Elder of Ziyon 12/18 Links Pt2: Columbia professor : Israel 'fabricated' Jewish refugees; Why the cultural elite truly despises Hanukkah; What Raphael Warnock Believes About Israel
To mark the 30 November Day of Commemoration of the exodus of Jewish refugees from Arab countries and Iran, Gilad Erdan, Israel's UN ambassador, pledged to press for a UN resolution for the recognition and compensation of Jewish refugees.
Enter Joseph Massad into the fray to call out 'Israel's outrageous fabrications'. Massad is Associate Professor of Arab Politics at Columbia University. Erdan's campaign, he alleges in Middle East Eye, is designed to exonerate Israel from the 'original sin' of expelling the Palestinians and other 'criminal actions'.
Dismissing all the ''push' factors, he argues that Jews coming to the Jewish homeland cannot possibly be refugees. They can't be said to have been expelled either, because Yemen defied an Arab League ban and 'allowed' the Jews to leave. Israel 'removed' 'Arab Jews', as he calls them, to face institutionalised Ashkenazi discrimination in Israel' and the abduction of hundreds of children'. Massad obviously knows better than three Israeli Commissions of Inquiry, who could find no evidence of an abduction racket.
Ignoring the mass violence and state-sanctioned persecution confronting 'Arab Jews', Massad resurrects the old chestnuts favoured by Palestinian propagandists of the 1950 'Mossad' bombs in Iraq and the 1954 Lavon Affair bombings in Egypt to infer that Jews had to be made to leave 'the paradise 'of Arab countries by the Zionists. Then comes a curious inference : because most Jews in Egypt did not have Egyptian nationality, one could not blame Egypt for expelling them as foreigners. In other words, Jews in Egypt were a mini-settler colony. It does not cross Massad's mind that Jews in Egypt could have been denied Egyptian nationality by racist laws. Of 1,000 Jews detained by Nasser after the Suez crisis of 1956, only half were of Egyptian nationality. (A negligible number, so that's alright then.)
Calling mainly on sources such as Tom Segev's The First Israelis, articles in Haaretz, Joel Beinin's The dispersion of tEgyptian Jewry and writings by Ella Shohat, Massad passes over massive evidence that Jews were stripped of their rights as Jews . He claims that there was no population swap between Jewish refugees and Palestinians, as Israel argues : while Jews were given Palestinian homes and land, Palestinians were not given Jewish property in return (Not true: some Palestinians in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq were housed in Jewish property, and it was Arab League policy neither to complete the exchange, nor resettle the refugees - ed). Massad inflates Palestinian losses to $300 bn, so that they dwarf Jewish losses.
In Britain, a number of people who eulogised le Carré after his death praised him for the moral sense they claimed illuminated his fiction. They did not mean by that his contempt for Soviet communism. They meant instead his contempt for the west.
For they were reflecting the cultural orthodoxy of moral relativism, the doctrine under which there can be no objective moral distinctions between behaviour.
That leads them straight into despising western culture while inflating the moral worth of the developing world. And this loss of moral compass leads them, in turn, straight into the detestation of Israel — the new antisemitism that is a fig leaf for the older kind.
Le Carré was clearly very upset at being accused of antisemitism. That's a reaction shared by many in progressive, Israel-bashing circles.
Such people often valorise the victims of the Holocaust, sentimentalise certain Jewish characteristics and boast of having Jewish friends. They therefore dismiss as outrageous the suggestion that they may harbour some form of anti-Jewish prejudice.
But antisemitism doesn't always wear jackboots. Like le Carré's spies, it hides behind multiple disguises, including western liberalism.
John le Carré was a wonderful writer whose works gave pleasure to millions. His early spy fiction was superlative, and his semi-autobiographical novel A Perfect Spy was a masterpiece.
English literature, however, is full of writers of enduring quality and importance but who had antisemitic views. From Chaucer to Dickens to TS Eliot to Roald Dahl, we continue to read and appreciate writers of genius while being uncomfortably aware of their anti-Jewish prejudice.
This doesn't just tell us something about these authors, but also about the culture that produced them. Le Carré was the product of an era in which rampant antisemitism has been facilitated by precisely the same moral bankruptcy posing as conscience that is reflected in his fiction.
Ultimately, though, he himself remains an enigma. Was he on the side of the Jewish people — or their enemies? Even George Smiley might fail to resolve that one.
Our cultural elites' least favorite Jewish holiday has arrived: Hanukkah, of course.
Why did Hanukkah irk everyone from the late Christopher Hitchens, who memorably derided it as a "celebration of tribal Jewish backwardness," to author Sarah Prager, who took to the pages of The New York Times recently to explain that she won't be teaching her kids about it?
Well, because Hanukkah is about as out of step with the contemporary elite consensus as any religious tradition can be.
If you haven't reviewed the story in a while, here's how it goes. One fine day in 167 BC, a crowd of Jews was gathered in the town square of Modi'in, a suburb of Jerusalem.
They were there because the Seleucid Empire — the successors of Alexander the Great's expansive dynasty — had recently moved into town. The conquerors believed that their Greek culture was the only path to enlightenment. The Seleucids had resolved to Hellenize this peculiarly stubborn people, the Jews, and they sought out the right kind of Jewish collaborator — you know, those who weren't too bearded or too weird — to persuade the rest of the locals to abandon their backward mountain God and primitive laws.
And then, just as one of those Hellenizing Jews stepped up to sacrifice to almighty Zeus, out came a priest named Mattathias. Having precisely zero patience for idolatry, the fiery-eyed zealot killed not only the Jewish collaborator but the Seleucid governor, as well. Mattathias thus launched a war — partly an internal Jewish conflict, partly a rebellion against Greek imperial power — that would end with that well-publicized victory of the priest and his sons, the Maccabees, aided by one miraculous vat of oil.
In a landmark decision, Canada's Federal Court has denied a Palestinian grandmother's application for refugee status because of her work for a foundation that financed so-called "martyr payments" to the families of Palestinian terrorists convicted of murdering Israelis.
The court's decision on Dec. 8 rejected the application of Khitam Khudeish, an Iraq-born Palestinian who first arrived in Canada in May 2016 on a visa issued by the Canadian Embassy in South Africa. At the time, Khudeish's husband was serving as the PLO representative in Angola.
Later that year, Khudeish and her daughter filed for refugee status, claiming they would face "religious persecution" if they were forced to return to Iraq.
In its ruling, the Federal Court noted that "central to the assessment of her claim is the fact that from 1984 to 2006, Ms. Khudeish worked for the Palestinian Liberation Organization [PLO] in Baghdad." Her department was the Palestinian Martyrs' Families Foundation, a body that funnels monthly payments to the families of terrorists that far exceed the average Palestinian income.
It quoted Khudeish explaining that her work at PLO was "at the department of Palestine Marty's [sic] Family, this department gave welfare/social assistant [sic] to families of deceased."
"It was an administrative part-time position," she continued. "I worked only 10 days out of a month, I would receive a list of names of people to receive financial help, I would distribute the funds and check people's names off the list who had appeared and received the money, these were usually older women, mainly widows."
The court observed that Canada's refugee agency had not regarded Khudeish as a "credible witness," concluding that she had in fact "made a significant contribution to the PLO's criminal purpose by issuing the sums of payments and facilitating payments to family members of terrorists."
The best chance to fight antisemitism in the United States is by elucidating the connections between the hatred of Jews and anti-American sentiments, according to philanthropist, real estate developer and Jewish communal activist Adam Milstein, who held a webinar on Wednesday hosted by the Los Angeles Holocaust Museum.
Milstein said the Jewish community cannot combat such an age-old scourge simply by arguing about antisemitic messages or defining it as a "Jewish problem." Instead, groups and movements spreading hate need to be addressed and targeted directly.
What is needed, he added, is for others to understand that at the core, antisemitism is about hatred and bigotry.
He stressed that the enemies of Jews "are the enemies of America, the enemies of the Western world, and the sooner everyone else understands that, the better."
