Elder of Ziyon 12/25 Links Pt2: 'Israel, the West must stand with persecuted people' - Bernard Henri Le´vy; Melanie Phillips: A stunning ruling against religious freedom
It began with a phone call. Bernard-Henri Lévy and I were speaking while I sat in my car, returning from getting hummus in central Jerusalem. The pandemic was raging and winter weather was beginning in Jerusalem. He wanted to speak about the recent war in Armenia and the Kurds.
The last time I'd seen the French philosopher, who is also a filmmaker, activist and the author of more than 30 books, was in Erbil in 2017 during the Kurdistan region's referendum. Tall and impeccably dressed, he was at the Rotana Hotel there during the first voting in the momentous attempt by the Kurdish region to offer its people a chance at independence.
Much has changed now. Turkey has prodded Azerbaijan into a war with the Armenians in Nagorna-Karabakh and Ankara has occupied the Kurdish region of Afrin in Syria. Israel has made a far-reaching peace with two Gulf Arab states, Sudan and Morocco (with even Pakistan reportedly considering it). Morocco is dear to Lévy's heart.
Lévy's work as an intellectual and writer is uniquely intertwined with humanitarian activism. His books include The Virus in the Age of Madness (2020), The Empire and the Five Kings (2019) and American Vertigo: Traveling America in the footsteps of Tocqueville (2005). In June 1992, Lévy convinced French president François Mitterrand to make his surprise-journey to Sarajevo. Lévy was appointed by French president Jacques Chirac to head a state mission to Afghanistan and he supported the intervention by France and the US in Libya in 2011. Since 2015, Lévy has been supportive of the Kurds, first in the fight against ISIS and later through his documentary film, Peshmerga, which premiered as an official selection of the Cannes Film Festival.
In 2018, following the abandonment of the West after the 2017 Kurdish referendum and the Turkish attack on Afrin, Lévy co-founded with environmentalist and philanthropist Thomas Kaplan the US-based nonprofit Justice for Kurds (JFK), of which Kaplan is the chairman and Lévy is president. Since its creation, JFK is the main base of Mr. Lévy's humanitarian commitments.
Bernard-Henri Lévy has always been a devoted Zionist, he says. His book The Genius of Judaism (2017) looks at the exceptionalism of Israel and Jewish thought. His recent reporting has been published in The Wall Street Journal and in European outlets such as Der Stern, La Repubblica, L'Espresso, Kathimerini, Novoe Vremya and Paris-Match.
I spoke to Lévy about a variety of regional issues. Given his background and knowledge of Morocco, Israel, the Kurdish regions and the great changes in the region and the world, his responses provide a critical window into the issues affecting the Middle East and the West today.
This argument over ritual slaughter has gone on in Europe for many years. At its base, it reflects the priority over humans that's now given to animals with a corresponding rise in ignorance, sentimentality and hypocrisy over their welfare.
That moral confusion is one of the outcomes of the prevailing dogma of universalism, which has caused much of Europe increasingly to reject the precepts of the Hebrew Bible. That in turn accounts for the secularism and hostility to religion upon which the EU itself is based.
The EU prides itself on the core Enlightenment values of liberalism and tolerance. Those values, however, emerged from British thinkers whose values were framed by the Bible.
In continental Europe, by contrast, the Enlightenment was fuelled by a vicious hatred of religion and the belief that reason could only be advanced if religion was suppressed.
It is that European strain of universalist Enlightenment thinking that forms the values of the European Union. It has also given rise to the west's predominant ideology of moral and cultural relativism, which has propelled the rise of paganism and the veneration of the animal and natural world at the expense of humanity. And that now has Jewish and Muslim religious practices squarely in its sights.
At the start of 2020, Europeans joined other nations of the world in marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, vowing "never again."
At the end of this horrible year, the custodians of the European Jewish graveyard have instead demonstrated all too bleakly just what they think that means for the values of freedom and tolerance so many have given their lives to defend.
Even when the "anyone-but-Bibi" camp doesn't have the requisite number of Knesset seats to form a government, so entrenched are its right-wing members in their hatred for Netanyahu that they still empower the left. Following the April and September 2019 elections, Lieberman prevented the formation of a government and forced the country into the second and third round of elections by refusing to join a Netanyahu-led coalition.
And following the third round of elections, former Netanyahu aides and current "anyone-but-Bibi" right-wing politicians Zvi Hauser and Yoaz Hendel who broke away from two parties to join the Blue and White list, were willing to block their leftist Blue and White party from forming a post-Zionist government with the Joint Arab List. But they weren't willing to leave Blue and White to join Netanyahu to form a right-wing government. And as a result, Netanyahu was compelled to form a coalition with Blue and White.
Blue and White's position in the outgoing government didn't give its leaders Benny Gantz and Gabi Ashkenazi the power to implement their leftist policies. But it did give them the power to block Netanyahu and Likud from advancing their rightist policies which Hauser and Hendel ostensibly support. Gantz and Ashkenazi torpedoed Netanyahu's plan to apply Israel's sovereignty to the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley, in accordance with US President Donald Trump's Middle East peace plan. This week, Gantz and Ashkenazi blocked Netanyahu from bringing the young Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria to the government for formal approval. Blue and White's Justice Minister Avi Nissenkorn has worked assiduously to expand the powers of his leftist partners in the judiciary and the state prosecution while ruling out the implementation of the Likud's agenda of legal reform.
