong, not anti-Israel, unless you can prove that they are inattentive because they would not mind if Israel ceased to exist as a Jewish state.
There certainly are leftists (and for that matter) rightists who focus so disproportionately on Israel's failings as to raise questions about their true motives.
Sound familiar?
I'm not asking Israel to be Utopian. I'm not asking it to allow Palestinians who were forced out (or fled) in 1948 to return to their homes. I'm not even asking it to allow full, equal citizenship to Arab Israelis, since that would require Israel no longer being a Jewish state. I'm actually pretty willing to compromise my liberalism for Israel's security and for its status as a Jewish state. What I am asking is that Israel not do things that foreclose the possibility of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, because if it is does that it will become--and I'm quoting Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak here--an "apartheid state."
It is interesting that even then, Beinart believed that Arab Israelis were not equal citizens under the law –of course they are - but he was willing to throw them under the bus to keep Israel as a Jewish state!
And foreclosing the possibility of a Palestinian state is exactly what the current Israeli coalition wants to do. You ask what has changed. First, year after year of settlement growth at triple the rate of the Israeli population…The more the settlements expand, the more settlers--including fanatical settlers--take over parts of the Israeli bureaucracy and become integral to the Israeli army and rabbinate, all of which makes the prospect of removing them without outright civil war more remote.
This was Beinart in 2010. Since then, what has changed? Netanyahu is still prime minister, Abbas is still the PLO head, the amount of land for settlements is virtually identical and the percentage of Israelis living in the territories has gone up only marginally (4.1% to 4.8%.)
However, Hamas still controls Gaza and has more weapons, Hezbollah has more rockets than it did, the Palestinians rejected a peace framework from the most pro-Palestinian president ever, they initiated a new terror spree of cars and knives, and the current president is offering them billions of dollars to accept a contiguous state – admittedly smaller than the previous ones they rejected, but still a state = and they don't want to talk to him.
And with all that new data, Beinart changed from Zionist to anti-Israel – by his own 2010 definition.
Nothing changed for Israel or for Palestinians. Only Beinart changed. Anything else he says about why suddenly Israel must cease to exist as a Jewish state is not in response to changed circumstances, but his own bizarre slide to the side of Israel's enemies.
There is nothing moral about it. Just ask 2010 Beinart.
Peter Beinart recently wrote an article of Jewish surrender that was published in Jewish Currents. Falling over itself, the New York Times rushed to publish an abbreviated version to ensure the piece was given a much wider audience. Beinart
The thrust of the Beinart argument is simple. Beinart used to believe in a Jewish state – he doesn't anymore, and as he lives in his comfortable home in the US, he believes Israel should dismantle itself and embark upon a utopian one state existence with the Palestinians. Thus ending 100 years of conflict.
There is nothing new inside the article. It is a silly proposition, a notion that the answer to the conflict between Israel and its neighbours is for the Jews to to put away their guns, remove the walls that protect them, surrender their right of self determination – have faith – and create what would eventually become another Muslim majority state in the Middle East. Beinart and privilege
The article and Beinart's position is historically and politically illiterate. Beinart pushes a solution with all the privilege of a person sitting under the umbrella of US citizenship, 1000s of miles away from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. Or as Benjamin Kerstein put in his response in the Tablet – "Peter Beinart thinks Jews don't need Zionism. That's because he's never needed it himself."
Beinart, like many of those who dabble in such utopian theory, pushes immature politics. The secular democratic one state solution is a privileged imperialist western answer to a problem they have with ignorant natives in a far-off land. Nobody on the ground wants it – not the Israelis and not the Palestinians.
The simple truth is that Israel looks the way it does – because it reflects the reality of the Middle East. The 1947 partition plan was not written into the British Mandate, but developed as reality took over. The civil war and regional conflict became inevitable. Israel is a natural product of its people, history and neighbourhood. And this simple fact – that Israel is a Middle Eastern nation, is what lies at the heart of the problem.
