When word got out this week that Facebook had squelched Shibbolet – again – Likud MKs Amit Halevy and Ariel Kelner published posts on Twitter threatening to take legislative action against Facebook. The threats worked. Shibbolet's account was reinstated. In fact, the account Facebook "permanently" froze in April quickly thawed.
While this is a positive development, it isn't a business model. Conservative businesses – and business owners – cannot build their commercial model around faith that lawmakers will defend them on Twitter or that the trillion-dollar conglomerates will long care what lawmakers say or do.
Recognizing the dimension of the threat, Wednesday Halevy initiated Knesset action on the issue. He submitted a bill titled, "Social Media Responsibility for Content Published on its Platforms."
If passed into law, Halevy's bill will divide social media companies into two categories: those that interfere in content posted on their platforms and those that do not. Currently, both types of companies enjoy immunity from lawsuits related to content posted or blocked on their platforms.
Halevy's bill would maintain the exemption for social media companies that do not interfere with content on their platforms without a court order or a clear legal obligation to do so. On the other hand, social media companies that interfere with the content on their platforms would no longer enjoy immunity from legal actions by users harmed by the content on their platforms.
Halevy's bill also requires companies that interfere with the content of its platforms to operate in a transparent way. They would be required to explain precisely what sort of content they censor. And they would be required to publish annual reports delineating precisely which posts they censored and why. Users would be notified before the companies take action against their content and be given an opportunity to defend themselves.
President Donald Trump and prominent Republican lawmakers have pledged to take similar action against Facebook, Twitter and other social media giants after the election. The Department of Justice filed an anti-trust lawsuit against Google earlier this week.
These initiatives are critical. And they shouldn't stand on their own. They should rather be the first shots of concerted campaign to limit the power of these gargantuan companies that control nearly all global information.
Freedom of expression and the free flow of information are the foundations of free societies. Rather than use their unprecedented power to secure both, social media giants are manipulating information and censoring speech with a power that no one could have fathomed just 20 years ago. Optimism and hope for their positive potential blinded many of us to their actual dangers. The time has come to take on this new and pernicious threat to the future of free nations and free people.
The BBC apologized on Thursday for broadcasting an appeal by convicted Hamas terrorist Ahlam Tamimi, mastermind of the Sbarro Pizza parlor bombing in Jerusalem in 2001, to be reunited with her husband, after the families of Tamimi's victims and the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) spoke out against the broadcast.
On October 1, 2020, Tamimi's husband Nizar, who is also a convicted terrorist, was deported by the Jordanian authorities to Qatar.
Seven days later the BBC's Arabic TV service broadcast a report in its program Trending on how Tamimi had called into a popular Amman-based radio station in a bid to appeal directly to King Abdullah II to intervene and have her husband returned to Jordan.
The BBC's report glossed over key elements of Jordanian-born Tamimi's story, reporting that she had been "accused" of the Sbarro terror attack but not that she had boastfully pled guilty to the charges in an Israeli court – or that she had said she would be happy to carry out such an attack again.
Tamimi was sentenced to 16 life sentences following the attack, but only served ten years as she was released in the deal that secured the release of captured IDF soldier Gilad Shalit from Hamas's hold.
The BBC's Arabic service, which is funded by Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office, further failed to mention any of her victims by name.
Moreover, such self-styled progressives believe this constitutes their whole moral and political identity. It bestows virtue upon them because it is based on the ideal of the perfect society where war is no more, lions lie down with lambs and prejudice is obliterated from the human heart.
Anyone who challenges it, therefore, isn't just wrong, but right-wing and evil. So anything they say — however truthful or evidence-based — is right-wing and evil. And so truth has become a right-wing concept and is to be exiled, along with the truth-tellers, from acceptable society.
But Farrakhan is immune from criticism as a result of the core doctrine of identity politics that says members of an "oppressed" minority are victims and can therefore do no wrong.
Liberal Jews in America go one stage further. They have convinced themselves that "social justice," which is in fact anti-social and unjust and stands utterly against the particularism which is the essence of Judaism, actually embodies Jewish ethical precepts.
So when they look at the Democratic Party, they make excuses and continue to vote for it. When presented with the anti-Jewish and anti-Israel bigotry of The New York Times, they make excuses and continue to buy it. When confronted by the violence of Black Lives Matter, they make excuses and continue to call anyone who opposes it "racist." And when they cannot make excuses, as over Farrakhan, they look away.
Because they have made a religious faith out of this illiberal liberalism, which classifies all who challenge it as evil by definition, most of their minds have become hermetically sealed thought systems. They will never be prised open.
In her essay, Weiss is rightly aghast at what this signifies for the Jews who have adopted this mindset. "That leaders and philanthropists charged to protect and nurture our community are entertaining, and at times embracing, such nihilistic and anti-American ideas is a scandal."
More than that, it's a tragedy in the making—not just for American Jews, but the west.
The irony of this is that pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist, and antisemitic forces on university campuses have been perhaps the foremost practitioners of deplatforming anywhere in the United States. Pro-Israel events are regularly disrupted, pro-Israel and even simply Jewish speakers are harassed and shut down, and Jewish and pro-Israel students are systematically subjected to campaigns of hate, violence and intimidation.
This has gone so far as to force Jewish students off campus; as was the case with the CUNY law student Rafaella Gunz, whose horrible odyssey was reported by this publication. And often, these acts of violence are enabled and supported by faculty and administrators.
The obvious goal of all this is to violate precisely those principles Khaled's defenders claim to advocate and thus brutalize Israel and Judaism's campus defenders into surrender and silence. In other words, they want to deplatform the Jews. The question, then, is whether we ought to do the same to them.
On the one hand, it is an uncomfortable question, given that many of us disapprove of deplatforming itself and oppose attempts to deplatform the Jews on precisely that basis. But that is essentially an argument over ideals, and we do not live in an ideal world. Whether we like it or not, the other side has laid down the rules of the game. When student mobs, faculty and administrators collaborate in an attempt to deplatform the Jews, it is no longer an issue of free speech. It is an issue of power: who has it and who doesn't. And is only by empowering ourselves that we can fight back, as was successfully done against Khaled and her supporters.
Moreover, if the deplatformers, whether students or faculty, wish to continue using the tactic, they must be consistent. They claim hate speech is an actual threat to life and limb, the moral equivalent of physical violence and even murder. By this definition, groups like Students for Justice in Palestine that incite violence against Israel and Jewish students, and often call for the outright genocide of Israel's Jewish population, are unquestionably hate groups, and thus certainly qualify for deplatforming according to the deplatformers own standards. Against this, our opponents can simply have no argument. They have chosen to live by that sword, and can hardly complain when they die by it.
Of course, it could be said that if we start to live by that sword, we will also die by it. But we are already dying by it, and it is only by seizing it for ourselves that we can effectively defend ourselves. These are the values, after all, that those who ought to know better have embraced, and it appears that, sadly, it is only by adopting them that we can force them to act according to those values, which they allegedly hold so dear.
Are Jews white? No, said the editor-in-chief of The Algemeiner during a Wednesday appearance on i24 News, and the false claim that they are is a "slur" that must be refuted.
"In the language of wokeness," Dovid Efune told "Global Eye" host Natasha Kirtchuk, "'whiteness' isn't just a description of the lowest rung on the ladder of victimhood — it's a pejorative, it's an accusation. It refers to an oppressor, a ruling class…an occupier or a colonialist."
Efune recalled that his own great-grandfather, who perished in the Holocaust, was considered by the Nazis to be of an inferior race.
"So it really is the height of irony and insult that when Jews express concern about antisemitism being ignored and a blindness to antisemitism, they're then lumped into the white category," he noted.
I have mentioned these memories before. They haven't changed. But this year, more than ever, we need a reminder that Rabin was neither a saint nor the devil.