Given the left's success in seizing and wielding power through its partners in the deep state and its enablers in the "anyone-but-Bibi" right, it is clear that the polls that give a significant majority of Knesset seats to right-wing parties obscure more than they reveal. The left remains the only power that competes with the Likud for power. And if Likud and its coalition partners do not win 61 seats in the upcoming elections, the left will continue to control the national agenda regardless of what the public thinks.
Social media enables bigots to "reinforce each other," the editor-in-chief of The Algemeiner said during a Wednesday appearance on i24 News focused on rising antisemitism in Germany.
"Whereas in the past you might have had individuals who harbored certain hateful or bigoted views hiding out in basements and not really seeing the light of day, now it's very easy for them to connect with likeminded individuals and to strengthen each other and for those sick and perverse ideologies to spread far quicker," Dovid Efune told "Global Eye" host Natasha Kirtchuk.
Earlier this week, Ulrich Meyer — the bishop of the central German state of Thuringia — asserted that the new wave of antisemitism, much of it linked to coronavirus-related conspiracy theories, marked a "relapse into the Middle Ages."
Efune credited the German government for some of the steps it had taken to combat antisemitism, but emphasized, "There is a lot more that needs to be done."
German bishop condemns country's rise in anti-Semitism as 'relapse to the Middle Ages.' Amid #COVID-19, social media allows bigots 'to reinforce each other,' @Algemeiner CEO and Editor @Efune says. pic.twitter.com/HRdsH4JaRg
The Professional Standards Authority (PSA) has asked the High Court to quash a decision of the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC), over its decision in relation to Nazim Ali, a pharmacist who leads the annual "Al Quds Day" march through London.
Last month, the GPhC's Fitness to Practise Committee, found that Mr Ali brought the pharmaceutical profession into disrepute, following a two-week hearing that culminated on 5th November arising from a complaint by Campaign Against Antisemitism.
Following the GPhC's ruling, Campaign Against Antisemitism made legal representations to the PSA asking it to use its statutory power to refer the matter to the High Court under the National Health Service Reform and Healthcare Professionals Act 2002, on the grounds that the decision made by the GPhC's Fitness to Practise Committee was insufficient to protect the public because it was "irrational and perverse".
The PSA has now made the referral that we requested. The High Court will now decide whether to quash the decision of the GPhC's Fitness to Practise Committee, leading to the matter being re-opened.
In particular, we asked the PSA to review the GPhC's ruling that Mr Ali's statements were not antisemitic, including by attempting to distinguish between "antisemitism" and "antisemitic". We have asked the PSA to consider the International Definition of Antisemitism adopted by the British Government, and the Guidance to all Judiciary in England and Wales produced by the Judicial College that makes clear that the word "Zionist" or "Zio" as a term of abuse has no place in a civilised society.
Many articles have been published about Jeremy Corbyn's prominent role in not preventing – and occasionally also promoting – antisemitism in the British Labour party. His support of extreme antisemites has been well covered in media. Its main element, among a number of others, was declaring that the genocidal antisemitic terror organizations, Hamas and Hezbollah, were his "friends and brothers." He also invited them to the House of Commons. But there is more.
The interference of Corbyn's office in the investigations of antisemitic incidents within Labour was condemned in the Equality Human Rights Commission, (EHRC) report saying: "The committee found that Mr. Corbyn's office unlawfully, 'politically interfered' with almost two dozen cases of alleged antisemitism."
One aspect of Labour's antisemitism – that has received insufficient media attention -- concerns the collateral damage resulting from Corbyn's attitude toward antisemitism within the party he led. This concerns the huge number of abusive messages that some leading Jewish elected representatives in the party received. If he reacted at all, he did so only nominally.
To highlight this in a rather simple way, one can focus attention on the extremely unpleasant experiences of the four female Jewish MP's that were representing Labour when Corbyn became party Chairman in 2015. This will give insight into the antisemitic vilification and extreme hate some prominent Jewish party members had to endure during Corbyn's leadership.
Already in 2016, MP Ruth Smeeth - who lost her seat during the 2019 parliamentary elections – said that she had received more than 25,000 messages of abuse. She called on Corbyn to name and shame the worst perpetrators who claimed to be acting in his name. Corbyn did not react.
There is no proof that the hate messages came primarily from Labour members. They might have originated partly in the 'fascistoid' extreme right as well as in its leftist mirror group of Jew haters. For lack of better terminology, one could call the latter group "progressive perverts." Furthermore, one has to consider that one person can send many messages. Yet had there not been the negligent and often passive attitude to antisemitism of Corbyn and his immediate environment, this massive flow of Jew-hatred surely would not have happened.
Guardian columnist Nathan J. Robinson tweeted this yesterday.
Can some courageous reporter please directly ask some members of Congress why, in the middle of this crisis, they are giving Israel $500,000,000 to buy a new weapons system? Or is this something journalists think would be rude to bring up and does not require a justification?
The degree of malice and misinformation within the tweet is something to behold.
First, the idea that it would take "courage" for a reporter to query members of Congress about US aid to Israel is absurd, and evokes the canard that the pro-Israel lobby is so powerful that journalists generally don't dare to challenge them.
