Elder of Ziyon 08/28 Links Pt2: The Plot for America: Remembering Civil Rights Leader Joachim Prinz; The Pope, the Jews, and the Secrets in the Archives
The influential Newark rabbi was a confidante of Martin Luther King, but he's been all but ignored by history
On the evening of June 26, 1937, thousands of Berlin Jews packed the city's grand Brüdervereinshaus to bid farewell to Rabbi Joachim Prinz, who had been ordered by the Gestapo to leave Germany immediately or face an almost certain death sentence for political subversion. Prinz had been the most popular, outspoken, and inspirational champion of Jewish national rights and Zionism in the dark years since the Nazis' rise to power, preaching to overflow crowds at Berlin's most important temples about the need to leave Germany and immigrate to Palestine. By the summer of 1937 he had already been arrested a half-dozen times by the Gestapo, but he always managed to elude deportation. This time, however, he was warned by his "friend" and informant, Gestapo Obersturmbanführer Kuchman, that his days were numbered, and he reluctantly decided to emigrate to the United States, sponsored by his friend and patron Rabbi Stephen S. Wise. Among the uninvited guests at Prinz's farewell was a Nazi functionary, Adolf Eichmann.
Eichmann's presence was to have important legal ramifications more than two decades later. In the initial discovery proceedings to establish Eichmann's identity before his 1961 trial in Jerusalem, Benno Cohen, the foremost Zionist leader in pre-war Berlin, positively identified the defendant, testifying as follows:
We held a valedictory meeting to take leave of Rabbi Dr. Joachim Prinz who was leaving the country. He was one of the finest speakers, the best Zionist propagandist in those years. The large hall was packed full. The public thronged to this meeting. Suddenly, as chairman of the event, I was called to the door and my office clerk told me, "Mr Eichmann is here." I saw this same man, for the first time in civilian clothing, and he shouted at me, "Who is responsible for order here? This is disorder of the first degree." … I watched him the entire time from my place in the chair.
As a young rabbi in his late twenties, Prinz was already addressing congregations of thousands in Berlin's largest temple, the magnificent Neue Synagogue on Oranienburger Strasse, whose stunning façade has recently been restored. And less than two years after arriving in the United States after his expulsion from Germany by Eichmann's goons, he was appointed rabbi of New Jersey's largest Jewish house of worship, the magnificent Greek Revival Temple B'nai Abraham, which towered over Newark's then-fashionable and heavily Jewish Clinton Hill section, where hundreds of young people swarmed to hear his Friday-night orations.
As Prinz so evidently delights in repeatedly recalling in his posthumously published memoir, Rebellious Rabbi, the Jews of both Berlin and Newark—especially "the younger generation" to whom he mainly dedicated his ministries—did not so much "go to shul" for an encounter with the divine as they "went to Prinz" for an encounter with the rabbi. The combination of Prinz's charismatic personality and his distinctly un-theological and nationalistic understanding of the essence of Judaism proved as attractive to the nervously Americanizing Jews of mid-20th-century New Jersey as it had been to the deeply assimilated and newly imperiled Jews of early Nazi Germany. Prinz's nationalist theology was first expressed in his classic work of Jewish defiance, Wir Juden, which was published in Berlin in 1934 and quickly became a best-seller among Germany's deeply demoralized Jews. He used his experiences leading the Jews of Nazi Berlin to develop an almost metaphysical notion of Jewish national identity, which he referred to as the "doctrine of Jewish inescapability."
Prinz's initial, exploratory visit to the United States, in March 1937, just a half year before his final emigration from Germany, was marked by all manner of disappointments with the "Golden Land." Prinz complained bitterly about America's complacence in the face of the threat posed by Nazi Germany. In his first recorded impressions of the country, he found almost nothing that compared favorably with his native Germany. America's cities are depicted as ugly and rundown, racism against blacks disturbingly pervasive, its political culture naïve and intellectual life second-rate, and its people primitive and poorly dressed.
In early 1953, the photograph of a prominent nun being arrested was splashed across the front pages of French newspapers. Over the next several weeks, other French clergy—monks and nuns—would also be arrested. The charge: kidnapping two young Jewish boys, Robert and Gérald Finaly, whose parents had perished in a Nazi death camp. The case sparked intense public controversy. Le Monde, typical of much of the French media, devoted 178 articles in the first half of the year to the story of the brothers—secretly baptized at the direction of the Catholic woman who had cared for them—and the desperate attempts by surviving relatives to get them back. It was a struggle that pitted France's Jewish community, so recently devastated by the Holocaust, against the country's Roman Catholic hierarchy, which insisted that the boys were now Catholic and must not be raised by Jews.
What was not known at the time—and what, in fact, could not be known until the opening, earlier this year, of the Vatican archives covering the papacy of Pius XII—is the central role that the Vatican and the pope himself played in the kidnapping drama. The Vatican helped direct efforts by local Church authorities to resist French court rulings and to keep the boys hidden, while at the same time carefully concealing the role that Rome was playing behind the scenes.
There is more. At the center of this drama was an official of the Vatican curia who, as we now know from other newly revealed documents, helped persuade Pope Pius XII not to speak out in protest after the Germans rounded up and deported Rome's Jews in 1943—"the pope's Jews," as Jews in Rome had often been referred to. The silence of Pius XII during the Holocaust has long engendered bitter debates about the Roman Catholic Church and Jews. The memoranda, steeped in anti-Semitic language, involve discussions at the highest level about whether the pope should lodge a formal protest against the actions of Nazi authorities in Rome. Meanwhile, conservatives in the Church continue to push for the canonization of Pius XII as a saint.
The newly available Vatican documents, reported here for the first time, offer fresh insights into larger questions of how the Vatican thought about and reacted to the mass murder of Europe's Jews, and into the Vatican's mindset immediately after the war about the Holocaust, the Jewish people, and the Roman Catholic Church's role and prerogatives as an institution.
Below is an excerpt from the book Titus, Trump and the Triumph of Israel; The Power of Faith Based Diplomacy, by Josh Reinstein (Gefen Publishing House).
In 2004, when I started the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus, I aimed to get more people — not just people who read the Bible — to start looking at Israel through a biblical lens in order to better understand the dynamics in the Middle East. More practically, my objective was to mobilize Christians' growing concern for Israel by creating a framework for political action. This initiative gained momentum, resulting in a shift from spiritual support into worldwide political support.
While observing this recent change in the diplomatic landscape through interactions on my TV show, Israel Now News, and while speaking to various groups across the world, I realized that many issues needed to be clarified. The questions came from all sides. Many Christians didn't understand the Jewish perspective. Some were confused about why many traditional Jews keenly collaborated with Christians on worthwhile projects, while Reform Jews, although proud of their Judaism, seemed to work more readily with Muslims than with evangelical Christians.
From another angle, Jews were observing the increasing wave of Christian kindness and enthusiasm to help Israel but were ignorant about the theological motivations behind it. Why, they wondered, are some churches the biggest supporters while others are virulently anti-Semitic, even divesting from Israel? Also, many Jews who supported Israel were not entirely aware of the powerful connection they felt toward the land. They innately comprehended it, aware that just three generations ago, most of their grandparents were religious and that without their ancestors' allegiance to the Bible and their traditions, Judaism would not have survived. But they still needed to clarify their current relationship to the state within a modern context.
On a broader scale, people were puzzled by certain groups, whose ideology should have resulted in strong advocacy for Israel but who instead tried to condemn it. Why, for example, is much of the liberal media so biased against the most liberal country in the Middle East? Their views on a multitude of policies — from individual rights to gender equality to freedom of speech — seem to align with those of Israel, in contrast to the Arab regimes. Yet instead of seeing Israel as a model to promote freethinking and tolerance, that portion of the media relentlessly and irrationally blames Israel for any conflict, while remaining silent about the bloodshed endorsed by its Arab neighbors. Similarly, many university campuses, the centers for Western education and enlightenment, have become breeding grounds for bigotry — filled with angry students picketing, shouting, and protesting this tiny country that thrives amid third world chaos.
President Donald Trump blasted Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden as a hapless career politician who will endanger Americans' safety as he accepted his party's renomination Thursday on the South Lawn of the White House, touting the administration's policies both at home and abroad.
Facing a moment fraught with racial turmoil, economic collapse, and a national health emergency, Trump delivered a triumphant, optimistic vision of America's future. However, he said that brighter horizon could only be secured if he defeated his Democratic foe, who currently has an advantage in most national and battleground state polls.
