Matthias Küntzel in the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs:
A thirty-one-page booklet in Arabic entitled Islam and Jewry, published in Cairo on August 18, 1937, served as an effective propaganda tool.11As far as we know, this publication is the first written evidence of Islamic antisemitism. In 1938, the Berlin-based publishing house Junker und Dünnhaupt released it under the title Islam–Judaism: Call of the Grand Mufti to the Islamic World in 1937, explicitly attributing that screed to al-Husseini for the first time.12In subsequent editions released by the Nazis during World War II, the Mufti continued to be named as the author. Whether al-Husseini was in fact the sole initiator and author of this pamphlet remains an open question.
While classical Islamic literature treats Muhammad's struggle with the Jews as a minor episode in the life of the Prophet, now "Muhammad's conflict with the Jews [was being] portrayed as a central theme in his career and their enmity to him given a cosmic significance."13The anti-Jewish verses of the Qur'an were generalized and considered valid for the twentieth century. Finally, for the first time, religious tropes were combined with elements of conspiracy theory. Since Muhammad's days, according to Islam and Jewry, the Jews have constantly been trying to "destroy Muslims." The brochure concludes:
[T]he verses from the Qur'an and hadith prove to you that the Jews have been the bitterest enemies of Islam and continue to try to destroy it. Do not believe them, they only know hypocrisy and cunning. Hold together, fight for the Islamic thought, fight for your religion and your existence! Do not rest until your land is free of the Jews.14
Here, the Muslims are presented as eternal victims in order to legitimize new forms of aggression more reminiscent of the policies of the Nazis than the attitudes of the Prophet. In September 1937, days after its publication, the booklet reached a wide audience through its distribution at the National Arab Congress in Bludan, a health resort in Syria, fifty kilometers northwest of Damascus.
The Spread of Islamic Antisemitism
This first pan-Arab congress, held from September 8–10, 1937, was organized by al-Husseini. He also "provided the funds to rent the two largest hotels in Damascus and Bludan and grant a large number of penniless participants rooms without charge."15No wonder, then, that the congress attracted 411 attendees, although only 250 were allowed into the hall of the Grand Hotel of Bludan, where the congress took place. The Mufti could not attend because he was in hiding in Jerusalem after a failed July 1937 attempt by the British authorities in Palestine to arrest him.16In October 1937, he fled to French-controlled Beirut. Nevertheless, the delegates named him honorary president of the assembly.
The congress was not a public event; even newspaper reporters were not allowed inside. However, Colonel Gilbert MacKereth, the British consul in Damascus at the time, arranged for a person in his confidence to attend. Based on the reports of the spy, MacKereth described the event as "a manifestation of Judeophobia." He referred to "a startlingly inflammatory pamphlet entitled 'The Jews and Islam,' which was handed to each member of the congress on his arrival. It had been printed in Egypt." Annex V of MacKereth's memorandum, written by his confidante, bears the title "Description of a violently anti-Jewish Pamphlet printed in Cairo for the Palestine Defense Committee there, which was given to each of the persons attending the Bludan congress." The summary of the pamphlet's contents presented in an annex to the report leaves us with no doubt that he was referring to the Cairo publication of August 1937.17
The Nazis viewed Islam and Jewry as an especially valuable tool. During the war, Berlin printed and disseminated this text nearly unchanged in several languages and editions. For example, there is proof that in 1942, the Spanish authorities confiscated some 1,500 copies of "a German propaganda pamphlet in the Arabic language called 'Islam and the Jews'" that had been sent to the German consulate in Tangiers. According to the German Foreign Ministry, these brochures were to have been distributed "unobtrusively" in Spanish Morocco. "Unobtrusive" is the key word here. The Muslims would have laughed at an SS officer openly distributing an Arabic text pretending to speak in the name of Islam. But this was indeed what was happening. The Nazis disguised themselves as Muslims and falsified Islamic scripture so as to lend credibility to their murderous hatred of Jews.
The Spanish authorities responsible for Tangiers, however, frustrated this plan. They were of the opinion that "the distribution of such propaganda directed against the Jewish elements in Spanish Morocco could not be permitted" and had all copies confiscated and destroyed.18In 1943, another 10,000 copies of the same pamphlet were printed in Zagreb, capital of Germany's Croatian satellite, this time in Serbo-Croatian (Islam I Zidovstvo), and distributed in Bosnia and Croatia.19
Though the precise details of the pamphlet's dissemination are unknown, Islam and Jewry might well be regarded as the forerunner to Sayyid Qutb's notorious text Our Struggle with the Jews of the 1950s. David Motadel regards Islam and Jewry as "one of the most significant examples of this kind of religiously charged anti-Jewish propaganda dispersed among Muslims,"20while historian Jeffrey Herf deems it "one of the founding texts of the Islamist tradition, one that defined the religion of Islam as a source of hatred of the Jews."21
The timing of the publication of Islam and Jewry, in August 1937, is also revealing. It proves that Islamic antisemitism took hold when the flight and expulsion of the Palestinian Arabs (1948) and Israeli rule over Gaza and the West Bank (1967) were still in the distant future. This fact alone contradicts the widespread assumption that Islamic antisemitism developed as a response to alleged Israeli misdeeds. It was not the behavior of the Zionists that prompted the publication of this hostile text, but rather the fact that a first attempt had been made in the summer of 1937 to agree on a two-state plan. Islam and Jewry accordingly culminates in the following call: "Do not tolerate the Partition Plan, for Palestine has been an Arab country for centuries and shall remain Arabic forever." This pamphlet was intended to theologize the territorial conflict between Jews and Arabs in order to destroy the first important attempt at a compromise—which had initially been met with a degree of approval from some moderate Arabs.
The antisemitic Mufti of Jerusalem is, of course, an icon for Palestinians today. His influence remains.
Israel's normalization of ties with the United Arab Emirates will pave the way for treaties with more Arab countries since it has removed the "Palestinian veto" on peace between the Jewish state and the Arab world, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday, as he hosted senior American officials who brokered the historic deal between Jerusalem and Abu Dhabi.
Netanyahu spoke Sunday during a press conference alongside US President Donald Trump's senior adviser Jared Kushner and US National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien, a day before a US-Israeli delegation including Kushner is set to take the first-ever Israeli commercial flight from Tel Aviv to Abu Dhabi to put the Israeli-UAE normalization deal into practice.
Kushner echoed the assertion that other Arab and Muslim states would make peace with Israel and said that Trump, his father-in-law, was "writing a script for a new Middle East."
The August 13 Israel-UAE diplomatic breakthrough "will pave the way for other countries to normalize their ties with Israel," Netanyahu said. "I think for too long the Palestinians have had a veto on peace. Not only between Israel and the Palestinians but between Israel and the Arab world."
"If we have to wait for the Palestinians, we would have to wait forever. No longer," he said. The Palestinians, when they realize that their veto has dissipated, "will be hard pressed to remain outside the community of peace," he added.
Palestinian leaders have sharply criticized the UAE for agreeing to normalize relations with Israel, calling the move despicable and a betrayal.
Recalling that Kushner had been ridiculed for suggesting this process could happen, Netanyahu said the critics have been proved "dead wrong." "We know that reality has changed," Netanyahu said, "because we have changed it."
Benjamin Netanyahu, Jared Kushner, Robert C. O'Brien Address Media in Jerusalem
For the first time, there is a "warm peace" between Israel and an Arab state, where both sides see the mutual advantage from their scientific, economic, cultural, and strategic cooperation.
In contrast, Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinians maintained "cold relations" with Israel that were meant to extract the maximum concessions from Israel while minimizing normalization with it.
With this diplomatic achievement, Israel is taking a huge step towards one of its long-term strategic goals – integration into the region.
The pragmatic Arab camp members feel that the radicals are weaker. Israel is perceived as a powerful country that dares to act against the extremists and will not change its position.
The agreement is a historic achievement for Israel, the UAE, the United States, and the pragmatic camp. It creates a potential for further achievements at the regional level and in the Palestinian context, as progress continues in the normalization process.
The anomaly of Israel's lack of relations – and the theory that Israel must make peace with Palestinians to achieve relations – is not found in any other conflict. India doesn't have to come to an agreement with Pakistan over Kashmir to have relations with countries, for instance.