If he hadn't died the way he did, we would probably still hear now and again his Knesset speech comparing Golan Heights residents opposed to withdrawal to "spinning propellers." That would be the everlasting sound bite rather than Eitan Haber's stark statement telling of the assassination.
It seems strange today to recall how Rabin's last term as prime minister was marked by arguments over leaving the Golan. I even remember residents of Jewish communities in Gaza making a solidarity trip to the Golan Heights, where people seemed to be under the imminent threat of losing their homes.
Today, we can appreciate just how disastrous handing the Golan Heights over to the Assad regime in Syria would have been. The same way as even those who ardently supported Ariel Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza recognize the dangers of the ever-increasing rocket attacks and the terror attack tunnels like the one discovered just this week.
It's tempting to play "What if?": What would have happened had Rabin not been murdered? It's impossible to know, but I don't believe he would have remained in power. While the Left often claims that Rabin's assassination killed the peace process, it was already literally blowing up before he was shot. The Left focuses on the incitement (some of it by Shin Bet agents provocateurs like Avishai Raviv) that preceded his murder, but the Palestinian suicide bombings that accompanied the Oslo process were just as much a part of the background.
Similarly, there's no way of knowing whether Rabin would have continued along the path that Shimon Peres was pushing him down, or done a reverse. It was Rabin, after all, who took a tough stand during the First Intifada and deported hundreds of Hamas terrorists to Lebanon.
It was these actions that Democrat congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez decided to focus on recently, as the timing of the anniversary overlaps with the height of election fever in the US. AOC, as she is known, pulled out of a commemoration event organized by Americans for Peace Now following a social media storm by Palestinian supporters. She apparently did not want to be associated with the Israeli leader even though he won the Nobel Peace Prize – along with Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres – for his role in the Oslo Accords.
That Peace Now's credentials are not liberal enough for AOC does not bode well for any of us.
Upon Rabin's death, Arafat called his partner in the peace process, "a brave man in war and a brave man in peace."
That's what's missing in the progressive audit of Rabin twenty-five years later, that he was in a state of war. And wars make people dehumanize other people. That's not a defence of anything Rabin or Israel have done to the Palestinians, far from it. But it does, as Ellison said, make Rabin's later sacrifices for peace all the more powerful.
The strange optics of Ocasio-Cortez playing a video game for a massive audience on the night of the Rabin memorial probably came about accidentally. That the livestream also featured Ilhan Omar â€" who has been accused of making anti-Semitic remarks, is a staunch opponent of the Israeli government, and a supporter of the Boycott Divest Sanction (BDS) movement which does not believe in a two-state solution â€" is simply fuel for the Israel hawks looking to paint AOC as an opponent.
In a 2018 PBS interview AOC clumsily referred to Israel's "occupation of Palestine," which some critics interpreted as a view that Israel was illegitimately occupying the full body of land that once constituted the British Mandate for Palestine, which includes Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. But after conceding she's "not the expert on geopolitics on this issue," AOC also said she believes "absolutely in Israel's right to exist" and is "a proponent of the two state solution."
The congresswoman also shares in Peace Now's opposition to the Israeli's government threat to annex land on which it has illegally built settlements in the West Bank, much of which is the only land still available for a future Palestinian state.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez's office did not return multiple requests for comment, which is a shame because without clarification, it's fair to assume that a vocal and growing portion of the progressive left are slowly making it clear that seemingly no Israeli leader â€" not even a martyr for peace â€" is worthy of tribute or legitimization.
And that makes it tough to unpack AOC's true positions. If she supports a two-state solution and Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, why not participate in a memorial for Rabin â€" who did more than any single Israeli to push toward a two-state solution?
If AOC shares the view that Rabin, like all Israeli political leaders, is irredeemably tainted by actions in defence of what many progressives see as a racist, colonial state, she should lay her cards on the table and say that. If she doesn't, it'd be illuminating to know which Israeli figures are not so problematic.
The Rabin event, hosted by the decidedly left-wing Americans for Peace Now, was no Zionist affair. It was attended by teachers' union president Randi Weingarten and Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison, who honored Rabin's legacy as a peacemaker. This was an event for those who loathe what the Zionist project has become—confident, capitalist, and prosperous—but nonetheless wish to associate themselves with the kind of progressive Zionism that Rabin has come to represent.
But even progressive Zionism, the support for the hypothetical Jewish state that might exist if its proponents could isolate and boycott and berate Israelis into living with unacceptable threats, is intolerable to AOC and her allies. As Jewish Insider reported earlier this month, the congresswoman has shunned New York's progressive Jewish leaders, some of whom have spent two years trying to get on her calendar. Those leaders are "perplexed" and "befuddled," the report says.
Tuesday evening's antics should bring some clarity. In addition to Piker, AOC was joined by her colleague Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.), who has argued that American support for Israel is solely a product of Jewish money—shared values and enemies don't factor for a congresswoman who rejects those values and embraces those enemies—and that it constitutes "allegiance to a foreign country." She believes that "Israel has hypnotized the world."
For Omar, 9/11 was an attack perpetrated by "some people" who "did something." For Piker, it was the attack America deserved.
AOC, who never seems to be at a loss for words, has had precious little to say about the atrocity inflicted on America that day but has never failed to defend her allies, like Omar, when they provoke criticism and backlash.
Her actions suggest that she believes the United States had it coming, that U.S. support for Israel is driven only by Jews and the support they can buy, and that Yitzhak Rabin was an irredeemable colonizer and occupier. As the saying goes, when someone shows you who they are: believe them.
The facts about these groups aren't a secret. All three are guilty of supporting the anti-Semitic BDS movement with words and deeds, and seek to undermine the right of Israelis to self-defense against terrorism, as well as to promote false charges of war crimes against the Jewish state. Their approach to alleged inquiries about life in the only democracy in the Middle East is inherently prejudiced. Indeed, these three non-governmental organizations (NGOs) act in perfect concert with institutions like the U.N. Human Rights Council, where anti-Semitism and bias against Israel have become its raison d'être.
It didn't have to be this way.
Oxfam dates back to the Second World War, the efforts of Quaker groups to aid starving populations in countries devastated by the impact of the fighting and Nazi occupation. But it eventually broadened its agenda to a general goal of fighting injustice. And, like other organizations connected to the Quaker faith, it developed a particular animus for Israel and a desire to support the Palestinian Arab war to destroy it. As NGO Monitor—a vital source for information about the anti-Semitic activities of non-governmental organization—details, it has become a huge booster of BDS and other anti-Israel activities.
Human Rights Watch was begun in 1978 as part of an effort to hold the Soviet Union accountable for its atrocities and oppression of dissidents and Jews. But it, too, eventually expanded its scope and ironically wound up becoming an ardent foe of Israel. As one of its founders noted in a blistering attack on it published in The New York Times in 2009, it had become an enabler of Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists, and was short-changing the far more egregious human-rights offenses going on in the Arab world because it was obsessed with attacking Israel.
Amnesty International also had a sterling reputation as a foe of oppression around the world. But it became a pivotal ally of the BDS movement, supporting embargos against Israel, falsely labeling it an "apartheid state" and defending those linked to terror under the bogus excuse that they were victims of human-rights abuses by Israel.
Let's be clear that these three groups are not being accused of anti-Semitism because they are critical of Israel's government or its policies. Rather, it's because their activities and advocacy have been consistent with the widely accepted definition of anti-Semitism that has been promulgated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance—precepts that have been officially endorsed by the government of the United States that rightly labels delegitimizing, demonizing and applying double standards to Israel, the one Jewish state on the planet, as acts of Jew-hatred.
Why then are so many liberal groups rising to defend them against the State Department?
The answer has more to do with politics than anything else.