For some western Jews, the Israel of reality is not the Israel of their dreams. These people tend to view Israel's growing religious population with horror, they look down on the 'arsim' of Bat Yam and they are quite derogatory about many aspects of Israeli culture. They don't like the way many Israelis think or behave and clearly they have no respect for the way Israelis vote.
Perversely they show understanding for Israel's enemies, including those like Hamas – but as is frequently pointed out – they never have any empathy for Israelis with different opinions to their own.
They openly display that they are fundamentally disappointed with Israeli people. Beinart's position can be described thus: – Israelis don't deserve their state because of the way they have developed and behaved.
So I was unsurprised by the article. Every few months we are presented with a similar article written by someone who says that they have supported Israel all their lives but because those pesky Israelis have just gone and ******* (fill in the blank with whatever has just occurred – with Beinart it is the 'annexation') they must now publicly state that Zionism is in tatters and doomsday is coming. Immature virtue signalling that sells out the millions of Jews who live in Israel.
But what interested me most about this episode was not another of the liberal Zionists falling off the ideological cliff. It was how our own Jewish fringe groups responded.
Beinart buttresses his argument for a one state solution by citing Yousef Munayyer and Edward Said, who support his view that "Equality could come in the form of one state that includes Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem."
In the November/December 2019 edition of Foreign Affairs, Yousef Munayyer, director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, (USCPR) said the "only alternative with any chance of delivering lasting peace: equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians in a single shared state." He argues "The Palestinians [are] a population struggling and surviving under decades of Israeli oppression."
NGO Monitor reports "USCPR is a national coalition of hundreds of groups working to advocate for Palestinian rights and a shift in US policy and is a leader and mobilizer of anti-Israel BDS campaigns." According to its "Common Principles," "We oppose U.S. military, diplomatic, financial, corporate, and all other forms of support for Israel's occupation and apartheid policies toward Palestinians."
On March 6, 2019, the Jerusalem Post reported Munayyer appeared "to condone the efforts of PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine] on his Twitter feed, including retweeting a PFLP announcement of a terror attack in Jerusalem on June 16, 2017."
The late Edward Said, a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and Palestinian Arab activist, postulated that underlying cause of "the conflict between the two peoples has always been about possession of and sovereignty over the land."
He accused the Zionists of being a "tool of imperialism" who usurped their land, established settler colonies and a sovereign state whose only means of preservation is by aggression and expansion.
In a September 29, 2015 interview [an article] in the Washington Post entitled "The one-state solution and the brutal honesty of Edward Said," he said "… the only feasible alternatives to Zionism… have a majority Arab state in which Jews are, at best, a suppressed minority, or force all six million Jews living in Israel to flee to whatever countries (if any) will accept them, or some combination of the two. "
The idea that giving up on 'Zionism' makes you a 'liberal' is false, unless creating yet another Arab dictatorship in what is now Israel at the cost of six million Jews' lives and liberty, and of by far the most liberal state in their region, is somehow a "liberal" option." [originally from a Ha'aretz inteview from 2000, source]
Rarely has a journalist's resignation from their newspaper created such an impact as the coruscating letter with which Bari Weiss resigned from The New York Times.
The moral bankruptcy of that paper has been plain for years to the many who have been shocked by its substitution of propaganda for objective journalism on many issues, including Israel.
What really horrified people was Weiss's description of the way she was victimized by her colleagues for challenging the paper's group-think. They singled her out for her support for Israel as a Jew, calling her "a Nazi and a racist." She said she "learned to brush off comments about how I'm 'writing about the Jews again.' "
I myself wasn't shocked by any of this because of my own experiences over many years. In the 1980s and '90s, as a writer on Britain's left-wing papers The Guardian and Observer, I rebelled against their orthodoxies over issues such as education, family breakdown or multiculturalism. The reaction was so poisonous I eventually felt forced to leave.
Colleagues suggested to my face that my support for Israel (a country I had never even visited at that stage) meant I was no longer really British. Other journalists talked offensively about my Jewishness behind my back.
