Elder of Ziyon 09/04 Links Pt2: Netanyahu: Kosovo to be first Muslim-majority nation to open Jerusalem embassy; 100-year old hoax: Why the ‘Protocols’ is still a hit with anti-Semites
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday that not only would Kosovo recognize Israel but it would open an embassy in Jerusalem, becoming the first Muslim-majority nation to do so.
Earlier Friday, Serbia announced that it would move its embassy to Jerusalem. The moves come as part of US-brokered discussions to normalize economic ties between Belgrade and Pristina.
After two days of meetings with Trump administration officials, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo's Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti agreed to cooperate on a range of economic fronts to attract investment and create jobs. The White House announcement provided US President Donald Trump with a diplomatic win ahead of the November presidential election and furthers his administration's push to improve Israel's international standing.
Netanyahu hailed the moves and said Israel would establish diplomatic relations with Kosovo.
A statement from Netanyahu's office said that during a meeting between Trump and Hoti, the president called Netanyahu and congratulated the two leaders on the decision to establish full diplomatic relations.
According to the statement, Hoti also announced that he would open an embassy in Jerusalem.
"Kosovo will be the first Muslim-majority nation to open an embassy in Jerusalem. As I said in recent days the circle of peace is expanding and more nations are expected to join," Netanyahu said.
Kosovo President Hashim Thaci confirmed Prisitna's intention, saying he welcomed Netanyahu's announcement "about the genuine intention to recognize Kosovo and establish diplomatic relations."
" Kosovo will keep its promise to place its diplomatic mission in Jerusalem," he tweeted.
The Palestinian Authority on Friday slammed US President Donald Trump, accusing him of orchestrating the decision by Serbia and Kosovo to establish embassies in Jerusalem to satisfy his "electoral ambitions."
During a summit at the White House between Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo's Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti to normalize economic ties between the Balkan nations, Trump announced that Serbia would move its embassy to Jerusalem and Muslim-majority Kosovo would recognize Israel and establish full diplomatic relations.
The White House announcement provided Trump with a diplomatic win ahead of the November presidential election and furthers his administration's push to improve Israel's international standing.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later revealed that Kosovo would also establish its embassy in Jerusalem, while Israel would recognize Kosovo.
Top PLO official and Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat reacted angrily to the news.
"The Trump Administration once again shows their full commitment with the violation of international law, UN resolutions and denial of Palestinian rights by encouraging nations to illegally recognize annexed Jerusalem as Israel's capital," Erakat tweeted.
"Palestine has become a victim of the electoral ambitions of President Trump, whose team would take any action, no matter how destructive for peace and a rules-based world order, to achieve his re-election," Erakat charged.
Erakat appeared to call on the Arab League and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to sanction Kosovo and Serbia, calling for "concrete measures against those who encourage crimes and violations against the land and people of Palestine."
The Biden campaign has remained silent on revelations that the father of Jacob Blake, a black man shot by police in Kenosha, Wis., posted numerous anti-Semitic messages on his social media accounts.
Biden met with Jacob Blake's family on Thursday in Kenosha following the police shooting that reignited nationwide protests, rioting, and arson.
Multiple anti-Semitic Facebook posts by Jacob Blake Sr. were exposed prior to the meeting. Blake Sr. excoriated the "Jewish media" and claimed they "control the interest rate [and] control the media they control Minds and money." In another post, he wrote, "A Jew can't tell me shit period." In another, he said, "The Jewish media picks and chooses who is a terrorists and is not."
In other posts from 2017 to 2019, Blake Sr. stated that he stood with anti-Semitic Nation of Islam Leader Louis Farrakhan, who has promoted hatred towards Jews for years. One missive stated, "A cracker jew can do whatever to a white woman for years but let a jig try it."
During his meeting with the Blake family, Biden reportedly discussed issues of racism and police violence in America. He also spoke by phone with Blake, who is still in the hospital following the shooting.
The Biden campaign, which has claimed Biden is not afraid to confront anti-Semitism among Democrats and liberals, did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the Washington Free Beacon. Biden's Jewish outreach director, Aaron Keyak, also did not respond to requests for comment about Blake Sr.'s views.
Keyak and Biden have repeatedly leveled charges of anti-Semitism and tolerance of anti-Semitism against President Donald Trump.
A Republican state representative in Louisiana was under fire this week for tweeting the same inflammatory antisemitic image that was once infamously defended by the former leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.
State Rep. Danny McCormick, of Oil City, was heavily criticized by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on Thursday after he shared a photo of an outdoor mural that caused an uproar in London several years ago before it was removed.
The mural, by the left-wing US artist Kalen Ockerman, was titled "Freedom for Humanity," and showed a group of stereotypical Jewish bankers playing a Monopoly-like board game that rested on the backs of a crowd of naked, kneeling figures.
Corbyn opposed the removal of the mural in 2012, favorably comparing Ockerman with the Mexican artist Diego Rivera. He apologized for these comments when they were uncovered six years later during the antisemitism scandals that rocked Labour under Corbyn's leadership.
On Wednesday afternoon, McCormick tweeted an altered version of the mural that included the slogan, "All we have to do is stand up."
In a message posted alongside the image, McCormick commented, "public opinion controls politics." On Thursday afternoon, following criticism, he deleted the tweet.
An anti-Semitic hoax more than a century old reared its ugly head again, as the Republican National Convention was underway last week.
Mary Ann Mendoza, a member of the advisory board of President Trump's reelection campaign, was due to speak on August 25. But she was suddenly pulled from the schedule, after she retweeted a link to a conspiracy theory about Jewish elites plotting to take over the world.
In her now-deleted tweet, Mendoza urged her roughly 40,000 followers to read a lengthy thread that warned of a plan to enslave the "goyim," or non-Jews. It included fevered denunciations of the historically wealthy Jewish family, the Rothschilds, as well as the top target of right-wing extremism today, the liberal Jewish philanthropist George Soros.
The thread also made reference to one of the most notorious hoaxes in modern history: "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion." As a scholar of American Jewish history, I know how durable this document has been as a source of the belief in Jewish conspiracies. The fact that it is still making the rounds within the fringe precincts of the political right today is testament to the longevity of this fabrication.
How the subject du jour—race—has turned into an everyday, round-the-clock issue.
Will this focus turn into revolutionary, structural change or is this really an organized and funded Marxist class war masquerading as anti-racism?
Will working poor, impoverished, bourgeois, or super-wealthy black folk be better off when every single statue in the public square has been toppled; when every college classroom has been newly re-segregated; when small African-American businesses have been set on fire and forced to close down; and when a defunded and openly despised police force cannot rescue black people from black criminals?
Does this virtue-signaling racism include Muslim hatred towards and enslavement of black Africans and the historical role black Africans played in the international slave trade?
Does it include the historical and contemporary Muslim persecution and enslavement of white and dark-skinned Christians, of central Asian Buddhists—and of "brown" Hindus and Sikhs today?
Why has the American mass media, especially the New York Times, increasingly been publishing mainly photos and pieces about both ordinary and extraordinary African-Americans? And in every conceivable section: The news, Op-Eds, Obits, Arts, Books, Food, Sports (of course), and in the Sunday magazine, etc., day after day, week after week, month after month?