These orgs have long peddled Antisemitism under guise of '#HumanRights' to demonize, delegitimize & single out #Israel, incl. supporting BDS and whitewashing Palestinian terror. pic.twitter.com/NWe1xZpuPb
The ADL said calling the groups anti-Semitic "is neither accurate nor helpful to the fight against anti-Semitism."
Democratic Congressman from Michigan Andy Levin, who used to work for Human Rights Watch, also criticized the move.
"Criticizing Israel's policies is not anti-Semitism. I know because I do so out of love for a country I want to thrive," he said on Twitter.
He also said the groups "do essential, often dangerous work to protect human rights."
News of the reported declaration came just before an international conference on anti-Semitism, which featured Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and a range of other officials and analysts. The conference focused on online hate and emphasized anti-Semitism from the left and Islamic terrorists, including anti-Israel activism.
While no panelist focused solely on far-right anti-Semitism, officials, including Netanyahu and others, did mention neo-Nazis among the dangerous groups facing the Jewish people.
"Contemporary anti-Semitism feeds off its more traditional precursors, often focusing on the State of Israel, which for the modern anti-Semite is the manifestation of the collective Jew," Netanyahu said.
"Today people with opposing political agendas can nevertheless find themselves united in hatred for Israel and the Jewish people. The neo-Nazi, the ultra-left revolutionary, the Islamist militant might agree about nothing else, but they all do share a common hatred towards us and that hate is awash across the internet," he added.
Tablet's correspondent attended the Sunday Paris demonstration in the central Republique square in solidarity with Paty, which appeared to show high levels of public support for Macron's initiatives and the French values they are meant to protect. The demonstration was tens of thousands strong and militantly serious. Schoolteachers were out in force. Numerous people waved their copies of Charlie Hebdo. The demonstrators represented a cross section of the population, and their placards were plaintive, generous, and occasionally witty.
Yet, perhaps because of exhaustion or built up trauma, the demonstration, which was very touching and somber in many ways, did not draw the millions who had attended previous demonstrations. As the second wave resurgence of the coronavirus has overwhelmed French hospitals and brought infection rates back up to unacceptable levels, mandatory nighttime curfews on free movement have been reimposed in various cities throughout France. Many Parisians have become visibly exhausted by the cycle of violence, and the somber atmosphere on the square showed it. Yet the single violent incident that Tablet's correspondent observed involving an angry middle-aged French man left open the question of how bright the future for communal cooperation might actually be.
A dedicated band of Algerian democracy protesters that gathers with Algerian national flags and posters every Sunday shared the side of the square with the demonstration in honor and defense of Paty. Their stall was assaulted by a tall and rotund middle-aged French man, dressed in a working class sort of leather rocker outfit and bedecked with numerous steel rings. The French man threw the Algerian flag to the ground, showed the Algerians his middle finger, and began fighting with some of them. Upon barreling through the crowd and pushing me to the side he was himself pushed to the floor, with some of the Algerian men having to keep their enraged comrades from stomping his head into the sidewalk beneath the statue of Marianne. The gendarmes then twisted the troublemaker's arms behind his back and dashed him against the side of a blue police van in an efficient display of concerted violence.
On Wednesday the French government sent an unmistakable message as Samuel Paty was posthumously awarded the Légion d'honneur.
Over the past two days, reports and articles that included incitement following the October 16 beheading of French history teacher Samuel Paty, as well as condemnations of French policy in response to Islamic terrorism, have been removed from the website of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS). One of the articles that was removed was written by IUMS secretary-general Ali Al-Qaradaghi, who claimed in it that the murder had been staged by the French authorities and that "the real murderer is still alive." Al-Qaradaghi's article, as well as statements containing incitement he voiced following the attack, were identified, translated, and published by MEMRI on October 20.
The Doha-based IUMS has been supported since its founding by the Qatari regime and by Turkey. It was established in 2004 by Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Sheikh Yousuf Al-Qaradawi, who also headed it until late 2018. He is considered to be the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and has resided in Qatar and enjoyed the backing of its regime since the 1960s. The IUMS website has for years promoted extremist discourse, including incitement to jihad and terrorism and hatred of Jews and Christians.[1] It should be noted that there is a French version of the IUMS website, but that it is different from the Arabic website.
The following are examples of articles that the IUMS removed from its website:
In response to Paty's October 16 murder, IUMS Secretary General Al-Qaradaghi condemned it in a statement on the IUMS website. In the statement, Al-Qaradaghi also placed the blame for the murder on senior French officials and on the victim himself, underlining that a teacher's role is to "instill peace in the young, rather than incite them." Going even further, the same day he published an article on the website that included a conspiracy theory according to which the murder had been meticulously staged by the French authorities with the aim of linking Islam and terrorism, and that "the real murderer is still alive." (For more on Al-Qaradaghi's response to the beheading, see Secretary-General Of International Union of Muslim Scholars, 'Ali Al-Qaradaghi, Resumes Jihadi Incitement: Claims Murder Of French Teacher Was Staged By French Authorities And Real Killer Is Still Alive.)
Two days later, the IUMS removed Al-Qaradaghi's conspiracy article from the website, along with other articles condemning French President Macron's stated intention to eradicate extremist Islamism in France.
On October 21, 2020, Al-Qaradaghi published a statement of clarification and denial, stating that he "condemns the incident and does not cast any doubts on it."[2] However, it should be noted that the article still appears on Al-Qaradaghi's Facebook account.[3]
David Miller is a sociology professor at the University of Bristol and for the past year and a half he has taken up far too much of my attention.
You might have come across him – his comments on Zionism and the Labour party, and the controversy that followed, are covered in the national press. He appeared at events alongside outcast former Labour MP Chris Williamson, and has also claimed the White Helmets were responsible for chemical attacks in Syria.
Since last January he has been brought up in roughly every other JSOC (Jewish society) committee meeting. Why? Because some Jewish students have been feeling intimidated by what he's been teaching for months.
He's accused Keir Starmer of receiving 'Zionist money' Miller has a history of controversial comments about Israel and Zionism. In 2018, at UCL, he argued that accusations of anti-Semitism in the Labour party are "mostly false". Yet according to a 2017 YouGov survey, 80+ per cent of British Jews believe the Labour party tolerated anti-Semitism. At the same event he claimed the reaction of some Jewish students was a result of "propaganda which they have been schooled with".
In June, Miller accused Keir Starmer of receiving "Zionist money" and resigned from the Labour party because of the "Zionist movement". The idea that Jews or Zionists are using their money to manipulate politics is a trope as old as time. Miller says he is "simply describing the facts" and that a donor to Starmer's campaign, Trevor Chinn, is "arguably, de facto one of the most senior officers in the UK Zionist movement".
Theories he uses in lectures leave some Jewish students feeling uncomfortable His lectures in his "Harms of the Powerful" module have made some Jewish students feel increasingly uncomfortable and unwelcome in his classroom.
A Jewish student in his class, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said: "I was one of the only Jewish students in David Miller's class. Honestly it was scary because he is a teacher so people believed the anti-Semitism he was spreading. I was scared because I am one voice and felt I couldn't stand up to him or tell him what he was saying was wrong."
Jewish students at the University of Illinois filed a formal complaint with the Department of Education alleging "an unrelenting campaign of anti-Semitic harassment" on campus, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The complaint, filed under the 1964 Civil Rights Act barring discrimination at institutions receiving federal funding, alleges that University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) officials systematically swept multiple instances of campus anti-Semitism under the rug. "Despite repeatedly being placed on notice of the developing hostile environment on UIUC's campus, the UIUC administration has failed to take the measures necessary to provide Jewish and pro-Israel students with a discrimination-free academic setting," the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which is helping to handle the case, said in a statement.
During the past several years, Jewish students at UIUC have come under attack from pro-Palestinian activists, far-left student groups, and white supremacists. Swastikas have been painted across the campus and Jewish ritual items, such as menorahs and mezuzahs, have been vandalized. The campus's Jewish fraternity houses also have been subject to attacks, including having bricks thrown through their windows. The complaint was filed seven months ago, but made public on Friday due to the school's alleged refusal to address the matter.