Crucial to such coalition-building is gathering facts to use against hate groups in the media and the court system, said Milstein, who in addition to holding dual US-Israeli citizenship serves as chairman emeritus at the Israeli-American Council and runs a family foundation with his wife, Gila, whose mission is to "strengthen American values, support the US-Israel alliance, and combat bigotry and hatred in all forms."
Milstein said it's vital to invest fiscally in research to expose who is behind the hate groups, what their objectives and future plans are, and what links them together.
A Muslim-American extremist has been disinvited from a Jewish-organized civil rights panel, and Jewish liberals are denouncing his removal as a suppression of free speech.
But the real outrage here is that he was invited in the first place.
Salam Al-Marayati, longtime president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), was invited by a group called Jews United for Democracy to speak as part of its panel on "After Four Years of Division, Tension and Bigotry—Now What?"
Yet Al-Marayati himself is a promoter of division, tension and bigotry. Bigotry against Jews, that is.
Al-Marayati's organization, MPAC, publicly defended infamous French Holocaust-denier Roger Garaudy, after Garaudy was fined by the French government for his denial activities.
Al-Marayati was a longtime member of the small editorial board of The Minaret, a magazine closely associated with MPAC leaders, which in the 1990s and early 2000s repeatedly published grotesque political cartoons depicting Jews and Israel controlling the American government. That theme was consistent with Al-Marayati's assertion that the U.S. "is in full partnership with Israel. Where Israel goes, our government follows."
Al-Marayati has had a long association with white supremacist William Baker, the onetime chairman of the extremist Populist Party, which was founded by a late neo-Nazi leader / Holocaust denier named Willis Carto, in 1984. MPAC has invited Baker to speak at a number of events. At MPAC's "United for Al Quds Conference" in 2002, Al-Marayati himself introduced and praised Baker.
Comparing Israel to Nazi Germany is standard fare for Al-Marayati. For example, writing in the notoriously anti-Israel magazine Washington Report on Middle East Affairs in June 1994, Marayati asserted: "Just as Hitler forged a conflict between Judaism and Christianity, apologists for Israel crave for Islam to be at odds with both Judaism and Christianity."
The Middle East poses a problem for the Democrats. Theirs was traditionally the pro-Israel party and still commands the support of a substantial majority of Jewish voters. But left-liberal orthodoxy demands that all right-thinking people take the side of the Palestinians against the Israeli government and hold Jerusalem to a double standard: If any other nation takes an aggressive stance against terrorist insurrectionists or other internal threats, the results may be tragic but are kept in perspective. If Israel does so, it has committed a moral outrage and broken international law.
If you aspire to higher office as a Democrat, you're expected to sympathize with that view of things but not to adopt it too stridently. You can condemn Israel for measures it has adopted to counter the indiscriminate killing of its civilians by terrorists, but you have to couch it all in pro-Israel rhetoric, always emphasizing Israel's "right to defend itself," as if any country could reasonably be said to lack that right.
Most Democratic candidates have negotiated the problem reasonably well, although extreme anti-Israel outliers from safe districts, such as Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, can occasion some awkwardness for their congressional colleagues. The problem for Raphael Warnock, the Democratic Senate candidate in Georgia's special-election runoff Jan. 5, is that he didn't start trying to negotiate it until very recently. He is a pastor whose weekly sermons at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta are recorded and available online, and he is the sort of left-wing clergyman who likes to make political pronouncements and to sign high-minded political statements.
He signed one such statement, composed in 2019 under the auspices of the National Council of Churches, after visiting Israel and the Palestinian territories with a group of black American and South African clergymen. The statement compared Israel's border wall to the Berlin Wall and drew indirect but invidious analogies to apartheid, slavery and Nazism. The statement also included melodramatic language about the plight of Palestinians ("we are cut up by the misery in which poor families in Palestine have to survive") and showed no awareness that these conditions are a consequence of Palestinians' refusal to reject, and indeed insistence on using, murder as a political tool.
Georgia Democrat candidate Rev. Raphael Warnock is running for Senate, but he's also running from a pretty checkered past. Warnack has come under fire for interfering with a child abuse investigation, for his church's decision to welcome communist dictator Fidel Castro and various other statements Warnock has made in support of Marxism and the like.
Fox News is now reporting that Warnock hosted the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright as a guest preacher in 2014. A flyer for the event at Ebenezer Baptist Church bills Warnock as the senior pastor and Wright as a guest preacher.
In a statement to Fox News, Sen. Loeffler's communications director, Stephen Lawson, blasted Warnock's decision to host the Wright.
"Not only did Raphael Warnock praise Jeremiah Wright's 'God Damn America' sermon, he thought it was so great that he invited him to Ebenezer Baptist to deliver it," said Lawson. "Does Georgia really want a U.S. senator who thinks God should damn America?"
In a 2003 sermon, Rev. Wright railed against the United States following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
"Not God bless America; God damn America," Wright said in response. "That's in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America, for treating her citizens as less than human. God damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and she is supreme."
The UK Labour Party announced on Thursday a new plan to uproot antisemitism from its ranks.
The Action Plan for Driving out Antisemitism from the Labour Party came in response to a UK Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) report in October. The report determined that the party had violated equality laws in its handling of antisemitic incidents under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.
The EHRC report's "findings were clear and stark: The Labour Party breached the Equality Act 2010 in terms of unlawful harassment and indirect discrimination towards our Jewish members," the party's current leader, Keir Starmer, and Deputy Leader Angela Rayner said in the plan's introduction. "We failed the Jewish community, our members, our supporters and the country."
As such, Starmer and Rayner said they "have made rooting out antisemitism our number-one priority," and they plan to "change the processes, structures and the culture of the Party to ensure Jewish people feel safe to return to their political home."
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has today published new guidance for all political parties and associations, following a request by Campaign Against Antisemitism.
The 'New Guiding Principles for all Associations and Membership Organisations' comes following the EHRC's devastating report on antisemitism in the Labour Party, which was found to have engaged in unlawful discrimination and harassment of Jews. The report followed the EHRC's investigation of the Labour Party in which Campaign Against Antisemitism was the complainant, submitting hundreds of pages of evidence and legal argument. Sir Keir Starmer called the publication of the report a "day of shame" for the Labour Party.
Now the EHRC has, following a request by Campaign Against Antisemitism, published guidance for other political parties and associations, drawing on its investigation and report into Labour.
The Guiding Principles cover what constitutes unlawful discrimination; the importance of setting standards of behaviour and creating an inclusive culture; and the role of leadership – which were all areas of failure for Labour and from which other parties should learn. The Guidance also emphasises the need for a clear and accessible complaints policy; training; and a clear, published social media policy, which it has also mandated for Labour in the agreed Action Plan published yesterday.
Campaign Against Antisemitism has today made submissions to Plaid Cymru's review into antisemitism in the Party.
Plaid Cymru's internal review will reportedly be led by Liz Saville Roberts MP, the leader of the Party's small contingent at Westminster, and it aims to ensure that there is "zero tolerance" of antisemitism in the Party.
The review was announced following the publication of the damning report into antisemitism in the Labour Party by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). Campaign Against Antisemitism was the complainant in the EHRC's investigation, having made the formal referral that prompted the launch of the unprecedented full statutory investigation.
Our submissions come on the same day that the EHRC has published new "Guiding Principles" for all political parties and other associations.
The core of the submissions relates to numerous cases that Campaign Against Antisemitism has compiled, with input from concerned Plaid members and other members of the public, to whom we are grateful. The cases can be reviewed here.
One of the cases concerns a former leader of the Party, Leanne Wood, who has courted controversy at least twice this year in relation to antisemitism. Another concerns repeat offender Sahar Al-Faifi against whom the Party has failed to take action.
The City University of New York (CUNY) committee has passed a resolution that rebuked the censorship of a virtual event a few months ago that featured a documented Palestinian terrorist.
The resolution that the CUNY Professional Staff Congress (PSC) International Committee passed last week bemoaned the video-conferencing platform Zoom, Facebook and YouTube removing a Sept. 23 event being promoted and live streamed, respectively, on their platform called "Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice, & Resistance: A conversation with Leila Khaled."