The venomous hatred of Israel on the left and their targeting of any Jew who stands up for it run rampant in Britain and America. Intersectionality has lined up the Jews with capitalist oppression and, as we have seen over the past few weeks, "white privilege."
And as we have also seen, liberal institutions, including much of the media, the universities and the cultural world, have gone along with this cultural totalitarianism. As a result, numerous people have been pushed out of their jobs or "canceled" via social media. Which is, of course, why Weiss's letter struck such a nerve.
Distressingly, many American and British Jews have not only swallowed these orthodoxies, but are also helping stamp out any dissent.
When it comes to diversity of thought, the Times has become all the boredom that's fit to print.
That's why it was fascinating to read Bari Weiss' letter of resignation from the Times. It made me realize I wasn't delusional.
"The lessons that ought to have followed the election — lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society — have not been learned," she wrote. "Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn't a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else."
Weiss was brought in three years ago to help fix that, to bring in voices, she says, "that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives, and others who would not naturally think of the Times as their home."
To her credit, she brought in many of those voices. She listed some of them: "The Venezuelan dissident Wuilly Arteaga; the Iranian chess champion Dorsa Derakhshani; and the Hong Kong Christian democrat Derek Lam. Also: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Masih Alinejad, Zaina Arafat, Elna Baker, Rachael Denhollander, Matti Friedman, Nick Gillespie, Heather Heying, Randall Kennedy, Julius Krein, Monica Lewinsky, Glenn Loury, Jesse Singal, Ali Soufan, Chloe Valdary, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Wesley Yang, and many others."
Maybe in the age of Twitter mobs, groupthink, and political ultra-correctness, it was too good to last.
Saturday will mark the 26th anniversary of the deadly bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in which 85 people were murdered.
The July 18, 1994 attack at the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) building was perpetrated by Hezbollah on behalf of its backer, Iran.
Major Jewish groups around the world are commemorating the atrocity with social media posts.
The World Jewish Congress (WJC) tweeted, "On July 18, 1994, a terrorist attack struck the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, killing 85 people. Julio Menajovsky was one of the first photojournalists on the scene. More than two decades later, he reunited with survivors and relatives of the victims."
On July 18, 1994, a terrorist attack struck the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, killing 85 people. Julio Menajovsky was one of the first photojournalists on the scene. More than two decades later, he reunited with survivors and relatives of the victims. pic.twitter.com/DKESzFKCM3
B'nai B'rith International tweeted, "Twenty-six years after the #AMIA terrorist bombing in Buenos Aires, there's still no justice for the victims & their families."
Twenty-six years after the #AMIA terrorist bombing in Buenos Aires, there's still no justice for the victims & their families. Our Latin American Affairs experts Eduardo Kohn & Adriana Camisar speak about where the case stands today & more.
In the days before the 26th anniversary of the Buenos Aires AMIA Jewish center bombing that killed 85 in 1994, Argentina's President Alberto Fernandez has conveyed to Jewish leaders his desire to end the decades-long legal case that followed the attack, which has been complicated by corruption allegations and the likely murder of Jewish prosecutor Alberto Nisman.
Speaking in an online event Thursday with Dina Siegel Vann, the director of AJC's Belfer Center for Latino and Latin American Affairs, Fernandez said "condemnation of terrorism can't be under discussion, as the Holocaust, it can't be neglected nor tolerated."
Fernandez's comments are significant given that his vice president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, has been on trial for years over allegations that she conspired with the Iranian government to cover up Iran's involvement in the bombing.
Fernandez's predecessor, the conservative Mauricio Macri, took a hardline stance on the investigation, vowing to find justice for the bombing victims and for the family of Nisman — who was found dead in his apartment on the day in January 2015 he was to present his findings in the case.
Iran and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, have long been linked to the attack, and seven people — six Iranians and one Lebanese — have been on Interpol's most wanted list since 2007. During the online event, Fernandez said Iran's refusal to extradite suspects has been a key factor in the investigation's holdup.