Additionally, the $500 million allocated towards Israel he refers to echoes an internet lie which was exposed and refuted before Robinson's tweet, one which claimed that the $900 billion pandemic relief bill passed by Congress on Dec. 22 contained $500 million for Israel.
However, as JNS editor Jonathan Tobin demonsrated in an article yesterday, the aid bill did no such thing. The lie seems to have been based on the fact that Congress passed a separate $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill to close out the year so that they could then take their holiday recess. Within that omnimus spending bill was the annual spending authorization bill for the Defense Department.
BBC audiences have seen no coverage whatsoever of that attack in over three days since it took place.
The last time visitors to the BBC News website saw any reporting on Palestinian terrorism was over three months ago when it reported (in just 30 words) rocket fire from the Gaza Strip on September 15th and 16th. Eight of the first eleven months of 2020 saw no BBC coverage of Palestinian terrorism at all and since the beginning of the year the BBC News website has reported 4.5% of the terror attacks against Israelis which actually took place and 50% of the resulting fatalities.
That of course means – as we have often noted in the past – that when Israel responds to Palestinian terrorism, BBC audiences lack the necessary context for proper understanding of events the corporation does chose to report.
A British neo-Nazi has been sentenced to a jail term of four years and two months for encouraging terrorism against Jews, the LGBT+ community and non-white minorities.
Luke Hunter, 23, was convicted at the Crown Court in the northern English city of Leeds on Tuesday after admitting seven charges of promoting terrorism and circulating material from terrorist publications.
Hunter was arrested last October as part of a police investigation into far-right terrorism.
Searches of Hunter's home revealed an obsession with Hitler and neo-Nazism and resulted in the seizure of a large number of white supremacist texts, military training manuals and guides on surveillance, guerrilla warfare, weapons and explosives. Officers also recovered Nazi memorabilia and a machete from his bedroom.
Hunter's media devices were found to contain thousands of documents, videos and audio files of an extreme right-wing nature, in addition to the manifestos of previous mass murderers and recordings of Hunter himself, expressing what police called "his deeply disturbing views."
Among Hunter's social media postings was a call for the "eradication" of Jewish people.
The Ramon Foundation, along with the Israeli Space Agency and the Ministry of Science and Technology published a call for proposals on Wednesday for scientists and researchers to apply to send their experiments or technology to the International Space Station (ISS). A scientific committee, which will be overseen by top Israeli space scientist Inbal Kreiss, who is the Head of Innovation at the Systems Missiles and Space Division of Israel Aerospace Industries, will choose between 10-15 such experiments — which are awaiting approval from NASA — that will travel aboard a SpaceX rocket alongside Israel's next astronaut, Eytan Stibbe, when he embarks to the ISS in October 2021.
Stibbe, who is a former Israel Air Force pilot and businessman, will dedicate his flight hours to the Ramon Foundation, in memory of fallen Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, will conduct scientific research for Israeli space tech businesses and academia, and hold an educational outreach program in Hebrew to be broadcast live from the station. He plans to spend 200 hours or eight days aboard the station.
The scientific committee is composed of leading individuals in the Israeli science, medical, and space industry. Proposals must be experiments that meet the following criteria: possess the technical feasibility to be conducted aboard the ISS, have the availability of required partner resources that adhere to Stibbe's strict AX-1 mission timeline, display a scientific and economic impact, and the ideas must also demonstrate novelty and the potential to achieve a significant scientific breakthrough. The deadline to apply is Feb. 14, 2021.
Experiments will be chosen from the fields of telecommunications, astrophysics, telehealth, agriculture, optics, remote sensing, medicine, robotics, and AI, among others.
Stibbe will be one of the first private astronauts to be sent by a nongovernmental nonprofit organization.
Medical cannabis patients in Germany received a welcome gift for Christmas Eve on Thursday after Israel's leading medical cannabis company, Panaxia, completed its first commercial export of medical cannabis products to the country.
Earlier this month, Panaxia announced that they had become the first company in Israel to receive a commercial license from the Health Ministry to export medical cannabis to Germany.
Germany is home to the world's fastest growing medical cannabis market outside of the United States, with 120,000 patients already being treated using medical cannabis products, paying on average between 2-5 times the amount paid by Israeli patients.
A spokesperson for Panaxia said they expect the German market to expand to 800 thousand over the next four years.
Panaxia will begin selling a series of premium oil-based medical cannabis products in Germany under the Naxiva-Panaxol brand, which it shares with European pharma giant Neuraxpharm.
Unlike Israeli patients, who receive a prescription mainly based on THC and CBD levels, German doctors prescribe their patients specific products and strains, which makes the strategic marketing partnership with Neuraxpharm vital to Panaxia's future success or failure in the country.
From the flashing outdoor lights that deck out Park Street, to the bustling pop-up Christmas market at the central rotunda of the sprawling New Market, Christmas has always been a celebratory affair in Kolkata.
While this year celebrations are toned down due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the damaging aftereffects of Cyclone Amphan that hit the city in May, Isaac Nahoum, a Jewish baker who has seen business tumble from more than 300 customers a day to a mere 30 on average, is not worried. The Christmas rush is still coming through.