"We have spent the last four years reversing the damage Joe Biden inflicted over the last 47 years," Trump said, referring to the former senator and vice president's career in Washington.
"When I took office, the Middle East was in total chaos: ISIS was rampaging, Iran was on the rise, and the war in Afghanistan had no end in sight. I withdrew from the terrible one-sided Iran nuclear deal," Trump said.
"Unlike many presidents before me, I kept my promise, recognized Israel's true capital and moved our embassy to Jerusalem," he continued, before moving on to celebrate the latest diplomatic breakthrough he has helped broker between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, which is expected to yield a full-fledged peace deal in the coming weeks. "This month we achieved the first Middle East peace deal in 25 years. Thank you to UAE, thank you to Israel," Trump said.
On the third night of the Republican National Convention, US Vice President Mike Pence, former US Ambassador to Germany and acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, and Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg—Pence's national security advisor—heralded US President Donald Trump's pro-Israel accomplishments.
"Last year, American armed forces took the last inch of ISIS territory, crushed their caliphate and took down their leader without one American casualty," said Pence at Fort McHenry in Baltimore, where America successfully defended Baltimore Harbor from an attack by the British Navy during the War of 1812. "And I was there when President Trump gave the order to take out the world's most dangerous terrorist. Iran's top general will never harm another American again because Qassem Soleimani is gone."
Soleimani, general of the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was targeted in a US airstrike on Jan. 3 at Baghdad International Airport.
Pence also remarked that the administration has "stood up to our enemies, and we've stood with our allies."
"Like when President Trump kept his word and moved the American embassy to Jerusalem, the capital of the State of Israel, setting the stage for the first Arab country to recognize Israel in 26 years," said Pence, referring to the Aug. 13 US-brokered normalization deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. It was the first such agreement between Israel and a Gulf Arab state.
In his speech in Washington, DC, Grenell said, "After the end of the Cold War, Democrats and Republicans in Washington bought into the illusion that the whole world would start to resemble America. And so they started to pursue unlimited globalization. They welcomed China into the World Trade Organization. They engaged in 'nation-building' in Afghanistan and tried to export democracy to Iraq. They signed a nuclear deal with Iran and a global climate agreement in Paris."
The United States withdrew in May 2018 from the 2015 Iran nuclear accord and reimposed sanctions lifted under it, along with enacting new penalties against the regime.
Grenell went on to warn that "a return to the Biden way of thinking means America gives the radical terrorist regime in Tehran a planeload of cash in the middle of the night."
"President Trump also sent an aircraft in the middle of the night to deal with Iran. But that plane was on a different mission—an airstrike to take out the head of Iran's terror machine who plotted the deaths of Americans," said Grenell, referring to the elimination of Soleimani.
Nikki Haley is a star. There's no other way to describe the former governor of South Carolina, whose subsequent two-year term as America's ambassador to the UN was one of the most memorable in recent history.
Her appointment to the latter post by then-President-elect Donald Trump came as somewhat of a surprise. She had supported Marco Rubio in the Republican Party primaries, and when he dropped out of the race, she backed Ted Cruz.
When Trump became her party's nominee, she announced that she would vote for him, in spite of her reservations about his character and abilities. She then called on him to release his tax returns, a move that elicited one of his notorious Twitter offensives.
Nevertheless, he selected her for the sensitive position based on what he considered to be her professional merit. This did not prevent critics from highlighting her lack of experience in foreign affairs.
To be fair, Haley seemed to many at the time who hadn't heard of her to be an odd choice for a job that requires not only familiarity with global politics, but a rejection of conventional diplomacy – certainly by representatives from countries like the US and Israel.
Indeed, the best envoys sent by Washington and Jerusalem to the snake pit in midtown Manhattan have been those who refuse to cower before their ill-deserving counterparts, focusing instead on putting delegates from despotic regimes in their place. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Jeanne Kirkpatrick and John Bolton are examples of previous ambassadors whose very large shoes Haley was charged with filling.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) will savage Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's track record on foreign policy issues in a speech at the Republican National Convention Thursday night, according to an advance copy obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The Arkansas senator, who has become a top ally of President Donald Trump's, will focus on Biden's decision making in three major areas: China, the Middle East, and his overall grand strategy. In the Middle East and otherwise, Biden's caution and weakness on defense spending stand out to Republicans as places of Biden's potential vulnerability. On China, Cotton sees Biden's record as even more shaky.
"China's not giving up—in fact, they're rooting for Joe Biden," the speech reads. "America's other enemies won't give up either. But Joe Biden would be as wrong and weak over the next four years as he has been for the last 50. We need a president who stands up for America—not one who takes a knee."
Biden's record includes a long list of left-wing positions, but particularly striking is his stance on China. For decades, Biden has aligned with engaging China, moving to reward it for behavior consistent with international norms, arguing for Beijing's status as "Most Favored Nation" in 2001. Biden has also repeatedly spurned prospects of a closer relationship with Taiwan in favor of the status quo in cross-strait relations.
Biden also opposed the killing of prominent terrorist leaders in the Middle East. In the days following the strike against Qassem Soleimani, Biden loudly opposed the operation. As vice president, Biden was one of the few in Barack Obama's decision room who opposed the strike that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011. Over the years, Biden has given differing accounts of his reaction to the strike, at times denying that he opposed it. Biden's opposition is clearly documented, however, in the memoirs of former defense secretary Robert Gates and then-CIA chief Leon Panetta.
In early June, as anti-racism protests swept the country in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, Beth Hillel Temple in Kenosha, Wisconsin, signed onto an interfaith letter supporting peaceful protest and condemning "a broken societal system which disproportionately affects communities of color."
This week, Kenosha became an epicenter of renewed protest after a police officer shot a Black man, Jacob Blake, seven times in the back. And on Wednesday night, the 93-year-old synagogue's driveway was graffitied with the words "Free Palestine."
Critics of the Black Lives Matter movement have cited similar vandalism as evidence that protests have devolved into rioting. But has the graffiti changed the synagogue's support for the racial justice movement?
"Absolutely not," said Rabbi Dena Feingold, who has led the Reform congregation for 35 years. "That's a trivial matter. What's happened these last few days is not about us and what's happened to us. It's about the issues of systemic racism that plague our society. About police policy, about implicit bias, white privilege and those bigger issues is what this is about. It doesn't change anything at all."
Feingold said the protests have felt like they're happening in the synagogue's backyard. Beth Hillel Temple is in Kenosha's downtown, a block away from where two people were shot dead following protests on Tuesday, allegedly by a teenaged gunman from out of state who saw himself as having responsibility for protecting local buildings. It is also near two churches, at least one of which was also graffitied on Wednesday.
The University of Delaware's Jewish student center was torched by an arsonist who is still at large.
The university's Chabad Center for Jewish Life went up in flames late Tuesday night, causing approximately $150,000 in damages. A Delaware fire marshal announced that the fire was arson and a criminal investigation is underway. The university has withheld labeling the incident a "hate crime" until the investigation is complete, though it affirmed its solidarity with the Jewish community. The building was not occupied at the time of the fire.
"At this time, the Fire Marshal's office has found no indicators that this case was a hate crime," university president Dennis Assanis said. "The Chabad Center … is an active part of UD's religious, faith, and spiritual diversity. We affirm our solidarity with the Jewish community at this difficult time."
The pro-Israel group BDS Report told the Washington Free Beacon that it is actively calling on university officials to condemn what appears to be anti-Semitism. "We condemn this attack on the University of Delaware's Jewish community and call on the university officials to condemn the rise of antisemitism on college campuses," a spokesperson said.
Universities have increasingly become a haven for anti-Semitism—often in connection with anti-Israel activism. At Florida State University, the student senate elected as president a student who said "f— Israel" and "stupid Jew" with little backlash. At Pomona College, the university refused to condemn its senior class president for claiming Jewish people "hate brown [people]" and "worship" World War II.
Delaware Chabad students kickstarted a GoFundMe campaign to help rebuild the historical center. In less than a day, the group raised more than $120,000.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden condemned the torching of the Chabad center at the University of Delaware.
The incident "is deeply disturbing — as an alum of @UDelaware and as an American," read a tweet Thursday from Biden's Twitter account. "We need a full and swift investigation into what happened Tuesday night. With anti-Semitism on the rise across the country, we all have a moral obligation to speak out and give hate no safe harbor."