Khaled played a critical role in two airplane hijackings as a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a US-designated terrorist organization. The Israeli Shin Bet considers her part of the Jordanian command of the PFLP.
The resolution stated that social media censorship went against the principle of academic freedom. In addition to the aforementioned platforms, the measure also blamed what it called "a pressure campaign organized" by the Anti-Defamation League, the Lawfare Project, StandWithUs and other groups.
In a statement, the Lawfare Project stated that "this resolution was passed so that CUNY PSC could set up a committee and begin fundraising against our efforts to keep terrorists and Jew-hatred off campuses. In doing so, this fringe union has declared war on the Jewish community."
Northwestern University scrubbed its website of references to a former professor who penned a controversial op-ed against Jill Biden—but it continues to feature a professor who denies the Holocaust.
Joseph Epstein, a writer and former adjunct lecturer at Northwestern University, had argued in the Wall Street Journal that Jill Biden shouldn't call herself a "Dr." Following the op-ed, Northwestern issued a condemnation of Epstein and removed his profile from its website. Yet the school still has a page for Arthur Butz, a tenured engineering professor who calls the Holocaust a "hoax" and a "legend."
Butz authored a book titled, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry, which argues against the existence of the Holocaust. In the book, Butz claims that there is no substantial evidence to prove the Holocaust happened, that Jews were asked to shave their hair and shower in gas chambers to fight lice, and that Jews used Auschwitz as a propaganda campaign.
"What we are offered in evidence was gathered after the war, in trials," Butz wrote. "The evidence is almost all oral testimony and 'confessions.' Without the evidence of these trials there would be no significant evidence of 'extermination.'"
Attempts to deter Jewish students from complaining about antisemitism at Warwick University have been rebuffed, with the assistance of UKLFI Charitable Trust. Three disciplinary charges against a Jewish student who complained about antisemitism have been dropped with no action being taken.
In November 2019, the President of the University of Warwick's Jewish Israeli Society, Angus Taylor, submitted a complaint on behalf of a society member who felt that an academic had made an antisemitic comment during a lecture, and who wanted to remain anonymous. The society member had recorded part of the lecture as she became increasingly concerned about the lecturer's remarks.
The particular comment in issue was: "… this idea that the Labour Party is antisemitic is very much an Israeli lobby kind of idea, the idea that you want to discredit the Labour Party because there is support for Palestine among some members of the Labour Party".
When the lecturer found out about the complaint, she emailed her whole class, denying that she had said anything antisemitic. Sociology students at the University then released a statement accusing Jewish students of taking the lecturer's statement out of context in an attempt to undermine a "lecturer of colour".
In an attempt to protect Jewish students from further hostility on campus, the Jewish Israeli Society published part of the recording of the lecture showing that the statement had not been taken out of context.
The University proceeded to investigate the complaint against the lecturer and ruled that the comment "was interpreted as an anti-Semitic conspiratorial trope" but nevertheless was legitimate "within the principles and values of tolerance and freedom of speech".
A second openly Zionist staffer has exited the New York Times editorial page as the newspaper's publisher interviews candidates for the editorial-page editor job.
In June, a Republican senator, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, wrote a Times op-ed headlined "Send in the Troops," calling for the deployment of the US military to quell what the article called an "orgy of violence" and "rioters and looters" in American cities following the death in police custody of George Floyd. More than 800 Times staff members signed a letter protesting the article's publication, and more than two dozen New York Times employees called in sick to protest the op-ed.
New York Times editorial page editor James Bennet resigned after the publication of the Cotton article, but others sought to blame its appearance on two Jewish opinion-page staffers, Bari Weiss and Adam Rubenstein. I covered the episode at the time under the headline "Republican Senator Writes New York Times Op-Ed. Zionist Jews Get Blamed."
"'Blame Weiss and Rubenstein' is the NYT's new motto, and unlike its previous one, actually accurately describes what the paper aims to do every day of the week and twice on Shabbos," quipped Seth Mandel, executive editor of the Washington Examiner magazine.
Weiss left the Times in July, complaining of "unlawful discrimination" and "constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views." Now Rubenstein has also departed. He did not reply to a message asking why, but Weiss, on Twitter, wrote that he "was hung out to dry by his own colleagues."
"The bottom line is that what @nytimes did to Adam was a disgrace," Weiss wrote on Twitter.
@Facebook this is not acceptable. The fact that this went to a secondary review and was still classed as 'against community guidelines' is very disturbing.
That means it was seen by a human, who decided that the term 'happy Hanukkah' was justification for punishment.
French police arrested four individuals on Friday in connection with an "incredibly violent" assault on a Jewish family who were traveling in their car in a Paris suburb the previous evening.
In another example of the brazen and potentially-lethal antisemitic attacks endured by French Jews over the last decade, Thursday night's incident began with the unsuspecting Jewish family sitting in their car, where they sang and listened to songs and messages celebrating the festival of Hanukkah.
The four individuals are alleged to have descended on the car as they screamed, "F— the Jews." They then began shaking the car violently while smashing glass bottles against the body of the vehicle.
Police officers arrested the entire group shortly afterward on charges of assault aggravated by religious hatred.
France's interior minister urged in the wake of the attack that the four perpetrators be "punished" with sentences appropriate to the seriousness of their crime.
"Last night, in the middle of Hanukkah, a family from Aubervilliers was insulted and attacked for being Jewish. In France, in 2020," Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin tweeted.
He continued: "The assailants were arrested very quickly by the police. They should be punished commensurate with the gravity of these facts."
Lawyers acting for Campaign Against Antisemitism have filed a criminal complaint with the Public Prosecution Service in the Netherlands, which is where grime artist Wiley was located when he launched his tirade against Jews.
Ron Eisenmann, a partner at Eisenmann & Ravestijn, filed documents on behalf of Campaign Against Antisemitism seeking Wiley's prosecution in the Netherlands over his antisemitic incitement. We are extremely grateful to Mr Eisenmann and his firm for agreeing to represent Campaign Against Antisemitism on a pro bono basis.
On 24th July 2020, the rapper Richard Kylea Cowie, who is known as Wiley, spent days engaged in an escalating rant on social media against Jews. After likening Jews to the Ku Klux Klan and claiming that Jews had cheated him and were "snakes", Wiley tweeted that Jews should "hold some corn", a slang expression meaning that they should be shot. He added: "Jewish community you deserve it". He then also called on "black people" to go to "war" with Jews.
Wiley repeatedly evoked conspiracy theories that Jews were responsible for the slave trade and that modern-day Jews are in fact imposters who usurped black people — a conspiracy theory that has incited acts of terrorism against Jews, such as a shooting in Jersey City and a stabbing attack in Monsey, NY during the festival of Chanukah last December.
Notorious antisemite Alison Chabloz appeared in court today to deny three new charges of sending by a public communications network an offensive, indecent message or material. The charges were brought following action by Campaign Against Antisemitism.
Her defence counsel argued that the charges were "vague" and noted that some of the broadcasts in question were "done in the USA", even though Ms Chabloz herself was in the UK when she appeared on the channels.
"She doesn't actually appear to know what is grossly offensive," the prosecution said, adding: "There are comments that may be grossly offensive, such as 'Hitler was right'. There are hundreds of evidential exhibits in relation to the transcripts of the broadcasts."
Ms Chabloz is a virulent antisemite and Holocaust denier who has an extensive record of using social media to publicise her hatred for Jews and to convert others to her views about Jewish people. Following a private prosecution by Campaign Against Antisemitism, which was later continued by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), Ms Chabloz became the first person in Britain to be convicted over Holocaust denial in a precedent-setting case.
Ms Chabloz is fixated on the idea that the Holocaust did not occur, and that it was fabricated by Jews and their supporters as a vehicle for fraudulently extorting money in the form of reparations. This forms the basis for her second obsession, that Jews are liars and thieves who are working to undermine Western society. Ms Chabloz is also connected to extremist right-wing movements, at whose meetings she gives speeches and performs her songs, in the UK, France and North America.
The three charges under section 127 of the Communications Act relate to two internet radio broadcasts featuring Ms Chabloz.