I was initially surprised, then pleased (all those years of mainly white faces, in their pages, right?, it's only fair, right? ), but now I feel that this incessant display is rather heavy-handed propaganda, pure indoctrination into the false 1619 narrative, perhaps even meant as intimidation, another version of bullying mobs in the street.
I await a series of articles with photographs of Jews of color, both in Israel, but also in India, and all over Europe and North America. True: Most people on Planet Earth are not Caucasian and are not living in the West. We white folk need to be educated about this, preferably in school, and early on. But in a newspaper? And one that increasingly resembles a computer screen, or Cliff Notes on everything from the Presidential election to Race.
The good news: Israel has, more or less, been knocked off the front pages—off all the pages—as scapegoats, targets, subjects of infamy.
Alberto Fernandez, vice-president of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), spoke to participants in a July 13 Middle East Forum webinar (video) about Arabic satellite TV channels in the Middle East.
The most influential Arabic TV channels fall into three main categories: media outlets funded directly by authoritarian regimes in the region that "generally mimic the[ir] foreign policy goals" (e.g. Saudi-funded Al Arabiya, UAE-funded Sky News Arabia, and Qatari-funded Al Jazeera); Islamic religious channels (including Salafi and pro-Muslim-Brotherhood Islamist outlets); and channels funded by actors outside of the Arab world (e.g. the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Russia, Iran, and Turkey).
Turkey has developed a "very aggressive" Arabic media footprint in the last six years, said Fernandez, with over a dozen major Islamist channels broadcasting to the Arab world. Since the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood-led government of President Mohamed Morsi in Egypt in 2013, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has established numerous Turkey-based channels, which disseminate anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-Western content across the region. Qatari financing plays a major role in their operations. While there are smaller Salafi channels in Egypt that preach anti-Semitic and anti-Shia content, Turkey has become the "new promoter ... of radical [Sunni] Islamist media content in Arabic to the Arab world."
Qatar's Al Jazeera, begun in 1996, is the "most notorious" of the Mideast channels. Its audience appeal is based upon its in-depth coverage of significant news events since the late 1990s, especially the rise of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, the U.S.-led war in Iraq, Hezbollah's 2006 war against Israel, Israel's 2008 Operation Cast Lead against Hamas, the 2011 "Arab Spring," and the civil war in Syria. Its coverage was uniformly anti-American and anti-Israeli, and then increasingly biased against rival Arab governments in keeping with Qatar's foreign policy agenda. "There's a ... near 100% correlation between Al Jazeera's editorial line ... and the foreign policy line of the state of Qatar," said Fernandez.
Al Jazeera's ideological bent is Islamist and pan-Arab. It owes its success to taking the discourse about Islamist politics already occurring "off-screen" in Arab societies and "mainstream[ing] the discourse. ... Al Jazeera put it front and center and made it credible and ... respectable."
Is that so? "Jews were not targeted because they were Jewish. They were targeted because they have all the money," is not quite the defense of anti-Semitic violence that Osterweil apparently thinks it is. Or maybe it is exactly the defense the author thinks it is, which then justifies my referring earlier to the pro-looting activist as a gigantic anti-Semite.
Did anyone at NPR read the book, which includes a chapter titled "All Cops Are Bastards"? Did no one at NPR question the wisdom of elevating an activist whose Twitter handle even bears the acronym for "All Cops Are Bastards"? Did it not occur to anyone that, instead of elevating a provocative but worthwhile voice, they were actually amplifying an ignorant bigot with no basic understanding of history or community?
Apparently not, which is why NPR is in the embarrassing position this week of having to issue mea culpas for what was always an extremely avoidable fiasco.
"This piece was fact-checked, but we should have done more," Code Switch editor Steve Drummond said of the interview, which has been updated to correct Osterweil's many false assertions.
But even with the corrections, NPR's McBride explained Thursday, "this failure to challenge this author's statements is harmful on two levels. Publishing false information leaves the audience misinformed. On top of that, news consumers are watching closely to see who is challenged and who isn't."
She adds, "In this case a book author with a radical point of view far to the left was allowed to spread false information. Casual observers might conclude that NPR is more interested in fact-checking conservative viewpoints than liberal viewpoints. Or possibly, that bias on the part of NPR staff interferes with their judgment when spotting suspect information."
Of course, alongside its desire to show things that are of historical importance, Charlie Hebdo is republishing the cartoons in order to demonstrate that no one, not even threatening radical Islamists, should be allowed to curb or chill freedom of speech. As its editorial says, 'We will never lie down. We will never give up.'
This is a message not only to intolerant Islamists, but also to the intellectual elites of Europe. They said 'Je suis Charlie' for about five minutes in 2015, before then going back to their old view that un-PC speech is a problem, that criticism of Islam is 'Islamophobia', and that campuses and public life in general should be cleansed of so-called transphobic, homophobic and other offensive forms of speech. Charlie Hebdo is confronting the cowardice of the cultural elites as much as (if not more than) it is saying another 'screw you' to radical Islamist movements that think they can use menace to prevent the expression of ideas they don't like.
Indeed, as the trial of the alleged accomplices begins this week, it is worth asking whether there were other accomplices to the Charlie Hebdo massacre, too. Not violent accomplices; not people who provided logistics and weaponry, as these 14 are accused of doing. No, intellectual accomplices, moral accomplices, a cultural worldview that had already demonised and even criminalised 'offensive' speech and 'hate speech' long before the two gunmen stormed the Charlie Hebdo offices. This massacre didn't happen in a vacuum. It happened at a time when PC censorship was growing, censorious wokeness was emerging, and the bizarre idea that people have the right not to be offended was being institutionalised in universities and in political circles.
Our intellectual elites have a great deal to answer for. They have abandoned the ideal of freedom and especially freedom of speech. They have rebranded certain moral views, political opinions and even biological facts as 'hate speech' deserving of punishment. They have mainstreamed the idea that questioning Islam and its practices is 'Islamophobia', a fancy term for blasphemy. They have helped to nurture a climate across Europe where you can be No Platformed from campuses for expressing unorthodox views on anything from immigration to climate change, where people have been arrested and fined for mocking Islam or denouncing homosexuality as a crime against nature, and where 'wrongthink' is cleansed from social media on a daily basis.
This machinery of political correctness was also an accomplice to the events in Paris in 2015. That massacre can be seen as the armed wing of political correctness, the nadir of the reactionary, regressive idea that people and ideologies have the right never to be questioned or ridiculed, and that anyone who does question or ridicule them deserves to be punished – whether that is by being hounded, sacked, arrested or, in the one-step-further outlook of the Islamist killers of January 2015, murdered.
Charlie Hebdo is right to continue insisting that freedom of speech, including the right to offend, is something really worth fighting for. Whether this freedom is being undermined by armed gunmen, government censorship or woke mobs, we all suffer when the liberty to express ourselves is betrayed. So let's say it again: Je suis Charlie.
A primary suspect in the trial over the 2015 massacres at satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a Kosher supermarket in Paris denied on Friday any responsibility for the attacks carried out by jihadists, one of whom was a close associate.
Ali Riza Polat, a 35-year-old Franco-Turkish man, was jailed a few weeks after the terror attack that stunned France, with investigators saying he tried to flee the country several times heading for Syria.
"I am innocent!" Polat told the court, his head shaved and his face hidden behind a cloth mask.
"I'm here because certain people, lying squealers, said all sorts of nonsense… but they're lying," he said.