The Tuesday night blaze, which resulted in damages estimated at $150,000-$200,000, was ruled an arson by the state fire marshal on Wednesday. The blaze required 45 firefighters, including from neighboring fire companies, to bring the fire under control, according to local media reports.
"It is heartbreaking to learn the fire at the Chabad Center was set intentionally," Jerry Clifton, the mayor of Newark, Delaware, said in a statement. "This is a sickening act of hostility that threatens the safety and security of our inclusive, welcoming neighborhoods. My thoughts are with the Jewish community and those affected by this tragedy."
The Delaware fire comes just a week after another Chabad center, in Portland, Oregon, caught fire twice, though the cause of those blazes is still unknown.
The entire clip is far worse.
It's alleged that Jews who push back against Linda Sarsour or Jeremy Corbyn's anti-Jewish ideology and statements aren't "normal Jews". pic.twitter.com/x1uMKW7XA8
Missing context: He popularized the term "No Justice, No Peace" when helping lead an anti-Semitic mob against Jews in Crown Heights. https://t.co/nZu32yb3RD
The antisemitism that Rose Ritch endured at the University of Southern California (USC) has been all over the media. Ritch recently resigned as vice president of USC's undergraduate student government after she was harassed for months by fellow students for one reason only: Ritch is proudly Jewish and openly expresses her Jewish identity by supporting the Jewish state of Israel. Students launched an aggressive social media campaign against Ritch to "impeach her Zionist ass." Heartbreakingly, Ritch felt that she had to resign, to protect her physical safety and mental health.
Ritch's ordeal is outrageous and unacceptable. But sadly, it's not surprising or new. Ritch is the latest example of what Jewish students have been enduring on their campuses for years. Consider, for example, what happened in 2015 to UCLA student Rachel Beyda, whose application to serve on the Student Council's Judicial Board was initially rejected after several council members questioned her fitness based on her identity as a Jew. Beyda was asked, "Given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community, how do you see yourself being able to maintain an unbiased view?" Beyda's expression of her Jewish identity – she belonged to a Jewish sorority and was involved in UCLA's Hillel – had absolutely nothing to do with her fitness to serve on the judicial board. She was eminently qualified to serve. But that didn't stop antisemites from bullying Beyda and trying to derail her nomination simply because she proudly affiliated with her Jewish community. Consider, too, what happened to Jesse Arm in 2015 when he was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. Members of an antisemitic, anti-Israel student group on campus ("Students Allied for Freedom and Equality," or SAFE) instigated what can truly be described as a witch hunt against Arm. They called for his removal from his position in the student government simply because he exercised his right to object to the timing, taste and appropriateness of an anti-Israel display in the center of the campus. SAFE set up the display on the very same day that two deadly terrorist attacks occurred in Israel, killing five people.
A group of progressive American scholars have come to the defense of a Jewish student whose experience of antisemitism led to her resignation as University of Southern California student vice president earlier this month.
In a statement published this week under the title "Are you now or have you ever been a Zionist?" — a deliberate nod to the McCarthy-era harassment of leftists in the 1950s — the Alliance for Academic Freedom (AAF) said that it "condemns the treatment of Rose Ritch … following a campaign that featured denunciations of her support for Israel, including some with antisemitic overtones."
In an open letter published on Aug. 6, Ritch said that she was stepping down because she had been "harassed and pressured for weeks by my fellow students because they opposed one of my identities."
She explained: "It is not because I am a woman, nor because I identify as queer, femme, or cisgender. All of these identities qualified me as electable when the student body voted last February. But because I also openly identify as a Zionist, a supporter of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, I have been accused by a group of students of being unsuitable as a student leader. I have been told that my support for Israel has made me complicit in racism, and that, by association, I am racist. Students launched an aggressive social media campaign to 'impeach [my] Zionist a**.' This is antisemitism, and cannot be tolerated at a University that proclaims to 'nurture an environment of mutual respect and tolerance.'"
Ritch's letter drew a supportive note from USC President Carol Folt, who told students in an email that she condemned "the antisemitic attacks on her character and the online harassment she endured because of her Jewish and Zionist identities."
In its statement, the AAF said that while Folt's statement was welcome, "the administration and faculty [of USC] failed to speak out forcefully and early enough."
The group noted that "Ritch is far from the only college student who has been harassed in recent years for their pro-Israel politics."
Amid growing concern over antisemitic violence on German streets and anti-Israel activism on the country's campuses, the U.S.-based policy research institute Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) has published a detailed report looking at the activities of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in Germany.
The 27-page monograph authored by Benjamin Weinthal, a FDD research fellow and Jerusalem Posts's Europe correspondent, is perhaps the most comprehensive overview of the BDS movement in Germany so far. The report examines the emergence of the BDS movement in Germany (Germany is "a late arrival to the campaign," the monograph explains) and makes policy recommendations on how Germany can help fight the antisemitic activism in Europe given its historical responsibility.
While the report lauds the German government and parliament for taking a unequivocal stand against the anti-Israel boycott campaign, it calls on Berlin to go beyond symbolic gestures and take effective steps in combating BDS-driven antisemitism
On May 17, 2019, German parliament Bundestag passed a landmark resolution condemning BDS as antisemitic. It received overwhelming support from lawmakers belonging to the ruling Christian Conservatives (CDU-CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD), as well as the center-right Free Democrats (FDP) and the ecological Green party.
The Bundestag resolution "brought a new sense of democratic legitimacy to the effort to counter BDS initiatives, since the parliament spoke on behalf of more than 80 million inhabitants of the most populous country in the European Union," the report says.
"I commend the German Bundestag for labeling BDS antisemitic. And that is important. However, there is much more that can be done to advance the impact of the non-binding resolution," Weinthal told Legal Insurrection.
Today I visited Zorganika - an organic date farm blacklisted by @UNHumanRights for "raising human rights concerns."
Well - there is no concern. I met the faces behind the company, the Israelis & Palestinians, who work together "as family."
On the heels of the important AdoptIHRA campaign, where 140 NGO's from around the world urged Facebook to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, HonestReporting Canada issued this open letter calling on Canadian media outlets to adopt this internationally recognized definition of antisemitism.
It's imperative that the Canadian media adopt the IHRA definition now, especially at a time when antisemitic incidents have reached near historic levels and Jews remain the most targeted minority group in Canada. Without a recognized definition for the term, there's no way for various stakeholders (journalists, school administrators, police, union representatives, judges, etc.) to identify instances of Jew-hatred and enforce laws and policies to counter the scourge of antisemitism.
IHRA's membership consists of nearly 40 member countries including Canada, the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, etc. each of whom "recognizes that international political coordination is imperative to strengthen the moral commitment of societies and to combat growing Holocaust denial and antisemitism."
Today's antisemites deny Israel's right to exist, reject Jewish self-determination in our historic homeland and employs Holocaust denial and revisionism, while subjecting the Jewish people and Jewish state to demonization, double standards and delegitimization. That's why it's imperative for the media to know how to identify antisemitism and its many manifestations in order to know how to combat it, and to not give it an undue platform.
Each week, HonestReporting reviews countless news articles, setting the record straight when journalists portray Israel unfairly by casting it as an aggressor and responsible for the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians, or disseminate antisemitic tropes.
That's one of the many reasons why HR is active on social media. By using online platforms, HR can simultaneously expose bias and misinformation, and directly reach a given writer or outlet instantaneously to inform them of any errors. In this way, we are able to have an immediate impact, with the ultimate aim of garnering corrections.
So, for those not familiar with Twitter, below is a roundup of some of our media critiques from the past seven days. Stay informed Let us know where to email your free, daily news roundups:
1. Yahoo News depicts one-sided, distorted story of recent events in Gaza When Yahoo News picked up a video produced by the Turkish media outlet TRT World, it wasn't surprising that the information provided therein was supremely biased. The video omitted crucial facts and was devoid of vital background regarding Hamas' policy of using violence to extort Israel as well as its practice of hiding behind "human shields." It also mislabeled Israel's security barrier as a "wall," and mislead readers by using source material from six years ago, during the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas.
Woeful misinformation being peddled by @trtworld, and recycled by @YahooNews.