"This was a big setback. Fortunately, we have the resources to carry on," he said of his family-owned business, Nahoum & Sons, an iconic 118-year old Jewish bakery. "And, as I've said before, it'll pick up next year."
Known for its delectable fruitcakes and its selection of Christmas baked goods, Nahoum & Sons is a testament to Kolkata's once significant Baghdadi Jewish community, of which fewer than 20 members remain.
"With the passage of time, the Baghdadis left India because they weren't sure how things were going to be. And gradually the migration carried on," Nahoum explained. "I left in 1951, when there were about 1,500 Jews left in Kolkata."
When Lior Avitan glanced up at a tower construction crane as he was in between classes while doing an MBA business degree at the University of Haifa, a new realization dawned on him.
Avitan, today the co-founder and CEO of UltraWis, had spent 16 years working at Elbit Systems, a leading Israeli defense company, including years at the Aerospace Division, where he led the technological development of the Brightnite pilot night vision system. Brightnite is in use in air forces around the world.
"I saw a person sitting up in the cabin operating the crane all day, and I saw that all sorts of things could be done differently, more safely and more efficiently," he told JNS. "I told myself that the technology we have at Brightnite can be converted to cranes. That a person does not have to sit up there all day—we have sensors that enable ground control."
Thus, the idea for UltraWis was born.
Together with his colleague, Erez Gernitzky, who was responsible for image processing and algorithms at Brightnite, Avitan proposed his ideas to Elbit, which ended up licensing him with 14 patents and investing in the new startup.
UltraWis was developed through Elbit's deep-tech incubator, called Incubit, which teamed up with the Israel Innovation Authority to make a seed investment of $1 million.
The company officially launched in 2019.
These days, it offers a solution that transforms the tower crane operator's booth into a cockpit that resembles an aircraft cabin and is active at a construction site in Israel.
The Brooklyn Nets have opened the National Basketball Association season at the Barclays Center (capacity: 17,732) in front of no fans. In contrast, Amar'e Stoudemire – the Nets' new player development assistant and former NBA, Hapoel Jerusalem and Maccabi Tel Aviv star – performed in front of 2,000 fans on Monday night, December 21. The crowd assembled on Zoom for a UJA Federation New York-sponsored discussion, "Amar'e Stoudemire: His Practice On and Off the Court."
The likable Stoudemire, a six-time NBA All-Star, NBA Rookie of the Year with the Phoenix Suns in 2003, and a bronze medalist with the USA Olympic basketball team in 2004, recently returned to New York after many years living in Israel. Stoudemire is a co-owner of the Hapoel Jerusalem basketball team and he was the playoff MVP for Maccabi Tel Aviv as it secured the 2020 Israeli championship.
Stoudemire is also a proud Jew, deeply committed to combating antisemitism, and works to strengthen relationships between the Jewish and African-American communities. He shared his intriguing journey to Judaism and Israel with the event attendees.
From a young age, Stoudemire's mother said: "You should keep the laws of Moses. We are from the tribe of Israel, brought here [to the United States] as slaves." Stoudemire admits that he "didn't know what she meant by that."
At age 14, he reported, "I started davening to the Torah." He continued his Bible studies through high school and continued his studies when selected ninth overall in the NBA draft at the age of 18. When he was 24, he "began gravitating to Judaism. This is what I was searching for, but I was doing it on my own. Judaism gave me structure."
Stoudemire first visited Israel in 2010.
"I came to learn Torah and discover my Hebrew roots, to see what I was reading."
That's the first response I would get from senior IDF officials over the last few years when I requested the opportunity to draft. "You serve our nation in other ways and there is a reason that the law exempts people like you," they said.
I admit that making aliyah at the age of 32 and now, with a wife and four children, my situation is a little different to the typical 18-year-old who is recruited to the army, but I too wanted to serve my country and didn't feel it right to use my exemption just because I could.
When he finished university, my brother Jon made aliyah and drafted into the army. He served in the elite Duvdevan special forces unit (the one that Fauda is based around) and years later continues to be a legend there. They thought he was crazy volunteering to serve with a bunch of kids out of high school, but he felt that he wanted to play his part in the physical defense of the Jewish people, even if he wasn't obliged to.
I remember at the time sitting comfortably in synagogue and reading Moses's exhortation of the descendants of Gad and Reuben (Numbers 32:6): "Shall your brothers go to war while you will sit here?" I thought to myself, why should my brother go and not me? Yes, neither of us had to, and yet he did it. He got up and volunteered to be part of something greater than himself.
And what about my sisters and brothers in the broader sense? How could I live on the front rows of history, in one of the first generations that one can serve in this way and not do so? I know this isn't the norm and of course respect everyone who does not do so, but for me, this was an opportunity I did not want to miss. My brother had done it, my friends went through it, all my neighbors did it, and my children too will engage in national service one day. For me, this was not a question of if, but when.
After getting over the fact that this crazy Australian oleh wanted to join them in the army, my conversations with those in charge were nothing short of inspiring. It was a bit like the traditional process of conversion to Judaism – once they had tried, and failed, to dissuade me, they welcomed me with open arms.
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.
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.