The landmark complaint with the Education Department is the latest attempt by American Jewish students to ensure their safety on campus. Jewish students across the nation are increasingly under attack from liberal activists who oppose their support for Israel and belief in a Jewish homeland. Anti-Semitic incidents on college campuses have hit historic levels in recent years. Much of this activism has been tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged by professors intolerant of pro-Israel voices.
Ex-Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters claimed the BBC was "completely corrupt" for failing to respond to his proposal to make a documentary to counterargue claims of antisemitism in the UK Labour Party.
The musician and vehement anti-Israel activist attacked the British public broadcaster during an online panel discussion last week — hosted by anti-Zionist author and American-Israeli activist Miko Peled — that focused on defending Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
Waters referenced a July 2019 documentary by the "Panorama" program, screened by BBC1, that examined antisemitism in the Labour Party, charging it "was a shocking put-up job that just floated away on the clouds of rubbish that come out of the Ministry of Truth never to be seen again."
"We can't live with the disgusting nature of the deceit — the BBC having become completely corrupt," he added, before saying, "I wrote to the BBC and suggested we make another 'Panorama' program showing the other side of the argument about alleged antisemitism in the Labour Party. They didn't even answer."
An open letter signed by Noam Chomsky, Roger Waters, Ken Loach, former MP Jim Manly, poet El Jones, author Yann Martel, and more than 170 Canadians, was delivered this week to Canadian Justice Minister David Lametti asking him to investigate recruitment taking place in Canada for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
The authors of the open letter also launched a formal legal complaint with the Justice Minister, since it's a crime in Canada to recruit anyone for a foreign military. Advertisement
A website close to the petition and the complaint listed the offenses carried out by Jewish schools in Canada in violation of the country's Foreign Enlistment Act.
Netivot HaTorah Day School last January posted on its Facebook page that its "donut day" initiative raised more than $750 for Gar'in Chayalim, a program that supports IDF lone soldiers."Bialik Hebrew Day School states on its website: "Tzedakah programs such as Shai Le'chayal help students feel a sense of responsibility to the Israeli community by sending gifts to Israeli soldiers. Similarly, having the opportunity to interact with IDF [entertainment] Band soldiers, who visit to perform for the school, reinforces these feelings."The Toronto Heschel School invited the IDF Nachal Band to play there last September.Families affiliated with the Leo Baeck Day School hosted Israeli teens for a year before they enlisted in the IDF. When they returned to Israel, they engaged with students over Skype.Leo Baeck students also pay tribute to Israel's fallen heroes and fundraise for Beit Halochem Canada/Aid to Disabled Veterans of Israel.The IDF Orchestra performed in several Canadian Jewish schools.Leo Baeck's alumni magazine advertised the Judy Shaviv Memorial Fund "Keren Yad Yehudit" which assists graduates to spend time in Israel in the IDF, in study programs, or as volunteers. The high school celebrates its graduates who have served in the IDF, inviting them to share their experiences with the students.The Israeli Consulate General in Toronto in May 2019 sent IDF Colonel Barak Hiram to speak to high school students, telling them about "being a new recruit and a seasoned commander in the Golani Brigade."Some of the Jewish high school teachers' biographies state that they served in the Israeli military.Bnei Akiva honors alumni who served in the IDF on its website.
Sounds like nothing short of those Central African children's armies doesn't it…
A former leader of a campus anti-Israel group and employee of an organization that was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror case is running for a seat on the Coral Springs City Commission in Florida.
Noor Fawzy, a civil litigation attorney at statewide law firm Conroy Simberg who previously worked at the Broward County Attorney's Office, has a history that includes being president of the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at Florida Atlantic University in 2012, where she graduated the following year, according to her LinkedIn page.
From June to August 2015, she served as a legal intern at the office of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Sunrise, Fla., according to LinkedIn. CAIR was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case that proved connections to the US-designated terrorist group Hamas and other radical Islamic entities.
In 2012, when Hamas launched rockets from Gaza into Israel, Fawzy posted on Facebook, "Israeli warmongers justify their operations on the basis of ensuring safety and security for their citizens. During the Gaza Massacre (2008-2009), resistance fighters hit areas farther and farther into Israel proper. It saw a record in the number of Palestinians wishing to fight on behalf of its Izzedin al-Qassam Brigades. Its support increased, and its international legitimacy was enhanced."
"Now, the resistance has targeted even farther areas, including Tel Aviv and Occupied al-Quds, for the first time in 20-30 years," she continued. "This is unprecedented."
Given than Norm wrote the (bestselling) The Holocaust Industry, in which he suggests people drain a living from it, that's essentially what he's made a career out of. His shtick is Holocaust Holocaust Holocaust. Oh, and he's got a new book coming out. Guess what it's about? 🤔😉 pic.twitter.com/RjyVEFicAO
As for logistics, the synagogue in question could never hold a crowd of 10,000, as Satmar leader Rabbi Moshe Dovid Niederman explained to Cuomo during a Sunday call, published in the Orthodox daily Hamodia. The hosting congregation even published a statement explaining that "this wedding was designed differently," because of COVID-19. So, only "a small circle of close family members" were expected to attend the ceremony and celebratory meal. The statement also noted that "unwarranted attacks on this event" were "detached from the facts" before remarking, "It's sad that nobody verified our plans before attacking us."
Americans Against Antisemitism founder Dov Hikind considered that statement credible. During a call, he asked rhetorically, "Are the Satmar so out of their minds that they're planning a wedding with 10,000 or even 1,000, and TV cameras would've been down there? It would have been a disaster."
Another nagging question remains: Why didn't Cuomo just call Satmar leaders? On Sunday's call, Cuomo described knowing Rabbi Niederman for "over 20 years." Given that, Cuomo could easily have buzzed Niederman to fact-check. Hikind commented, "Why didn't the governor pick up the phone before making it into a national story? That's being sensitive? That's not being a friend." A friend would inquire directly. Further, if anything in the original wedding plans didn't fully comply with state health guidelines, a friend would offer private guidance on how to remedy shortcomings.
Cuomo's response to Niederman during Sunday's call truly stands out, though: "In this crazy world, everything gets blown out of proportion. And you're right, the press comes to me, they ask me a question, with an asserted fact in it. 'There is a wedding that's gonna have 10,000 people, how can you let that happen?' They assert the fact, and then it's hard to say to the reporter, 'Well, I don't know if you, if that's true or not.' And I understand that things are said."
But Cuomo clearly accepted the premise of a large wedding taking place, and his words have had consequences. Reporters descended on Williamsburg on Monday, something locals did not appreciate. Further, harassment and anti-Semitic graffiti continue apace for New York's Orthodox Jews, as does the cementing of the dangerous narrative that Orthodox Jews deserve unique blame for COVID-19's spread.
If New York is to conquer COVID-19, there must be universal compliance with public-health guidelines. However, public officials must simultaneously demonstrate true leadership. In Governor Cuomo's case, that includes ending his recent, troubling pattern of singling out New York's Orthodox Jewish community. Perhaps he could start by publicly taking responsibility for the response that launched a thousand nasty news stories.
To that end, the RCI report includes a reference to a news release from M.A.I (Montreal, arts interculturels) that states:
This exhibition is a response to the ongoing violation of Palestinian human rights with the continued sieges on Gaza, the shooting of peaceful protestors, night raids and the arrest of thousands of Palestinians including over two hundred children and women. Live in Palestine seems particularly crucial at this moment as Trump's 'deal of the century' sponsors Israel's plan to annex parts of the West Bank, in defiance of International and Humanitarian Law."