1. Israeli planes have been striking *Hamas assets* in Gaza, not all of Gaza. Citing @AlJazeera should be a hint as to the credibility of the claim. pic.twitter.com/GoDA6zrrQj
2. Hezbollah terrorists target Israeli troops, but The Times headline ignores the full picture In recent months, Hezbollah has been attempting to catch Israel out on its northern border. From last year's revelation that the Iranian proxy had constructed a network of subterranean tunnels crossing into Israeli territory, to its launching of a botched attack in late July, the IDF has been preparing for an inevitable flare-up. And it came this week, with Hezbollah firing at Israeli soldiers, thereby precipitating a response. A woeful London Times headline confused cause and effect .
Of course, Israel launched the air strikes after Hezbollah terrorists fired shots into Israel. But readers won't know that unless they read the article.
Last month we noted that the BBC News website had completely ignored news of the resignation of a senior official at a prominent UK charity following exposure of his social media posts promoting antisemitism and supporting Hamas, along with the opening of a related investigation by the Charity Commission:
BBC WEBSITE IGNORES RESIGNATION OF UK CHARITY OFFICIAL OVER ANTISEMITISM Last weekend the Times – which exposed those posts in July – reported (£) that another trustee at Islamic Relief Worldwide – Almoutaz Tayara – had also been found to have posted messages supporting Hamas and consequently the charity's entire board was due to resign.
Once again we have to date been unable to find any reporting on that story on the BBC News website, including on its 'Charity Commission' page and 'Charities' page but the story was featured in the August 24th edition of BBC Radio 4's "ethical and religious issues" programme 'Sunday'.
Presenter William Crawley introduced the item (from 36:32 here) as follows: Crawley: "The entire board of trustees of the charity Islamic Relief Worldwide has stood down in the wake of revelations that two of them had shared extremist antisemitic comments on social media. Following an internal review of their governance, a new board was elected yesterday with none of the previous board members standing for election. Dr Lorenzo Vidino is the director of the programme on extremism at George Washington University. He uncovered the social media posts and he spoke earlier to Rosie Dawson."
Dr Vidino's interview with producer Rosie Dawson included the following: Vidino: "I think it's pretty clear that some of its leaders historically and today have sympathies for groups like the Brotherhood or Hamas."
German car parts maker Continental revealed Thursday that it played a key role in the Nazi war effort and used thousands of slave laborers during World War II.
Continental was the world's biggest producer of rubber materials at the time, supplying the Nazi war machine as the horrors of the Holocaust unfolded.
Historian Paul Erker, tasked by the company with researching its relationship with the Nazis, said it ended up as a "pillar of the National Socialist armaments and war economy."
Continental is the latest German company to shed light on its Nazi past as they continue to confront their role in the country's darkest period.
The company used about 10,000 forced laborers in its factories during the war, Erker's 800-page report said, including concentration camp prisoners, in what he called "inhumane" conditions.
The study shows that "Continental was an important part of Hitler's war machine," the company's chief executive Elmar Degenhart said.
One of Continental's major products in the 1930s and 40s was shoe soles, making it a vital supplier to the army.
It tested them at Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin where prisoners were forced to march 30 to 40 kilometers (19 to 25 miles) a day around the central courtyard with its looming gallows.
Any who weakened and fell to the ground were executed by the SS guards, Erker said.
Austria's government announced a "roadmap" to combat rising antisemitism in the country on Friday, with measures that will include a new department in the Chancellor's office to confront the problem and an offer of Austrian citizenship to the descendants of Jews expelled during the Nazi era.
The plan was announced following a meeting in the southern city of Graz between Chancellery Minister Karoline Edtstadler and Elie Rosen — the head of the local Jewish community who was physically assaulted by an Islamist last weekend, a few days after he cautioned against the atmosphere of "left-wing and anti-Israel antisemitism" in Graz.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Edtstadler said that the attack on Rosen had spurred her into action.
"That is why there will be a corresponding staff unit [to combat antisemitism] in the Federal Chancellery from 2021, which I will be entrusted with," she explained.
A new platform is also being created for the reporting of "antisemitic and anti-Zionist incidents."
Expressing the desire for better statistical reporting of antisemitism, Edtstadler commented that "many incidents are not reported out of shame, perhaps because one has already come to terms with the fact that something like this happens when it shouldn't."
As a "gesture of reconciliation," Edtstadler confirmed that the descendants of Austrian Jews expelled by the Nazis would be offered citizenship of the country without having to give up their existing passports.
She said she had spoken with Austrian Holocaust survivors who told her they wanted "their children and grandchildren to have Austrian citizenship, even if they may now live in other countries around the world."
Leading cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks announced Monday that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire The Crypsis Group, a leading incident response, risk management and digital forensics consulting firm.
Under the terms of the deal, Palo Alto will acquire Crypsis for a total purchase price of $265 million, subject to adjustment, to be paid in cash. The proposed acquisition is expected to close during PAN's fiscal first quarter, Palo Alto said in a press release.
"The proposed acquisition of The Crypsis Group will significantly enhance our position as the cybersecurity partner of choice, while expanding our capabilities and strengthening our Cortex strategy. By joining forces, we will be able to help customers not only predict and prevent cyberattacks but also mitigate the impact of any breach they may face," said Nikesh Arora, Palo Alto's chairman and CEO.
According to the company, as threat actors continue to professionalize and grow in sophistication, the risk of revenue and reputational impact of a security breach increases dramatically. In order to focus on the health and growth of their business, organizations need trusted partners to not only quickly and efficiently respond to and contain attacks but also leverage their learning and insight to prevent future attacks.
🚨BRAND 🆕 TRAILER for Jonny Gould's Jewish State: "For those who listen, for those who are willing to listen"⤵️https://t.co/h8hAOjxzYq
— Jonny Gould's Jewish State 🎧 podcast (@jonnygouldpod) August 27, 2020
A team of Israeli firefighters is slated to fly to California on Sunday to help battle the catastrophic wildfires that are engulfing huge swathes of the state.
The Israeli delegation, which includes rescue workers and experts in forest and brush fires, as well as Foreign Ministry representatives, is expected to spend some two weeks helping.
The Foreign Ministry is organizing the team and is coordinating with US authorities via the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco. A representative of Israel's Fire and Rescue Services is leading the logistics and will direct the team at the fire sites themselves.
Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi said, "Israel's quick enlistment to help its friend the US is an expression of the deep friendship between the people and the excellent ties between the two countries in a wide variety of fields. I congratulate the members of the team and wish them success in their important mission."
IDF: A Holocaust Survivor's Dream Turned Into Reality
Abba Naor never imagined that he would live to see the Israeli Air Force fly by the concentration camp in which he was imprisoned 75 years ago.
Abba, a 92-year-old Holocaust survivor, was a prisoner in the Dachau concentration camp. During the Holocaust, he and millions of other Jews had no Jewish state to come to their rescue. Last week, he witnessed the Israeli Air Force and German Luftwaffe fly side-by-side, committing to a better future and together affirming: Never Again.
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.
Cartoonist Emad Hajjaj was arrested on Wednesday August 26 for "disturbing relations with a sister country" in a cartoon. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) condemns this arrest and recent attacks on media freedom in Jordan and demands Emad Hajjaj's immediate release.
Published in Al Araby Al Jadeed, the cartoon mocked the recent deal the United Arab Emirates struck with Israel. Hajjaj was referred to the State Security Court yesterday, his trial will be held under the antiterrorism law.
Here is the cartoon, captioned "Israel asks US not to sell UAE F-35s."
Today, his detention was extended 14 days. According to the newspaper Al Araby al Jadeed that he works for, the UAE complained about the cartoon which resulted in the arrest.
In an earlier cartoon this month, Hajjaj evoked Jesus' drown of thorns in another cartoon against the agreement.
This fairly blatant antisemitic imagery didn't cause any furor.
A few days ago, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, the mufti of the Palestinian Authority and Jerusalem, published a fatwa (religious ruling) stating that Muslims in the United Arab Emirates were forbidden to visit Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Who has ever heard of a fatwa like that? Who will enforce it? Whom is it supposed to deter? Will Arab states seeking to follow in the Emirates' footsteps be put off from normalizing relations with Israel out of fear that Mohammed Hussein will issue a similar fatwa for their own citizens?
The Palestinians' relations with Arab countries aren't an ongoing love story. The Palestinians weren't prepared to accept any solution that allowed Jews in western Israel any sovereign territory whatsoever and dragged the Arab countries into joining their opposition to the UN Partition Plan in November 1947.