The theory that lack of normalization has pressured Israel to make peace with the Palestinians has little evidence to back it up. Decades of lack of normalization didn't bring Israel and the Palestinians closer to a solution – if anything, it entrenched Israel's role in the West Bank after it left the Gaza Strip.
Much of the discussion about peace therefore centers primarily on Israel achieving peace, even if neither the Israelis or Palestinians can agree on basic aspects of it – such as Jerusalem, refugees and removing Jewish communities in the West Bank – creating a Catch-22 in which Israel can't achieve peace with the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, and therefore can't achieve normalization anywhere else.
It appears that much of what was put into the Oslo process in the 1990s was doomed to create impossible "final status" issues, put off to the end and thus making it impossible for Israel to reach beyond the Palestinians to peace with more countries in the region.
The UAE deal breaks that trend.
CRITICS SAY this means that Israel doesn't have to make concessions to Ramallah. However, 15 years of the Palestinians being divided between Hamas-run Gaza and PA-run Ramallah seem to illustrate that even if Israel has a peace-driven prime minister, which it hasn't for a decade, little progress will be made. A divided Middle East, with Iran and Turkey backing Hamas while the UAE and its allies want a greater role in Ramallah, make things more complex.
The end result is that the Israel-UAE deal generally got a lukewarm response for many reasons: partisan opposition to the Trump administration; criticism that it doesn't achieve much for Palestinian demands; concern that it was done cynically or for weapons sales; anger over it appearing to cement a victory for Netanyahu and Trump; and criticism of the UAE by those who are closer to the regional views of Turkey or Iran. In many ways, it was seen as linked to US domestic politics or was overshadowed by the domestic crises in the US, and thus didn't inspire voices to celebrate the agreement.
The first-ever commercial flight from Tel Aviv to Abu Dhabi is set to take place on Monday, with Israeli and US officials taking off to finalize the peace deal between the Jewish state and the United Arab Emirates.
The 737-900 El Al aircraft, named Kiryat Gat in honor of the southern town, will have 16 Business Class seats, with one aisle. With several dozen onboard, including senior adviser to President Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, some of the officials will have to sit in Economy Class.
The flight will most likely go over Saudi Arabia, marking the first time the Israeli national carrier gets a green light for such a path. The flight will last about 3 hours.
The Emirati hosts are also gearing up for the historic occasion and have already made sure that the Israeli officials will get kosher food. Israel Hayom has learned that the royal family has even contacted the well-known Orthodox Union organization, through the local Jewish community, to ensure that it sends proper mashgichim (kashrut supervisors) who would be on hand to ensure that the Jewish dietary law is followed at the hotel hosting the Israelis and where many meetings will take place.
In May, the first-ever direct flight from Abu Dhabi landed in Israel, but it was a cargo plane carrying aid for Palestinian. Monday's flight will take Israeli and US officials to the UAE, after Israel and the UAE announced a pact to normalize ties last month.
The route between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi is bound to prove popular with Israelis, who will enjoy the chance to visit somewhere new and exotic.
Ben-Gurion Airport's website, which lists upcoming arrivals and departures, shows that the first flight will depart Tel Aviv for Abu Dhabi on Monday, August 31 at 10 a.m. The first return flight will take place the following day, and is due to land at 3:15 p.m.
The route will be operated by El Al, and the Boeing 737 was chosen over the Dreamline 787 as the latter is not yet equipped with the Israel Aerospace Industries's Skyshield systems, according to Ynet. As part of the security requirements, El Al was required to set up an aircraft with the protection system manufactured by IAI.
The Embassy of Israel in the USA tweeted the scheduled flight on Friday, commenting: "FYI: the flight from Israel is flight number 971 (phone country code); the returning flight is 972 (phone country code)!"
And it seems excitement for the anticipated flight is reflected in the UAE, with the State of Israel's official Twitter account tweeting a video of Emirati children waving Emirati and Israeli flags while singing "Hatikva."
#Israel's El-Al Airlines added the word 'Peace' in Arabic, English and Hebrew to the plane that will be flying an Israeli delegation tomorrow in a historic first commercial flight from #TelAviv to #AbuDhabi. 🇮🇱🇦🇪#UAEIsrael#IsraelUAE#UAEMessageOfPeace
BEAUTIFUL: Children in United Arab Emirates wave UAE & Israeli flags, also on the cake & balloons, to the tune of Israeli national anthem Hatikvah. (h/t @kaisos1987)@mbachelet@UNHumanRights Learn from the children: instead of demonization, maybe try 1 minute of peace & love? pic.twitter.com/bK3dK0RPx4
Palestinian Politician Edward Kattoura: The Oslo Accords Were Signed without Consulting the UAE or Other Arab Countries; Is It Forbidden for Others to Negotiate with Israel? pic.twitter.com/D812qvEtj9
Australian Islamic Activist Ismail Al-Wahwah: The Muslim Rulers Who Recognize Israel Will Be Beheaded by the Same Knife They Used to Partition Palestine pic.twitter.com/dtHX18qaab
Save the Date: HonestReporting Canada's next Insider Briefing webinar is on Sunday August 30 at 12:30pm ET with all-star panelists Arsen Ostrovsky and Professor Eugene Kontorovich, who will examine Israel and the Jewish people's legal rights to Judea and Samaria.
While there's been much discussion in the media about Israel's proposed sovereignty plans which are congruent with the Trump peace plan, learn about the facts and context that have gone under the media's radar. You don't want to miss this one!
Please note that there's no registration required to join our free Zoom webinar. To participate, simply connect via either of the following on the day and time of our scheduelled webinar: https://zoom.us/j/97414498125
.@PeterBeinart has claimed he supports a binational state in Israel where Jews have a safe haven and homeland, if not a state.
His new friends disagree. Even a one state solution isn't enough. They want us to rewrite and turn history upside down: pic.twitter.com/gyX3FZnIYW
972 Mag is an extremist fringe publication, that caters to the far left and serves as a propaganda outfit for Palestinians, to vilify Isrsel and whitewash Palestinian terror. So, it is only fitting that @OmarSShakir of @hrw would recommend it so fervently. https://t.co/GFOoPUzQXK
The 10,594 coronavirus tests processed Saturday identified 899 new cases in Israel, the Health Ministry reported Sunday, a positive rate of 9% – higher than the percentage of positive results in recent days, which hovered at around 6%.
Since the start of the epidemic in Israel, 113,648 Israelis have contracted the virus. As of Sunday morning, there were 20,151 symptomatic cases.
Three more people succumbed to the virus on Saturday, bringing the death toll to 909 – more than double what it was on July 24, when the total number of deaths stood at 448. Of all the corona patients to die of the virus in Israel, 90 (nearly 10%) died this past week.
On Sunday there were 892 coronavirus patients hospitalized, 441 of whom were listed in serious condition, including 121 on ventilators.
The only coronavirus units at over 90% capacity were those at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, Laniado Hospital in Netanyahu, Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, and the Old Scottish Hospital.
Cities designated "red" because of high rates of COVID spread included Bnei Brak, Tira, Kafr Qasim, Umm al-Fahm, Daliyat al-Carmel, Laqiyya, Maaleh Iron, Yakir, Kisraa-Samia, Furedeis, Tifrach, Kaabiyye-Tabbash-Hajajre, Buka'ata, and Yad Binyamin.
The families of murdered teenagers Eyal Yifrah, Gil-Ad Shaer and Naftali Fraenkel, represented by Shurat Hadin, sued Hamas on Sunday in the Jerusalem District Court for around NIS 520 million in wrongful-death compensation.
Although the civil lawsuit was filed against Hamas, which was behind the 2014 attack, the true purpose is to block the Palestinian Authority from transferring funds to Hamas.
Shurat Hadin's strategy is to press for the government to confiscate customs taxes from the PA if it continues to transfer funds to Hamas – at least until the compensation is paid.
Previously, the two Hamas terrorists who actually murdered the teens were killed while resisting arrest, and the mastermind was captured and sentenced to life in prison.
In addition, Shurat Hadin made some progress with a wrongful-death civil lawsuit in the US, but the case was eventually sidelined.