@UNWatch speaks for many in expressing anger at @kenroth's 27-yr reign of hate under #HumanRights facade: "contemptuous actions, comments & attitude toward Jews, Judaism and the Jewish state make one thing clear: you are ashamed of your Jewish identity." https://t.co/uYiKPHYsRl
Throughout the month of August 2020, seventeen written or filmed reports relating to Israel and/or the Palestinians appeared on the BBC News website's 'Middle East' page, some of which were also published on other pages and one of which was carried over from the previous month.
In short, 41% of the reports appearing on the BBC News website's 'Middle East' page throughout August related to the normalisation agreement between Israel and the UAE. All three of the items concerning Palestinian affairs related to health issues and included promotion of Israeli counter-terrorism measures as a contributing factor but once again BBC audiences saw no meaningful coverage of social, economic or legal issues in Palestinian society.
In an effort to paint Israel as a country undergoing an historic self-implosion and turmoil, Louis Delvoie engaged in mental acrobatics and drafted a fiction in his August 15 Kingston Whig-Standard commentary entitled: "Chaos in Israel".
While Israel, like most countries, is struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic, but despite its challenges, Israel is fairing comparatively well with a rate of death per million citizens that is well below that of most developed countries in the Western world, including Canada.
Nearly every day, Israeli researchers and scientists are announcing new progress in the scientific fight against the deadly coronavirus pandemic, ranging from promising vaccine clinical trials and treatments, and most recently, a gargle test which, with 95 percent accuracy, is able to produce COVID test results in only one second.
Beyond Israel's borders, the Jewish state and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced they will be soon be launching full diplomatic relations, in a historic first. The UAE is an influential Gulf Arab state, a significant exporter of petroleum around the world, and the news of the diplomatic breakthrough is a major sign that Israel, far from being the pariah state as Delvoie describes it as being, in fact is enjoying a never-before seen breakthrough in normalizing relations with the broader Arab world.
In fact, Israel's detente the UAE may be just the tip of the iceberg. This past week, the president of Lebanon, Michel Aoun – a country still technically in a state of war with Israel – publicly mused about accepting a peace agreement with Israel. Such words would have been extraordinarily unlikely even a few years ago. Meanwhile, Bahrain, Oman, Morocco, Kuwait and even Saudi Arabia and inching towards making peace with Israel. So much for Delvoie's argument that Israel is isolated.
Failing to clarify to listeners that the chronic shortage of medical supplies in the Gaza Strip is rooted in long-standing infighting between Hamas and Fatah, Iqbal turned to another topic.
Iqbal: "On top of what you have just outlined there is also the issue of the lack of electricity for 20 hours a day."
Al-Haj: "Yeah this is a chronic problem very certainly. But the acute thing of this problem is that it has deteriorated. It was 8 hours on, 8 hours off. Now it is 4 hours on and almost 16 hours or more off. Some of our hospitals last year we connected them to the main lines of electricity in order to save them but at least 50% of our facilities are still not connected to those main lines so they are exposed to those cut off for 16 hours. That's we are need for a huge amount of fuel in order to run the generators. I mean now the ministry of health declare that there is a need for 400,000 liters per month for fuel and we are facing the Covid 19, we are opening more quarantine centres. The considerable number of our doctors and nurses have been infected when they don't know that they are dealing with cases who are infected before discovery of the first case."
Iqbal made no effort to remind listeners that the "chronic problem" of electricity supply in the Gaza Strip (which made BBC headlines in 2017) is likewise rooted in Hamas' dispute with the Palestinian Authority. She went on to make a curious reference to "a period of 48 hours" for which no supporting evidence was given.
Iqbal: "You're painting a picture that suggests that this situation could go out of control very quickly; in fact within a period of 48 hours. What is it that you need from aid agencies, the outside world, that you are not getting because the whole of Gaza and its 2 million residents are now under lockdown?"
Al-Haj: "We need urgent assistance of materials and intensive care equipment and the medications. Also on top of that, as soon as possible we need from the Israeli side to permit fuel to enter Gaza, to pass to Gaza, in order to work the only station of electricity in Gaza. Just to return the situation as before – 8 hours on, 8 hours off – at least the situation will be better than now."
Listeners were not told that the stoppage of fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip came in response to the hundreds of terror attacks using incendiary balloons, airborne explosive devices and rockets launched from the territory with the approval of the same terrorist organisation which runs the ministry that employs Iqbal's interviewee.
Iqbal: "But presumably that is very unlikely to happen given the tensions between those people who run Gaza – Hamas – and the Israeli security services."
Al-Haj: "Yeah."
Iqbal: "There has been a real spike in tensions in the last two weeks."
According to Lockheed Martin, US allies who have or are procuring F-35's are Israel, Japan, South Korea, Poland and Belgium.
CAMERA contacted Reuters about the error yesterday but as of this writing the articles have yet to be corrected.
The Jerusalem Post and Israel Hayom, which both ran Reuters stories with the incorrect claim, both commendably corrected yesterday in response to communication from CAMERA. In addition to the inaccurate claim within the article itself, the error had also appeared in Post's subheadline: "The United States has sold the F-35 to allies including Turkey, South Korea, Japan and Israel."
Following communication from CAMERA, The Post amended the subheadline and article to accurately report: The United States has sold the F-35 to allies including South Korea, Japan and Israel. A previous sale to Turkey was canceled after Ankara decided to purchase advanced Russian-made air defense systems.
Israel Hayom commendably deleted the erroneous reference of a sales to Turkey. Neither The Post nor Israel Hayom, however, appended a correction notifying readers of the change, a standard journalistic practice.
Stay tuned for an update about a correction from Reuters.
— The Mossad: Espionage at = 2 metres (@TheMossadIL) September 4, 2020
Dear @scholasticuk please read above I don't think that the author Roald Dahl needs to be put as a special day for children to read his books, yet parents have no clue he was a racist antisemite ? Surely a warning inside the books would suffice ? pic.twitter.com/hjQWfTqx0m
The European Union's top counter-terrorism official has voiced concern regarding an increase in antisemitic rhetoric and actions during the global coronavirus crisis.
"Violence against minorities ‐‐ particularly Jews ‐‐ has increased during the pandemic," Gilles de Kerchove — the EU's counter-terrorism coordinator — observed in an extensive interview with the Combating Terrorism Center of the United States Military Academy at West Point.
"We need to tackle these problems and counter antisemitic hate speech and violence," de Kerchove said.
A former law professor from Belgium who has been in his position since 2007, de Kerchove was candid in his analysis of how Islamism, the far left and the far right dovetail around certain subjects — particularly hostile attitudes to Jews.
"It is a lot about a rejection of globalization," he said. "It is often about projecting a black-and-white vision of the world, hatred of Jews and antisemitism."
De Kerchove emphasized that antisemitism was "not just linked to the right-wing, by the way; Islamist extremism is a case in point, but there is a strong strain of antisemitism on the far left as well."
He argued that leftist antisemitism was "linked to anti-Zionism and an anti-[Israeli PM Benjamin] Netanyahu feeling rather than the exact same strands of ideology linked to the far right."
The Catholic archbishop of the French city of Strasbourg has issued an emotional appeal to his fellow Christians to confront rising antisemitism, which he compared to the environmental crisis facing the Earth.
"Silence supports [those who commit antisemitic offenses], indifference feeds them," Bishop Luc Ravel said in his message on Friday.