During the War of Independence, Arab countries sent forces which, other than the Jordanians (whose real goal was to capture the territory earmarked for a Palestinian state for Jordan), comprised only a sliver of those countries' military power.
The Arab countries themselves did take in Arab refugees from Palestine, some of who we ran off and some of whom we expelled, but only Jordan granted them citizenship. All the others kept them as second-class citizens. In 1948, Egypt, under the auspices of the Arab league, set up in the Gaza Strip the ridiculous "All-Palestine Government," whereas Arab state exploited the Palestinian problem for their domestic and international needs.
The Palestinian expectation that the Arab countries would fight us and clear the way for the 1948 refugees to return was pathetic, and the Palestinian leadership's destructive transition to the use of terrorism in the late 1960s stemmed from a no less pathetic desire to take the fate of the Palestinians into their own hands and bring about the solution they desired, by themselves.
The expectation that Arab states would, at least, provide continual diplomatic backing for the Palestinians took a blow in the Camp David Accords, and when Anwar Sadat rose to power in Egypt. The country's need for peace with Israel (to get the Sinai Peninsula back, and because it wanted security and economic ties with the US), prompted Sadat to avoid the standard precondition that there would be no peace unless a Palestinian state was established. The Palestinians managed to initiate an Arab boycott of Egypt, and have the country expelled from the Arab League, but neither lasted for long.
One must ask: Where do the UN, EU, and ICC stand on what was surely a catastrophe foretold in Beirut?
Hezbollah has been consistently involved in attempts to obtain and store ammonium nitrate for the purpose of carrying out terrorist attacks against Jewish and Israeli targets. From the 1994 terrorist attack on the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, to ammonium nitrate repositories discovered in London and Cyprus, to the Mossad intelligence agency's warnings to the German government about three tons of ammonium nitrate hidden in a warehouse in Berlin, – information that led Germany to outlaw Hezbollah.
If anything, the UN-backed tribunal's decision on convict only one Hezbollah operatives in the 2005 assassination of beloved Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has enhanced the Lebanese people's understanding that this is a brutal terrorist group that, despite professing to be "the defender of Lebanon," is actually hurting it.
The verdict infuriated many in Lebanon, who know that Hezbollah planned and executed Hariri's murder on the behest of Iran and Syria. The tribunal, served with thousands of documents and pieces of evidence, was wary of setting that fact in stone.
Israel must use the simmering unrest in Lebanon to deal Hezbollah a crippling blow in terms of psychological warfare. Not one bullet needs to be fired. This is also our moral duty vis-à-vis civilians being used as human shields by living in very close proximity to chemical warehouses and missile depots.
Militarily speaking, the value of the intelligence Israel holds is lower than the impact it could have on Lebanese public opinion, especially when the voices asserting that Hezbollah is dooming the Lebanese people to death and destruction are growing louder.
Netanyahu's proactive diplomacy has enabled Israel to operate in Syria (according mostly to foreign sources), with the tacit agreement of both Russia and the US, taking their respective interests into account. John Bolton, President Trump's former national security advisor, notes in his book how Russian President Vladimir Putin told him, asking that the message be conveyed to Trump, that "Russia has no interest in an Iranian presence in Syria, and in any event, gains no advantage from it." On the contrary, it creates problems, and "he had spoken about it with Netanyahu."
But there are warning signs, particularly in case there should be a change of administrations in the US, and though the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, has welcomed the Israel-UAE peace treaty and is a proven friend of Israel and Netanyahu, his party's platform relative to Iran states that a Democratic administration would oppose Iranian regime change as part of its policy, would call for "de-escalation" with Tehran, and put an emphasis on a return to Obama's nuclear agreement.
The direction is clear: canceling the sanctions and limitations on Iran imposed by the Trump administration and restoring Obama-style "diplomacy." Such a trajectory, in the absence of pressure and means of enforcement, could quickly turn into appeasement.
On the other hand, the new peace treaty and its positive ramifications may give Israel, if correctly handled, an opening to solve the differences with the Democrats' centrists, who in spite of the left-wing elements trying to increase their influence on the party's policies, are still the majority.
A Democratic win is not assured, but even if Trump gets another four years in the White House, an important objective for Israel should be rehabilitating support for it on both sides of the American political divide. The American Jewish community, which plays a not insignificant role in the Democratic Party in more ways than one, must also be part of this supremely important task.
When Israel and the United Arab Emirates announced formal relations two weeks ago, it was a major symbolic shift in the reigning paradigms about Israel's place in the region.
From the Khartoum Resolution's "three noes" – no peace, no recognition and no negotiations – to the 2002 Arab Peace Plan, most Arab states said they didn't want anything to do with Israel until the Palestinians' problems are solved to their satisfaction.
This is the source of the "linkage theory," the argument that if Israeli-Palestinian peace is achieved, all the Middle East's other conflicts will end, with the subtext being that Israel is somehow at fault for all of the region's problems. If only Israel would once again give up a huge chunk of land – after successfully making peace in that way with Egypt and unsuccessfully with the Palestinians in Gaza – then there would be peace in the Middle East and we could all sing "Kumbaya."
Much of the foreign policy establishment went along with this theory as though it made sense. Year after year, Palestinian recalcitrance was bolstered by Western money pouring into their institutions with little to no demands on them, the perennial victims, along with warnings that Israel was isolating itself. Israel continues to be a monthly item on the UN Security Council's agenda, even in relatively calm times, as though the conflict with the Palestinians were the most important problem in the world.
But over the decades, plenty of issues have cropped up in the region that have almost nothing to do with Israel.
As White House Senior Advisor Jared Kushner said last week, "Israel is always a convenient scapegoat... [but it] is not the main issue in the region."
Iran, not Israel, shot missiles into Saudi Arabia. Iran, not Israel, sent its proxies into Yemen, Syria and Lebanon, destabilizing them, Kushner pointed out.
In an attempt to spoil the celebrations about peace with the United Arab Emirates, opponents of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made up a new story last week, and are claiming that Bibi has given the Americans a nod to sells F-35 fighter jets to the UAE. In effect, we are to understand, he hasn't secured any historic achievement, but once again sold off Israel's security.
Well, you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
Let's start with a little background. The American weapons industry is one of the strongest, richest, and most powerful lobbies in the world. It is so strong that American administrations are afraid of it, and cover up its failures. Because it is so critical to the US economy, presidents and legislators have always helped sell advanced weaponry to the world, including Arab countries. Israel has objected, to no avail.
In 1980, for example, the US sold Egypt the F-16 fighter jet, the most advanced in the world at the time. Egypt was our biggest enemy. Only seven years earlier, in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, it had done serious damage to our air force. Israel had signed a peace treaty with Egypt only a year before the sale, and it hadn't even been implemented. Still, it was clear to leaders in Israel and Washington that the risk – which was much greater than the case of the UAE – was worth it. So what is all the current fuss about?
Let's move on. Saudi Arabia, which is even closer geographically to Israel than the UAE is, has been operating F-15s for 40 years already, even though the Saudis led the vanguard of hatred for Israel in the Arab world. Israel knew about those planes and ignored them because there was nothing to be done. None of the people clutching their pearls now expressed any worry about the Saudi planes back then.
Again, in the 1980s, the US sold Saudi Arabia its AWACS early warning aircraft. With our supporters in Washington, Israel campaigned to stop the deal but failed miserably. Not only did the Saudis receive the aircraft, which controls the skies of the Middle East, but Israel – who had also requested it – was turned down. Where were commentators Nahum Barnea and Amnon Abramovich?
Israel's Bank Leumi has been negotiating a partnership with an unnamed bank in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), according to a Calcalist report on Wednesday, citing Shmulik Arbel, First Executive Vice President and head of the corporate and commercial section of the bank.
The report comes amid the recent UAE-Israel normalization agreement that has opened both countries to relations in a variety of areas, from security collaboration to trade.
"We, at Leumi, believe there is a golden opportunity for collaborations here and we intend to be an active party," said Arbel in a comment to the Calcalist. The report noted that Bank Leumi is seeking to aid Israeli businesses in establishing a presence in the UAE, in collaboration with the Emirati bank.
"We started negotiations over the past few days with one of the leading banks in Dubai, to form a partnership that would assist the clients of each of the banks," Arbel added.
When asked about the significance business ties that can come from collaboration, Arbel told the Calcalist "that in light of the current crisis, the importance of normalizing the relationship between Israel and the UAE becomes even greater," while also suggesting that the normalization agreement represents a highly important breakthrough in the regional status quo for Israel's economic interests.