Watch as German man duets a Palestinian song on #TikTok in front of a #menorah, pointing to it as the song progresses.
Tunisia is struggling to protect North Africa's Jewish heritage, threatened by vandalism, looting and the smuggling of valuable artifacts bearing witness to the long history of the region's Jews.
While many of Tunisia's own synagogues and Jewish graveyards lie neglected, the country has also become a conduit for antiques pillaged in lawless neighboring Libya.
"A huge number of antiques have been looted in Libya, and people are trying to smuggle them to Europe," said Habib Kazdaghli, a historian at Tunisia's Manouba University.
Kazdaghli is campaigning for the creation of a museum of the country's Jewish heritage — a sensitive subject given public opposition to Israel.
Jews have lived in North Africa for over 2,000 years, a community strengthened by multiple waves of immigration, notably an influx of refugees expelled from Spain at the end of the 15th century and the arrival of Italian Jews in the 17th.
Several hundred thousand Jews lived across North Africa in the 1940s. But the vast majority left after the creation of Israel in 1948, many of them fleeing local hostilities directed at them over the establishment of the Jewish state and leaving homes, synagogues and graveyards abandoned and vulnerable to looters.
Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has been active in the space arena for the last three or four decades. It launched its space program in the late 1980s, blasting off its first satellite in 1988, to help track the southern border and monitor the Sinai Peninsula for security threats.
In addition to producing various types of satellites, last year, together with SpaceIL and the Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology, it launched Beresheet, a Moon lander that unceremoniously crashed moments before reaching its target. In an exclusive interview, General-Manager of the Space Division at IAI Shlomi Sudri spoke to CTech about the company's unveiling of its particularly ambitious plans for Israel's next spacecraft, Beresheet 2, which is set to launch in 2024.
"Israel is one of a few countries in the world that possesses space capabilities and can launch, develop, and build satellites. We do all of this at IAI," Sudri said, noting that the Jewish state is a "one-stop-shop" for many international customers. The company yields $4 billion in sales a year from exports, with 75 percent of its products sold and purchased overseas to over 90 countries, while 25 percent of its products are purchased and used domestically.
IAI is currently a government-owned company but has recently received approval to issue minority shares on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, a move planned for the first quarter of 2021.
Nissim Black is passionately, assuredly, confidently in love with God.
Not in love with Judaism, though he's fastidious in prayer and observance. Not in love with spirituality, though most mornings, you can find him meditating in the Israeli hills after sunrise. Not in love with ritual, though he's a devoted Hasidic Jew.
No, Nissim Black is in love with the creator of the universe, with whom he has an intimate and fierce connection. He's faced no shortage of adversity, experienced myriad modes of connection with the divine. Yet he's unapologetically who he is, doing what he loves — rapping — with the undeniable gifts — perceiving and conveying clear-eyed truth — he's been endowed with.
Days after his 34th birthday, on which he released "The Hava Song," the Jewish Telegraphic Agency spoke to Black at length about his music, his faith and his communities.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. The word Hashem, literally meaning "the name," is a Hebrew word for God commonly used by Orthodox Jews in everyday speech.
Motown legend Smokey Robinson asked to re-record a "Happy Hanukkah" message he sent to a fan after he realized that he mispronounced the name of the Jewish holiday.
Jeff Jacobson, who paid $399 for Robinson to film a holiday greeting on Cameo for his mother, shared the original video message on Sunday on Twitter, writing in the caption, "My mom grew up on the same street as Smokey Robinson in Detroit. So for Chanukah, I wanted to reunite them via @Cameo. But the video takes a strange twist."
In the clip, Robinson accidentally pronounced Hanukkah as "Cha-NOOK-ah" and admitted he had "no idea what Chanookah is."
He afterward said he wanted to redo the message. Robinsin tweeted on Monday, "Hey @jeffjacobson — in the spirit of 2020, I'm gonna need a do-over! Please DM your mother's phone number so we can try this again."
Jacobson, who called Robinson a "mensch" for offering to film another video, replied to the singer saying, "Coming right up, Smokey but you owe her and us nothing. We love you!"
Robinson called Jacobson's mother on Tuesday to wish her a happy holiday, and she invited him for dinner at their home in Vancouver, Canada.
Jacobson shared on Twitter a video of the former neighbors speaking on the phone, and said about the singer's mispronunciation, "By the way, @smokeyrobinson can pronounce it any way he damn well pleases. He is a true legend whose music has been with me since birth. His kindness and generosity of spirit has already made this most-unusual 2020 Chanukah one of my family's most memorable. Also, my mom says hi."
In my wildest dreams I never imagined lighting a full menorah on the eighth day of Hanukkah in the United Arab Emirates. Nor had I contemplated saying the kaddish memorial prayer for my father on his 14th yahrtzeit, the anniversary of his death, earlier this week, in the desert dunes on the periphery of Dubai. (My father would have been amused and excited about both moments, I think.)
And yet, here I am in an Arab country, newly at peace with Israel, on Hanukkah – the holiday of Jewish spiritual resistance and military victory. Amazingly, there is no reason to hide my Jewish religious affiliation or my national citizenship as an Israeli. Just the opposite is true. Everyone here is thrilled to meet a religious Jew and a real Israeli. Emiratis are proud to be associated with us.
(I am here as a scholar-in-residence, teaching Torah and strategic affairs on behalf of koshertravelers.com for Jews from around the world. Reportedly, 50,000 Israelis are running around Dubai this month. From here, it seems the number is double that!)
To tell you the truth, at first I was put off by the seemingly preening skyscrapers of modern Dubai. Every guide boasts that the Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world, which reminds me of the Tower of Babel, of which God did not approve. "And they said: 'Come, let us build us a city, and a tower, with its top in heaven, and let us make us a name; lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.'" (Genesis 11:4). And indeed, God then scattered mankind upon the whole face of the earth, to curb the arrogance.
But then I learned from Emiratis to see their tall towers differently. They do not mean to lord it over others or express conceit. They mean to say: We are a forward-looking nation.
Heavy snow fell on New Jersey this week, just as it did 14 years ago as I prepared to return to Israel.
After a two-week speaking tour in 2006, I was anxious to get home and join my family for the final days of Hanukkah. But as always, I first stopped to visit my parents, still living in the house where I grew up, a 20-minute drive from the airport. After our visit, I arrived at the terminal filled with my mother's latkes and my father's always-solid advice, and stood in line for check-in.
Directly in front of me was A.B. Yehoshua, the internationally acclaimed writer and outspoken peace activist whose novels I revered but whose politics I often abhorred. It wasn't only his ultra-left positions on the peace process I rejected but his recent pronouncements on American Jews. They were only "partial Jews," he declared, unlike the "complete" Jews of Israel. I ached to tell him that American Jews were complete in their own way and did not think of themselves as exiles. Their identity was not at all as frail as Yehoshua depicted it, but frequently brave and even muscular. Zionism, I wanted to state, was not a zero-sum game. One could be proudly Israeli and still respect the integrity and legitimacy of American Jews.
Yet I said none of this. Rather, in a typical Israeli way, the moment we starting talking it was only about the balmy weather back home and how much we missed it. Warmly, we exchanged stories about our respective journeys across the United States. He insisted that I call him "Boolie" and introduced me to Rivka – "Ika" – a clinical psychologist and his wife of 27 years. Handing over our bags, we retired to the departure lounge still chatting.
But the snowfall grew heavier, canceling many flights. Soon ours, too, disappeared from the board, and then the entire airport closed.
Thousands of travelers were stranded without food, ground transportation or the slightest guidance. The Yehoshuas, I could tell, were anxious. Nearly in their 70s and with limited English, they had nothing but the clothes they wore and absolutely no one to phone.
"Stay calm," I assured them. "I'll call my father."
They seemed perplexed. How could some man who was even older than they were extricate them from this mess? They didn't know Lester Bornstein.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla lit the Hanukkah candles at a virtual ceremony organized by the Israeli embassy in Washington on Wednesday evening, just days after his pharmaceutical corporation received the final go-ahead to distribute its coronavirus vaccine across the US.