Israelis woke up on Monday to the horrible news that the lifeless body of 52-year-old Esther Horgen, a mother-of-six from the community of Tel Menashe in Samaria, was found at around 2 am in a forest near her home after she went for a power walk on Sunday afternoon and never returned. Her husband, Benjamin, alerted security officials when she didn't make it back.
On Thursday, JNS reported that Israel's Shin Bet security service arrested a Palestinian suspect from the Jenin area in connection with the murder. Details of the investigation remain under a gag order.
Police are trying to assess whether the incident was a nationalistically motivated terror attack. The Samaria Regional Council said the murder was without a doubt an act of terror, saying Horgen's skull had been crushed with police believing the weapon to have been a rock.
Friends and family gathered in Tel Menashe on Tuesday to pay their final respects to Horgen before she was laid to rest.
Ora Oziel, a neighbor and close friend, told JNS that her family and the Horgens shared a Shabbat meal together last Friday night, just 48 hours before Esther went on her ill-fated jog. She said that Esther, who was a life coach, marriage counselor and specialist in Jewish psychology, "was full of life."
"She loved the beauty of nature and of human beings, both on their inside and outside," added Oziel.
Thousands of people took part in a march on Friday in memory of an Israeli woman murdered in a suspected terror attack while out on a run earlier this week in the Reihan forest near her home in the West Bank settlement of Tal Menashe.
The march took place in the forest where Esther Horgen, 52, a mother of six, was killed on Sunday. Her body was found in the early hours of Monday, having apparently been violently murdered. Horgen had gone out for an afternoon run and did not return, whereupon her husband, Benjamin, notified the police.
Samaria Regional Council Chairman Yossi Dagan called on Friday for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to greenlight new housing construction in the settlement as a response to the murder.
"We call on the prime minister to announce on Sunday that construction in Tal Menashe will be doubled as a Zionist response to the killing. We will not stop marching," Dagan was quoted by Ynet as saying at the gathering.
IDF soldiers entered the Palestinian village of Tura early Friday in order to map the house of the terrorist suspected of murdering Esther Horgen, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit reported.
The process of mapping the house was done in order to examine the possibility of demolishing the house, in case the suspected killer is found guilty.
Horgen, a woman in her 50s, was found dead on Monday in the Reihan Forest, close to her home in the settlement of Tal Menashe, after she had been out jogging.
Horgen's body was found on the side of a path in the forest and showed signs of violence, including to her head. Her family reported her missing on Sunday. She is survived by her husband, Benyamin, and six children. Her youngest child celebrated his bar mitzvah three months ago.
A suspect in the murder of Horgen, who was killed in the northern West Bank in an alleged terrorist attack, was arrested in a joint operation by the Police, the IDF, and the Border Police on Thursday.
On Thursday, at around noon, intelligence units found that the suspect was staying at his mother's house in the village of Toura, near Jenin. The Yamam (Israel Police National Counter Terrorism Unit) then arrived at the scene and with assistance from intelligence drones, the suspect was located on a rooftop and was later apprehended. He was taken questioning by the Shin Bet.
Like in a good Hollywood thriller, hints about the end appeared in the first scene.
"My first experiences was the trip with President Trump to Saudi Arabia, and from there to Israel at the start of the administration's term. As a Jew visiting Saudi Arabia for the first time, it was very exciting for me," US President Donald Trump's advisor on international affairs Avi Berkowitz recalls.
"From Saudi Arabia, we flew straight to Israel – it was the first time that a flight like that had taken place publicly, even if it was a government flight. I remember taking pictures of the flight route from the plane. Already then, it showed us that things didn't have to stay the way they had been. The privilege I had later on of working on the Abraham Accords proved that," Berkowitz says.
Four years later, not only are Israeli flights crossing Saudi air space daily, but this week Berkowitz and his boss Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and advisor, inaugurated a new flight route between Israel and another Arab country – Morocco. On Monday, they met in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz, and Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi. The next day, they flew to Rabat with a high-ranking Israeli delegation led by National Security Council head Meir Ben-Shabbat. Ben-Shabbat, the son of Moroccan immigrants, greeting King Mohammad VI with a blessing reserved for kings: "Blessed is the One Who has given of His glory to human beings."
Later, Ben-Shabbat gave a moving speech in the local language. "Like me, many second and third-generation Moroccans in Israel remain loyal to their ancestors' heritage. Many traditions born here in Morocco are upheld in many homes in Israel. Moroccan Jewry has left its mark on Israeli society. Relations between us and the royal family are the base on which peace will be built," he said.
Ben-Shabbat repeated the speech in Hebrew. Kushner and Berkowitz, even if they didn't understand every word, didn't need any translation. It was another high point of the Middle East peace process.
Although no one said so explicitly, and even though – as Berkowitz put it – the peace process team is working "until the last second," there is a sense that something is coming to a close.
Berkowitz, only 32, and Kushner – architect of the regional peace and not yet 40 – have done in the last four years what hasn't happened in the last 26. Because they are Trump's people, the international peace camp can't allow a good word to be said about them, but Israel knew to give the team the respect it deserved.
It is worth remembering that, when President Trump took office, the region was still reeling from the dire consequences of former US President Barack Obama's inept and naive handling of the region.
By early January 2017, when Mr Trump took office, Iran was squandering the tens of billions of dollars it received for signing the nuclear deal, which Mr Obama had helped broker in 2015, on expanding its malign influence across the landscape of the Middle East.