Arbel also added that it might influence other countries to follow suit.
The United Arab Emirates' US embassy hit back at the critics of its recent deal with Israel, taking to Twitter to slam Iran, Turkey, Qatar, Hamas and Hezbollah, among others, for their negativity.
In a series of Tweets posted to the UAE Embassy US account, the Gulf state accused its critics of speaking "nothing but fear and hate," adding "their rants say something about what kind of world they want to see."
The Tweets were illustrated with examples of some of the criticism the deal has drawn from states and organizations in the Middle East. Among them was a quote by the Turkish Foreign Ministry which commented that "the consciences of the peoples of the region will never forgive the hypocritical behavior of the UAE, which betrayed the Palestinian cause."
Similarly, the Iranian Foreign Ministry had said: "The Islamic Republic of Iran considers Abu Dhabi's shameful move to normalize relations with the fake, illegitimate and anti-humane Zionist regime as a dangerous measure. ... The Emirati government and the other governments siding with it must accept responsibility for all of the consequences of this move."
But the UAE pushed back, accusing the critical voices of not being interested in coexistence and regional stability.
The UAE's criticism was ot limited to governments and paramilitary organizations. Media outlets also came in for rebuke, among them Al Jazeera English, which the UAE described as a "Qatar State-Controlled News Service."
Certain regional outlets have published one-sided, inflammatory commentaries and articles. pic.twitter.com/IBwU3JRKB5
Israel has listed an El Al flight taking off Monday for Abu Dhabi, which would be the country's first commercial passenger flight to the United Arab Emirates after the two countries agreed to a US-brokered deal to normalize relations.
The website of the Israel Airports Authority listed the flight on Friday.
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.
Authorities in Israel and the UAE did not immediately acknowledge the flight. The US Embassy in Abu Dhabi did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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.
First time in history: scheduled flight from Israel to the United Arab Emirates.
EL AL flight LY971, named for UAE's country calling code, will take off on Monday with senior Israeli & U.S. officials on board to advance the new peace accord.https://t.co/TQELZu8E8Mpic.twitter.com/S05Qp4Qm4V
Following the normalization agreement between the UAE and Israel, writers in the Emirati media praised Israel's scientific and technological achievements and called on the Arabs to learn and benefit from its experience. In an August 19, 2020 article in the daily Al-Bayan, attorney and media figure Dr. Yousuf Al-Sharif described Israel as a country that, since its founding, has dealt with many difficult challenges on its own, and at the same time managed to attain impressive achievements in the domains of military technology, counterterrorism, industry, agriculture and irrigation. Learning from this experience, he said, can help the Arabs to enhance their security and counterterrorism capabilities, and to develop advanced industries as a way of resolving their unemployment problem.
Manahel Thabet, an information economy expert of Yemeni origin who resides in Dubai, made similar arguments in an Al-Bayan article from August 21, 2020, in which she enumerated Israel's scientific achievements and described it as a world leader in research and technology. Welcoming a deal that has been signed by an Emirati technology company and an Israeli one following the normalization agreement,[1] she expressed hope that many additional deals will be signed, providing "a golden opportunity to overcome the scientific stagnation that has afflicted the Arabs since the 12th century."
The following are translated excerpts from the two articles: Emirati Media Figure Dr. Yousuf Al-Sharif: We Must Learn The Secret Of Israel's Success And Endurance Amid Many Threats
Attorney and media figure Dr. Yousuf Al-Sharif wrote in his article, titled "What Can We Learn from Israel?": "In a courageous political and diplomatic move, our country, the UAE, the land of peace and security, signed a historic agreement for peace with Israel and [the establishment of] bilateral ties [with it] in many domains. We have much to learn from the Israeli experience in many areas. What experience [am I referring to] and what can we learn from Israel?
"In the 70 years since it declared its independence, Israel has faced many challenges: the challenges of establishing a state in the circumstances [that prevailed at the time] and of maintaining its security amid this historic conflict. This is experience we can benefit from and study in depth, putting aside our emotions and sympathy for one side at the expense of the other. The fact is that Israel has excelled at [maintaining its security]. Some may attribute this to the fact that, as the 'spoiled child' of the U.S., it receives advanced weapons from that country, but that is not the only reason. Israel has strategic military and defense plans that allowed it to stand fast throughout this period, despite [all] the wars it openly waged, [both] directly and indirectly, which almost threatened its existence. We should benefit from this experience and plumb the secrets that led to its [successful] outcomes.
Some teach their kids to burn my country's flag ...and some preach to love, respect and raise my flag up high. #ThankYou my Jewish brothers and sister for loving my country #Israel#UAEIsrael 🇦🇪🇮🇱 pic.twitter.com/Fzqjxjvdsg
— حسن سجواني 🇦🇪 Hassan Sajwani (@HSajwanization) August 28, 2020
Egyptian Researcher Dr. Said Okasha: The Palestinians Are Responsible for Their Own Tragedy; They Must Take Advantage of the Opportunities Provided by the Deal of the Century, UAE-Israel Deal pic.twitter.com/KjNgpM6J7x
As the discussion about potential political divides continues to grow, the necessary universal steps seem to grow as well. The unity government was established to combat COVID-19, but must also play a role in securing Israel's future and the human rights of all. Identifying the opportunity alongside the pandemic challenge, this government must act and set Israel on a course of security, stability and prosperity. The agreement with UAE highlights ability to advance prosperity to peace.
In sharp contrast to past peace efforts with the Palestinians, this new plan presents a pathway to achieve parameters that will lead to something realistic and long-lasting. It focuses on the Palestinian people and their needs, prioritizing them above Palestinian leadership – whether in terms of human rights, anti-corruption, or criminal justice. While some may brand the plan's magnifying glass on gross Palestinian violations as "pro-Israel," the reality is that it is also "pro-Palestinian" – it is not a zero-sum game. When it comes to systemic incitement of youth, corruption and human rights violations, everyone loses.
COVID-19 and the economy can only be remedied by dealing with the facts as they are, not as we wish them to be. The same is true regarding conflict resolution. The necessity of recognizing that the half a million Israelis living beyond the 1949 armistice lines are not the obstacle to peace and are not going anywhere is paramount. The quicker Israel can resolve the ambiguity of our intentions, the more clarity Israel will bring to the conflict.
The "Vision for Peace" recalibrates the approach to the peace process to one that is about creating peace, and puts the Palestinians on a path toward a state, as opposed to past efforts that were about creating a Palestinian state but that may not have resulted in long-lasting peace. Empowering the people, and not their leadership, and giving the people agency for their own future is what is so important and unique in this plan, and is what has the potential to create a genuine paradigm shift in Israeli-Palestinian relations. The agreement with the UAE is a case study for what is possible, and how.
The past decades of misplaced compassion given to a rejectionist Palestinian leadership that continues to commit gross human rights violations have been a huge disservice to both the Israeli and the Palestinian peoples. It is only when double standards are exposed and when leaders are held genuinely accountable that the culture of impunity can end, enabling real change.
This is also the lesson that Israeli leaders must take to heart in this particular context, when it comes hopefully acting on – or perhaps sadly ignoring – the "Peace to Prosperity" vision.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab showed up in Jerusalem this week to pressure Israel and the Palestinians ("both sides") to renew negotiations toward a two-state solution "based on international parameters."
Translation: Raab was here to pressure Israel to yield to a stale formula based on maximal Palestinian demands alongside minimal regard for Israeli security needs and national-historic claims; a discredited formula involving the uprooting of settlements, withdrawals from most of Judea and Samaria, and a division of Jerusalem.
Raab's mission was a blast from the irrelevant past, as if Palestinian rejectionism and Iranian-backed jihadism of the last decade had not made such proposals passé, as if the Trump administration's wiser peace initiative had not been launched, and as if the UAE had not recently announced its intention to develop full diplomatic relations with Israel. It was an obvious dismissal of the Palestinian Authority's strategy of boycotting and criminalizing Israel, as if Israel needed to be prodded to engage in serious and realistic negotiations with the Palestinians.
Raab showed no inclination to take advantage of recent developments to put pressure where it belongs: on the side that began the conflict and that can end it, on the Palestinians.