In 2017, the NGO demanded that INTERPOL (International Criminal Police Organization) arrest Saleh al-Arouri, who was known to direct many of Hamas's terrorist attacks and was residing in Turkey at the time.
According to a study conducted for the prosecution by Lt.-Col. Alon Eviatar, an expert on Palestinian affairs and a former adviser to the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the PA transfers $50m.-$100m. monthly to Hamas. The money is transferred to government offices and other bodies in Gaza that Hamas controls, the report said.
Following the peace agreement between the United Arab Emirates and Israel, top PA official Jibril Rajoub stressed to Palestinians that terror is an option in "the struggle" against Israel.
Since Rajoub and other Palestinians have presented terror as an option - after a long period of quiet - there have been two serious Palestinian terror attacks. One Palestinian terrorist stabbed an Israeli man last weekend in Rosh Haayin, wounding him critically, while another murdered an Israeli four days ago in Petach Tikva.
Using the Palestinian euphemism for violence and terror, Rajoub stated that "all the possibilities are open to all the types of resistance": Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub: "Our interest is that the struggle will damage the occupation, and that the cost of the occupation will be on the occupation and not on us. But all the possibilities are open to all the types of resistance in the occupied lands against all expressions of the occupation, the symbols of the occupation." [Official PA TV, Aug. 17, 2020]
Rajoub's advocacy for violence and praise for terror is not new. Palestinian Media Watch has documented his views in favor numerous times. During the wave of Palestinian terror attacks in 2015/16, Rajoub praised the terrorists – including murderers – as "heroes and a crown on the head of every Palestinian."
But it isn't necessary to search for such statements in the past. Rajoub continues to reiterate his support for violence and murder of Israelis. Earlier this year, he mentioned several murderers by name, calling their attacks "glorious acts that teach generations":
Palestinian Islamic Scholar Dr. Omar Fora: Only Mizrahi Jews Would Have the Right to Live Amongst the Palestinians; Ashkenazis Should Go Back to Where They Came from pic.twitter.com/QJ0nnnNsd3
The story in #Gaza in one photo: Haniyeh sends the children of Gaza to riots and demands they attack #Israel knowing theyll be injured, but what does he care? They arent his kids who are busy getting degrees in Europe. Hamas cares ONLY for Hamas. This is the true tragedy in Gaza pic.twitter.com/05vVPYAqxP
The first defect of the Macron plan, as we understand it, is that it treats what Lebanon faces as a humanitarian disaster, something like a major earthquake or tsunami, rather than a man-made tragedy plotted outside and executed by elements in the Lebanese political system. In other words, Lebanon's crisis is caused by geopolitical factors with internal manifestations.
Tehran has tried to rewrite the Lebanese rules of the game in two ways. First, it has recruited, often purchased, allies not to say clients, in all communities. To be sure, Hezbollah remains Tehran's main Trojan horse. But Iran also has baby Trojan horses in all other communities.
The second way in which Tehran has changed the rules of the game is to transform Hezbollah into a state-within-the-state, turning the official institutions of the Lebanese state into empty shells. Worse still, Hezbollah itself is held on an increasingly tight leash from Tehran. Those who follow the official narrative in Tehran know that the hard core of the Islamic Republic leadership treat Hezbollah as servants rather than allies.
Even before the mullahs seized power in Tehran, Iran exercised some influence in Lebanon and is likely to maintain a high profile there even after the mullahs are seen off the stage. But, while Iran will always be here, it would be wrong to assume that the Islamic Republic, too, will always be there.
Hezbollah will only be satisfied when it has killed an Israeli soldier, thereby reestablishing "deterrence," the Lebanon-based terror group's Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah said on Sunday.
"I want to be more clear than at any previous time: when Israel kills one of our fighters, we will kill one of your soldiers," Nasrallah said in a televised speech to mark the holiday of Ashura.
Tensions have been rising between Hezbollah and Israel since the IDF reportedly killed Hezbollah commander Ali Kamel Mohsen in a July 20 airstrike near the Damascus airport. In general, Israel does not comment on whether it carried out specific strikes in Syria, although it has acknowledged generally that it carries out periodic raids to fight Hezbollah and Iranian military entrenchment in the neighboring country.
The Israeli army has said it prevented at least three infiltrations over the past several weeks and brought down a Hezbollah drone flown into Israeli territory from Lebanon. Last Tuesday, Israeli forces fired numerous flares over south Lebanon in response to an attempted incursion. Israel also reportedly shelled Hezbollah-affiliated "environmental organization" Green Without Borders.
Nasrallah said that Israel was hoping to allow for a simple exchange of fire which would cause material damage on both sides and end the escalation of hostilities.
"This is the equation. We're not going to blast sites and iron fences and tanks. [The enemy] has all the money in the world to replace them. That is not what creates deterrence with Israel," Nasrallah said.
According to Nasrallah, Hezbollah fighters operating along the fence in previous weeks had refrained from targeting Israeli equipment as they searched for an Israeli soldier to kill.
Acclaimed Israeli jazz player Avishai Cohen had a short and sweet response when asked to boycott Israel: "Go f*** yourself."
Cohen told Israeli news website Walla on Sunday that he was approached by representatives of the BDS movement due to a song on his 2017 album Cross My Palm With Silver about Israel's presence in the West Bank. They asked him not to play a concert in Israel.
"I never paid attention to them," Cohen said. "And when they came to me, I told them 'Go f*** yourself.'"
"It's not your business to tell me where to play and where not to play," he said he told them.
Cohen, who was born in Tel Aviv, has recorded 10 albums as a bandleader and collaborated with some of the biggest names in jazz. He has been voted Rising Star-Trumpet by the famed jazz magazine Down Beat for four years in a row.
A mural which gained prominence as the subject of a row over antisemitism within the British Labour Party two years ago has seemingly been taken up by black equality activists in America.
Two protesters at the March on Washington 2020 were photographed on Friday wearing t-shirts depicting the image first painted as a mural in London by the artist Mear One. The image depicts Jewish bankers playing a game similar to monopoly on the backs of people of color, underneath the masonic Eye of Providence.
The image on their shirts was flanked by the phrase: "All we have to do is stand up and their little game is over."
The mural gained prominence in the UK in 2018 when a row broke out in the Labour Party over whether then-leader Jeremy Corbyn was wrong to voice support for the artist behind it. The mural was scrubbed from a wall in London in 2012, prompting the artist to protest on the basis of freedom of speech. Commenting on the mural's removal, Corbyn wrote on Facebook: "Why? You are in good company. Rockerfeller [sic] destroyed Diego Viera's [sic] mural because it includes a picture of Lenin."
If you're participating in a racial justice protest while wearing #antisemitic cartoons on your clothing, you're not interested in equality.
You're simply just a bigot like the ones you're rallying against.
Iconic rapper Snoop Dogg has courted controversy by posting a black and white US flag with the image of a swastika peeking out from behind -- suggesting that the most successful democracy in history is infused with Hitler-like racial-based fascism. In doing so, an iconic musical figure has -- intentionally or not -- belittled the Nazi genocide of 6 million Jews.
The post comes amid emotionally-charged and often violent protests in the US demanding equality for African-Americans. A valiant and long-overdue endeavor, but one that has been marred by repeated incidents and expressions of Jew-hatred and anti-Zionism.
This @AP story republished in @WashingtonPost neglects to describe Hezbollah as it really is: a genocidal terrorist organization which has shot hundreds of rockets into Israel, bombed Jews in Europe and South America, and glorifies the murder of Israeli children. pic.twitter.com/AXjp8RaTLk
And later down the same article, a variation of the mistake is repeated. BDS is not merely about pressuring Israel to change its policies.
Per BDS leader As'ad AbuKhalil: "The real aim of BDS is to bring down the State of Israel…this should be stated as an unambiguous goal." pic.twitter.com/Oo9oqQlCCP
Last month, the first-ever Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today (JUST) Act report was released by the U.S. State Department. It shows America has persuaded countries around the world to return or provide compensation for property confiscated during the Holocaust or subsequently nationalized during the Communist era.