Ravel was moved to speak out by the recent assault in Strasbourg on Raphael Nisand, a Jewish graphic artist. Nisand was accosted by two people who showered him with antisemitic abuse while he was working on a project commissioned by the City Council.
During the incident on Aug. 27, the two individuals verbally insulted and jostled Nisand after they noticed him wearing a t-shirt that displayed the names of several countries and cities, including Israel.
One of the assailants aggressively told Nisand, "You are a Jew, you have no place here," before ordering the frightened artist to change his shirt ‐‐ which he duly did.
But when he returned later to complete his work, Nisand was confronted again by the same man, who grabbed one of his paint canisters and sprayed offensive slogans on the ground, including, "Forbidden to Jews," "Bitch," and, "You can believe in Christ and the Prophet but not the Jews."
Antisemitism Cow is a Twitter user who, in their own words, "is a simple cow that moos at antisemitic stuff." Antisemitism Cow joined Twitter in June of this year and has spent their time on the social media website mooing in all caps at antisemitic tweets and comments.
The user, whose profile picture and cover photo are both of cows, responds to antisemitic content on the platform, sometimes commenting, but generally retweeting antisemitic content with an added moo comment.
Antisemitism cow has amassed over 12,500 followers, many of whom came to its defense when antisemitic Twitter users tried to publish the personal details of the person they thought was behind the account, according to the Forward.
In a show of support for Antisemitism Cow, scores of fans and followers claimed to be the person behind the account.
When asked what it wanted its followers to know about hate speech on social media, Antisemitism Cow didn't give a straight answer but, rather cryptically, sent the Forward two articles in response to the question.
The first, an article from The Verge, asserts that "not feeding the trolls" or ignoring online hate, only exacerbates online abuse.
Fortune, the US-based multinational business magazine, has named four Israelis in its 2020 "40 under 40 list," its annual ranking of the most "extraordinarily important and influential" young people in business.
This year's ranking has been expanded, and highlights a total of 200 people — 40 influential people in each of five categories: finance, technology, healthcare, government and politics, and media and entertainment.
"There are just so many stars throughout the industry that deserve recognition," said Fortune's editors and writers in presenting the ranking on the website. They were chosen not just because of their current title and position, but because of the "scope and trajectory" of their career and their influence on the industry, and because they have an "outsized amount of potential for future creation and achievement," Fortune said.
The Israelis included are:
Nir Bar Dea, 38, is listed in the Finance category. He is the co-head of Bridgewater Associates, a hedge fund with $138 billion in assets, and which is "by far the largest in the world," Fortune said.
"After serving in the Israeli special forces, Bar Dea landed at Bridgewater just over five years ago, but has quickly ascended through the ranks," Fortune said. Since starting as a management associate in the research department of the hedge fund, Bar Dea "has risen to oversee a team of more than 500 people, connecting the firm's exhaustive quant research and technology to plug into the algorithms that underpin Bridgewater's trading."
Untold Story of Life-Saving 'Iron Dome' Rocket Defense Revealed in New Documentary
Producer Nati Dinnar on his new documentary, "Iron Dome," which tells the untold story of Israel's incredible life-saving technology.
Israel's Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) has reached its highest peak in 27 years, according to a KAN news report on Thursday.
The report noted that a contributing factor to the precipitous rise has been heavy rain falls over the past two years, contributing to a revitalization of the freshwater lake's ecosystem.
A water level rise of this type has not been seen since 2003. Since the end of winter, the Kinneret's water level has dropped by 64 centimeters, well above the previous years average when measured during the same time of year.
Meanwhile, Israelis have been visiting the Kinneret in droves throughout the summer, due to ongoing travel restrictions as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
In May, the Kinneret Urban Union announced that the 15 beaches which comprise the Kinneret Union reached full capacity, with an estimated 35,000 people, crowding the area.
Similarly, in early August, the beaches of Shikmim, Lavnun and Kinar beaches were closed for swimmers during the day because of overcrowding, and in order to prevent the further spread of coronavirus.
This year alone, Australia battled its largest-ever bushfire, California has more than 500 blazes burning, many of them mega fires, and forest fires have been reported in 14 other US states. In August, Argentina registered 8,493 fire alerts and Cyprus wasn't far behind.
The frequency and intensity of wildfires is growing across the globe. Reasons include hotter and drier weather, poor land use management and human negligence.
Israel's worst fire was in December 2010 in the Carmel Forest when 44 people died in the blaze. It was a wakeup call for the state, forcing authorities to rethink strategies, and bringing the dangers of wildfire to everyone's attention. It even motivated employees at the nearby Google office in Haifa to build the company's first crisis alert product.
Since 2018, the country's professional and volunteer firefighters and foresters have not only had to tackle regular forest fires, but also had their hands full with daily terrorist arson attacks launched from Gaza on southern Israel.
In August alone, more than 450 such fires burned almost 495 acres of Western Negev forest, not counting agricultural fields. Over the last couple of years thousands of acres of Israeli parks, fields, and forests have been reduced to ash.
"The difference between Israel and other places is the size of the country, the density of the population and long periods of dry windy weather," says Prof. Avi Perevolotsky, former chief scientist at the Israel Nature and Parks Authority (INPA) and a retired Volcani Research Center specialist in natural resources management.
"We don't have large areas like in Australia that can burn for days without damaging population centers."
With such an obvious and dangerous growing problem, it's no surprise that Israeli thinkers, innovators and aid experts are devoting a great deal of time and energy in the hunt for solutions that will do anything from prevention and early warning to fighting the fires itself. It's also no surprise that these solutions are now attracting the attention of people all over the world.
"We try to think out of the box," says Shay Levy, head of the National Fire and Rescue Authority's Wildfire Doctrine Department and a renowned lecturer on forest fires.
Check out the best solutions below.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
I found the original photo and it is of Manar Shweiki, a 16 year old girl who hid a knife in her schoolbag to stab Israelis. She was sentenced to six years in prison under a plea agreement and was released last December.
People automatically believe captions made up by anti-Israel propagandists. Students should really be taught critical thinking starting in first grade, because very few people seem to have that skillset.
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.
Why do so many well-meaning people committed to ending abuses of power ignore the evidence of who is actually committing these abuses and blame their victims instead?
An official investigation funded by Britain and the European Union into textbooks used in Palestinian schools has descended into farce.
In April 2018, finally responding to concerns about anti-Israel incitement in Palestinian-Arab schools, the United Kingdom pushed the EU to commission a report on Palestinian textbooks from the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research in Germany.
In April last year, the Institute published as a preliminary what it called its "Inception Report." This, it said, developed a framework for "an academically rigorous review" of "how peace, tolerance and an understanding of the other are incorporated into Palestinian textbooks."
This report, however, was itself riddled with so many mistakes that the European Union ditched it. Bafflingly, however, the EU has continued to use the Georg Eckert Institute to finish the project.
Its final report is due out next month. But it has now produced an interim report, which the EU is choosing to keep secret.
Marcus Sheff, chief executive of the Jerusalem-based Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education, managed to obtain a presentation of this interim report. This has shown the project lurching from bad to worse.
Calling the review "a comedy of errors from start to finish," Sheff says the researchers have looked at the wrong textbooks. They have actually used as examples textbooks that are used in Israel's Arab schools in Jerusalem, praising them and presenting them falsely as part of the Palestinian Authority's curriculum.