Remember, it was PA dictator Mahmoud Abbas who walked away from negotiations with prime minister Ehud Olmert in 2008; Abbas who refused peace talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even after Netanyahu froze settlement construction in 2009; and Abbas who left US secretary of state John Kerry out in the cold in 2014. Earlier this year, Abbas declared "1,000 No's" to the new American peace plan.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius was one of the friendlier representatives with whom Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi met while in Germany this week.
Only recently, Lithuania agreed to Israel's request that it not allow Hezbollah operatives to enter its borders. Three years ago, Linkevičius organized an invitation for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who at that time was also acting foreign minister – to meet with European foreign ministers, breaking a long-term impasse between Brussels and Jerusalem.
Currently, Linkevičius is dealing other problems, namely the ongoing crisis in Belarus. Speaking to Israel Hayom, Linkevičius said he believed that change in Belarus was possible, and that the EU should cut ties with the current regime in Minsk.
"People in Belarus deserve to live a normal life," he said, adding that while a flourishing democracy might be slow to arrive, it was impossible not to hold members of the recent regime responsible for events in that country.
"The least we can do – the Lithuanians, the EU, and other countries – is to say that a leadership like that is unacceptable."
When asked why the EU did not appear delighted at the news that Israel and the United Arab Emirates were normalizing relations, Linkevičius said, "It's a step in the right direction."
Generally speaking, the foreign minister said, Lithuania wanted to see dialogue between Israel and the Arab world, but right now realized that the Palestinians were not "thrilled."
Lithuania hopes that the Palestinians will understand that dialogue between Israel and the Arabs is a good thing, he added.
Dozens of locals clashed Friday with Hassidic Jews trying to enter Uman, Ukraine for an annual pilgrimage before a ban on foreign nationals entering the country goes into effect.
Videos posted to social media showed angry crowds confronting the pilgrims before dawn Friday, pushing and shoving them as they try to prevent them from entering apartments they had rented.
The confrontation, in which residents yell in Ukrainian at the Jews to get out and tell them they are acting dangerously.
Israel's Kan national broadcaster also reported that the demonstrators prevented the pilgrims from setting up "an illegal camp" in the city where they planned to sleep before police intervened to separate the two sides.
The confrontation occurred at the site of a half-completed residential building whose construction has been stalled due to a dispute between the owners and the construction workers. Police at the scene told the Jews they could stay in Uman, but not in the building itself. In the video, a man can be seen pleading with police, in English, to let the pilgrims enter the building, saying repeatedly, "It's my house."
The city usually sees tens of thousands of Hasidic Jews visit the gravesite of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav for the Rosh Hashanah holiday, which this year begins on the evening of September 18.
Fourteen suspected accomplices to the French Islamist militants behind the 2015 attacks on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine and a Jewish supermarket in Paris will go on trial next Wednesday.
Seventeen people were killed during three days of bloodshed that marked the beginning of a wave of Islamist violence that was to leave scores more dead.
On January 7, 2015, brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi went on a gun rampage in the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a weekly whose cartoons on race, religion and politics tested the limits of what society would accept in the name of free speech. They killed 12 people.
The following day, Amedy Coulibaly, an acquaintance of Cherif Kouachi killed a female police officer. On January 9 he killed four Jewish men at a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris.
The three attackers were killed by police in separate standoffs.
In a video recording, Coulibaly said the attacks were coordinated and carried out in the name of Islamic State. The Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabic Peninsula claimed the Charlie Hebdo attack.
The Health Ministry said Friday that 2,068 people tested positive for the coronavirus on Thursday, with 10,777 new cases found in total over the course of the week.
The daily infection rate was the highest seen in Israel since the end of July.
The ministry reported eight more coronavirus deaths since Thursday evening, taking the total to 891.
Of the 20,444 active cases in Israel, 426 patients were in serious condition with 118 of them on ventilators, and 178 people were in moderate condition. The remainder had mild or no symptoms.
There have now been 111,493 cases of the coronavirus in Israel since the start of the pandemic.
The new figures came as testing levels appeared to remain at high levels, passing the 30,000 mark for the third day in a row on Thursday, with 36,372 carried out returning a positive rate of 5.9%.
Ministers are expected on Sunday to discuss coronavirus czar Ronni Gamzu's "traffic light" plan, which last week they refused for a third time to approve, reportedly due to opposition from ultra-Orthodox ministers who oppose restrictions that could shutter synagogues in high-infection areas.
A researcher from Ben-Gurion University has predicted that the coronavirus infection rate in Israel will start to decline within the next three weeks, but that as many as 1,400 Israelis will be dead by the end of September.
The death toll on Friday, August 28, was 891.
Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, Prof. Mark Last, a member of the Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering at BGU and director of the university's Data Science Research Center, said that a further lockdown is not necessary if the current restrictions are maintained and there are no unusual spreading events.
Last has been analyzing the data on COVID-19 attributed deaths reported by the Health Ministry on a daily basis since March. He also used data from serological screenings that estimate the total number of infected, rather than just confirmed cases.
He presented his findings at the AIME 2020: International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine on Wednesday, August 26.
"There are several indications that when the entire population is susceptible, meaning there is no immunity at all, but the population observes social distancing, then the reproduction number (R) is somewhere between 1.1 and 1.2 - closer to 1.2," Last explained.
IDF forces struck targets in the Gaza Strip belonging to the Hamas terrorist group early Friday morning in response to six rockets that were fired from Gaza towards southern Israel through the night.
The IDF Spokesperson Unit's said on Friday morning that, "The attack was carried out in response to rocket fire from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory early in the morning.
"The IDF takes all terrorist activity against Israeli territory very seriously and is prepared and ready to act as much as necessary against attempts to harm Israeli citizens and their sovereignty. The terrorist organization Hamas bears responsibility for what is happening in and out of the Gaza Strip, and will bear the consequences of terrorist acts against Israeli citizens."
The rockets came shortly after the IDF struck targets in response to the continued launch of incendiary and explosive balloons.
Sirens sounded on Friday morning in the towns of Nahal Oz and Alumim.
Underground infrastructure and military positions belonging to Hamas were targeted in the strikes by tanks and IAF aircraft, according to the IDF Spokespersons Unit.
A number of incendiary and explosive balloon landed in southern Israel on Thursday, sparking at least 26 fires throughout the area.
Israel's Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that a cluster of homes in a West Bank settlement outpost was built on privately‐owned Palestinian land and must therefore be removed.
Accepting a petition by Palestinian plaintiffs, Israel's top court overturned a 2018 District Court ruling which had broken judicial ground by recognizing the Mitzpe Kramim settlers' claim to the land, despite it being owned by Palestinians.
The District Court had declared the settlers the legal owners, finding that Israeli authorities were unaware the land was privately owned when they originally mapped out the area.
That ruling was based on an Israeli law which states that transactions with legal faults could be valid if they were conducted in "good faith."
Established 20 years ago on a hilltop overlooking the Jordan Valley, Mitzpe Kramim is home to about 40 families, most of whom live on Palestinian-owned plots and say they received Israeli authorities' approval to set up there.
But the Supreme Court said that the Israeli authorities had not acted in good faith by "turning a blind eye to the many warning signs given over many years" which showed the plots were actually owned by Palestinians.
The Hamas terror group warned on Friday morning that it would exact a "heavy price" from anyone who threatened the Gaza Strip, after overnight violence saw a volley of rockets launched toward southern Israel and two rounds of airstrikes on the enclave.
"Whoever lays siege to our people will pay a heavy price in their security and stability," said Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum, according to Channel 12 news.
"We will not hesitate in our national mission and in our commitment to our people." Barhoum said, adding that Hamas was committed to "protecting the people from all aggression and fighting the occupation if there is an escalation and the siege continues."
Three fires were sparked in southern Israel on Friday, apparently caused by balloon-borne incendiary devices launched from the Gaza Strip.
Israel Defense Forces conducted a second round of airstrikes on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip on Friday morning after terrorists in the enclave fired six rockets at southern Israel overnight, the military said.
The rockets appeared to strike open fields, causing neither injury nor damage. There were no immediate reports of Palestinian casualties.
Israel's decision to close the crossings to and from the Gaza Strip because of the recent escalation spike in arson balloon attacks and rocket fire from Gaza drew harsh words from terrorist organizations on Friday morning, after a series of IDF airstrikes hit a number of Hamas targets, including a weapons workshop.
The military arm of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad issued a statement stressing that "a continued delay in implementing the conditions having to do with lifting the 'siege' will lead to an explosion," and that Israel "would bear the responsibility."