The report also describes international efforts, led by the United States, to commemorate the Holocaust's survivors and victims, including the estimated 80,000 survivors living in the United States. Archives will be opened and Holocaust education promoted. All of these efforts are to ensure such atrocities never happen again.
Sadly, anti-Semitism is surging at home and abroad. According to the Kantor Center at Tel Aviv University, violent anti-Semitic attacks have increased 18 percent globally since 2018, the largest increase since 2014.
Within the last year alone, over 200 Jewish graves in Eastern France were desecrated with Nazi symbols. A gunman killed two people attempting to break into a synagogue on Yom Kippur in Germany. Neo-Nazis blocked the entrance to a Holocaust exhibition in southern Sweden.
In the United States, anti-Semitic incidents have been rising since 2013. FBI statistics show that Jews are victim to the largest number of hate crimes of any religious group every year for the past 20 years.
The Vatican both fought efforts efforts to reunite two Holocaust orphans with their relatives and urged Pope Pius XII not to protest the Nazi deportation of Italian Jews, Brown University historian David I. Kertzer has found.
Kertzer published the results of his investigation into Vatican documents unsealed in March in an article published by The Atlantic on Thursday.
He revisited the high profile story of Jewish twins Robert and Gérald Finaly, who were kidnapped and baptized by French Catholic priests. Angelo Dell'Acqua, a Vatican Secretariat of State official who later became the cardinal for Rome, played a key role in the smuggling of the Finaly twins from France to Spain.
That happened after French judges ordered the boys, who were hid from the Nazis at a Catholic monastery, be handed over to their aunt. That finally happened in 1953, and the twins now live in Israel.
Pius XII has long been accused of turning a blind eye to the Holocaust, which happened early on in his stint of nearly 20 years as pope, until his death in 1958.
Kertzer's findings add to this widely-accepted impression. They include a memorandum advising Pius against formally protesting the rounding up of about 1,000 Jews in Rome in 1943 for deportation to Auschwitz.
In the 1930s, the British Union of Fascists were driven from our streets.
Yesterday - in 2020 - the British Union of Fascists stood with the hard-left at Trafalgar Square.
Nobody blinked. None fought them.
We need to pay attention to what is brewing in our sewers.
Thank you @ReinsteinJosh for having me on your #AskTheSource show, discussing everything from #Israel, Zionism, Sovereignty, Human Rights & more. Always a pleasure & I'm still yet to find a better backdrop than yours!
Aliyah and Zionism go to very core of who I am as a Jew, an #Israeli & as a person. I had the chance to speak more about how important these values are to me, with @ReinsteinJosh on his #AskTheSource show (see below).
Esther Levens, the founder and former CEO of the Kansas-based Unity Coalition for Israel (UCI), passed away on August 21 at the age of 95, according to her surviving family.
Esther and her late husband Vrem had spent most of their lives in national politics working to strengthen the bond between the United States and Israel. Vrem so much that he worked as part of the Sonnenborn group before the 1948 War of Independence, attempting to secure armaments for pre-state Israel.
In the 1960s, Esther and Vrem worked on Bob Dole's campaign for Senate hosting events and fundraising parties before his election. By 1968, the couple became immersed in a life of politics through and through. After Vrem's passing, Esther continued to work alongside Dole on his finance committee during his presidential election run in 1988.
Following her work with Dole, Esther began focusing her attention on the negative publicity the Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria were attracting across the world. She recalled back to her memories of what her husband Vrem might do, knowing he would not allow the settlements to tarnish the relationship Israel and the United States has, or the outward view Israel has to the rest of the world.
Knowing she needed to do something, and keeping in mind 2% of the US population is Jewish, she decided to assemble an alliance of Jewish-Christian partners, using the contacts she made from working for senator Dole all of those years and stumbled upon something much larger than she could have possibly imagined.
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.
Saturday's announcement formally eliminates a 1972 law on the UAE's books, since just after the Emirates's formation.
That law mirrored the widely held stance by Arab nations at that time that recognition of Israel would only come after the Palestinians had an independent state of their own.
Products of Palestinian Jews are to be considered undesirable in Arab countries. They should be prohibited and refused as long as their production in Palestine might lead to the realization of Zionist political aims.
The only use of the word "Palestinian" was referring to the Jews who were being boycotted!
When the boycott was announced, not one Arab stated that they were concerned with the rights of Arabs in Palestine. From the New York Times, December 4, 1945:
And when Arabs gathered in British Mandate Palestine to deepen the boycott, its antisemitic nature was made even more explicit (January 10, 1946):
The boycott was always a purely antisemitic idea, and it remains so. Which makes Hanan Ashrawi's shocked reaction to the UAE move quite interesting:
In Pompeo's shuttle diplomacy we see the enormity of the administration's achievement.
After the Cold War, Israeli leftists and anti-Israel foreign policy analysts in America claimed that with the superpower contest settled, Israel was no longer a strategic asset to America. The Israeli Left argued that to retain its relevance to America, Israel had to sue for peace with Yasser Arafat on his terms.
Arguably the saddest man in Jerusalem this week was British Foreign Minister Dominic Raab. Blind to the seismic shifts that have occurred, Raab arrived uninvited in Israel's capital, (which Britain still refuses to recognize) to mediate peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
After Britain exited the European Union following the Brexit vote, the Trump administration expected Britain would renew its special alliance with the US and ditch Brussels' anti-American and anti-Israel unified foreign policy. But Prime Minister Boris Johnson didn't get the memo.
Much to Washington's disappointment, the Johnson government has continued to act as a loyal member (or vassal) of the EU. The Johnson government opposes the administration's maximum pressure strategy for dealing with Iran, and even abstained from supporting the US at the Security Council last week.
The British Foreign Office, like the EU and the UN, reacted coldly to the news that Israel and the UAE are normalizing their relations, insisting that the Palestinians must not be ignored, the chimerical "two-state solution" must be upheld at all costs.
Raab met with Pompeo in Jerusalem. While the details of their meeting were not reported, Netanyahu made clear Israel's displeasure at Britain's pro-Iran policies and expressed no interest in Britain's offer to pressure Israel to make unreciprocated concessions to the Palestinians.
The Israeli-Sunni Arab bloc is a stabilizing force in the region because it is an organic alliance. It was not the product of superpower rivalry. It was borne out of common interests that are likely to remain in place for the foreseeable future. The existence of this bloc has enabled Washington rebuild its credibility as a superpower and an ally in the Middle East and advance its Iran policies with or without UN Security Council support.
If Trump is re-elected in November, this stabilizing bloc whose members stand against both Sunni and Shiite jihadists will expand and the circle of formal ties between Israel and the Gulf States will grow. If Trump loses, just as the bloc protected its members against the hostile Obama administration, so it is likely to survive and shield its members from the vagaries of a Biden administration.
The president of the United Arab Emirates on Saturday issued a decree abolishing a law boycotting Israel and allowing trade and financial agreements between the two nations, two days before a delegation from Jerusalem was due to arrive in Abu Dhabi in the wake of August 13's normalization agreement.
The state-run WAM news agency said the move formally ending the boycott came on the orders of Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the ruler of Abu Dhabi and the Emirates' leader.
WAM said the new decree allows Israelis and Israeli firms to do business in the UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula. It also allows for the purchase and trade of Israeli goods.
"The decree of the new law comes within the UAE's efforts to expand diplomatic and commercial cooperation with Israel," WAM said. It lays out "a roadmap toward launching joint cooperation, leading to bilateral relations by stimulating economic growth and promoting technological innovation."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the move as "an important step in promoting prosperity and peace in the region."
Already, some Israeli firms had signed deals with Emirati counterparts. But the repeal of the law widens the likelihood of other joint ventures, such as in aviation, banking, and finance.
The decree formally eliminates a 1972 law on the UAE's books since just after the country's formation. That law mirrored the widely held stance by Arab nations at that time that recognition of Israel would only come after the Palestinians had an independent state of their own.
Prime Minister Netanyahu: "I welcome the decision of United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed to cancel the law on boycotting products from Israel and economic contacts with Israelis. This is an important step in promoting prosperity and peace in the region."
Israel is expected to declare the Untied Arab Emirates a "green state," meaning that Israelis who return from the country will not need to enter home isolation, according to Walla! News.