There was no context about Israel's perspective on these many issues and no balance is featured in this RCI report. On the issue of the security barrier, what is referred to in this report as a "wall," no mention was made that it's in place to prevent Palestinian terror that has killed over 1,000 Israelis, injuring hundreds more and that its implementation has seen a drastic reduction in terror attacks by 90%, Israel says. With respect to Palestinian prisoners, no mention was made that Israel considers these individuals to be terrorists or they were incarcerated for their role in supporting acts of terror and/or for being security threats. Israel says they are not "political prisoners" and this report leads you to that false conclusion. Lastly, with respect to the now postponed Israeli plan to apply sovereignty to Judea and Samaria (west bank), Israel claims it's within its rights under international law, citing its historical, legal and ancestral claims to the lands, along with pressing security concerns. The U.S. now supports the Israeli position that Israel's presence in these areas is not "illegal" and do not violate international law.
The article also links and drives traffic to the M.A.I exhibit and the Arts and Resistance blog.
In a complaint sent to senior editors at Radio-Canada International, we conveyed our concerns that this isn't a news article in any sense, it's really just a promotional piece of this anti-Israel "art" exhibit without any context and consideration for Israel's perspective on these many controversial issues.
Accordingly, we respectfully requested that corrective action be immediately undertaken by RCI to set the record straight.
We await RCI's response to our complaint. Stay tuned to this page for any future updates.
After CAMERA's communication with editors, the New York Times corrected a recent story about an al Qaida financier that had misrepresented the violence on board the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, which was part of a 2010 flotilla to the Gaza Strip.
The story initially stated that in 2010, the al Qaida operative "was a student activist in Australia who was shot when Israeli naval commandos killed nine activists on a ship that was carrying aid to Gaza."
The suggestion that Israel arbitrarily killed activists seeking to deliver aid is egregiously misleading. The Mavi Marmara was not carrying aid for Gaza. And while other ships in the flotilla did carry aid, a UN report questioned the "true nature and objectives of the flotilla organizers."
No less important is that the flotilla was seeking to breach a naval blockade on the Gaza Strip. That blockade was a "legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law," the UN report found. The Mavi Marmara ignored several warnings and demands that the vessel turn back, and when Israeli forces boarded the ship, they faced "organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers," the UN report explained. Three Israeli soldiers were captured, and several were injured in the violence.
In short, the passengers on the Mavi Marmara weren't killed because they were charity workers. They weren't killed because they were part of a flotilla delivering aid. They weren't even killed because, as the UN report put it, they "acted recklessly in attempting to breach the naval blockade." Instead, they were killed during a frenzied battle, in which they initiated the violence. The Times story ignored all of this. To refer to the death of the passengers without mentioning their violent attacks is to flagrantly mislead readers.
We pointed out to editors that, based on our research, this 400 figure was merely an unsubstantiated (and, as we demonsrated in our post, highly dubious) claim by a Palestinian activist, and not based on any actual source.
Editors upheld our complaint and amended the sentence to make it clear that the number only represents a claim:
After some claims of 400 incidents in Kisan and the surrounding area, the villagers say they have had enough and installed a camera system that can monitor clashes with the settlers and hopefully provide evidence for prosecutors.
As we often remind journalists and editors, the Accuracy clause of the Editors' Code requires that media outlets "distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact".
An Australian school teacher on Thursday collected a "Righteous Among the Nations" award from Israel's national Holocaust memorial on behalf of her Dutch grandparents, who protected a two-year-old Jewish child from the Nazis by passing him off as their own.
Ingrid Bradford — a teacher from the Australian city of Brisbane — received the award in a virtual ceremony on Thursday evening hosted by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.
Bradford's late grandparents — Klaasje van der Haar and her husband Jacob — cared for the infant boy, Joseph Gokkes, alongside their own children for more than three years in the Dutch city of Hoogeveen.
Following the defeat of the Nazis, Joseph was safely reunited with his parents, Gila and Benjamin.
Also participating in the ceremony were the daughter of Joseph Gokkes, Inbal, and her mother, Shifra, who live in Israel.
Bradford said that the family had been overwhelmed by the recognition of their grandparents' heroism.
Jerusalem's International Convention Center (Binyenei HaUma) at the entrance to the city will be renamed in memory of the late Israeli statesman Shimon Peres, who died four years ago at the age of 93. His last political position was as the ninth president of the Jewish state, serving from 2007-2014.
The commemoration received the blessing of Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion and chairman of the Jewish National Fund Danny Atar.
JNF is expected to take ownership of the site as part of its redevelopment, together with the Jerusalem Municipality. The management of each organization, as well as the board of directors of the International Convention Center, approved the decision.
The convention center, which was inaugurated in 1956 near the government building complex in Givat Ram, is expected to become the largest and most advanced conference center in the Middle East in the coming years, covering an area of 55,000 square meters.
Additionally, a new business center will be built on the site with nine skyscrapers and another 15 10-story buildings—a project estimated to add 60,000 new jobs in the city of Jerusalem.
The construction of the entire project, expected to take place over the next decade, is estimated at $530 million.
Capt. S. just made history as the FIRST female pilot to ever fly the F-35i "Adir" fighter jet. She was just appointed as the new Deputy Squadron Commander of the 116th Squadron in the Israeli Air Force.
Kristallnacht is when 140 synagogues were burned down in 1938. March of the Living is running a campaign across the world to keep lights on during the night of November 9th, as a symbol of solidarity.
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.
President Trump announced peace between Israel and Sudan. Get ready for the hypocritical "peace" activists to object to...peace.
The objections by Palestinians and their friends to Israel's peace accords with the UAE and Bahrain announced in August were bizarre. But perhaps the most insane objections were floated by people who pretend to be peace activists. I looked at their specious arguments by the cofounder of the Hamushim NGO and by the executive director of Churches for Middle East Peace.
Israel's normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which its Parliament is scheduled to approve on Thursday, was termed "peacemaking" by the Trump administration that mediated it, and all involved seek credit for being peacemakers. In reality, these deals could lead to increased arms sales, more violence in the Middle East, and the perpetuation of the ongoing military occupation of the Palestinian people.
Neither the UAE nor Bahrain, which only gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1971, have ever been at war with Israel.
Sudan was at war with Israel, declaring war in 1967.
Of course, the argument that normalization deals aren't peace deals is silly. Normalization is several steps better than peace, unless you are a fanatic hater of Israel. Israel has peace with Egypt and Jordan but there was never normalization, and (either as a cause or effect) both of those states are among the most antisemitic nations on Earth.
It is too soon to say whether the peace deal with Sudan will include full normalization of relations, but early indications from Sudanese media are promising, saying that there is interest in cooperation with Israel on agriculture, technology, aviation and immigration.
Of course, "Jewish Voice for Peace" already condemned the deal, saying that it has nothing to do with peace with Palestinians. They still think the world considers peace with Palestinians to be a prerequisite for peace with anyone else, an assumption that has already been proven false - but the religion of "linkage" is strong.
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.
US President Donald Trump announced Friday that Sudan will start to normalize ties with Israel, making it the third Arab state to do so as part of US-brokered deals in recent months.
During a call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Sudan Sovereign Council president General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, Trump brought reporters into the Oval Office and announced: "The State of Israel and the Republic of Sudan have agreed to make peace."
A senior Trump aide, Judd Deere, said that Sudan and Israel "have agreed to the normalization of relations."
Trump said Sudan had demonstrated a commitment to battling terrorism. "This is one of the great days in the history of Sudan," Trump said, adding that Israel and Sudan have been in a state of war for decades.
"It is a new world," Netanyahu said over the phone. "We are cooperating with everyone. Building a better future for all of us."
"We are expanding the circle of peace so rapidly with your leadership," Netanyahu could be heard telling Trump, who responded by saying. "There are many, many more coming."
Trump also was heard taking a dig at Joe Biden, his opponent in the November election saying: "do you think Sleepy Joe could have made this deal, Bibi?"