On the basis of this egregious mistake, the researchers have claimed that the Palestinians' educational materials have been "transformed" for the better.
They make no mention of the vile language and images used in many of the Palestinian textbooks, such as describing the burning of Jewish bus passengers with Molotov cocktails as a "barbecue party," or teaching Arabic through a story promoting suicide bombings and illustrated by a Palestinian gunman shooting Israeli soldiers in a tank.
A Republican member of Congress has slammed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden for pledging to restore US funding to the Palestinians in accordance with the Taylor Force Act, calling Biden's pledge a display of "mental incoherence."
"You can't restore funding to the Palestinians and comply with the Taylor Force Act except for some very, very limited humanitarian types of funding," Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) told JNS in a recent interview. "Basically, if you agree with the sentiment behind the Taylor Force Act, you don't restore funding to the Palestinians."
"I think Joe Biden is showing some mental incoherence when he says something like that," he said.
Lamborn introduced a version of the Taylor Force Act in 2017 and a version of it passed Congress and became law in March 2018, cutting off virtually all US funding to the Palestinian Authority due to it financially rewarding terrorists and their families. It requires the secretary of state to verify that the PA has taken certain steps to stop such activity in addition to other requirements.
Lamborn warned that a Biden administration could try to certify that the PA is taking those concrete steps against rewarding terrorism, even if Ramallah isn't actually doing so.
"There might be people out there in a Biden administration who would try to do that," he said. "We would have to be diligent to watch over them and get oversight in trying to permit them from doing something that would be dishonest like that."
Stuart Force, whose son Taylor was killed by Palestinian terrorists during a visit to Israel, is urging former Vice President Joe Biden not to resume assistance to the Palestinian Authority (PA) if elected in November.
In a campaign launched by the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) on Monday, Force defended the Taylor Force Act, named after his son. The law, passed by Republicans in 2018, prevents the PA from receiving economic assistance from the United States until it dismantles the Palestinian Authority Martyr's Fund. Known as the "Pay to Slay" policy, the fund gives monthly-payments to the family of individuals killed committing terrorist acts against Israeli or American citizens.
"Our son, Taylor, was stabbed to death, while visiting Israel by a Palestinian terrorist. The terrorist's family became eligible immediately for a monthly payment, for life, for killing an Israeli or American," Force says in a new ad. "U.S. taxpayers sent hundreds of millions of dollars to the PA, which they use to fund those payments."
"There is talk that some politicians want to resume sending U.S. tax dollars to the PA, even though they have refused to end their 'Pay to Slay' policy," Force says, as a photo flashes across the screen of Biden shaking hand with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority.
Joe Biden says he'll reinstate funding for terrorist Palestinian Authority (PA) which pays Palestinians to murder Americans & Jews. Sending US tax dollars to the Palestinian Authority will enable the PA to finance the murder of more innocent Jews and Americans.#SayItAintSoJoepic.twitter.com/IRKBpqCmyg
Two major books envisioning a better future for Israel were published in 1993: The New Middle East, by Shimon Peres, foreign minister at the time, and A Place Among the Nations, by then-opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu.
Both saw a future in which Israel had relations with many more of the world's nations than it had at the time, just as the Oslo peace process began, but they had a core disagreement on how they thought this would happen.
Peres wrote his book after the high of the Oslo Accords, which he believed would reshape the region for better, while Netanyahu named his chapter on the accords "Trojan Horse," believing that it was a danger to Israel.
"At the heart of the conflict that has been going on for some 100 years," Peres wrote, "a conflict that escalated with the founding of the State of Israel 45 years ago, stands the Palestinian matter."
If Israel makes peace with the Palestinians, then the rest of the Arab world will follow, and "open the way for a fundamental transformation," creating the titular new Middle East, he posited.
Peres held this position for the rest of his life, even negotiating with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas when he was president of Israel and Netanyahu was prime minister. It was a view that made him an international superstar. He had a lot of support behind it, from politicians around the world and the experts in their think tanks. The 2002 Arab Peace Plan was predicated on that very idea, that the Arab League states would have official relations with Israel only if there is a two-state solution to their liking.
The historic agreement between the United Arab Emirates and Israel is a direct continuation of the profound changes in the Middle East that have been quietly taking place in recent years. The Israeli-Arab conflict is starting to come apart before our very eyes, and Israel finds itself in a place of honor in the moderate Sunni camp against the extremist Shiites.
Located between these two groups are several sub-groups, including the Palestinian Authority and the Muslim Brotherhood (Qatar, Turkey, Hamas). The PA is sometimes backed by the moderate Sunni camp, especially by the countries bordering Israel (Jordan and Egypt), although sometimes they, too, lose interest.
As for the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters, Turkey still maintains diplomatic relations with Israel; Qatar is officially mediating between Israel and Hamas – with its representative, Mohamed al-Emadi, meeting openly with Israeli security agency and IDF personnel; and even Hamas may no longer be quite what it used to be.
The most prominent symbol of this apparent, tentative Hamas shift — from terrorist group to governing authority that sometimes takes up the "mantle of terror" — is its all-powerful leader in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied on Friday that he had privately removed any opposition to the sale of American F-35 fighter jets and radar-blocking planes to the United Arab Emirates as part of the normalization deal, saying it was a "false allegation."
"Repeating a false allegation against Prime Minister Netanyahu does not make it true," the Prime Minister's Office said in a statement. "At no point in the talks with the United States leading to the historic breakthrough with the United Arab Emirates on August 13 did the prime minister give Israel's consent to the sale of advanced weapons to the Emirates."
The response came after a New York Times report on Thursday said the premier privately stopped opposing the sale of the planes to Abu Dhabi, despite repeated public assurances that he is against the deal.
Yesh Atid-Telem MK Moshe Ya'alon, a former defense minister under Netanyahu and IDF chief of staff, asked for the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee to discuss the UAE's purchase of F-35s.
"I intend to demand close parliamentary oversight of the strategic dialogue between Israel and the US. This dialogue can't be managed any longer by Netanyahu and the national security adviser [Meir Ben-Shabbat] because there's a heavy suspicion that the decisions being made are tainted with considerations not in line with the strategic interests of Israel," Ya'alon was quoted saying by the Walla news site.
The report, which cited unnamed sources involved in the talks, claimed that along with the ultra-advanced jets and Reaper drones, the deal also includes radar-blocking EA-18G Growler jets, which could erode the effectiveness of Israel's air defense capabilities and put the UAE at a considerable military advantage.
Flights between Israel and the United Arab Emirates will be able to fly over Bahrain after the kingdom on Thursday said all services to and from the UAE can cross its airspace.
The decision, which the kingdom's aviation authority said came at the request of the UAE, follows a historic agreement last month between Abu Dhabi and Israel to normalize ties.
In August, Israel's intelligence minister said Bahrain and Oman could be the next Gulf countries to follow the United Arab Emirates in formalizing ties with Israel.
"All flights to and from the UAE can use Bahrain airspace," state news agency reported on Thursday, citing the aviation authority, without mentioning Israel.
The decision cuts flying time between the Middle East states by several hours.
Serbia announced Friday that it would move its embassy to Jerusalem, while Muslim majority Kosovo is to recognize Israel. The moves come as part of US-brokered discussions to normalize economic ties between Belgrade and Pristina.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the moves and said Israel would establish diplomatic relations with Kosovo.