Mr Trump's Middle East legacy... completely redefined the landscape of the region from the chaos and conflict that prevailed when Mr Obama left office. Nowadays, the momentum in the region is moving towards peace, not conflict....
[T]he challenge for the incoming Biden administration now will be to see how it can pursue a different foreign policy agenda without jeopardising the very significant achievements that have been accomplished during Mr Trump's tenure.
Certainly, if the incoming Biden administration makes any serious attempt to undermine Mr Trump's legacy in the Middle East, it will do so at its peril.
Barack Obama's fourth memoir incurs on Jewish history by giving it the title A Promised Land, promised as in plighted, stolen from Lord Balfour. During his actual presidency, Obama's main incursions on the Promised Land involved the unresolved status of the Palestinians as a plausible obstacle to his pursuit of regional peace with Iran. To this end, he targeted Israel's West Bank settlements, which he and his Secretary of State John Kerry imprinted on the Democratic mind as the obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace. You could recognize this imprint during the 2020 Democratic primaries, as even the relatively moderate Pete Buttigieg (who will now be safely ensconced taking care of the country's traffic) talking to Ben Rhodes at J Street's annual conclave of good intentionalists, described Israel as the "friend" who was making bad choices over West Bank settlements; the friend whom America had to steer right. This was the logic, or not logic, of the post-Obama Democratic mind.
But, on the ground in the Promised Land, there was a glitch to the administration's certainties when it came to Israel: the Palestinians had not ever put forward a serious proposal — even, in fact, a non-serious proposal — that had fine points which would invite at least the weighing of Palestinian intentions. Of course, it would have been better, smoother if the Israelis could have sat down with the Palestinians and ironed out a permanent territorial and civil accommodation. Indeed, in the early years after the Six Day War, the Israelis proposed solutions that would have, with truly minor adjustments, set the cartography almost as it was before the fighting. But after more than half a century maps are no longer static and the political actors have changed or disappeared. Yasser Arafat is dead and Mahmoud Abbas is playing bagatelle with himself. Hectoring the Israelis for moving rightward, as an actually vicious Kerry under Obama's orders had done — most egregiously at the UN in 2016 — will not bring Palestine to vibrant life.
Now Obama's presidency is four years past and he won't be giving parts of any Middle East turf away to anyone, although there were many from his administration who were readying under a new Democratic president's command to carve up the Holy Land this way and that. But the incoming president is not Obama and certainly not Buttigieg. It is Joe Biden, a traditional Democrat who is a fan of Israel and who, in my view, doesn't want Obama's idealists to bring their biases or beliefs — there is no real difference — to the region.
Primary among these idealist contenders were Susan Rice, John Kerry, and Samantha Power. Rice couldn't have cared less about Israel… and that in the deepest sense. A fighter, she would have had a tough time getting senatorial approval in any case. Instead, she will be in charge of the economy if the left and the right will allow her.
As Israel prepares for the incoming US administration under the leadership of President-elect Joe Biden, questions abound in Israel over what his priorities will be and what his foreign policy will look like, especially regarding Iran and the Palestinian issue.
To that end, the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS) led an online symposium together with B'nai B'rith International featuring experts debating what Israel can expect.
Former US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro said Biden's priorities will be focused on resolving the coronavirus pandemic, improving the economy, dealing with racial issues and addressing climate change.
"This doesn't mean that foreign policy is going to be ignored," he said, going on to list Biden's likely foreign-policy priorities. They include revitalizing key traditional American alliances, particularly with NATO and in Asia; restoring American leadership in multilateral arenas such as the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accord; and dealing with the challenge of a strategic rivalry with China and an aggressive Russia.
Iran, according to Shapiro, does not make it into the immediate top tier of concerns for the Biden administration.
Shapiro expected that the Iran issue is where "we will see some significant difference" between Biden's approach and that of US President Donald Trump.
While Israel's leadership believes that Iran can be pressured through sanctions to abandon its quest for nuclear weapons, Shapiro seemed to offer only two options that exist: the risk of war or the risk of a nuclear arms race.
Media organizations and Jewish groups were among those reacting furiously on Thursday to the decision of a Pakistani court to immediately release four men accused of orchestrating the 2002 kidnapping and murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl.
Pearl, a 38-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter, was investigating Islamist militants in Karachi after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States when he was seized by terrorists connected to Al Qaeda.
His gruesome death by beheading was captured on video, and included Pearl saying the words, "My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish," moments before he was killed.
The France-based organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) denounced the Pakistani court's decision on Twitter for symbolizing "the impunity of crimes against journalists."
Separately, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) — another leading media freedom NGO — tweeted that the release of British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who masterminded Pearl's abduction and killing, would increase "the threats facing journalists in Pakistan."
"...The International Criminal Court (ICC) rejected to open an investigation into the mounting allegations of genocide against the Uighur Muslims in China, meaning the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has a free rein to continue what it deems "re-education" camps – for now.
Beijing, like the United States, is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, which founded the ICC in 2002. The court was intended to be the world's first permanent international criminal legal structure to endorse the rule of law, ensure human rights protection, and punish the most abhorrent international crimes.