Introducing Bourla, Ambassador Ron Dermer pointed out that the business executive is also the son of Holocaust survivors, as his parents were among the few Jews from Thessaloniki, Greece to survive the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis.
"Seventy-five years after the Nazis murdered millions, Dr. Bourla is today leading the race to save millions," Dermer said, lauding Pfizer for being the first corporation to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, which will be distributed to countries around the world, including Israel.
In brief remarks before lighting the candles, Bourla noted that Hanukkah is "the story of great determination in face of adversity," and also "the story of the possible becoming possible."
"This Hanukkah, as this extremely difficult year comes to a close, and we look to a new beginning, we are celebrating both the incredible human spirit and determination it took to create the COVID-19 vaccine and how these efforts made the impossible — developing a vaccine so quickly — possible," he added.
1/ IDF Chief of the General Staff LTG Aviv Kohavi hosted Chairman of @thejointstaff Gen. Mark A. Milley & US Staff Sgt. Jarelle Turner, a MFO peacekeeper who survived the deadly helicopter crash in November, for a candle lighting ceremony on the 8th & final night of Hanukkah. pic.twitter.com/To87oau2KS
UAE: Photos, Chief Rabbi to Israel, Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef lights menorah today in Dubai, it's the first time a sitting chief rabbi visits an Arab country, during his visit he plans to attend ceremony building a mikvah and dedicate a new synagogue in Abu Dhabi pic.twitter.com/quXYAgpIqc
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The basic, universal rule for determining a new country's borders is to look to the borders of the preceding political entity in the territory, be it a colony, administrative district or Soviet republic. In Israel's case, it was Mandatory Palestine, which included all of the West Bank. Concerns that the Trump administration's actions could be used to justify Russia's takeover of Crimea are baseless. Crimea was indisputably part of Ukraine, a sovereign country.
The Polisario demands a country of its own. Yet only a few countries have recognized the purported Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic. Self-determination in international law doesn't typically mean the right of a people to have its own country. It can be satisfied by some degree of self-governance, and autonomy in internal matters such as language and culture. This is why the U.S. recognition was coupled with an endorsement of an "autonomy plan" for Western Sahara.
The Palestinians today have vastly more autonomy than the Saharawi would have in the Moroccan plan, which makes Rabat the final arbiter of Saharawi law. Ramallah, by contrast, has the last word on its own legislation. The Palestinian Authority and Hamas, for better or worse, govern the daily lives of their people.
The Obama administration also supported Moroccan sovereignty with Saharwai autonomy, as did other countries such as Spain and France—and even the Palestinian Authority. Morocco's position has bipartisan support in Congress, and thus the U.S. will likely maintain the recognition policy.
There is a huge gap between many countries' stances on Western Sahara and the West Bank that can't be explained by legal differences. It will be a bad look for a Biden administration to harp on Israeli "occupation" and "settlers" while maintaining recognition of Morocco's 1975 takeover. The U.S. recognition makes eventually doing the same for Israel in the West Bank much easier, and indeed a matter of consistency.
Having supported more than a dozen U.N. General Assembly resolutions condemning Israel in the past two weeks, the representatives of some of the world's most egregious rights-abusing regimes complained on Wednesday about "country-specific" resolutions targeting some among their own ranks – Iran, Russia, North Korea, and the Assad regime – saying they violate the cherished U.N. principles of "objectivity, non-selectivity, and impartiality."
Among the most outspoken critics during Wednesday's plenary session in New York were the delegates from China and Cuba, governments whose widely-documented human rights abuses at home have attracted not a single General Assembly resolution this year.
At the meeting, the assembly considered texts from its Third Committee – which deals with social, cultural, and humanitarian issues – including country-specific resolutions relating to the human rights situations in Iran, Syria, North Korea, and the Russian-occupied Crimea peninsula of Ukraine.
All four passed, but with sizeable numbers of "no" votes, and large numbers of abstentions:-- The Iran resolution passed by 82 votes to 30, with 64 abstentions-- The Syria resolution passed by 101 votes to 13, with 62 abstentions-- The Crimea resolution passed by 64 votes to 23, with 86 abstentions-- The North Korea resolution passed without a recorded vote (although several countries – including China, Iran and Cuba – then disassociated themselves from the "consensus.")
Patterns are everywhere: in nature, in art, in human behavior, in interpersonal relationships. They also exist in diplomacy. And for students of diplomacy, or more specifically those who carefully watch the ebb and flow of US-Israel relations, there is one particular pattern that may appear somewhat disconcerting as US President-elect Joe Biden is poised to take office in just over three weeks.
Veteran US Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross identified this pattern in Doomed to Succeed, his 2015 book on the history of US-Israel relations from presidents Harry Truman to Barack Obama.
"When an administration is judged by its successors to be too close to Israel, we [the US] distance ourselves from the Jewish state," he wrote. And then Ross gave numerous examples.
"[Dwight D.] Eisenhower believed that Truman was too supportive of Israel, so he felt an imperative to demonstrate that we were not partial to Israel, that we were in fact willing to seek closer ties to our real friends in the region – the Arabs
"President [Richard] Nixon, likewise, felt that Lyndon Johnson was too pro-Israel. In his first two years, he, too, distanced us from Israel and showed sensitivity to Arab concerns. President George H.W. Bush believed his former boss, Ronald Reagan, suffered from the same impulse of being too close to Israel. He, too, saw virtue in fostering distance."
And finally, Ross continued, "President Obama, at the outset of his administration, certainly saw George W. Bush as having cost us in the Arab and Muslim world at least in part because he was unwilling to allow any gap to emerge between the United States and Israel."
Since 1977, the UN's "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People," held on or around November 29, has provided an annual opportunity for the PLO and its supporters to target Israel.
This year, however, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the propaganda is spreading far beyond the confines of the UN's New York headquarters with the launch of a virtual exhibit that relies on inflammatory and misleading imagery, takes source material from an antisemitic website, and uses distorted and de-contextualized quotes.
The UN exhibit "examines the plight of the Palestinian people" by "focusing on the wall built in the Occupied Palestinian Territory," which it explores through the words of "advocates and public personalities," and through images from "artists and human rights activists who have used the wall as a canvas to express their solidarity with the Palestinian people."
What the UN-hosted exhibit does not say is that over 90 percent of Israel's security barrier, which it misleadingly refers to as "the wall," is made up of an electronic fence. Only 10 percent of the barrier is a concrete structure, mainly limited to highly populated urban areas such as Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Qalqiliyah and Tulkarm.
The exhibit describes the security barrier as an illegal abuse of Palestinian human rights concerned with "confiscating Palestinian land, demolishing Palestinian property, including homes, dispossessing and displacing Palestinian families, and de facto annexing more land."
What the exhibit fails to mention are the reasons why the barrier was constructed: no mention of the Palestinian terrorism that claimed over a thousand Israeli lives, and injured thousands more during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s; no mention of the suicide bombers dispatched from Palestinian towns and cities to wreak death and destruction on Israeli buses and cafes; and no acknowledgment of the human rights of Israelis or their security needs.
Ultimately, the security barrier reduced the number of terror attacks originating in the West Bank by some 90%, demonstrating both its necessity and its effectiveness.
The Palestinians, still floating rounds of rhetoric and propaganda – invoking such inflammatory verbiage as Nazis, apartheid and worse – reject recent normalization treaties with Israel by Arab states, the UAE and Bahrain. While these Arab states embrace a two-state solution, they also see the great short-term benefits building enterprise with Israel.
The normalization narrative weakens Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas as it is a departure from the PLO mantra, much less the PLO charter, which denies the legitimacy of Israel, the existence of a historical or religious ties to "Palestine" and labels Zionism a racist, imperialist, fascist and colonialist political movement. At the very least, archaeological finds have given the Lying King a long run at the United Nations. As for colonization, Israel is slightly larger than New Jersey.
Palestinian and Arab rhetoric seeks to revert to the 1967 borders and designate east Jerusalem (the Old City) as a capital. Turning back the clock 54 years is unlikely, if not impossible. Truly, it is mere staging for Israel's destruction.