Yes to removal of Sudan from the US list of state sponsors of terror. Yes to a billion-dollar aid package. And yes to normalization with Israel?
The remarkable tale of Sudan turning from a symbol of the Arab world's rejection of the Jewish state, into its latest potential peace partner, could be summed up by referring to three no's that, in the span of 53 years, look set to become three yes's.
Many Israelis still associate Khartoum with the "Three No's" — "No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel" — formulated by an Arab League summit held in the Sudanese capital shortly after the end of the Six-Day War in 1967.
Now, after months of pressure from the US administration, the culmination of efforts to get the Northeast-African Arab country to normalize relations with Israel appears closer than ever, perhaps just days away.
Earlier this week, the transitional government in Khartoum agreed to pay $335 million in compensation to the victims of the 1998 bombings of two US Embassies in Africa (Sudan didn't perpetrate the attacks, which killed more than 4,000 people, but granted asylum to the terrorists). In exchange, US President Donald Trump vowed to remove the country from its lists of state sponsors of terrorism, where it has been since 1993.
Together with a massive financial aid package for the struggling country — the US has reportedly offered $800 million in aid and investments, but Sudan demands some $3-4 billion — the removal of the terrorism designation is largely seen as a precursor to a normalization deal with Israel.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday spoke with Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, applauded his "efforts-to-date to improve Sudan's relationship with Israel, and expressed hope that they would continue."
Caroline Glick on Sudan normalizing relations with Israel & social media giants
This election, there is no subgroup for whom the stakes are higher than my Jewish co-religionists.
That's because, for starters, Donald Trump is quite possibly the most pro-Jewish president ever — or at least since George Washington famously assured the Jews of Newport, RI, that each child of the "stock of Abraham" would forever "sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree."
Through word and deed, President Trump — a father of an observant Jew and grandfather of Jewish children — has repeatedly established himself as a true friend and guardian of the people of the covenant. And in the post-1948 era of Zionism, Trump has been by far the most loyal and transformative friend of the world's sole Jewish state.
Trump ended decades of presidential timidity and promise-breaking by finally moving the US embassy to Jerusalem. He withdrew the United States from the harrowing capitulation to evil that was the Obama-Biden nuclear accord with Iran and has slapped crippling sanctions on the mullocracy.
He decimated the Islamic State "caliphate" and decapitated Iranian arch-terrorist Qassem Soleimani, both threats to Israel and Jews everywhere. He closed the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization's mission in Washington and defunded the Palestinian Authority itself due to its barbaric "pay-to-slay" subsidies.
Trump also cut funding or outright withdrew from three anti-Israel UN bodies: the (grossly misnamed) UN Human Rights Council, UNWRA and UNESCO.
And we're just getting started. Team Trump has boldly stood up for Israeli "settlements" in Judea and Samaria. The president formally recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and rolled out the most pro-Israel plan for peace with the Palestinian Arabs that a US president has ever endorsed.
US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper hosted a meeting with his Israeli counterpart, Benny Gantz, at the Pentagon on Thursday.
"This morning I met with Israeli Minister of Defense Benjamin Gantz at the Pentagon where we discussed the security and stability of the Middle East, as well as the United States' long-standing and continuing commitment to maintaining Israel's qualitative military edge," Esper tweeted.
Gantz tweeted, "Today in DC, months of dedicated work culminated in Defense Secretary @EsperDoD and I signing a joint declaration confirming the United States' strategic commitment to Israel's qualitative military edge in the Middle East for years to come."
"The declaration naturally elaborates on the practical measures involved, which I will not elaborate on here, but I will say this: Israel's security has taken a major leap forward today, thanks to our American Allies," he added.
The issue of Israel's military superiority in the Middle East received much attention in recent weeks due to reports that the US was considering selling F-35 stealth fighter jets to the United Arab Emirates after it signed a normalization agreement with the Jewish state.
A senior defense official on Thursday predicted Saudi Arabia would soon move to normalize ties with Israel.
The comments by the official, who spoke to reporters as Defense Minister Benny Gantz visited America, came amid reports that Sudan was poised to follow the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in normalizing diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.
"Soon Sudan and later Saudi Arabia will come out of the closet," the official was quoted saying by Hebrew media, without further elaborating.
Saudi leaders have publicly ruled out forging ties with Israel before a Palestinian state is created, even as they have welcomed the normalization deals between the Jewish state and Gulf Arab states signed in Washington last month.
Last week, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo encouraged Saudi Arabia to recognize Israel.
"We hope Saudi Arabia will consider normalizing its relationships as well. We want to thank them for the assistance they've had in the success of the Abraham Accords so far," said Pompeo, while hosting Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud in Washington.
"I was born and raised in Tehran. We opened every school day reciting 'Death to Israel, Death to the United States.' For eight years we were trapped in Iran, trying to escape. Today, I interact with millions of Iranians on behalf of the Israeli government. I cannot put into words the thrill and satisfaction I feel."
Sharona Avginsaz is one of Israel's most important diplomats today. Though not an ambassador, consul or even attaché, she oversees the Jewish state's most extensive and substantial link with the people of Iran as head of the Foreign Ministry's Farsi Digital Department.
"We're dealing with a hostile, enemy nation," she tells The Media Line. "Our platform is the only way to be present there, to communicate with the Iranian public, to build a bridge to the people in Iran over the regime's head."
Avginsaz is part of a surprisingly small team of young, energetic and driven social-media experts operating for the past several years out of the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem. Armed only with a computer, an internet connection, a deep sense of patriotism and complete fluency in Farsi or Arabic, this band of keyboard warriors has changed the landscape of digital diplomacy in just a few years.
Their hard work, usually done in the shadows, has come to light in recent weeks with the signing of the historic Abraham Accords with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
A victory for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden would harm the burgeoning normalization deals between Israel and its Middle East neighbors, US Middle East envoy Avi Berkowitz said in an interview published Thursday.
"I am nervous, if I am just being completely honest," said Berkowitz, who is assistant to US President Donald Trump and a special representative for international negotiations.
Berkowitz was careful to laud Biden for his support for the Abraham Accords, under whose umbrella Israel last month normalized ties with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
"I was appreciative when the Biden camp put out a positive statement of support for the accords, because it actually showed that this is something that has bipartisan support in the US," Berkowitz said.
At issue, he warned was the potential that a Biden presidency would return US policy toward Iran to one of appeasement.
"A different administration would continue to pursue sort of an appeasement-type strategy with Iran and whether its intention is so or not, it is hard to imagine that that would not have negative ramifications on the normalization efforts," Berkowitz said.
372 House members have now cosponsored a bipartisan resolution supporting the historic peace agreements between Israel, UAE and Bahrain.
Here are the major elements included in the resolution 👇
The UAE-Israel Abraham Peace accords may have been signed by men, but looking at the members of the Gulf-Israel Women's Forum, it is women who will actualize it.
Founded by Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum and head of the London Stock Exchange's Israel market, Justine Zwerling, the goal of the Forum is to unite women from the Gulf and Israel in friendship and business. The Forum is a division of the UAE-Israel Business Council, established to foster shared Abu Dhabi-Jerusalem opportunities, economic cooperation and business partnerships. Established in June, it already boasts 2,500 members.
"At London Stock Exchange Group, we believe that a diverse group of colleagues and a commitment to equal opportunities for all are key to driving innovation and building a culture that reflects our global customers and the communities in which we operate around the world," says Zwerling.
For Hassan-Nahoum, it's simple.
"Women are natural networkers and collaborators, and we are very practical."
This truth was evident from the first Zoom meeting of the forum (of which this writer is a member) where Emiratis and Israelis, native and immigrant, met virtually. At first, perhaps a bit shy, the group warmed up upon noticing the many similarities we had among us.