Argentina signed a controversial memorandum of understanding with Iran in 2013, under Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, which stated that the two countries would jointly investigate the attack. The agreement was voided in 2015 after critics said it violated the executive branch's principles of independence. Even though Fernandez opposed the pact in the past, on Thursday he said that it was an effort to advance the investigation.
The June 5 lines were entirely abolished and not mentioned in any document. Israel was entitled to secure and recognized boundaries to be negotiated between the parties. Only such arrangements would help in ensuring future Israeli security.
Nor was Johnson the only US president to confirm this formula. President Ronald Reagan in his Mideast Peace Effort address of September 1, 1982, declared, "Having followed and supported Israel's heroic struggle for survival ever since [its] founding... in the pre-1967 borders, Israel was barely 10 miles wide at its narrowest point. The bulk of Israel's population lived within artillery range of hostile Arab enemies. I am not about to ask Israel to live that way again."
Thus, the American position renouncing the 1948 armistice lines as null and void is a reflection of bipartisan policy.
The question, therefore, arises: From where do these Europeans take this June 5 formula? The answer is that on December 23, 2016, the Security Council, at the behest of president Barak Obama, adopted Resolution 2334, which sought to renew the old formula of the June 5 lines.
This was Obama's parting gift, three weeks before leaving the White House, to his faithful antagonist, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But 2334 also reaffirms Resolution 242, so it cannot cancel what 242 established. Moreover, 2334 was adopted over the abstention of the United States, which means only 242 remains the accepted and recognized scheme for any settlement.
In short, the June lines were killed by Nasser and buried by the adoption of 242. The effort to resuscitate the June 5 lines must be acknowledged to have been aborted. Israel is acting in accordance with international and UN law in rejecting any such abortive effort.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's top coalition partner wants Israel to shelve West Bank annexation plans and instead focus on improving conditions for the territory's residents, both Israeli and Palestinian, two cabinet ministers said on Friday.
Centrist ex-general Benny Gantz and the conservative Netanyahu had agreed to begin discussing annexation as of July 1, but the initiative — already dogged by diplomatic blowback — has been sidelined by a coronavirus resurgence.
Gantz says the health crisis should take precedence over any West Bank moves that may inflame the conflict with the Palestinians.
Netanyahu could go it alone in declaring Israeli sovereignty over West Bank settlements and the Jordan Valley. But Gantz's misgivings have complicated Israeli efforts to present a united front on annexation and how it might fit with US President Donald Trump's plan for Middle East peace.
While Gantz — whose popularity has plunged since he broke with an opposition alliance to join Netanyahu in March — has limited political clout, his role as defense minister also puts him directly in charge of civilian activities in the West Bank.
Alon Schuster, Israel's agriculture minister and a member of Gantz's Blue and White party, said he was working to achieve "cultivation and not annexation, now" for West Bank farmers.
If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unilaterally annexes parts of the West Bank, he will do so knowing that virtually the entire United States Democratic Party opposes the move.
The entire leadership has spoken out against it, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and at least 210 of the 233 Democrats in Congress have sent or signed on to letters urging Jerusalem to drop the proposal.
But now, some Democrats are no longer just stating their disapproval of annexation; they are now calling for a policy response should Netanyahu go through with it.
Last week, Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen introduced an amendment to the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to block US funds from going toward the prime minister's planned annexation of roughly 30 percent of the West Bank.
The motion currently has 13 co-sponsors, including Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, and is backed by a coalition of liberal Zionist groups, such as J Street and Americans for Peace Now.
Let's take a closer look at this offensive lie. Why would someone who works in far-left American politics refer to a religious-national dispute in the Middle East using an irrelevant phrase taken from US domestic politics? It's odd and out of place. What's going on here?
As we are the first to take the floor, after all the statements by Iran, Syria, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and other distinguished supporters of the Palestinian delegation, let me state — for the record — that everything we have just heard has no basis in fact, or in law.
Now, 14 years ago, this Human Rights Council was founded to rectify what UN Secretary General Kofi Annan decried as the selectivity and politicization of the old Commission on Human Rights — which, he said, was casting a shadow upon the reputation of the United Nations as a whole.