After two days of meetings with Trump administration officials, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo's Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti agreed to cooperate on a range of economic fronts to attract investment and create jobs. The White House announcement provided US President Donald Trump with a diplomatic win ahead of the November presidential election and furthers his administration's push to improve Israel's international standing.
"Truly, it is historic," Trump said, standing alongside the two leaders in the Oval Office. "I look forward to going to both countries in the not too distant future."
Serbia's decision to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is a nod to both Israel and the United States. The Trump administration recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital in late 2017 and moved the US embassy there in May 2018.
Were it not for the agreement reached between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud and Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz's Blue and White party on Monday night, Israelis would have gone to the polls in November.
Despite Israel's crisis being solved, some 300,000 Israelis can still exercise their democratic right to cast ballots in an election in November.
That is roughly the number of residents of Israel who are eligible to vote by absentee ballot in the November 3 election in the United States. Four years ago, there was a high-profile campaign in Israel for then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Stickers bearing Trump's name in Hebrew were handed out in Israeli malls, and the president addressed a campaign rally in Jerusalem's Old City by video.
This time, Americans in Israel have been relatively silent about the US election, when they really should be shouting out loud and going to vote in droves.
On the one hand, it is understandable why there was such so much more enthusiasm and motivation about voting four years ago. Americans who care about Israel had just endured eight years of Barack Obama and Joe Biden in power and saw the way they advanced a deal with Iran while throwing Israel under the bus at the United Nations.
They had every right to be terrified that Obama's secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, would continue his policies that endangered Israel's future existence and the special relationship between Israel and the United States.
US National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien said the Trump administration is committed to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"We want to see the Palestinians in their own state with their own government, hopefully a democratic government, and one that thrives economically alongside Israel," O'Brien told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt in an interview broadcast Thursday.
He said the Palestinians had a "unique opportunity" to reach a peace agreement with Israel under US President Donald Trump and that "he'd love to get a great deal done" for them.
"And we've got a lot of credibility with the negotiations to work with our Israeli friends to make sure that happens. And so this is an opportunity for the Palestinians to come to the table and get a great deal for themselves," he said.
O'Brien was speaking after visiting Israel and the United Arab Emirates this week to follow up on the US-brokered agreement between the countries to normalize diplomatic ties. As part of the normalization deal, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to shelve his campaign pledge to annex the 30 percent of the West Bank slated for Israel under Trump's peace plan.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has rejected the US peace proposal, which provides for the conditional establishment of a Palestinian state on the rest of the West Bank territory and in the Gaza Strip, with some additional territory inside Israel. He has also railed at the UAE for agreeing to normalize ties with Israel before a Palestinian state is established.
As an American-born Jew living in Israel, I find the divide between American and Israeli Jews on Israel incredibly frustrating. I believe that there is such a great divide between American and Israeli Jews when it comes to Israel because we are envisioning two different Israels. The American view of Israel is stuck in the 1990s, at the high point of the optimism of the Oslo Peace Process. Most Israelis have abandoned that vision, while American Jews overwhelmingly still support it. It seems that the few remaining Israelis who view Israel with the rose-colored optimism of the mid-90s live outside of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). It is rare to find an Israeli within or near Judea and Samaria who views things the same way.
In today's discussion about Israel there are two Israels. The first Israel, "Israel One" is a strong, secure and growing Israel. The second Israel, "Israel Two," is a moral, just and equal Israel. These two Israels aren't mutually exclusive of each other; they coexist, but Zionists in America and Israel focus on the Israel that resonates with their values.
The advocates of "Israel One" focus on Israel's security. They will spend more time talking about the threats that Israel faces. They will advocate growing Israel's footprint on the land of Israel, including in Judea and Samaria. They will be excited about Israel's global influence and point to this new influence as a proof to the success of their position.
The advocates of "Israel Two" focus on Israel's treatment of Palestinians, Israel's Arab citizens and minorities in Israel. They want to ensure that all of Israel's policies and actions treat all people within Israel and under Israel's control equally, including non-citizens. For most of the "Israel Two" advocates, they see equality in Israel fulfilled by the creation of a Palestinian state and the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict coming through the two state solution.
The decision to suspend annexation almost automatically resurrected the pre-1967 line in the West Bank, excluding in Jerusalem. This transition last month was swift and sudden, because the two concepts are opposite sides of the same conceptional coin.
One either operates within a conversation about the application of sovereignty or within a dialogue about a two-state solution at the pre-1967 lines.
That is because the West Bank's Area C, where over 700,000 Israelis and Palestinians live, cannot be frozen in time.
The going wisdom of US President Donald Trump's regional peace plan as it has now unfolded, is to hold the West Bank in some suspended reality, to be handed out by priority to whichever side is most compliant with the process.
Ideally, settlers and the Israeli Right should simply wait until the process is done, knowing that sovereignty awaits them like some golden cup prize at the end of the race.
The problem has little to do with the issue of political trust that would result in this prize being theirs. Every day – in what is otherwise known as the battle for Area C – Palestinians and Israelis engage in activities in the West Bank that either help strengthen an inevitable annexation or assist in ensuring a two-state solution at the pre-1967 line.
The response to Trump's executive order demonstrated the potential for backlash from sanctions. ICC chief judge Chile Eboe-Osuji declared the ICC is "undeterred" by what he called a "grotesque" executive order contrary to international law. Meanwhile, 67 ICC member nations issued a joint statement rallying around the Court and promising it their "full support."
The furor generated overseas and in the United States by the executive order and sanctions have obscured the strong bipartisan support in Washington for the view that the ICC investigations of the United States and Israel are illegitimate and should be halted. For example, Obama administration lead officials for ICC and detainee issues have asserted the two investigations are not legitimately within the ICC's legal purview. In May, 262 House members, led by Elaine Luria (D-VA) and Mike Gallagher (R-WI), asserted that the ICC does not have "legitimate jurisdiction" in the two cases, and urged the ICC to "cease its politically motivated investigations into the United States and Israel." Meanwhile, 69 Senators, led by Rob Portman (R-OH) and Ben Cardin (D-MD), asserted the ICC does not have "legitimate jurisdiction" in the Israel case and opposed that case's "dangerous politicization of the Court."
The stakes for U.S. and Israeli security are high. The Military Coalition, representing more than 5.5 million current and former U.S. service members, recently warned the ICC investigation of the United States "could lead to the arrest, prosecution, and detention of American military personnel and veterans in foreign countries." Experts have speculated that the ICC could indict former president George W. Bush and former CIA directors including George Tenet and current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Israel faces similar risks. Its government has reportedly prepared a list of several hundred current and former Israeli officials, including the prime minister, who could be subject to arrest abroad if the ICC moves forward against Israel.
The United States can more effectively attempt to block the ICC's illegitimate investigations by building on bipartisan support at home and leveraging common ground with allies. The United States should emphasize that potential ICC steps forthcoming in 2020 that are hostile to American interests could cause damage to the court's relationship with the United States that would outlast the current administration.
In recent years, more than half the ICC's €155 million annual budget has come from a handful of close U.S. allies: Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Canada, and Spain. These allies can remind the ICC of the substantively strong arguments that its investigations of the United States and Israel are contrary to the ICC's own rules and clash with its founding principles. By steering the ICC away from confrontation with the United States, these allies can protect their own overseas military personnel from problematic precedents.