Meanwhile, the rhetoric by Afghanistan, Iran and other outliers make glorifying speeches at perennial Palestinian pep rallies. They cry out against "denying the historical and legal rights of the Palestinian people... It is time to stand for justice." These lines get delivered with perfection and even a straight face. The story of lies and deception is flawless.
At the United Nations, art does not imitate life. The refrain to the Palestinians simply falls on deaf ears. Come to the negotiating table and negotiate face-to-face with Israel. You will get less than what you want but more than what you have today.
In 2001, "there was a discussion about ending UNRWA... gradually over a 5-year period. There's no reason why that couldn't be done now, taking into account that the money going to UNRWA would have to be, at least initially, transferred to the Jordanian government." —James Lindsay pic.twitter.com/3jrlb14FMN
Hillel Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch, an independent non-governmental human rights organization based in Geneva, issued the following three comments after the United Nations General Assembly concluded its 2020 agenda on "promotion and protection of human rights" by adopting resolutions on only five specific situations—Iran, North Korea, Crimea, Syria and Myanmar—while ignoring human rights abuses in China, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Turkey, Pakistan, Vietnam, Algeria, and 175 other countries.
Three Comments by UN Watch's Hillel Neuer:1. Iran Resolution Includes 9 Sections of PraiseToday's UNGA resolution on Iran, co-sponsored by Canada, UK, France, Germany and all other EU countries, opens with nine separate sections of undue and false praise for the oppressive regime, even as the rest of the text calls out Tehran's abuses.
The sections of praise include:• The resolution's Paragraph 5 showers praise on Iran's "continuing efforts…to host a large number of Afghans," even as Iranian border guards tortured and drowned dozens of Afghan migrants in May.• Paragraph 6 "welcomes the commitments made by the Iranian authorities with regard to improving the situation of women," even though the regime systematically represses women with the compulsory hijab law, and just sent human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotudeh back to prison to complete a 38-year sentence for defending women who removed their headscarves.• Paragraph 8 "welcomes the engagement" of Iran with different UN human rights bodies, even as the regime has denied entry for a decade to the UNHRC's Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran.• Paragraph 3 commends Iran's "reduction in number of executions" even though in September it executed wrestler Navid Afkari for protesting the regime and, just last week, hung dissident journalist Ruhollah Zam in what France called a "barbaric" act.
This excessive and undue praise supported by the EU co-sponsors is especially inappropriate just days after EU leaders postponed an online Europe-Iran Business Forum in protest of the killing of Ruhollah Zam.
Israel is open to cooperating militarily with Arab states who till recently were official adversaries of the Jewish state, a top Israeli security official said Tuesday.
"Of course, there are a lot of advantages," said Moshe Patel, who heads the nation's Missile Defense Organization, when asked about possible missile technology exchanges between Israel and its newly found allies in the Gulf. "That information can be shared."
Patel's remarks were made on the backdrop of Jerusalem's latest successful military exercise, which saw multilayered testing of the entire Israeli missile defense arsenal.
The extensive land and sea-based drill, conducted with the presence of representatives from both Israeli and American missile agencies, simultaneously tested the Iron Dome, David's Sling and Arrow systems, proving the arrays' adaptability and interchangeability.
While Patel acknowledged that overtures have been made from Gulf states on the issue of missile defense cooperation, he noted the subject would have to be reviewed and approved by governments in Jerusalem and Washington and that no tangible advancements should be expected in the immediate future.
"Access to Israeli technology and innovation, including in the defense realm, is a key interest of Arab Gulf states and a key driver for this summer's normalization deals between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain," Hugh Lovatt, Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told The Media Line.
"Gulf Arab states have grown increasingly concerned by Iran's missile and drone capabilities, and their transfer to regional armed groups. Repeated missile attacks against Saudi locations by Houthi rebels, and the September 2019 attack against Aramco blamed on Iran and its proxies, combined with the lack of any significant US response, has driven home these vulnerabilities and concerns in Arab Gulf states."
For example, Matt Duss, the top foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), is being put forward as deputy national security adviser or special adviser to the secretary of State. Trita Parsi, co-founder of the Quincy Institute and a former United Nations official, is being recommended to oversee Middle East affairs on the National Security Council. Kate Gould, a national security adviser to Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), is being put up for senior policy adviser for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.
Mike Darner, executive director of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, should be considered for a position in policy development at the White House, the groups recommend.
They'd like to see Alison Friedman, executive director of the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable and an expert on human trafficking who served in the State Department, as Biden's undersecretary of State for civilian security, democracy and human rights.
And another recommendation is for Noah Gottschalk, a senior policy adviser at Oxfam America, to be named deputy assistant secretary of State overseeing the bureau of population, refugees and migration.
A number of others on the list are well-known in defense and foreign policy circles: Bruce Riedel, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, is a former deputy assistant secretary of Defense for the Near East and South Asia. Joe Cirincione is the former president of the Ploughshares Fund, a leading advocate for nuclear disarmament. And Heather Hurlburt is director of the new models of policy change for New America's Political Reform program.
As if 2020 couldn't get worse, recent news suggests President-elect Joe Biden is considering Samantha Power to lead the United States Agency for International Development. This comes after Biden's choice of Susan Rice as the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, giving her broad sway over his administration's approach to immigration, health care, and racial issues.
While Biden hasn't made a final decision, Power's return would be another signal Biden plans to operate his White House as Obama's third term, or worse, as the first term Hillary Clinton never won.
Power has been testing the waters for a while. In November, Power said she'd be happy to take up a job in the new Biden administration. Then, a few weeks back, she wrote a long essay for Foreign Affairs titled "The Can-Do Power," outlining what she thinks should be the future foreign policy of the new administration:Today, the fact that fewer and fewer people identify the United States as capable of solving big problems should be a major concern for those who believe that U.S. leadership must play a central role in tackling climate change and other shared global problems whose solutions demand both expertise and effective coalition building.
The essay has nine mentions of immigration and migration, eight mentions of climate, and, conspicuously, zero mentions of Libya.
Power is a die-hard proponent of using America's military might to push leftist values across the world, a worldview she says she internalized growing up fatherless then working as a journalist in the Balkans during the Bosnian war. Born in Ireland, she migrated to the United States but considers it her duty to lead America on moral crusades around the world.
The Allen Plan included US forces replacing Israeli troops in the Jordan Valley. Israel could, and should, never countenance that. https://t.co/GHWDziOI4V
Israel's Chief Sephardi Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef left on Thursday to visit the Jewish community of the United Arab Emirates marking the first time a sitting chief rabbi has visited an Arab country.
During the visit, scheduled to extend between December 17-20, he will participate in a number of exciting activities such as the inauguration of the newly certified Jewish nursery school and in a special ceremony, invest Rabbi Levi Duchman as Rabbi of the Emirati Jewish community.
"The visit of the Chief Rabbi is as historic as it is a great honor for us to host him here in the Emirates," said Duchman, rabbi of the JCC where Yosef will be hosted as guest of honor for Shabbat.
"We are excited to welcome him as we dedicate and break ground on several of our new institutions, which are being constructed with the swiftness and efficiency for which the UAE has become world-famous," Duchman added.
Over 50,000 Israelis have visited the United Arab Emirates since the recent normalization pact between Israel and the UAE, according to a report this week in The Washington Post.
That number is the result of only two weeks of open commercial flights between the countries, which agreed to open the diplomatic and tourism floodgates in a historic agreement signed in August. Tens of thousands more were expected to visit during the Hanukkah holiday, according to the Post.
The report also said that the Jewish community center in Dubai, the UAE capital, is increasing its staff from five to "about 30" employees, and that nearly 150 restaurants have begun serving kosher food. The center is planning to build a mikvah "befitting Dubai's luxury standards." "It will probably be the nicest mikvah in the world," said Rabbi Mendel Duchman, who works for the JCC.
Israel's normalization agreement with the UAE, which preceded others signed with Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, was a watershed moment for the Jewish state's relationship with the Arab world. Until August, Israel only had formal relations with two Arab countries, Egypt and Jordan.