And yet, in 2007, only one year later, the Council created the agenda item under which we meet today, for the 44th time. It requires — at every meeting of this world body — that Israel alone be singled out, for unique scrutiny. There's one agenda item for the entire world, for 193 countries, which we had yesterday — and then today, one agenda item on Israel alone.
Right after its adoption, on 20 June 2007, the new Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon, condemned this agenda item. He was "disappointed at the Council's decision to single out only one specific regional item, given the range and scope of allegations of human rights violations throughout the world."
Why has the Council not removed this stain on its reputation?
Madam Chair,
No other country in the world is subjected to its own agenda item — not even one that has killed half a million of its own people, or another that has 1 million Muslims locked up in re-education camps, an action that, incidentally, was praised by the Palestinian Ambassador in the letter published as HRC/41/G/17.
And so as the Council gathers today for the 44th time to vilify the Jewish state, it will simply have no time for millions of victims around the world. They continue to go ignored.
Just another day at the @UNHumanRights Council as the chair and VP censure me for this 90-second rebuttal to Agenda Item 7's "special rapporteur for singling out Israel, Michael Lynk", and his blatant violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. @NGOmonitor ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/fgrdf6mrK1
— Prof Gerald M Steinberg (@GeraldNGOM) July 16, 2020
China's appointment in April to a U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) panel that selects world human rights monitors sparked global outrage.
Even worse, it now turns out that among the 17 different appointments to be made this year by this five-nation consultative group, the vetting of the expert on freedom of speech—an appointment to be finalized today by the Council's plenary—was actually chaired by Beijing.
Only in the Orwellian world of the UNHRC would a totalitarian regime that systematically silences, jails and crushes dissenting voices, and which operates the notorious Great Firewall of China to block Internet content from its people, be allowed to lead the process in selecting the next U.N. special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression.
Out of 48 applicants worldwide for the prestigious six-year position, the top choice put forward by the China-led panel is Irene Khan, the former secretary-general of Amnesty International from 2001 to 2009.
But why would the Chinese Communist Party, which locks up democracy advocates like Wang Bingzhang, endorse a human rights champion?
A closer look at Khan's record—her role in moving Amnesty away from its founding mission of protecting prisoners of conscience, her growing ties to China's government—suggests Xi Jinping's advisers will have little reason to fear Khan's wrath.
To allow for preparations and due to the purchase of food by restaurants for the weekend, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz said Friday that restaurants could remain open until 5:00 a.m. on Tuesday, July 21. At that time, they will revert to takeaway and delivery only.
The government is required to approve the decision.
The announcement, made via a statement from the Prime Minister's Office, came after several restaurants announced that they would not adhere to the new coronavirus directives and would open anyway, and amid strong protest by the Association of Restaurants and politicians.
"Once again, we are witnessing the capricious and irresponsible conduct of a government that has lost its way," the association said in a statement, stressing that they had already stocked up on raw materials that would otherwise be thrown away or donated.
"The arbitrary decision to close the restaurants again is a death sentence for the industry," accused MK Avigdor Liberman in a Facebook post. "Restaurants that opened after a long period of closure, that had to adapt themselves at record speed to the changing restrictions, are now forced to close again without prior notice."
Following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's unveiling of a widely criticized plan to cut checks to all Israelis amid the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, thousands of people have donated millions of shekels in an effort to redirect the money to those in need.
Netanyahu announced on Wednesday that the government would distribute stipends to all Israelis, regardless of financial standing. Anyone above 18 will receive NIS 750 ($217). Families with one child will receive NIS 2,000 ($580), those with two NIS 2,500 ($725) and those with three children or more will get NIS 3,000 ($870).
While Netanyahu explained the stimulus program as motivated by the "need to get the wheels moving and make sure nobody falls between the cracks," it was met with criticism by top finance officials, members of his government and by many citizens.
In the wake of Netanyahu's announcement, Channel 13's late-night news program "HaTzinor" opened up a crowdfunding campaign for people interested in redistributing the grants from "those who need less to those who really are in need."