By December, the ICC will elect a new chief prosecutor and may take pivotal steps in its investigations of the United States and Israel. A sophisticated, measured, and bipartisan U.S. strategy could help point the ICC in the right direction for the next decade.
The death toll from coronavirus since the start of the epidemic in Israel stood at 991 on Friday morning following three more deaths after midnight Thursday, the Health Ministry reported.
In total, the number of Israelis who have contracted coronavirus stood at 125,755, 2,766 of whom were identified from Thursday to Friday. The rate of positive test results for that same period stood at 6.3%, or 666 positives from 10,751 tests processed.
As of Friday, there were 25,277 active or symptomatic coronavirus patients in Israel, with 828 hospitalized. Of the hospitalized patients, 416 were listed in serious condition, including 123 on ventilators. Another 131 patients were listed in moderate condition.
There were 2,140 medical workers in quarantine, including 333 doctors, 589 nurses, and 1,218 members of other health care professions.
Israel's national coordinator of the battle against coronavirus Professor Ronni Gamzu has issued a clarification about the partial lockdown set to begin Sunday in cities, towns, and local authorities designated "red" under the traffic light system.
Gamzu put out a statement on Friday explaining that the decision to instate a full lockdown would apply only to "the eight towns with especially high infection rates." However, a list of the cities deemed "especially high" would be compiled only this weekend, and subject to cabinet approval on Sunday, the statement said.
The statement noted that "the decision by the Corona cabinet gives the team of experts under Professor Gamzu the authority to expand the list of red cities that will come under a full lockdown."
With COVID-19 infections at all-time highs, the government earlier this week published regulations for prayer services during the High Holy Days.
The new regulations apply for the rest of the Jewish month of Elul and the High Holy Days.
Prayer services are being permitted indoors as long as the synagogue or prayer space is at least 40 square meters in size. The maximum occupancy cannot exceed one person per four square meters, a large space permitting relatively few worshipers in such buildings.
The maximum total occupancy of any building is 1,000 people, although few synagogues or places of prayer have the 4,000 sq. m.
Occupancy will be further limited by the "traffic light" system of red, orange, yellow and green zones. Red zones with high COVID-19 infection rates will have more restrictions on the number of worshipers, while green zones will have fewer.
Seating inside synagogues and other indoor spaces will be within groups in designated areas of the building, each of which will be allocated specific entrances to the building if it has more than one.
It is, apparently, "Next year in Jerusalem" for the High Holy Days.
Major Israeli-based tour operators tell The Media Line they do not expect the country's skies to open for international visitors in time for some of the most important religious dates on the Hebrew calendar, which start in just a couple of weeks.
"I don't see any kind of traffic coming to Israel. Not during Rosh Hashana. Definitely not Yom Kippur. And I don't think that Sukkot is even an option," Etay Furmen, business- development manager at Haifa-based G&S Travel, told The Media Line.
"Maybe – and it's a big maybe – I hope that by Passover [in the spring] we'll see some movement, some traffic," he said. "But for the near term, I don't see any."
Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, starts on Friday, September 18, followed by Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, on September 27, and Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, on October 2.
A "traffic light" plan by Israel's coronavirus czar, Prof. Ronni Gamzu, which takes effect on September 6, could prove a hamper on the holidays for local residents as well. It is an effort to lower the daily transmission rates and shows that Israel has a long way to go before it opens itself up to foreign visitors.
The number of coronavirus cases confirmed on Tuesday was 2,183, the same number as the day before, continuing a trend of high daily infections, according to the Health Ministry.
Israel's so-called Coronavirus Cabinet on Sunday added nine more states to the "green" list of countries with low infection rates from which returning Israelis can avoid a 14-day quarantine upon arriving home. Foreign nationals are still banned, with some exceptions, including thousands of yeshiva and other students who are supposed to start the new academic year.
As if to emphasize how long the road to recovery will be for Israel's tourism industry, a new report from the hospitality consulting firm HVS indicates that the country's hotel sector will not return to 2019 peak performance levels (revenue per available room, or RevPAR) until 2024.
That is certainly not good news for Benny Scholder, director of North America sales for Tel Aviv-based Kenes Tours.
"We are one of Israel's leading tourism companies, but our entire office of nearly 40 employees is on furlough at the moment – and those of us who are doing work are doing administrative work in preparation for when tourism returns," he told The Media Line.
Furmen and Scholder both say they hope that foreign visitors will again be welcome by next summer.
Readers were not given any further information regarding the activities of the man described as "a well-known activist" despite some details being available in the local media.
"While Hannoun told WAFA he had been peacefully protesting, the former security prisoner and father of five from the village of Anabta told the Associated Press that the scuffle began when he pushed a soldier who had aimed his rifle at the protesters. […]
The Israel Defense Forces said that Hanoun, an activist in the Popular Committee to Resist The Wall and Settlements, was "well-known as a central instigator and participant in many violations of public order in Judea and Samaria." The Popular Committee is responsible for several protests across the West Bank, including a weekly protest at Kufr Quddum, which regularly ends in violent clashes between protesters and Israeli soldiers."
The BBC's subsequent portrayal of the context to what it described as "a protest in the occupied West Bank" predictably included the corporation's standard mantra concerning 'international law'.
"It was filmed during a protest against Israeli settlement construction in the village of Shufa, near Nablus, on Tuesday. The settlements are seen as illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this."
In fact – as stated by the umbrella organisation of the 'Popular Committees' to which Hanoon (also Hanoun) belongs – the violent demonstration on September 1st was against "Israel's planned construction of an industrial zone" called Bustanei Hefetz near – rather than "in" – the village of Shufa in Area C.
Israel Advocacy Movement: Palestinians use George Floyd to protect a terrorist
A drone dropped packets of what looked like cannabis over a main square in Tel Aviv on Thursday after activists seeking to legalize the drug in Israel promised free weed from the air on social media.
Police said they arrested two men who operated the quadcopter that flew over Rabin Square, a site often used for street protests and political rallies.
"The time has come," the Green Drone pro-legalization group said on its Telegram web messaging channel. "Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's the Green Drone sending you free cannabis from the skies."
In a statement, police said they suspected the baggies were filled with "a dangerous drug" and that officers managed to recover dozens of them. Photos distributed by the police showed what appeared to be cannabis inside.
The Maariv news website, which carried photos of the drone dropping the packets, said passersby took some of them before police arrived. Footage showed people walking through busy traffic to pick up packets that had fallen on a road.
Currently, medical use of cannabis is permitted in Israel while recreational use is illegal but largely decriminalized.
Unlike their leaders, however, the Palestinians living in Syria and Iraq do not appear to be worried about the Israel-UAE accord. These Palestinians have more existential concerns -- such as providing shelter for their children and safe drinking water for their families. They are disturbed about the homes they have lost, and they are in a state of anguish about fate of their missing sons.
The Palestinian families complained that the International Committee of the Red Cross and other international organizations, including the United Nations, have refused to assist them in their search for their beloved ones.
Palestinian writer Nabil Al-Sahli said that the 4,000 Palestinians who remain in Iraq are facing an "ongoing tragedy." He said that according to some studies, at least 20,000 Palestinians have been displaced from Iraq to 40 countries around the world because of the "massacres" committed against them by sectarian militias.