Israelis are some of the most enthusiastic globetrotters in the world, and the pandemic — difficult for many reasons in any case — has deprived them of their favorite past time.
But these travelers undoubtedly thought life was beginning finally to return to normal with the establishment of diplomatic ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and direct flights between the two.
This week, a new misery has been added to the woes of the Israeli travelers.
A security breach was inadvertently discovered on the Emirati site of Sharaf Travels, where many Israelis have begun to book their vacations and obtain their visas to their exotic new destinations.
Their personal details — including the PDFs of their visa certificates — have been exposed to the eyes of others, according to a report by the Hebrew-language Channel N12 news team.
Many Israelis have already taken the opportunity to fly and vacation in Dubai, and many are still planning their upcoming trip there. A large proportion of them use websites to obtain deals, and even to purchase and issue the tourist visa required to enter the Emirates.
Moroccan Ambassador Omar Hilale pledged to build a bridge of peace with Israel as he lit the eighth candle of Hanukkah with his Israeli counterpart Gilad Erdan at a special ceremony in New York.
"There is no alternative to peace. We are all the sons of Abraham and the sons of Abraham, they always at the end of the day will sit together to make peace together and to build a future together for the next generation," Hilale said at the ceremony.
A deep belief in peace, he said, is the reason he stood "today to light Hanukkah candles" which are symbols of hope.
"Hanukkah is existing together. Hanukkah is loving each other. Hanukkah is rejecting violence. Hanukkah is building bridges between people and civilizations. This is the understanding we have in our hearts, Hilale said.
He joined Israel's mission in New York just one week after the announcement that his country had become the fourth Muslim nation to sign a normalization deal with Israel under the rubric of the US brokered Abraham Accords.
An adviser to Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan visited Israel in late November and discussed moving toward better ties between the countries, which do not have formal relations, two prominent Pakistanis have claimed in recent days.
The claims from a Pakistani counterterror analyst and a UK-based political scientist who writes for a Pakistani newspaper have led to a backlash on Pakistani social media, with the country's ruling party wading into the controversy to try and deflect blame toward the nation's former ruler.
Their assertion came days after Israeli daily Israel Hayom reported that a top adviser from an unnamed Muslim-majority country visited Israel in late November for talks.
The claims could not be independently verified.
Noor Dahri, Executive Director of the UK-based Islamic Theology of Counter Terrorism thinktank, detailed the alleged visit in a series of Twitter posts on December 15.
He said an unnamed close aide to Khan, who also has good ties with the Trump administration, was dispatched from Islamabad to Tel Aviv via London on November 20. There he supposedly met with several Foreign Ministry officials and conveyed Khan's desire for closer relations between the two nations.
A debate about establishing relations with the Jewish state has once again taken off in the South Asian nation. Here's where Pakistanis fall on the matter.
When he was a student many years ago, Zain Zaidi, 34, joined a charged mob of young men who marched down a street, stomped their feet and shouted slogans against Israel.
He was there when a crowd burned the flag of the United States, the 'Great Satan' who backs the Jewish state, in one such protest.
Growing up in Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city, he, like many others, couldn't escape seeing the Israeli imprint on daily life. Across the country in public colleges and universities, religious groups had painted the Israeli and American flags on the ground so people could walk over them.
But Zaidi is now a sales executive in a multinational IT firm and he has travelled enough to make him question some of his earlier beliefs.
"Is there any weight in what we say about the rights of Palestinians? Does anyone listen to us? Shouldn't we try to fix our own house first?" he tells TRT World.
This reasoning is resonating with others. In the past week, some senior Pakistani journalists have openly suggested that Islamabad should consider normalising ties with Tel Aviv to remain in step with shifting geopolitics in the Middle East.
Israel is undergoing the gravest political crisis in its history. The last two years have seen a never-ending election campaign that stems from the preoccupation with the political and legal fate of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose involvement in corruption cases has led to prolonged public protests and the creation of new political entities.
But something is not working. Dialogue is essential, but it will always lack meaning if millions of Palestinians live under military rule; if hundreds of Israelis cannot get married in Israel, and if secular Israelis do not have access to public transportation on weekends and holidays.
There's meaning to taking a stance in the era of fake news, too. Israeli needs the Left. When I meet with the heads of ultra-Orthodox yeshivas, they scowl at the word "Left." For them, leftists are those who betray the public, who love Arabs more than Jews, who hate Judaism and whose values differ from their traditional views of family and community, and who would do anything just to oust Netanyahu.
But the Left embodies a holistic worldview, one that values mutual solidarity and takes human dignity seriously.
The Left values the economy. It does not seek to abolish the free market. Just the opposite, it supports small businesses and entrepreneurship.
The Left values peace. The use of force should be a last resort. Morality is important not only in treating others but also in understanding what the prolonged use of excessive force does to all of us, especially our youth.
Attorneys for some 50 victims of terror who were affected by a suicide bus bombing in the Bulgarian resort of Burgas in 2012 — including relative of five Israelis who died in the attack, and a Bulgarian bus driver, as well as another 40 people who were wounded — have triggered a search for Hezbollah assets in the amount of $100 million in court-ordered compensation for the families.
The suicide bomber in the Burgas attack was the son of a Hezbollah financier, according to the court proceedings in Bulgaria. Two male terrorists sentenced to life in prison in absentia for their part in the attack, were organizers of the attack.
In addition to a prison sentence, the two terrorists will have to pay more than $67 million in compensation to the families, if they are caught. When the total compensation package is totaled, that figure could reach as high as $100 million, according to a report by The National.
"We are looking all over the world for assets in each part of the world, in every country," said Yaki Rand, attorney acting on behalf of the families. "I don't think it's a good idea to share with everyone, including Hezbollah, our methods and our system of finding these assets. As you can imagine, we have techniques on how to find them."
Rand has filed claims in the Israeli court system against two Iranian banks and the Islamic Republic of Iran, which the victims allege failed to take steps to prevent the attacks.
The Palestinian Authority announced a two-week closure in the entire West Bank Thursday evening, after three weeks of tightening restrictions failed to curb the coronavirus outbreak among its residents.
"We know that lockdown has a negative impact on the economy. When we're given the choice between the lives of you and your loved ones, and between financial profits generated by economic activities, we absolutely chose the former," PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said in a statement to the populace.
All schools, universities, restaurants, barbershops, gyms and leisure venues in the West Bank will be closed starting Thursday night, Shtayyeh said. As part of the lockdown, a nightly curfew will be extended for another two weeks, beginning on Thursday night. The West Bank has been under a nightly curfew since early December.
The new closure will not be as strict as some previous lockdowns, in which all shops were closed except for pharmacies and grocery stores. However, any stores and government offices not closed by the official decree will have to work with no more than 30 percent of their normal staff, Shtayyeh said.
Entering and leaving Israel for work will be banned, Shtayyeh said. Tens of thousands of Palestinian workers cross into Israel for work on a daily basis, most of whom work in construction and agriculture.
The PA can do little to enforce such a ban, as the decision to close checkpoints is in Israel's hands, not Ramallah's. Israel's military liaison to the Palestinians, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, declined to comment.
PLO's Role Now Devoid of Any Substance, Jordanian Critic Says
Despite calling the decision to normalize ties with #Israel a 'sin', a 'betrayal' and a 'stab in the back of the Palestinian people', Hamas has accepted #COVID19 aid from the #UAE. https://t.co/4lCJHf7pxZ
After years in which Turkey's leadership has threatened the region, invaded countries and attacked minority groups while working with Iran and Russia, the US has finally slapped sanctions on Ankara over its purchase of Russia's S-400 air defense system. The sanctions come after years during which Washington tried every avenue to get Turkey not to acquire or use the new system.
Senior US officials said in a call with reporters this week that Ankara's purchase of the S-400s and its refusal to reverse its decision left the United States with no other choice.
"The United States made clear to Turkey at the highest levels and on numerous occasions that its purchase of the S-400 system would endanger the security of US military technology and personnel and provide substantial funds to Russia's defense sector," US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said.