"We are inundated with difficult stories," the show's staff wrote in a post on its official Facebook page. "People who do not receive assistance from the state at all. Children who are disgracefully hungry. Families whose electricity has been cut off. Let's now pass on to them the grants we have received from the government."
As of Friday morning, some 5,633 Israelis had donated NIS 2,772,112 ($803,767) to the program's crowdfunding campaign on the online GiveBack platform.
The convergence between healthcare and technology is the next phase in the evolution of life sciences innovation, says Dr. Laurent Choppe, Managing Partner at Cukierman & Co. Life Sciences, the life sciences arm of the leading investment house. But for anyone hoping that health tech will solve the Covid-19 crisis anytime soon, Choppe has got little good news, saying that at the very best a vaccine will be available during the first quarter of 2021.
Choppe, who splits his time between Israel and Switzerland, knows what he's talking about when it comes to coronavirus, and not just because of his medical background or the fact that he has been keeping close tabs on life sciences progression for decades. Choppe's mother was hospitalized in Israel three months ago after contracting Covid-19. Fortunately, she made a full recovery and Choppe said that she was recently checked and it was determined that she is still carrying coronavirus antibodies. However, he said he knows of other cases diagnosed at the same time who no longer have antibodies, which is an example of another challenge with major implications presented by the Covid-19 pandemic.
"The majority of cases in Israel today are infections without symptoms. You have thousands of people identified and from what I see either the virus is less aggressive or it is mainly young people being infected so it is less impactful on them while the older population is being very protective," Choppe told CTech.
The fact there are fewer serious cases and less people requiring respiration has actually made clinical trials of medication for Covid-19 more complicated. "You need to move from country to country following the pandemic which is today more active in the US and South America. It is very complicated to follow," said Choppe. "For a vaccine, it is even more complicated because the trial takes a long time as you don't see immediate results the way you do with other drugs."
"There will be several vaccines because companies are developing them from different angles of the technology," added Choppe. "The regulatory system will help to get fast approvals, but I don't see anything before Q1 next year, assuming it works. If what they are trying today on a big number of patients doesn't work, which is very often the case, it could be even later and there is no way to speed it up. You need to show that the vaccine is protecting people for a certain time. If it protects a person for one month nobody will use it. You need to show it works for six months, a year, or more."
Many Israeli startups and companies have thrown themselves into the Covid-19 vertical, with Choppe saying that of the 1,600 life sciences companies in the country, around 180 are either fully or partially dedicated to coronavirus.
Scientists across the globe are working on vaccines to prevent Covid-19 infection. (Click here to read about six Israeli vaccine candidates.)
But in the meanwhile, and even after initial vaccines are approved, there is an urgent need for effective treatments for the respiratory disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.
Most potential treatments target the life-threatening lung inflammation typical of serious Covid-19 cases. It's caused by a phenomenon called a "cytokine storm."
Cytokines are proteins that trigger inflammation as a natural response to infection. In response to a virus overload, in this case in the lungs, the immune system activates a storm of cytokines. Too many cytokines lead to too much inflammation, which can damage the lungs and cause respiratory distress.
Israeli hospitals were among the first anywhere to use dexamethasone, a steroid drug, to stop cytokines storms and reduce lung inflammation in severely ill Covid-19 patients. However, steroids can suppress the immune response too strongly.
Additionally, an Israeli hospital is among the first to do a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial of ivermectin, a drug to treat parasitic infections in people and animals, to see if it can shorten the duration of the disease if given to Covid-19 patients immediately after diagnosis.
Israelis are also formulating novel therapeutics of their own.
Palestinian org declines to comment to NYT because it also quoted Israelis, resulting in Palestinians not being quoted. I think that's not helping the cause? pic.twitter.com/EceyBLIuF7
Failure by the French Consul to condemn Palestinian calls for terrorists to be released from jail endangers Israeli lives by legitimizing terror as a weapon in the Israeli-Arab conflict, an NGO told The Jerusalem Post.