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said on Friday that "What the resistance did today was part of a direct response to Israel's escalation 'on' Gaza and attacks on resistance sites. Israel has been warned against retaliation repeatedly, several times."
Barhoum went on to say that "This resistance response is confirmation that it will never hesitate to carry out its national obligation to its people and defend them against all aggression. We will fight the enemy if this escalation and blockade continues. Israel will be responsible for the ramifications of escalation and attacking resistance sites."
According to the Hamas representative, Israel was being "dismissive" of people's lives, given the spread of coronavirus in the Gaza Strip.
"The continued blockade and the worsening electricity crisis, and the stop of goods and fuel and supplies to Gaza are a crime against humanity that we cannot allow to continue or remain silent in the face of," Barhoum said.
Ibrahim al-Beitar released from an Israeli prison today is welcomed in Khan Yunis. Unfortunately, things get a bit out of control & social distancing goes out the window. Images like this don't bode well for Hamas as it tries to implement a lockdown due to COVID-19. #Gazapic.twitter.com/aZaySF7WgR
The UN Security Council is voting on a resolution that would extend the mandate of the UN peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon for a year but reduce its troop ceiling from 15,000 to 13,000 in response to US pressure.
The French-drafted resolution also makes another concession to the Trump administration and its close ally Israel. It calls on the Lebanese government to facilitate "prompt and full access" to sites requested by UN peacekeepers for investigation, including Hezbollah tunnels crossing the UN-drawn Blue Line between Lebanon and Israel.
The draft urges freedom of movement for UNIFIL and unimpeded access to all parts of the Blue Line, and condemns "in the strongest terms" all attempts to restrict UN troop movements and attacks on mission personnel.
The resolution, if approved, would give the United States a symbolic victory, but it would also almost certainly be welcomed by many countries that view UNIFIL as critical to maintaining peace in the volatile region and strongly support its current mandate which is largely maintained.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres wrote to the council on July 29 recommending a 12-month renewal of UNIFIL's mandate, stressing the importance of maintaining high troop strength.
While the resolution's adoption would reduce the troop ceiling from 15,000 to 13,000, it would not require any cuts in the current peacekeeping force. That's because UNIFIL's current strength is about 10,250 troops, well below the ceiling.
Today: Security Council to say "UNIFIL has successfully implemented its mandate since 2006" & "has allowed for maintaining peace and security since then."#FactCheck: FALSE. UNIFIL has turned a blind eye to Hezbollah turning Lebanon into a tinderbox.https://t.co/Qmem16yw4t
Canadian Islamic Scholar Kamil Ahmad: Beirut Port Blast Is Divine Retribution against Lebanon for Spreading "Vice and Evil" to the Arab Countries, Ignoring Syria's Plight pic.twitter.com/RMzELePbVa
The impending expiration of an international weapons ban on Iran threatens to flood the Middle East with high-tech Russian and Chinese military equipment, a situation that senior Trump administration officials warn will spark an arms race and could ignite a massive regional war.
A United Nations ban on the sale of weapons to Iran is set to expire in mid-October despite a last-ditch effort by the Trump administration to renew it. Senior U.S. officials involved in regional discussions told the Washington Free Beacon that Israel and its traditional Arab foes are united in opposition to the arms embargo lifting.
Without the arms ban, Russia and China are poised to bolster their already close military alliances with Iran, selling the country stockpiles of advanced weapons that will be available to the Islamic Republic's terror proxy groups, including Hezbollah in Lebanon. Both countries have sold Tehran arms in the past—including aiding its nuclear endeavors—and have been clear in recent months about their desire to amplify the relationship. The Trump administration is trying to block this outcome by invoking a mechanism known as snapback that was written into the nuclear deal. Snapback would reapply a litany of international sanctions on Iran and also ensure the arms ban remains in place.
"Letting the arms embargo expire would set off an arms race in the Middle East," Brian Hook, who served as the administration's top Iran envoy, told the Free Beacon following a fresh round of meetings this week with Israel and Gulf Arab leaders. "I have heard that repeatedly from Gulf leaders and Israel during this trip. The permanent members of the Security Council dismissed the request from all six Gulf nations and Israel to extend the arms embargo and add new sanctions on Iran. The council failed."
Hook vowed the United States would "do the right thing and restore U.N. sanctions on Iran—and that includes the arms embargo."
Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi took part in a group meeting in Berlin on Thursday of his European Union counterparts.
"I just finished a visit that was both important and significant for Israel's foreign policy and our connection to the European Union, and would like to thank my friend, German FM @HeikoMaas for hosting me," Ashkenazi tweeted later.
"I laid out Israel's positions on a number of important issues relating to our security, Iran, #Hezbollah and Hamas," he added. "I called on the EU to join the battle against the Iranian threat, particularly on the nuclear issue, renewing the arms embargo and outlawing Hezbollah."
Ashkenazi further noted, "The agreement with the UAE was received with great enthusiasm by all EU foreign ministers."
"Finally, we agreed to continue working together in the fields of innovation, R&D, academia and the fight against the corona virus," he concluded.
Multiple European nations' diplomatic priorities may be on the line as the Trump administration examines a range of options to pressure these countries after their refusal to back the United States in its efforts to expand sanctions on Iran, according to current and former U.S. officials.
U.S. diplomats are seeking to force European allies to split with Iran and its allies, Russia and China. Multiple sources who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon outlined a range of European priorities the administration could leverage in this pressure campaign, including a free trade agreement sought by the British, increased coordination on Lebanon needed by the French, and a range of items the Germans have sought to revive ties with America. These sources spoke only on background about ongoing discussions in the administration about how to respond to Europe's intransigence on Iran.
Relations between the United States and its European allies are at historic lows following a failed vote at the United Nations Security Council earlier this month to indefinitely extend a ban on Iran's purchase of advanced weaponry. With the embargo set to lift in mid-October, the administration is now pushing to reimpose all sanctions on Tehran that were lifted under the nuclear deal—an effort that traditional allies France, Germany, and the United Kingdom publicly oppose. These European nations joined with Russia and China in opposing the United States.
Senior U.S. officials told the Free Beacon earlier this month that they are livid with Europe for abandoning America as it sought to extend the Iran weapons ban. The dispute spilled into public view on Tuesday, when U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Kelly Craft accused European allies of "standing in the company of terrorists." The administration shows no signs of backing down from the diplomatic fight, which is likely to elevate foreign policy issues in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election. U.S. ties to Europe have chilled in recent years due to the Trump administration's bid to pressure NATO allies into paying a greater share of the alliance's costs.
The one-sided nuclear deal didn't bring security for America, stability in the Middle East, or a change in the regime's behavior – it never will. Re-establishing the @UN Arms Embargo on Iran puts pressure Iran to behave like a normal country and come back to the bargaining table. pic.twitter.com/6FRWZUAODj
The domestic intelligence agency for the German state of Saarland added new weight to intelligence reports from its sister states that previously confirmed the Islamic Republic of Iran sought technology for weapons of mass destruction and missile carrier systems during time period of 2019.
The Jerusalem Post reviewed the 112-page intelligence report, which was released last week, titled "Overview of the situation" that addresses security threats faced by the small West German state Saarland.
"Iran, Pakistan and, to a lesser extent Syria, made efforts to procure goods and know-how for the further development of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems," wrote the intelligence officials for the Saarland.
"Delivery system" is typically defined as the capability to launch missiles. Israel, the United States and many Gulf nations believe Iran's clerical regime seeks to develop nuclear weapons.
The Post contacted the Saarland domestic intelligence agency regarding the nature of the illicit proliferation material that Iran sought in 2019. Katrin Thomas, the spokemwoman for the domestic intelligence agency wrote the the Post by email on Friday that "the Protection of the Constitution in Saarland does not pass on any information on the activities of groups or individuals.The Protection of the Constitution is the formal name of the Saarland domestic security service."
The report said that "The intelligence services of these countries are present with varying staffing levels at the respective official and semi-official representations in Germany and maintain so-called legal residencies there. This refers to the operational bases of a foreign intelligence service, disguised in an official (e.g. embassy, consulate general) or semi-official (e.g. press agency, airline) representation in the host country as a starting point for intelligence activities."
Iranian Analyst Jafar Ghannadbashi: Israel Will Destroy the UAE's Economy, Use It to Spy on the Region; Iran Could Defeat the UAE Militarily in One Hour pic.twitter.com/XoNOb78K6a
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