Turkey's drift away from its allies in the West, to become an authoritarian state in which women, minorities and dissidents are crushed under the boot of totalitarianism, has been a long process. The regime of Recep Tayyip Erdogan has ruled the country for almost two decades. It has fundamentally changed Turkey from a country that was once an ally of Israel and the US into a country that hosts Hamas and recruits Syrian mercenaries and religious extremists. Turkey had a chance in the early 2000s to become a country of laws and freedoms, to become more like countries in the West. It didn't need to sacrifice its strength to do that, Israel has also had to deal with the complexities of the region while preserving freedom of the press and rights for minorities and differing sexual orientations. However, in Israel we have a model of balancing rights and the need for security. We have a critical press and gay pride parades. In Turkey, they have dismantled every aspect of freedom they once had. The country is the largest jailer of journalists in the world. Dissidents have been forced to flee or go into hiding and the opposition party has been jailed. People are imprisoned just for tweets that are critical of Erdogan.
Turkey has evacuated seven military observation posts in northwest Syria, pulling back troops from territory controlled by the Syrian government to areas held by insurgents and Turkey-backed rebels, a Turkish source said on Friday.
Turkey had set up a dozen military posts in the region in 2018 as part of an ill-fated deal it reached with Russia and Iran to calm fighting between Syrian government troops and rebels. Ankara backs the forces fighting Bashar al-Assad, while Moscow and Tehran back the Syrian president.
Several Turkish military posts were surrounded last year by the Russian-backed Syrian government forces. Turkey vowed at the time to maintain its presence at all of them but it started withdrawing in October.
The source, who requested anonymity, said the last of the evacuations was completed on Thursday night, and the forces were being redeployed within territory controlled by the Ankara-backed forces under an understanding reached with Russia. "It is not in the form of troop withdrawal or reducing their numbers. The situation is just about changing location," the source said.
Syrian rebels say Turkey retains between 10,000 and 15,000 troops in northwest Syria, alongside rebel fighters backed by Turkey and jihadist forces it has committed to disarm and contain.
Since the onset of the civil war in Syria, Israel has remained on the sidelines, and has avoided intervention in the struggle for control in southern Syria, only conducting military action against concrete threats in the area. With the return of the Assad regime to southern Syria, Israel terminated Operation Good Neighbor, which was designed to provide humanitarian aid to the local population, mainly in communities close to the border in the Golan Heights, to attain stability and prevent terrorist actions against Israel.
Israel's policy of non-intervention, exclusive of overt and covert attacks aimed at preventing terrorism and the transferal of advanced weaponry from Iran to Hezbollah via Syria, has enabled Iran, while fighting at the side of the Assad regime, to take advantage of the opportunity to build military capabilities against Israel, and to consolidate its overriding influence in Syria for the long term. Iran has thus been able to establish another front against Israel, in addition to the Lebanese front, for use in times of war or escalation. Once Israel realized this state of affairs, it was forced to operate a military response to the Iranian consolidation, while at the same time relying on Russia to remove the Iranian military presence from Syria and design a future arrangement comfortable for Israel. Here, however, Moscow has not yet delivered on this promise. On a related note, the Israeli policy in southern Syria is essentially another version of its policy of non-intervention that has enabled the Iranian-Shi'ite axis to build military outposts and terror cells in the south aimed against Israel.
In order to prevent Iran from using its proxies to create a border of friction in the Golan Heights marked by terrorism and high tension, Israel should take advantage of the weakness of the Iranian-Shiite axis, including the Assad regime. It can use its mechanism for coordination and deconfliction with Russia to adopt a proactive policy in southern Syria and attack the Iranian proxies there, including Hezbollah forces. At the same time, Israel should strengthen local forces, both Sunni and Druze, and forge connections by means of humanitarian aid – food, fuel, and health services – with elements in the local population that oppose the regime. This will create an "island of Israeli influence," thereby disrupting the drive to consolidate the Iranian and its proxies presence in southern Syria.
Recent weeks have provided remedial instruction for those unwilling or unable to acknowledge the reality of Iran's outlaw government. On December 9, Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif gave a Persian-language interview in which he said that "America is in no position to set conditions for its return" to the Iran nuclear deal, or JCPOA. Then he used anti-Semitic slang to express his support for Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's "popular referendum" that would decide whether Israel should continue to exist. "We're not talking about throwing the k—s into the sea, or about a military attack, or about suicide operations," Zarif said. A simple up-or-down vote should do the trick.
No one in the English-speaking world would have known about Zarif's comments were it not for the indefatigable translators at the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). Needless to say, when his despicable language was publicized, Zarif claimed in a tweet that, ha-ha-ha, he was just joking. "I was mocking the allegation that Iran seeks to 'throw the Jews into the sea' and reiterating our solution is a referendum with participation of ALL: Jews, Muslims, Christians," he wrote. In a favorite trick of demagogues everywhere, Zarif cast himself as the victim, and said it was really his critics who were biased and beneath contempt. How could anyone accuse Minister Zarif or his government of anti-Semitism? It's not like his supreme leader denies the Holocaust and says Israel won't exist in 20 years. "MEMRI," Zarif wrote, "has sunk to a new low."
It is Zarif who's hit bottom. Around the time the foreign minister dropped the k-bomb, Iran executed the 47-year-old Ruhollah Zam, an Iranian journalist and dissident who had been living in France until Tehran's agents lured him under false pretenses to Iraq, where they kidnapped and arrested him. Zam's killing was intended to demonstrate that no Iranian who speaks out against the mullahs is safe. It also sparked an international outcry from the very people whose good opinion Iran needs the most. It's "another horrifying human rights violation by the Iranian regime," tweeted incoming national security adviser Jake Sullivan. "We will join our partners in calling out and standing up to Iran's abuses."
One way to stand up to "Iran's abuses" would be resisting the temptation to reenter the nuclear deal. Using the sanctions leverage bequeathed to him by Trump, Biden might try linking not only missiles and terrorism but also human rights to a renewal of negotiations. Iranian refusal would not be a "failure of diplomacy." It would be confirmation that Tehran has no interest in changing its ways. The mullahs understand that the second they relax their grip, or appear weak vis-à-vis America, their government will crumble. Paying them off to abide by an agreement whose terms they set is an evasion. Stability in the Middle East won't come when America rejoins the JCPOA. It will arrive when the Iranian people put an end to the Islamic revolution.
Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency on Friday rejected the UN atomic watchdog chief's suggestion that reviving Iran's nuclear agreement after a new US administration comes to power would require striking a new deal.
In an interview with Reuters on Thursday, Rafael Grossi, who heads the IAEA that polices Iran's compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal, said there had been too many breaches by Iran for the agreement to simply snap back into place when US President-elect Joe Biden takes office next month.
Biden has said the United States will rejoin the deal "if Iran resumes strict compliance."
After President Donald Trump quit the deal in 2018 and reimposed US sanctions, Iran responded by breaching many of the deal's restrictions.
"Presenting any assessment on how the commitments are implemented is absolutely beyond the mandate of the agency and should be avoided," Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran's ambassador to IAEA in Vienna, tweeted. "@iaeaorg played its part during negotiations on the JCPoA."
Iran has begun construction on a site at its underground nuclear facility at Fordo amid tensions with the US over its nuclear program, satellite photos show.
Iran has not publicly acknowledged any new construction at Fordo, whose discovery by the West in 2009 came in an earlier round of brinkmanship before world powers struck the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran.
While the purpose of the building remains unclear, any work at Fordo likely will trigger new concerns in the waning days of the Trump administration before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden. Already, Iran is building at its Natanz nuclear facility after a mysterious explosion in July there that Tehran described as a sabotage attack.
"Any changes at this site will be carefully watched as a sign of where Iran's nuclear program is headed," said Jeffrey Lewis, an expert at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies who studies Iran.
Iran's mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The International Atomic Energy Agency, whose inspectors are in Iran as part of the nuclear deal, also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The IAEA as of yet has not publicly disclosed if Iran informed it of any construction at Fordo.
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it just seems that too many people are hurling accusations of "antisemitism" to their political enemies and thinking that this is how one fights antisemitism. In the end, it makes Jews feel less secure than they did before.
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.
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