French Consul-General, René Troccaz, recently met with PLO Executive Committee Secretary and Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat, where, according to the official PA daily newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Troccaz is said to have agreed with all of the PA's demands for peace, including a return to the 1967 borderlines, a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, and the release of all Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, including terrorists responsible for deadly terror attacks.
According to a translation by Palestinian Media Watch, on July 3 the newspaper reported: "During a meeting between Erekat and French Consul General René Troccaz, … the French consul general emphasized his country's absolute rejection of annexation, and demanded to cancel it and begin a credible peace process on the basis of international law, the international bodies, and the defined agreements and sources of authority in such a way that will guarantee the end of the occupation, the realization of the independence of the State of Palestine whose capital is East Jerusalem within the 1967 borders, the resolution of the permanent status issues – foremost among them the issue of the refugees based on [UN] Resolution 194, and the release of the prisoners."
Resolution 194 guarantees right of return for Arabs who left Israel during Israel's War of Independence, and their descendants, now amounting to some 5.5 million people, and stipulates that compensation must be paid to those who choose not to return.
A spokesman from the Consulate General of France in Jerusalem told the Post in an email: "These reports are inaccurate. The French position is public and well known. We will not further comment on this official's bilateral talks."
After denying such reports, Hamas has now confirmed that one of its naval commanders fled to Israel after providing it with intelligence. Abu Mohammed, a Hamas military spokesman, told The Media Line that the defector was a junior officer in the organization's highly regarded naval unit.
The daring escape was first reported on Saturday by the Saudi news channel Al Arabiya, which said the officer and his brother escaped with a laptop and surveillance equipment as part of a 72-hour operation led by Israel's Mossad spy agency.
Hamas immediately issued a statement calling the report "fake news" benefitting Israel, and harshly criticized the news outlet.
"The aim [of the report] is to harm the Palestinian people and [damage] their confidence in the resistance and liberation project," Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem said at the time. "Al Arabiya is promoting rumors that serve the occupation by destabilizing the home front in Gaza." Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, which Saudi Arabia has been trying to quash. The kingdom has also drawn closer to Israel in recent years although the countries do not maintain official ties.
The ban came after reports surfaced that it had arrested several members accused of collaborating with Israel
The Palestinian terrorist movement Hamas has decided to ban Saudi television channels Al-Arabiya and Al-Hadath from reporting in the Gaza Strip, a journalist working in the coastal enclave said Thursday.
The Hamas Interior Ministry and Al-Arabiya confirmed the ban, which was imposed following reports by the channels that Hamas had arrested several of its members for "collaborating with Israel."
According to an Al-Arabiya journalist speaking on the condition of anonymity, the decision prohibits "anyone or any business from providing services" to the two channels.
Hamas closed the Al-Arabiya satellite channel in the Gaza Strip in 2013 after the dissemination of "false" information about aid from the Islamist movement to the Muslim Brotherhood."
But both Al-Arabiya and Al-Hadath, which are Saudi channels based in Dubai, continued to work with independent journalists in the Palestinian enclave.
Hamas, which took power in Gaza following a bloody coup of the Palestinian Authority in 2007, is largely dependent on aid from Qatar, which is the target of a regional blockade led by Saudi Arabia.
The Palestinian journalists' union denounced the Hamas decision, saying in a statement that "restrictions on press freedom and repeated shutdown of media" in the enclave were "contrary to national values and principles."
Al Qassam Brigades welcomed one of their militants during a parade in the Nuseirat camp today. Muhamad Abu Atawi spent 12 years in an Israeli prison and was recently released. #Gazapic.twitter.com/6XeHvJYS0v
Corona shmorona: Recently released al Qasaam militant Muhamad Abu Atawi hugs and kisses family and friends after being released from an Israeli prison on Thursday. #Gazapic.twitter.com/OGFKXlPV3f
Exiled Indian Islamic Scholar Zakir Naik: The Turning of Hagia into a Mosque is Permissible Because It Is on a Land Conquered by Muslims pic.twitter.com/R96rUKuSNT
Some 230 lawmakers have urged the European Union to designate the Lebanon-based Hezbollah organization as a terrorist group.