On Monday, an Israeli delegation led by Meir Ben Shabbat, Head of the National Security Council, will leave for the UAE.
El Al has reportedly asked Saudi Arabia to use its airspace when one of its planes on Monday makes the first-ever commercial passenger flight from Israel to the United Arab Emirates, following the countries' US-brokered agreement to normalize ties.
According to the Israeli news site Ynet on Saturday, the request was relayed on El Al's behalf by way of the National Security Council and other unspecified mediators. The Saudis have yet to respond.
Earlier this week, The Times of Israel reported that the Foreign Ministry was conducting talks with Saudi Arabia about the flight potentially passing over Saudi airspace, but the matter wasn't final, according to a source with knowledge of the talks.
On Friday, Israel listed the El Al flight taking off on Monday for Abu Dhabi on the Israel Airports Authority website.
It said the flight would be numbered LY971, a nod to the UAE's international calling code number. A return flight to Ben Gurion International Airport on Tuesday will be numbered LY972, Israel's international calling code.
Among those set to be on the flight are White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and several other senior Trump administration officials, who are scheduled to arrive in Israel over the weekend.
Titus, Trump and the Triumph of Israel, Josh Reinstein's new book which is set to be released on September 1, has already broken its publisher's pre-sale record. Reinstein, who is the President of the Israel Allies Foundation and Director of the Knesset Christian Caucus, wrote the book after "many years of witnessing the transformational power of Christian support for Israel," according to a statement from Gefen Publishing.
Ilan Greenfield, the owner of Gefen Publishing, which has been publishing English-language books in Israel, hailed the book as a "global phenomenon."
"I am not surprised by the success of the book," said Reinstein. "There are many books written from a political perspective on Israel and also many written from a Biblical perspective but this is the first to mesh the two. Anyone who truly knows Israel understands that you cannot have one without the other."
The book covers changing attitudes towards Israel from Titus, the Roman emperor who destroyed Jerusalem, to US Donald Trump who moved the US embassy to the city in 2018. Reinstein not only writes about increased support for Israel from "people of faith," he also discusses the rise in antisemitism across the globe. He explains this through a discussion of a "faith-based diplomacy," the publishing company says.
"The only path to peace comes from following the Biblical guidelines – recognizing the Jewish people's connection to the land of Israel and ensuring the safety of its citizens," Reinstein writes.
Turkey is protesting the UAE for establishing diplomatic relations with Israel—even though Ankara has had diplomatic relations with Israel for the past 71 years. If the UAE, as Ankara argues, has betrayed the "Palestinian cause" just by having diplomatic relations with Israel, then Turkey has been betraying the "Palestinian cause" since 1949.
These days, Turkey's foreign policy calculus, especially when it involves matters surrounding Israel, appears to reflect the thinking of a fifth-grade schoolboy. I don't like David anymore and you, Bassam, want to play with him. So I don't like you anymore either.
That is exactly how the 97-year-old Turkish republic behaved when Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced they are normalizing diplomatic relations. Not a word has been uttered to explain how a country that has had diplomatic relations with Israel for 71 years could logically protest another country's decision to establish diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.
Turkey remained neutral during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. At its conclusion, the then young Turkish republic became the first Muslim country to recognize the infant state of Israel on March 28, 1949.
In January 1950, Ankara sent a career diplomat, Seyfullah Esin, to Tel Aviv as the first Turkish chargé d'affaires in Israel. In 1951, Turkey joined the Western bloc of countries that protested Cairo's decision to deny Israeli ships passage through the Suez Canal. The Mossad opened a station on Turkish soil in the early 1950s. In 1954, Turkish PM Adnan Menderes, while on a visit to the US, called on Arab states to recognize Israel.
In 1958, an El Al airliner requested an emergency landing at Istanbul's Yeşilköy Airport due to mechanical problems. As it transpired, the passengers aboard were David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, and the IDF Chief of Staff, who were on a secret mission. The purpose of the visit, which was welcomed by the Turkish government, was to establish and enhance cultural and intelligence cooperation.
The Health Ministry reported Saturday evening that 1,831 people tested positive for the coronavirus over the course of Friday, and 15 more people died of the disease, according to the ministry's tallies between Friday and Saturday.
Israel's cumulative death toll from the coronavirus stood at 906, the Health Ministry's figures showed on Saturday evening.
Of the 20,331 active cases in Israel as of Saturday, 438 patients were in serious condition, with 116 of them on ventilators, and 191 people were in moderate condition. The remainder had mild or no symptoms.
Israel's daily infection rate has remained at between roughly 1,800-1,900 daily confirmed cases over the past few days, with a peak on Thursday of 2,068. It was the highest seen in Israel since the end of July.
There have now been 113,337 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Israel since the start of the pandemic.
The ministry said 23,263 coronavirus tests were performed on Friday, a number considered high for a non-weekday.
Shortly before 9 p.m. on the evening of August 26th the BBC News website published a report concerning a terror attack which had taken place some seven hours earlier.
Both the presentation on the website's 'Middle East' page – "Rabbi stabbed to death in Israeli city" – and the report's headline – 'Israeli rabbi killed in Petah Tikva knife attack' – failed to clarify to the corporation's audiences that the incident was a terror attack.
In line with BBC's selectively applied editorial policy, the only description of the attack as terrorism – which appeared in the fourth paragraph of the report – was attributed to a non-BBC source.
"Investigators said they were treating the incident as a terrorist attack."
Readers were told that:
"Earlier on Wednesday, Mr Netanyahu shared an article on Facebook that said no Israeli civilian had been killed in a terrorist attack for 12 months for the first time in 56 years, the Jerusalem Post reported."
They were not however informed that an Israeli soldier was murdered in May in an attack that the BBC failed to report at the time or that in September 2019 a 74-year-old woman who had been seriously injured in a rocket attack on Ashkelon the previous November passed away.
Airborne incendiary devices launched from the Gaza Strip sparked at least 23 fires in southern Israel on Saturday, a majority of them minor, according to Israel's Fire and Rescue Services.
Fire investigators told Channel 13 that all of the fires were sparked by waves of arson balloons, where flammable or explosive devices are lofted into Israel from Gaza on actual helium balloons. Most landed in open fields, sparking brush fires that were put out by firefighters.
The fires came as Qatar's envoy to the Hamas-run coastal enclave was in the Strip this week seeking to deescalate ongoing tensions between the terror group and Israel that have led to daily arson balloon and rocket attacks on Israel, and to IDF reprisal strikes. Mohammed al-Emadi is said to have left the territory briefly on Saturday afternoon to speak with Israeli officials before returning, according to Hamas-linked media.
Al-Emadi arrived in Gaza on Tuesday with $30 million in cash. The money is earmarked to help the territory of two million people, half of whom live under the poverty line, sources close to the envoy told AFP this week.
Palestinians in the Strip have, in recent weeks, sent waves of arson balloons across the border, sparking scores of wildfires in southern Israel.
The Hamas proxy Humat al-Aqsa (HAA) published a video this week claiming responsibility for sending incendiary balloons into Israel from Gaza. HAA openly acknowledges its arson attacks as part of a campaign to terrorize Israeli civilians and cause fires across the border.
The attacks marked a resumption of incendiary balloon attacks after a six-month hiatus. The renewed attacks caused 161 fires in Israel between August 22 and August 26. In response, Israel has deployed Lahav Or, a laser system designed to counter incendiary balloons, which reportedly has a 90 percent success rate in the limited areas it can cover.
With Hamas' approval, HAA and other militant groups reportedly resumed the attacks to pressure Israel to improve conditions in the Gaza Strip. Hamas seeks to extend Gaza's fishing zone from 15 to 20 nautical miles, relax the blockade on the Gaza Strip, and increase work permits for Gazans to enter Israel. Israel has maintained severe restrictions on the coastal enclave following Hamas' violent takeover of Gaza in 2007.
Palestinians in Gaza first deployed explosive balloons in April 2018 under the cover of the "March of Return" protests. That year, the incendiary devices sparked approximately 2,000 fires and destroyed about 8,400 acres of land in southern Israel. Additionally, between January 2019 and shortly after the 2019 June ceasefire agreement, Israel reported an average of two arson attacks per day.