By extreme contrast [to Syria and Iraq], the UAE and other Gulf states have long opened their doors to Palestinians and provided them with jobs and high living standards. Puzzlingly, Palestinian leaders have plenty of time to castigate the UAE, but no time at all to comment on the systematic abuse and killing of Palestinians in Syria and Iraq. For the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, the true tragedy is when an Arab expresses willingness to make peace with Israel.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday called on the Arab countries to abide by the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative and refrain from normalizing their relations with Israel.
Noting that the initiative calls for the Arabs to normalize their relations with Israel after the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital, Abbas said: "The Arabs must abide by their decisions. The Arab Peace Initiative was presented by Saudi Arabia in 2002 and since then it has been endorsed by the Arabs and the United Nations Security Council. The Arabs must reiterate their commitment to the Arab Peace Initiative during the upcoming meeting of the Arab League, which will be chaired by Palestine."
Abbas, who was speaking during a videoconference meeting of leaders of all Palestinian factions in Ramallah and Beirut, said that the Palestinians did not and will not mandate anyone to speak on their behalf.
In an implicit reference to the recent normalization agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Abbas, who was speaking from his presidential Mukata compound in Ramallah, said: "Normalization schemes with the occupation are used as a poisonous dagger to stab our people.
The [Israel-US-UAE] tripartite agreement is the latest poisonous dagger with which they stabbed us. We are meeting today to confront all these conspiracies."
Abbas told the faction leaders that the purpose of the meeting was to "move forward with a unified political position to end the division [between the West Bank and Gaza Strip], establish national and political partnership and hold presidential and parliamentary elections."
There are no understandings as far as Gaza is concerned. No agreements. No anything.
The way the latest escalation ended is nothing but an invitation to the next round, which may end up being more violent.
This can be attributed to the current leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, who's steadily losing his grip on the Palestinian enclave his group took over in 2007.
If it were within his power, Sinwar would have gladly erased the last escalation from the collective Palestinian consciousness.
Not only did he fail to achieve any economical, national or military achievement to present to the people of the Strip, the situation in Gaza actually deteriorated.
During the three weeks Israel closed the land and ocean passageways into the Strip, the number of unemployed there jumped by no less than 10%, as thousands lost their jobs and their livelihoods.
Neither Sinwar nor his people can bury these numbers with mere words. This last round of violence against Israel was a colossal failure for him and his people.
In October, Sinwar is set to run for the Hamas presidency, in an election season that begins in November and ends in March.
Hamas Representative In Lebanon: Relations Between Hizbullah And Hamas Are 'Deep And Strategic'
Osama Hamdan, Hamas' representative in Lebanon, denied in a September 2, 2020 interview on Mayadeen TV (Lebanon) that that there is any problem in the relations between Hamas and Hizbullah. He said that the two organizations maintain deep and strategic relations that cannot be ended or be reduced by an "incident here or there."
Iran's stockpile of low enriched uranium is more than ten times over the limit set by the Iran deal, according to a quarter reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency released Friday.
Those documents showed that Iran had violated the terms of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action known as the Iran deal, but that its stockpile of low enriched uranium was still lower than it been prior to the deal.
Iran had granted the UN nuclear watchdog access to inspect one of the two nuclear sites, after a protracted standoff.
During the inspection the IAEA took environmental samples, one of the two reports obtained by Reuters said, referring to samples aimed at detecting traces of nuclear material that may have been present.
The agency's inspectors will visit the other site "later in September 2020 on a date already agreed with Iran, to take environmental samples," the report said.
The other report said that Iran's stock of low-enriched uranium (LEU) rose by 534 kg in the most recent quarter, roughly the same amount as in the previous three months, to 2,105.4 kg.
That is more than 10 times the 202.8 kg limit set by Iran's 2015 nuclear accord with big powers, which Iran has been breaching in response to Washington's withdrawal from the deal in 2018 and reimposition of sanctions against Tehran.
Iran has let the UN nuclear watchdog inspect one of the two sites it agreed last week to grant access to after a protracted standoff, while Tehran's stockpile of enriched uranium has risen further, quarterly reports by the agency said on Friday.
The International Atomic Energy Agency inspected one of the sites and took environmental samples there, one of the two reports obtained by Reuters said, referring to samples aimed at detecting traces of nuclear material that may have been present.
The agency's inspectors will visit the other site "later in September 2020 on a date already agreed with Iran, to take environmental samples," the report said.
The other report said that Iran's stock of low-enriched uranium (LEU) rose by 534 kg in the most recent quarter, roughly the same amount as in the previous three months, to 2,105.4 kg.
That is more than 10 times the 202.8 kg limit set by Iran's 2015 nuclear accord with big powers, which Iran has been breaching in response to Washington's withdrawal from the deal in 2018 and reimposition of sanctions against Tehran.
The stockpile, however, remains far below the many tons of enriched uranium Iran had accumulated before the 2015 deal.
Tehran is enriching up to a fissile purity of 4.5%, which while above the deal's 3.67% limit is still far short of the 20% level it achieved before the deal. Roughly 90% purity is considered weapons-grade, suitable for an atomic bomb.
The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on 11 foreign companies, accusing them of helping to facilitate Iran's export of petroleum, petroleum products and petrochemicals in violation of American sanctions.
The Treasury said it slapped sanctions on six companies based in Iran, the United Arab Emirates and China that it said enable the shipment and sale of Iranian petrochemicals and support Triliance Petrochemical Co Ltd, a Hong Kong-based company blacklisted by the United States.
The State Department also imposed sanctions on five companies for engaging in transactions related to Iran's petroleum and petrochemical industry, as well as on three executive officers of the blacklisted companies.
"Our actions today reaffirm the United States' commitment to denying the Iranian regime the financial resources it needs to fuel terrorism and other destabilizing activities," US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a separate statement.
The move freezes any US assets of those blacklisted and generally bars Americans from dealing with them.
The action targets Iran's Zagros Petrochemical Co, which the Treasury said agreed to sell Triliance hundreds of thousands of tons of Iranian petrochemicals this year.
Triliance, a Hong Kong-based broker, was hit with sanctions in January over accusations it ordered the transfer of the equivalent of millions of dollars to the National Iranian Oil Co as payment for Iranian petrochemicals, crude oil, and petroleum products.
The Treasury also blacklisted UAE-based Petrotech FZE and Trio Energy DMCC, Hong Kong-based Jingho Technology Co Ltd and Dynapex Energy Ltd, as well as China-based Dinrin Ltd, accusing them of being front companies for Triliance and Zagros.
Hearing that Iran is looking to execute a great and popular wrestling star, 27-year-old Navid Afkarai, whose sole act was an anti-government demonstration on the streets. They were protesting the "country's worsening economic situation and inflation"...
President Erdogan: Turkish Conquest Isn't Occupation Or Looting, It's Spreading The Justice Of Allah
On August 26, 2020, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave a speech at Manzikert National Park in Turkey at an event celebrating the 949th anniversary of the Battle of Manzikert. He said that for Turkey, conquest is not occupation or looting. Rather, he said that it removes oppression and brings Allah's justice to the conquered region. He said that Turkey will claim its right in the Mediterranean, Aegean, and Black seas, that it will do whatever is necessary politically or militarily, that it will never cede any of its territory, and that its patience, capabilities, or courage are not to be tested. He added: "If there is anyone who wants to stand against us and pay the price, let them come."
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