StandWithUs: The Middle East is Changing
Over the last few months, history has been made in the Middle East. Peace between Israel and the Arab world is no longer a dream. It is now a reality. May peace in the region continue to prosper. 🇮🇱🕊️🇦🇪🇧🇭
The historic peace accord signed between Israel and the United Arab Emirates last month is already paying dividends.
Large corporations from both countries are establishing joint ventures and negotiating collaborative agreements.
One example is the UAE's Dubai Ports World, one of the world's largest port operators, which has signed an agreement with Israel's DoverTower to buy a stake in the privatization of Haifa Port, Israel's largest by cargo tonnage.
But the possibilities extend beyond freight and trade. Strategic collaborations across the financial services sector and the biotechnology space are two more areas where businesses from the UAE and Israeli expect to benefit from the Abraham Accords, says Ran Hamou, managing partner at France-based firm Everlaw.
"Each year, many Israeli startups are sold to foreign investors instead of developing their businesses to become major players," he says. "And UAE funds invest in many foreign companies around the world."
However, there are very few UAE companies that operate at the global level, Hamou says.
"If a UAE-Israel consortium were able to invest, such a group could [pursue business opportunities] across the entire European Union, and become a major player in that part of the world."
Once upon a time, prior to the advent of Twitter, any relationship between an Arab country and Israel would be cause for celebration, yet given the current climate in the Middle East, some are unsure of the normalization of relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain.
While the historic deal between Israel and the Gulf states was lauded by many as a historic accomplishment, there were some who were concerned that it would harm their personal beliefs about how reality ought to be. Meade Benjamin, who is a cofounder of Code Pink, says that the agreement between Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain is a step in the wrong direction for the Middle East, and that "we'll never have peace in the Middle East if they keep signing Peace agreements with Israel." Code Pink is a progressive organization that seeks to support other peaceful movements in the region like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hamas, Hezbollah, and just random groups of men who enjoy getting together on Saturdays for those special weekend beatdowns on women and small children.
Also concerned about the prospects for another book deal and speaking tour is former Obama administration official Ben Rhodes, who noted, "I can't be wrong, history is the problem". Former Obama Secretary of State John Kerry, who once said that Israel would find itself further isolated and a Pariah state, was last heard crying into a pillow through his bedroom door and refusing to come out.
Hillary was Secretary of State in the Obama admin, which coddled the Palestinian Authority, Muslim Brotherhood, & Iranian regime with total silence on their atrocious records on "women's rights." It's hard to overstate what BS this is: https://t.co/nzaOseQUmG
Palestinian lawyers on Friday filed suit with a Nablus court against the British government over the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which spelled out the United Kingdom's support for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people.
Signed by then-British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour, the declaration is considered the historic precursor to Israel's inception in 1948.
According to French news agency AFP, lawyers representing the Federation of Independent and Democratic Trade Union, International Commission to Support Palestinian People's Rights, and the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate file a lawsuit in Nablus citing that "the suffering of the Palestinians" stemmed from the Balfour Declaration.
"The British Mandate is at the root of the suffering of the Palestinian people and has paved the way for the violation of their rights and the plunder of their land," said Munib al-Masri, head of the Federation of Independent and Democratic Trade Unions.
The Palestinians have repeatedly condemned the declaration, which they refer to as the "Balfour promise," claiming Britain was giving away land it did not own. The PA has tried to get Britain to renege on the historic document in the past but to no avail.
#OnThisDay we remember & honor the 241 American service members (as well as 58 French military personnel and 6 civilians) murdered in the 1983 #BeirutBarracks bombing by #Iran-#Hezballah.
Guatemala designated all branches of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization on Friday, according to the Foreign Ministry. This makes Guatemala the eighth country to designate Hezbollah a terrorist organization in 2020.
Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi welcomed the designation and congratulated Guatemala's government. "I call on other countries in Latin America to fight the terror led by Hezbollah globally," said Ashkenazi. He went on to say he was happy to see that diplomatic efforts "led by the Foreign Ministry to label all branches of Hezbollah a terrorist organization are bearing fruit and being recognized worldwide and especially in Latin America.
"The struggle against Hezbollah is a long and difficult one, but we cannot ignore the fact that global efforts against the organization are doing great damage to it, strong expressions of which can be seen by citizens of Lebanon becoming fed up with the organization for the disaster it caused them," Ashkenazi said.
Guatemala's recognition comes a day after Estonia announced that it will impose sanctions on Hezbollah, becoming the fifth EU state to take the step of banning Hezbollah in its entirety, following Germany and Lithuania this year.
At a meeting with ambassadors from the region in August, Ashkenazi called on Latin American countries to ban Hezbollah saying that "Terrorism affects all countries, and we have to fight it in a mutual way." According to Ashkenazi, "The best way to do that is sanctions on Hezbollah."
Estonia joins a growing list of countries that are taking action to disarm the Hezbollah terrorist group. Welcome! 🇮🇱 🇺🇸 🇨🇦 🇳🇱 🇧🇭 🇬🇧 🇦🇷 🇵🇾 🇨🇴 🇭🇳 🇩🇪 🇪🇪 pic.twitter.com/0PdV3r7f3N
Turkey's president on Friday confirmed the country tested its Russian-made S-400 missile defense system, despite objections from the United States.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey had every right to test its equipment. "They were tested, they're being tested," he announced.
"America's stance is absolutely not binding for us," he said. "We aren't going to ask America."
Washington has strongly objected to NATO member Turkey's acquisition of the Russian anti-aircraft system and suspended Turkey from its F-35 fighter jet program, saying the S-400s are a threat to the stealth fighter jets and wouldn't be interoperable with NATO systems.
It has also warned Ankara that it risks US sanctions under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act if the S-400 system is activated.
The US Embassy in Ankara said on Friday it was temporarily suspending all American citizen and visa services at missions in Turkey over credible reports of potential terrorist attacks and kidnappings against US citizens in Istanbul.
"The US Mission in Turkey has received credible reports of potential terrorist attacks and kidnappings against US citizens and foreign nationals in Istanbul, including against the US Consulate General, as well as potentially other locations in Turkey," the embassy said.
A US Embassy spokesperson said the statement was issued after an ongoing assessment of security conditions in Turkey.
On New Year's Day 2017, a lone gunman killed 39 people in an attack at an Istanbul nightclub which was later claimed by Islamic State. It was one of a series of militant attacks that killed dozens of people in Istanbul and elsewhere in Turkey.
The Palestinian terror group Hamas is secretly operating a facility in Turkey where it conducts cyberattacks and counterintelligence operations, according to a British newspaper report Thursday.
Citing Western intelligence sources, the Times of London said the headquarters was set up two years ago and is overseen by Hamas military leaders in the Gaza Strip.
The headquarters, which is separate from Hamas's official offices in the city, was set up without the knowledge of Turkish authorities, the report said.
The facility is reportedly overseen by Samakh Saraj, a senior member of the terror group who reports directly to Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza.
Channel 13 stirred waves in the political pool on Sunday evening with the broadcast of a Camil Fuchs poll showing that if elections were held today, a right-center coalition could be formed without the Likud and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
According to this poll, the Likud would get 27 seats, only three more than Naftali Bennett's Yamina Party (24) and only six more than Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid-Telem list (21).
Bennett and Lapid, together with Blue and White (8) and Avigdor Liberman's Yisrael Beytenu (8), could form a four-party center-right coalition, keeping the Likud and haredi parties out.
That prospect was trumpeted by the network as "dramatic." And, indeed, it is not an uninteresting political possibility, though a more likely possibility based on the same polling numbers would be the Likud, Yamina and the two haredi parties joining together for a 66-seat coalition.
THERE WAS something else in that poll that was even more significant, but did not garner much attention: Ayman Odeh's Joint List would fall from the 15 seats it received in the last elections to 11. And while this was the first time that a poll showed a possible center-right coalition without the Likud, this was the third month in a row that the Channel 13 poll showed a significant tumble for the Joint List. In August and September the network's poll had the Joint List gaining only 12 seats.