In January and February 2020, Hamas violated its ceasefire and ordered the renewal of incendiary and explosive-laden balloons by militant groups, including HAA. It is unlikely that HAA or others would carry out these operations without explicit approval from Hamas. In fact, HAA boasted of its role in the arson campaign, publishing a video in February featuring men holding a banner with the group's logo and name, filling condoms with helium, and sending them into Israel.
According to Israel's Shin Bet security agency, Fathi Hamad, a senior Hamas official subject to U.S. sanctions, established and funded HAA in 2006. As a Hamas proxy, HAA enables Gaza's rulers to carry out terrorist attacks while maintaining plausible deniability.
Qatari envoy Mohammed al-Emadi met Saturday with Israeli security officials in an attempt to quell the escalating violence between the IDF and Hamas, a source confirmed to The Jerusalem Post.
Emadi entered Israel from Gaza through the Erez checkpoint and met with representatives from the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), the Office of the Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories and the Southern Command, according to the Arabic Al-Quds website. He returned to Gaza where he has been holding talks with Hamas for a number of days.
UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov on Friday took to twitter to warn that an escalation in Gaza is imminent unless both Israelis and Hamas exercise restraint and pull back from the brink.
"I am VERY concerned that escalation is imminent," he tweeted.
He spoke in the aftermath of an exchange of fire between Palestinian terrorists in Gaza and the IDF. Over the last weeks Palestinians have launched incendiary balloons and rockets against southern Israel, and the IDF in turn has conducted nightly aerial raids against military targets.
This included Friday morning, when the IDF struck Hamas facilities, after six rockets were launched at Israel. Over the weekend Israeli firefighters battled over 45 blazes in southern Israel due to incendiary balloons.
The PFLP's Brigades of the Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa states #Israel is exploiting the #COVID-19 outbreak in #Gaza. The militant group is ready to clash with Israel if the signal is given. pic.twitter.com/Ibf7OzIUl0
.@KenRoth Today marks 141 days that the most courageous man in Gaza—peace activist Rami Aman—is in Hamas prison for a Zoom call between Israelis & Palestinians. If you're a human rights champion, why do you refuse to mention his name or demand his release? https://t.co/9QvDx5wnBqpic.twitter.com/Xwme20cq6g
The IDF remained on high alert along the northern border with Lebanon over the weekend amid expectations that Hezbollah will continue trying to attack Israeli soldiers deployed nearby.
On Wednesday, Israeli attack helicopters and fighter jets struck posts belonging to Hezbollah along the in response to sniper fire against IDF troops near Kibbutz Menara in the Upper Galilee.
It was the third failed attack by Hezbollah since the group's leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah vowed to avenge the death of one of his operatives killed in an alleged Israeli airstrike in Syria in July.
The high alert continues as the the UN Security Council (UNSC) decided Friday to extend the mandate of the UNIFIL peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon by another year but slightly reduced its number of troops.
The council added several demands from the government of Lebanon to allow UNIFIL to operate more efficiently after efforts from Israel and the US to strengthen to force's authority in the face of Hezbollah activity.
These new demands include an enhanced reporting mechanism to the UN for violent incidents and violations; a call for the Secretary-General to create a detailed action plan to optimize the force's effectiveness; and a strong condemnation of attempts to hamper the force's freedom of movement and of threats posed to UNIFIL troops.
The Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Mayadeen broadcaster aired footage on Saturday showing what appears to be a mannequin of an IDF soldier being operated by a robotic device, along the border fence between Israel and Lebanon.
The video briefly showed the mannequin moving before it is engulfed by smoke from smoke grenades lobbed from the Israeli side of the fence, as a pair of IDF tanks are stationed next to it.
Al-Mayadeen claimed the mannequin was an Israeli ploy to have Hezbollah believe it was a real target and "lure" it into "a trap," according to the network's written report.
Hezbollah has repeatedly vowed to avenge the death of one of its fighters, killed in an airstrike outside Damascus on July 20 that was attributed to Israel, heightening tensions along the border.
On Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces said Hezbollah snipers fired at Israeli troops operating near an Israeli community along the border, prompting Israeli airstrikes on a number of the terror group's observation posts. The Hezbollah force, according to Israel, was situated right in between two UN posts, barely 110 yards away from the closer one.
The IDF released aerial footage from the border showing the location from which the sniper cell opened fire at the soldiers, between two UN posts belonging to UNIFIL, the peacekeeping force in Lebanon.
The photo "shows UNIFIL's powerlessness and the fact that it is not fulfilling its purpose," Israel's UN mission said Thursday.
The UN Security Council will extend the mandate for a peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon for another year later on Friday, but will reduce the number of troops amid US and Israeli criticism over the mission's efficiency, diplomats said.
The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) ‐‐ established in 1978 ‐‐ patrols Lebanon's southern border, known as the Blue Line, with Israel. Washington regards Iran-backed Hezbollah, which supports the Syrian government and has a strong presence in south Lebanon, as a terrorist organisation.
The United States and Israel have argued that the force needs to be smaller but with more powers and more access to areas controlled by Hezbollah. They have pointed to recent incidents on the border in areas monitored by UNIFIL as examples of why the force should be bolstered. Israel struck Hezbollah targets on Wednesday after it said it had come under attack.
The renewal of the UN mission comes as Lebanon grapples with a financial crisis, political deadlock and the aftermath of a blast that killed 180 people.
France, overseeing the resolution's progress at the United Nations, circulated a final compromise draft on Thursday, which will be put to a vote on Friday afternoon.
The troop ceiling was lowered from 15,000 to 13,000 to meet a key US demand, though one diplomat called that a symbolic change as only 10,500 troops are currently deployed.
A French presidential official said the renewal was now certain.
"It's important for Lebanon and Israel," the official said. "What's expected from Hezbollah is that it doesn't do anything that could lead to an escalation."
A second Western diplomat said also said the mandate would be renewed. The United States was satisfied because it called for a detailed plan to improve the efficiency of the mission and report back to the council within 60 days, the diplomat said.
The United Nations voted this week to extend the mandate of its peacekeeping force in Lebanon. There was some concern for the fate of UNIFIL, and that the failure to carry out its mission would reflect poorly on the force but UN Security Council representatives said that that has never been a consideration for Middle East policies. A spokesperson commented that "failure in the Middle East is neither an option, nor a consideration".
The resolution was criticized by Israel and the United States as renewing a force that has failed in its goals to keep the peace on Lebanon's southern border and has also failed to implement UN resolutions to disarm Hezbollah. The French, who drafted the resolution countered that it is part of their new peacekeeping doctrine of "Retreating-Forwards", which goes hand-in-hand with their military doctrine "Failing-Upwards". Criticism centered around concern that peacekeepers were too restricted in their ability to monitor and fight groups like Hezbollah, Last week a Hezbollah cell fired upon Israeli troops barely 110 yards from a United Nations outpost in Southern Lebanon. A UNIFIL soldier, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that in their defense, "we probably would have let them do it regardless".
Officially, the United Nations condemned in "the strongest possible terms" the attack as well as Hezbollah's consistent attacks on Israel. The UN assured both Israel and the United States that the entire grammatical arsenal of UNIFIL would be brought to bear against any forces that violated United Nations agreements.
The US has taken historic step of beginning to right-size a UN mission, while throwing down the guantlet: a veto is clearly possible in the future. https://t.co/79AbgPmQLu
A prominent host of the Qatar-based Al Jazeera Media Network promoted a conspiracy theory that the US and Israel were involved in spreading the idea of exporting the 1979 Iranian Revolution to the Arab world to allegedly benefit Israel.
Al Jazeera presenter Faisal al-Qassim said on Twitter that the US and Israel had exported the idea that similar revolutions could occur in Arab states, which had led Arab leaders to partner with Israel against Iran.
Al-Qassim's comments come in the wake of a historic peace deal signed by the UAE and Israel earlier this month, bringing to end a decades-long boycott and opening the door to a full normalization of relations. On Saturday, the UAE abolished its official Israel boycott law, allowing commercial deals to occur with Israelis.