Yet activists had carefully been compiling evidence about acts of genocide, including classified Chinese government cables detailing a sweeping surveillance system and extrajudicial detention – much to Beijing's chagrin...
The case put forth was based on operations against the Uighurs residing in Tajikistan and Cambodia, both of which are ICC members. Furthermore, a collective of more than 60 parliamentarians from more than a dozen countries also added their gravitas to the appeal, sending a letter to prosecutor Fatou Bensouda requesting that the international legal body 'play its part in ensuring that the perpetrators of the most egregious human rights abuses are held accountable and prevented from acting with impunity.'
However, the office of ICC prosecutor Bensouda stated last week the 'precondition for the exercise of the court's territorial jurisdiction did not appear to be met with respect to the majority of the crimes alleged' since they appear 'to have been committed solely by nationals of China within the territory of China, a State which is not a party to the Statute.'
But for some analysts, the argument doesn't hold weight – raising questions over a broader influence of China in the international community and throughout the United Nations, of which The Hague, Netherlands, is affiliated with but functions independently.
One week from tomorrow, a man who herded 1 million Uighurs into camps, jails human rights activists, crushed Tibet, disappeared courageous men and women who sounded the alarm on the coronavirus, and suffocated freedom in Hong Kong will join the U.N.'s highest human rights body. pic.twitter.com/j4iSBOOnlk
The Genesis Prize Foundation on Thursday announced the winners of a competition among Israeli high-tech and biotechnology firms that are behind "the most promising innovations" in Israel to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
The announcement took place at the President's Residence during a small, socially distanced ceremony, which also celebrated Natan Sharansky, who funded the competition. Hundreds of invitees from around the world joined the event by video, the organizers of the competition said.
Sharansky was chosen the 7th Genesis Prize laureate in December 2019 and directed his $1 million award to organizations fighting the coronavirus. Part of Sharansky's award was used to fund a competition for Israeli biotech and high-tech companies developing innovative solutions in this battle.
The contest, launched in partnership with Start-up Nation Central, recognizes Israeli companies that achieved technological advances aimed at preventing, diagnosing, and treating the effects of COVID-19.
Hundreds of Israeli startups and other firms took part in the competition, of which 21 were shortlisted, with 10 winners announced after being vetted by a panel that included scientists, medical doctors and philanthropists.
Among the judges were philanthropist and SpaceIL founder Morris Kahn, Startup Nation Central head Eugene Kandel, and Dr. David Agus, a physician and the author of the New York Times bestseller "The End of Illness."
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he wished to improve ties with Israel, after long years of making repeated bellicose comments toward the Jewish state.
"Our relations with Israel on intelligence have not ceased anyway, they are still continuing," Erdogan said during a press conference. "We have some difficulties with the people at the top."
He stressed that Ankara "cannot accept the attitude of Israel towards the Palestinian lands," and that "we differ from Israel in terms of our understanding of both justice and the territorial integrity of countries."
But, he noted: "Otherwise, our heart desires that we can move our relations with them to a better point."
Turkey, once a strong Muslim ally of Israel, has become a geopolitical foe under Erdogan. The Turkish leader, an ardent defender of the Palestinian cause and a fierce critic of Israel, has often engaged in diatribes against Israel, including most recently in September during an address to the United Nations General Assembly.
Still, Ankara has continued to maintain open ties with the Jewish state, including on tourism and trade.
Syrian state media said Israel carried out airstrikes in the central province of Hama early Friday morning.
Syria's official news agency SANA said the attack occurred near the town of Masyaf and that the missiles were fired from Lebanese territory.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a pro-Syrian opposition organization, claimed the strikes hit positions of Iran-backed militias and killed at least six foreign paramilitaries. The claim could not be verified.
It said the strikes targeted the Iran-backed groups' arms depots and facilities for manufacturing short-range missiles.
The Associated Press said Israeli jets flew very low over parts of Lebanon before the strikes, including over Beirut, frightening some of the city's residents.
The Syrian Ministry of Defense issued a statement saying Israel "launched an aggression by directing a barrage of rockets" from the north of the Lebanese city of Tripoli toward the Masyaf area.
It said Syrian air defenses "confronted the enemy missiles and intercepted most of them." Syrian war analysts generally dismiss the military's regular claims of interceptions as false, empty boasts.
Syrian state TV aired footage purporting to show air defenses responding to the Israeli attack.
There was no comment from the Israel Defense Forces, which generally maintains a policy of ambiguity regarding its activities against Iran and its proxies in Syria, refusing to publicly acknowledge its actions.
Journalist Daoud Kuttab, a close acquaintance of Ashrawi's who is also of Christian descent, published an article on December 14 expressing his support for her. He stated that Ashrawi represents the Christian Palestinians who "are a fundamental part of the Palestinian national struggle."
In the article, he backed her criticism of the decline of the PLO that is empty of all function and content — and her pointing to the need for a democratically-elected leadership representing the younger generation (13 million Palestinians) in the territories and the Palestinian diaspora.
There is nothing new in Kuttab's article. In recent years, hundreds of such pieces were published by Palestinian journalists, academics, and politicians in the territories and around the world, reporting on the weakening of the PLO and on Abbas' dictatorial control since 2005.