"Hezbollah, the Iranian regime's most deadly proxy, operates a global terror network that threatens not only its neighbors, but also Western democracies," the lawmakers said in a letter they planned to send to the EU on Friday.
"In Germany alone, Hezbollah has over 1,000 supporters... the group's violent and antisemitic ideology is poisoning the fabric for our pluralistic societies," the lawmakers said.
The EU already recognizes Hezbollah's military wing as a terrorist group, but has not extended that designation to the organization's political wing. Such a designation must be made by the unanimous consent of the EU's Council of foreign ministers, where opinions on the matter are divided.
In their letter, the lawmakers urged "the EU to end this false distinction between 'military' and 'political' arms – a distinction Hezbollah itself dismisses – and ban the entire organization," the lawmakers said.
Signatories to the letter included 131 members of European national legislatures, 73 members of the European Parliament, 17 members of the US Congress, eight members of the Parliament of Canada and six Knesset members.
The letter was organized and released by American Jewish Committee's Transatlantic Institute in Brussels. It was designed to come out around the July 18th anniversary of the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Argentina, in which 85 people were killed. It's believed that Iran and Hezbollah were behind the bombing. The letter is also linked to the July 18, 2012, Hezbollah-backed bombing of a tour bus of Israelis in Bulgaria, in which five Israelis and the Bulgarian bus driver were killed.
The text, referred to as the Transatlantic Declaration, was scheduled to be sent to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, European Council President Charles Michel, European Parliament President David Sassoli and to the governments of all EU member states.
Announcing Iran's intention to build a new military base in the Indian Ocean, Admiral Alireza Tangsiri, the commander of the naval attachment of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said that the base would be used to protect fishing and commercial vessels from piracy and "foreign ships", a reference to the US-led multinational naval task force that is currently protecting Gulf shipping from Iranian interference.
As part of the deal negotiated with Beijing, China is to be allowed access to a number of Iranian ports, including Chabahar, with the Chinese reported to be planning to build a new military base in the vicinity of the port.
The construction of such a base would enable the Chinese Navy to monitor the activities of the U.S. Navy in the area, in particular the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet in the Gulf, which is permanently deployed to protect shipping passing through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most important economic waterways.
Any expansion in Iranian and Chinese military activity in the region would also have an impact on the jointly-administered U.S.-UK base on the island of Diego Garcia, one of the Pentagon's most important military assets in the region.
In six weeks, at the end of August, a number of international construction groups will submit their offers for an estimated NIS 15 billion tender to construct the Tel Aviv Light Rail's Green and Purple lines.
This is one of the largest infrastructure projects in Israeli history, meant to connect portions of Gush Dan with the middle of Tel Aviv. What makes the tender noteworthy is that out of the six groups pre-approved to submit proposals, three of them include a Chinese partner. In addition, all three of the Chinese companies are owned by the state.
Why is this important? Because this past week, The New York Times revealed that China and Iran had quietly drafted an economic and security partnership that will see billions of Chinese dollars be invested in Iranian infrastructure projects. The investments are reportedly going to be spread out over 25 years, and will reach a whopping $400 billion.
In other words, while China does business with Israel's #1 enemy, Israel is doing business with China. One could say that while Israel is reportedly waging a covert battle against Iran's nuclear program with one hand (think about the series of recent explosions across the country), with the other hand it is giving China billions of dollars that could then make their way to Iran.
One of the groups competing for the tender includes CRRC, a state-owned Chinese company that a couple of years ago won the tender to supply rail cars for the Red Line for a hefty NIS 1.2 billion. CRRC already works in Iran. A few years ago, it signed massive contracts to provide the Iranians with subway cars.
A brief seminar on American news media and Iranian regime propaganda, going back to spring 2015 when Team Obama's pivot toward Iran became decisive thru this morning, told in 4 slides pic.twitter.com/g3ZNz62gnW
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