In return for signing the peace agreement, Israel has agreed to cease its plans to annex a vast majority of the West Bank.
While many, including the US and Bahrain, have come out in support of the agreement, Doha-based Al Jazeera has been accused of bias in its coverage of the deal, and chosen not to contextualize Qatar's own track record of ties with Israel.
Despite the channel's slogan being "The Opinion and The Other's Opinion," Al Jazeera has recently covered peace talks and efforts with Israel in a negative light, ignoring its own history of hosting Israeli officials both on air and in Qatar.
The Islamic Republic of Iran's Supreme Court confirmed the death sentence of national wrestling champion Navid Afkari for his 2018 protest against the regime in Tehran. The news website Iran International reported on Saturday that Iran's clerical regime imposed two death sentences, six years and six months in prison, and 74 lashes on Afkari. His brother, Vahid Afkari, received a prison sentence of 54 years and six months in prison and 74 lashes. The third brother, Habib, was slapped with a prison term of 27 years and three months and 74 lashes.
Prominent American-Iranians urged the Islamic Republic not to execute the brothers. The actress Nazanin Boniadi tweeted: "Champion wrestler Navid Afkari has been sentenced to death for participating in anti-government protests in Iran. Those close to him have said he was subjected to a forced confession under torture. Stop Executions In Iran."
Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, tweeted "Navid Afkari, a champion wrestler, joined his compatriots in protest to demand a better future. For that, the criminal regime in Iran has sentenced him to death. The international community must act to prevent the murder of another young, innocent Iranian. Stop Executions in Iran."
Iran International reported that "Navid and Vahid Afkari were severely tortured to give confessions, and the testimony of witnesses about their beatings and torture are even referenced in the case, but the court has ignored it."
An "informed source," according to Iran International, said the case is filled with baseless accusations including many mentions of "producing tools for criminal activity" which refers to carrying a nail clipper, a screwdriver and masks.
Four years ago, the Movement for Black Lives put out a platform that, among a long list of detailed policy recommendations, accused Israel of genocide.
Several major Jewish organizations expressed their outrage and put out statements condemning the platform.
On Friday, the Movement for Black Lives is convening a Black National Convention, where it's going to unveil another policy platform. A 10-page summary of the 2020 platform obtained by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency contains no mention of Israel, Zionism, Palestinian rights or the movement to boycott Israel.
A representative of the Movement for Black Lives who spoke with JTA could not say for certain whether the full platform would include any mention of Israel.
But to hundreds of Jewish organizations across the country, that question doesn't seem to matter as much as it used to. On Friday morning, a Jewish statement in support of Black Lives Matter appeared in a full-page New York Times ad, signed by more than 600 national and local Jewish groups and synagogues, including a major umbrella body and three of the four major Jewish religious movements.
"We speak with one voice when we say, unequivocally: Black Lives Matter," said the statement, which was first published in June. "The Black Lives Matter movement is the current day Civil Rights movement in this country, and it is our best chance at equity and justice."
Over 600 Jewish organizations, representing the majority of American Jews, signed a letter in support of the Black Lives Matter movement that was published in a full-page New York Times ad on Friday.
"We support the Black-led movement in this country that is calling for accountability and transparency from the government and law enforcement. We know that freedom and safety for any of us depends on the freedom and safety of all of us," reads the letter, which was published on page A17 of the print edition of The New York Times.
"As Jews, we know how dangerous this is: when politicians target Jewish people and blame us for problems, it leads directly to violence against us. When Black movements are undermined, it leads to more violence against Black people, including Black Jews," the letter says.
The 627 groups that signed the letter included the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist denominational movements, which make up 35 percent, 18% and 1% of American Jewry, respectively, according to a 2013 Pew Research Center study.
The list also includes several Orthodox groups such as the Uri L'Tzedek social justice organization and Yaffed, an advocacy group that seeks to improve secular education in Hasidic schools.
The letter's signatories include ardently Zionist, mainstream organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League and Jewish Federations of North America local chapters, along with several groups that support the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement, including Jewish Voice for Peace and Anti-Zionist Shabbat.
Former Women's March, Inc. leader Linda Sarsour said in an Aug. 26 appearance on a YouTube channel that "right-wing Zionists" have allied with white nationalists to smear her.
Nomiki Konst, host of "The Nomiki Show," argued that "there is a powerful arm of right-wing AIPAC interests" that have worked to smear Sarsour, former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
"This is coming from the right wing," Konst said to Sarsour. "This is not coming from normal Jewish Americans — even Israelis, frankly — this is from the right wing. So can you clarify just like, where you actually stand?"
Sarsour replied: "Where this comes from is the alignment of right-wing Zionists with the white nationalists, and it's such an unlikely allyship because the white nationalists are in fact very unapologetically anti-Semitic and … the root of white nationalism is anti-Semitism. That's why, for a lot of people, they get confused when they see the very staunch pro-Israel folks align with white nationalists, with the Republican Party, with Donald Trump."
Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action Agenda at the Simon Wiesenthal Center Rabbi Abraham Cooper said in a statement to the Journal, "I am always amazed by the level of chutzpah when anti-Semites want to tell the Jewish community what constitutes an anti-Semite and anti-Semitism. Hypocrite Sarsour says that right wing Zionists hate her but she is the self anointed gatekeeper who bars left wing Zionists from the Women's movement."
Sarsour also said that "new groups have emerged as a front for AIPAC, like the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) and others that are trying to rebrand themselves as Democrats who are progressive on other issues except for this issue of Israel-Palestine and we're onto them."
DMFI President and CEO Mark Mellman said in a statement to the Journal, "These fact-free allegations from Sarsour are outrageous lies, but they are far less important than the vile antisemitic statements for which she is infamous."
The far left is making what would have been an easy decision for many Jews into a hard decision. They are going after a...Jewish Democratic group. Huh? Do you really think the far left cares if Trump or Biden win? @JoeBiden's campaign made a terrible mistake apologizing to her. pic.twitter.com/IgEyaVWRjk
A far‐left Jewish group has walked back its labeling of the vandalization of a synagogue during racial unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, as "antisemitic."
The words "Free Palestine" were spray‐painted on the driveway of the Beth Hillel Temple during this week's angry protests following last Sunday's shooting by a white police officer of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old black man.
Mainstream Jewish organizations denounced the vandalism, with the American Jewish Committee tweeting, "This is antisemitism. Full stop. If you don't understand why, you need to educate yourself. If you try to justify or explain this in any way, you are part of the problem."
The far‐left group IfNotNow initially added its voice to the denunciations, with a Twitter post calling the act "antisemitic."
Said the group: "Spraying this on a synagogue implies that all Jews and Israel are the same ‐‐ which is antisemitic ‐‐ or that all Jews support Israel (factually incorrect). Individual actions like this have no place in our movements and give the Right even more chances to smear #BlackLivesMatter."
But within 24 hours, IfNotNow reversed itself following a flurry of criticism from left-wing activists on Twitter.
"After hearing from friends in and outside the movement, we'd like to do teshuvah (repentance) for the ways in which our tweet's phrasing fell short and contributed to distracting from the most urgent issues facing our country today: police violence and anti-Black racism," it announced, drawing a slew of sarcastic responses.
In some instances, other minority groups in the United States are behind the racist tropes and memes against Jews and the state of Israel, like some factions of the Black Hebrew Israelites and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. In other instances, it's the more recognized groups like the neo-Confederate, neo-Nazi, racist skinheads.
It's not always racist tropes but ideological indoctrination that reveres Marxist, socialist values. What about the hundreds fo TikTok, Instagram and Twitter videos depicting police officers as pigs and threatening our communities.
"I'm not on TikTok, you're not on TikTok, our kids are," Rez told me. "And they don't have the type of reasoning skills to sit back and say, you know what, this is not okay. You know, wait a minute, maybe we should question why."
"You know, a group of people such as police officers, or first responders are being vilified," she said. "So the fact that these social justice movements, and these hate movements are being targeted to children. And then the children, you know, they don't know what's right or wrong, they take it for what it is right? They're not able to see that this is completely off the wall. They're not going to go to their parents and say, you know, the police should be dismantled. They're subliminally being shown that the police are there to hurt you, not protect you."