It appears that his article was mainly intended to express sympathy and support for his friend Ashrawi. Unfortunately, he chose to ignore the main reason for her resignation as cited by senior PLO officials: Abbas' rejection of her demand to replace Erekat. Even in Palestinian politics, in the end, everything is personal.
Abbas made a strategic decision to no longer to attack Arab countries that choose to join the process of normalization with Israel. Accordingly, he instructed senior PA officials and the Fatah movement not to make media comments regarding Morocco's normalization with Israel. However, Ashrawi, in a recent TV interview with a US network, sharply criticized Morocco's decision and President Donald Trump's recognition of Morocco's sovereignty in the Western Sahara, saying it contradicted UN resolutions.
Her remarks provoked a great deal of anger in Morocco, and she was met with harsh criticism on social media.
Many Internet users called her remarks a "provocation." Abdessamad Bencherif, director of al-Maghribia TV, wrote on his Facebook page: "Do you want to incite the Palestinian street against Morocco and mobilize the anger and rage against it? Does the Palestinian problem need it? You are wrong when you link the Western Sahara problem to the Palestinian problem, and you hurt the Moroccan people's love for Palestine."
One political activist wrote: "We will not accept your intervention in the internal affairs of Morocco; we will not interfere in the internal affairs of the Palestinians."
It appears that we can expect sharp public criticism by Ashrawi of the PA and its head — criticism that she never voiced while holding positions in the PLO. This criticism may be justified, but it stems mainly from her personal anger against Abbas, who refused to appoint her as Erekat's replacement.
Hamas, the Islamist terror group that rules Gaza, is drawing criticism after an internal document was leaked in which it urges Islamic authorities to limit "interactions" by Muslims with Christmas.
A Hamas spokesman said the document, seen by some Gaza Christians saw as an insult to their faith, was an "administrative error."
An administrative circular issued by Hamas's Minister for Religious Affairs Abd al-Hadi Sa'id, the document proposes "preventing interaction with Christmas" through Islamic religious edicts and public campaigns in the media. It was leaked last weekend by the Palestinian news site Amad, a Cairo-based outlet affiliated with former Gaza security chief Mohammad Dahlan, and has been making waves ever since.
"This edict…threatens the social fabric and national unity," Palestinian political analyst Omar Sha'aban wrote in a Facebook post.
Hamas, which avowedly seeks to destroy Israel, has been the de facto ruler of the Gaza Strip since 2007. The two-million-strong coastal enclave is overwhelmingly Muslim, but over 1,000 Christians live in the area as well. File: Palestinian Christians attend a Christmas tree lighting celebration in Gaza City, Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2019. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)
Senior officials in the Palestinian Authority — longtime rivals of Hamas — quickly seized on the document to claim that Hamas was attempting to impose a ban on Christmas celebrations in Gaza.
Media distributed by Palestinian factions emphasizing joint military cooperation between the groups. The upcoming military drills in #Gaza will be heavily promoted by the factions in order to project unity and strength. #Israelpic.twitter.com/GDk3a6AngC
The third week of December 2020 should go down in history as a lesson in how countries attempted to combine military power, technology and messaging through media to prevent conflict.
On the surface, this appears counterintuitive.
Over the last week US President Donald Trump has tweeted threats against Iran, IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi has also warned Iran, and US and Israeli submarines were reported to be on their way to the vicinity of Iran.
For the average person watching the region, the conclusion is obvious: We are on the brink of war. However, the opposite may also be true: The actions taken in Washington and Jerusalem are meant to prevent conflict.
How all this came about is complex.
Iran-US relations have been marked by rising tensions over the last several years. Iran continues to try to challenge the US and seeks to remove US forces from Iraq. The Trump administration walked away from the Iran Deal in 2018 and has sought to use sanctions to isolate and impoverish the regime. It sought also to sanction Iranian allies and raise awareness about Iran's trafficking of weapons to the Houthi rebels in Yemen and to Hezbollah in Lebanon. That has meant the US Navy intercepted several ships moving weapons to the Houthis, and the US even established the "petting zoo" in Washington to show off Iranian weapons such as ballistic missiles and drones that were used to attack Saudi Arabia.
Tensions grew in May 2019. Iranian-backed Iraqi militias began to fire rockets at US forces in Iraq and also at Saudi Arabia. Iran mined ships in the Gulf of Oman. It threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, and has continued to show off new missiles, a military satellite, drones and naval weapons. It also keeps "sinking" a mock-up of a US carrier and harassing US ships in the Persian Gulf. In September 2019 Iran used drones and cruise missiles to attack Saudi Arabia.
In Iraq, Iran empowered the Hashd al-Shaabi, mostly Shia militias that are part of the Iraqi security forces, to strike at US facilities. A US contractor was killed in December 2019, and three US-led coalition members in March 2020.
The US carried out airstrikes in response. The Trump doctrine has stressed that the US will strike back if US soldiers are harmed. The US also killed IRGC Quds Force head Qasem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.
Australian Shiite Imam Youssef Nabha: Macron Is No Less of a Criminal than the Perpetrator of the Nice Church Stabbing; The West Is Now Suffering from the Takfiri Groups It has Supported pic.twitter.com/d245FA1OJF
Ahmmm, does someone wanna tell them Jesus was a Jew born in Bethlehem, whom the Palestinians would consider a settler and therefore try to boycott or prosecute him.
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