Over 2,100,000 people have been tested for coronavirus since the start of the pandemic in Israel, marked at February 24th, according to the MDA.
These were taken at various locations across the country, most notably at nursing home as part of the "Protecting Fathers and Mothers" project meant to prevent the spread of the virus to vulnerable populations.
About 340,609 of these tests were taken at people's homes, while 717,137 samples were taken at MDA's Drive and Test facilities operating in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, Home Front Command and HMOs across the country. The highest number was in Jerusalem, where 125,454 tests have been carried out within the city.
About 80,988 were sampled in Tel Aviv, of those,73,744 Ganey Yehoshuah. Some 17,986 were tested in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, 25,616 in Ashdod, 24,675 in Hadera, 24,593 in Haifa, 23,066 in Netanya, 20,528 in Kfar Sava, 20,526 in Bnei Brak, 17,806 in Rishon le Zion, 17,142 in Lod, 16,396 in Um al-Fahm, 14,854 in Modi'in Ilit, 14,584 in Beer Sheva, 11,021 in Modi'in-Maccabim-Reut, and 10,518 people were tested in Rehovot. In addition, as needed, Magen David Adom operates additional Drive and Test complexes across the country.
The drive and test facilities continue to operate alongside testing for those who are homebound and in nursing homes and long term care facilities throughout the country.
Israeli-Developed Nasal Spray Stops 99.99% of COVID-19 Infections
Police on Wednesday dispersed an ultra-Orthodox wedding held at an unexpected location — the Arab village of Kafr Qasim, east of Tel Aviv.
The reason for the choice in locale was because the bride and groom wanted to avoid detection while holding a wedding that violated coronavirus restrictions on mass gatherings, according to a Channel 12 news report Thursday.
Under the partial lockdown in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19, weddings, like other outdoor events, are capped at 20 people.
An eyewitness quoted by the network said the revelers played Arabic music over the loudspeaker in an effort to blend into the surroundings.
Palestinian officials on Thursday denounced a decision by Israel to brand the student branch of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine as a terrorist organization.
Israel, the United States and the European Union consider the PFLP to be a terror group.
On Wednesday, Israel Defense Forces Gen. Tamir Yadai said in a statement that the military also now considers the PFLP's student branch as an "illegal and terrorist" entity.
Yadai, who heads the IDF's Central Command in the West Bank, said the branch had been for years behind "destructive acts that led to the deaths of many Israeli citizens."
He accused the PFLP of "recruiting young men to commit acts of terrorism."
At least 50% of coronavirus patients lie during their epidemiological investigation, Home Front Command said Thursday.
The tracing of the chain of infection has been severely impacted by people lying during investigations, Home Front Command said, adding that it could not properly track the people they may have been in contact with. As a result, it could not warn people to enter quarantine before infecting others.
Each investigator spends up to four hours per investigation. On occasion it can take less, but this is because after an investigator calls a coronavirus patient, the patient hangs up.
A citizen is not obligated to cooperate with an epidemiological investigator.
Epidemiological investigators are tasked with breaking the chain of infection. However, the task cannot be done without the cooperation of those being investigated, Home Front Command said.
Of those who are infected, at least half of them refuse to admit who they have been in contact with.
Gazan terrorists fired missiles at Israel to kill Jews but the missiles were intercepted. Media, UN & EU ignore the Palestinians' war crimes because they never care when Jews die. Write "yes" in the comment below if you support Israel's right to retaliate.pic.twitter.com/pNXrHQj1g3
It fills me with no pride that senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat was this week given VIP treatment for acute novel coronavirus at Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem. It does not make me feel moral or altruistic, nor does treating him represent the "finest Jewish ethics," as some commentators have gushed. Israel is a light unto the nations without having to treat an enemy like Saeb Erekat.
In fact, I am not sure Israel's Minister of Defense should have approved Saeb Erekat's request for emergency treatment in Israel. It is not at all certain that "Jewish values" require us to heal him, and I am quite certain that Erekat doesn't deserve it. If Erekat is nevertheless benefiting from Israel's ultra-benevolence, it is because we hopelessly want to believe that (almost) every person was created in the image of God.
Many Israelis and Jews worldwide are extraordinarily proud of the fact that Israeli hospitals treat hundreds of Palestinian Arabs and Arabs from countries that do not recognize Israel's right to exist, especially innocent children. It is a fine humanitarian thing to do; and maybe, just maybe, the Arab kids who are saved by Israeli doctors might one day be a bridge towards peace.
But I never have bought the assertion that Israel has an "obligation" to do so stemming from its "responsibility for the occupation" or from some sweet-sounding and misinterpreted halachic dictum. Nor do I believe that the world truly grants Israel credit for such humanitarian effort. Few have tempered their political hostility towards this country in recognition of its medical kindheartedness.
Hamas' Humat al-Thagour (Border patrol) unit allegedly confiscated a batch of Saraya al-Quds missiles tonight. Although this is unconfirmed, it is highly unusual to hear about this — much less publish photos of the seizure of the PIJ arsenal. #Gazapic.twitter.com/sDYdKXrUpz
On October 20, 2020, the daily Al-Arab, which is UAE-affiliated and based in London, published an op-ed by Lebanese writer Khairallah Khairallah in which he discussed Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi's ongoing series of visits to some of Europe's capitals in relation to the recent security challenges his government is facing.
Al-Kahdimi set out on his tour just two days after reports of the abduction and murder of a group of Sunnis in Iraq's Salahuddin province, and the vandalization of the Baghdad offices of a Kurdish political party. On October 17, ten bodies were discovered near the village of Farahat in Balad. The bodies belonged to a group of Sunni villagers, including some minors, who were abducted a week earlier. The area is controlled by Asa'ib Ahal Al-Haq, an Iran-backed militia.
Also on October 17, pro-Iran groups attacked the headquarters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Baghdad after senior KDP member and former Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari accused Shi'ite militias of operating outside the law, implying that they are responsible for the attacks on foreign diplomatic missions in Iraq.[1]
Commenting on these two incidents, the writer suggested that the deteriorating security situation in Iraq is being orchestrated by Iran in order to intimidate Iraqi Sunnis and Kurds, embarrass the Iraqi security forces, and foil the efforts of Iraq's Prime Minister to restore his nation's sovereignty. The writer argued that Tehran is nevertheless failing to notice the growing tendency among Iraqis, including Shi'ites, to resist Iranian influences, as evidenced in the ongoing protests calling for reform. He further stresses that Iran's declining economy under U.S. sanctions haa left Tehran with little space to maneuver, adding that the outcome of the upcoming U.S. presidential election is Iran's last bid to help its economy.
Government analysts and private sector investigators were able to rapidly attribute to Iranian hackers a wave of thousands of threatening emails aimed at US voters because of mistakes made in a video attached to some of the messages, according to four people familiar with the matter.
Those failures provided a rare opportunity for the U.S. government to identify and publicly announce blame for a malicious cyber operation in a matter of days, something that usually requires months of technical analysis and supporting intelligence.
"Either they made a dumb mistake or wanted to get caught," said a senior US government official, who asked not to be identified. "We are not concerned about this activity being some kind of false flag due to other supporting evidence. This was Iran."
Attribution to Iranian hackers does not necessarily mean a group is working at the behest of the government there. Iranian officials denied the US allegations.
"These accusations are nothing more than another scenario to undermine voter confidence in the security of the US election, and are absurd," said Alireza Miryousefi, spokesman for Iran's mission to the United Nations in New York.
Iraqi Politician Misha'an Al-Juburi: I Would Rather Be Ruled by ISIS than by Pro-Iranian Militias that Follow Khamenei pic.twitter.com/fAPksbz8TC
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