Many times the messaging is not overt but subversive, she said. For example, there is no group associated with the video, but the messages are intended to push the "anti-American, racist, antisemitic" ideology, she added.
She told me that her goal after acquiring a large following on social media sites was to use her platform to expose the dangers online. It has not been easy for her. Many times she has become the target of the social media giants for exposing the growing antisemitic behavior on their platforms. Many times, companies like Twitter, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook fail to appropriately monitor or remove the messaging targeting the Jewish community.
For example, Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan, a known and overt antisemite, has a platform on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook and many times has posted antisemitic statements that have been allowed to exist on the platform for weeks before any action is taken.
Another interesting example is an algorithm discovered on Facebook that "actively promotes" Holocaust denial content. This is based on an investigation by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a UK-based counter-extremist organization, that discovered the issue. It found that typing "holocaust" in the Facebook search function brought up suggestions for denial pages. Moreover, it actually linked to recommended publishers and books that sell revisionist and denial literature, according to The Guardian, which first published the findings.
Rez is not surprised. An allied group of her StopAntisemitism.org, known as @StopAntisemites, has been jailed by Twitter for actually "exposing a physical threat against harming a Rabbi."
Goyim TV, an anti-Semitic video-sharing website that was promoted with a "banner drop" from a Los Angeles freeway overpass on Saturday, has been taken down by its domain host under a flood of complaints.
Jon Minadeo Jr., 37, was behind both the website and the banner drop, J. the Jewish News of Northern California reported earlier this week, as were a handful of Minadeo cronies known as the "Goyim Defense League."
However, just days after Goyim TV was taken offline, Minadeo directed his followers to a similar site — disseminating the same hateful ideology — on BitChute, a UK-based company described by a London-based Jewish security firm as a "cesspool" of racist and anti-Semitic content. It reportedly solicits financial support via cryptocurrency.
The rapid resurfacing of Minadeo's videos, on a different but similar channel, reflects the challenge of controlling hate-spewing websites on the internet, and the whack-a-mole-like effort it can take by anti-hate groups and concerned members of the public to confront them.
"It is similar to what happened with the Daily Stormer website and other bad actors," said Seth Brysk, the San Francisco-based director of the Anti-Defamation League's Central Pacific region.
The neo-Nazi Daily Stormer was rejected by a number of domain registrars after the highly anti-Semitic 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, but ultimately found a new host in the Canadian-based company BitMitigate, whose founder at the time cited "a commitment to liberty."
"The norms, rules and laws for online behavior are still evolving," Brysk added. "So the public can and should continue to play a role in pushing back against harassment, lies and extremism."
It appears that is exactly what happened with Goyim TV, which had been hosted since December by Epik, a domain registrar with more than 560,000 websites, according to DomainState.
A British man who harangued a Jewish family with antisemitic invective as they traveled on the London Underground last year entered a not guilty plea at his court trial on Friday.
Isher Campbell — a 34-year-old resident of the city of Birmingham — denied that he had engaged in "racially aggravated abusive behavior" toward the Brand family, a husband and wife traveling with their three young children last November.
Campbell also denied haranguing a Muslim mother of two children, Asma Shuweikh, who was on the same train carriage as the Brand family.
The court was told that Campbell was facing further charges of being abusive toward another Jewish man, Sholom Toron, on the same part of the Underground in August 2019, which he also denied.
Campbell will next appear at the Inner London Crown Court in September.
The incident with the Brand family was recorded by a fellow passenger and drew public outcry on social media.
In the video, Campbell was seen loudly reading a passage from the New Testament that addresses "them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not," while pointing to the kippahs worn by Mr. Brand and his two sons.
After threatening another passenger who interceded to "get out of my face or I will smack you right in your nose," the man began engaging with Ms. Shuweikh.
Police in France are looking for men who allegedly assaulted a painter for wearing a shirt with an Israel inscription and using his paint to write "no Jews or sluts allowed" on a Strasbourg street.
The incident occurred Wednesday afternoon, Les Dernieres Nouvelles d'Alsace newspaper reported. The artist, who was not named, did not sustain any serious injuries in the attack.
The alleged victim is a graffiti artist that the municipality hired on a freelance basis to decorate electricity boxes near Leon Blum Street, which is named for a former French prime minister who was Jewish and a Holocaust survivor.
After the artist fled, the assailants used the paint to write the slur on the pavement of the intersection of Leon Blum and Vauban streets.
Officials from the town of New Castle, New York state, condemned antisemitic and racist graffiti that was recently found at a train station in the area, according to a report in the local news site Journal News on Friday.
The antisemitic and racist graffiti was found after a resident who was cycling with his children discovered statements written in chalk on a sidewalk, which included lines such as "Ann (sic) Frank should have worn a TAC mask," and the word "Nigeria" with the drawing of a penis. Black Lives Matter (BLM) signs were also stolen from a local church.
Police responded to calls from the local Presbyterian Church of Mount Kisco, where the BLM signs were stolen to investigate the incident. The case also comes following another incident earlier that month in which a BLM banner hung by the Chappaqua Quakers was set ablaze and vandalized.
In response to the latest incident, the town's official Facebook page issued a statement, saying "While it pains us to continue to report on these hate crimes, and we fear giving them oxygen, we will not allow antisemitic and racist incidents in our community to be swept under the rug or covered up."
"Not only will we continue to say 'Hate Has No Home Here,' 'Love thy Neighbor,' 'Black Lives Matter,' and 'All are Welcome Here,' but we will back up our words with actions. If 2020 has taught us anything, it is that the future requires substantial changes and a 'new normal,'" the statement added.
The 107th edition of the Tour de France got underway on the French Riviera on Saturday, two months later than planned and under the shadow of a coronavirus pandemic which could still shatter hopes of the world's greatest bike race making it to the Paris finish line in three weeks' time.
Competing for the first time was Israel Start-Up Nation, with a team that includes the first Israeli to ride the Tour, Guy Niv.
"I am honored and privileged to represent my country and team in the biggest race in cycling," the 26-year-old Niv said in a team press release. "And to be the first Israeli to do so? It might sound cliche, but my dream of a lifetime has now been realized."
Niv is a devoted mountain cyclist and only took up road racing three years ago under the tutelage of the Israel Cycling Academy. The academy co-founder Ron Baron said in a team statement, "When we founded the team five years ago, we dreamed of this moment. But we strive for more than just the glory of racing in the Tour de France. We want every kid in Israel to say, 'I can be Guy Niv one day. I can get to the Tour.'"
Niv is the only Israeli on the team, which also includes Ireland's Dan Martin, André Greipel and Nils Politt from Germany, Ben Hermans and Tom Van Asbroeck from Belgium, France's Hugo Hofstetter and Latvian cyclist Krists Neilands.
Gail Carson Levine has transported young readers to fantasy realms for decades with her popular novels. Now, the prolific author best known for her Newbery Medal-winning "Ella Enchanted," goes to a very real place and time in her latest book.
Set during the Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in the late 15th century, "A Ceiling Made of Eggshells" is Levine's 25th book for children, and her second historical young adult novel. It was a highly personal book for Levine to write, and one that was a long time in coming.
"It took me a long time to tackle the subject. I worried about how little I knew about it," the author told The Times of Israel in a recent video interview from her home north of New York City.
Levine, 72, had wanted to write something related to her father David Carasso's Sephardic heritage, but she had little to go on. All she knew was that her father had immigrated as child with his family to New York from Salonika, which was within Ottoman Turkey when he was born in 1912, but was later annexed by Greece and became known as Thessalonki. The 50,000-strong Jewish community of Salonika was later almost entirely wiped out in the Holocaust.
Levine eventually learned that her family must have immigrated to Turkey from the kingdom of Naples, where they had temporarily found safe harbor after being expelled from Spain.
Both of Carasso's parents died when he was very young, and he was placed in New York's Hebrew Orphan Society (the inspiration for the author's first historical young adult novel, "Dave at Night.") Growing up away from family in a mainly Ashkenazi Jewish environment at the orphanage, Levine's father lost touch with his Sephardic heritage. He also changed his name to the more American sounding Carson.
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