Elder of Ziyon 01/15 Links Pt2: Caroline Glick: Israel goes back to the future; In the Guardian, Antisemites are Authorities on Antisemitism; Melanie Phillips: Inoculation, incompetence and intolerable exceptionalism
Then there are the Palestinians. In September 2000, the Palestinians launched a massive terror onslaught against Israel which lasted for four years. Every day, Israelis were subjected to acts of murderous terrorism that ranged from roadside stonings, shootings and bombings to mass shootings to suicide bombings, to mortar and missile assaults.
The Palestinians launched their terror war after rejecting Israel's offer of peace and statehood at the Camp David Peace Summit in July 2000. Yet in 2001, Burns was instrumental in convincing then-president Bush to become the first president to support Palestinian statehood.
Burns' support for the Palestinians is widely shared among members of Biden's incoming team. On Wednesday, Biden announced he is appointing Obama's former UN ambassador Samantha Power to serve as administrator of USAID.
Power played a central role in conceiving and passing UN Security Council Resolution 2334 in December 2016 which referred to Israeli communities and installations beyond the 1949 armistice lines in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria as "a flagrant violation of international law." As USAID administrator, Power will be responsible for providing US financial support to the endemically corrupt and terror-supporting Palestinian Authority and to international organizations that facilitate Hamas's terror regime in Gaza.
According to sources in contact with Biden's transition team, Biden intends to appoint Obama's ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro to oversee the Abraham Accords. The sources raised the concern that Biden's goal in making the appointment is to restore the Palestinian veto over the normalization of relations between Israel and Arab states. Shapiro, who took the unprecedented step of remaining in Israel and active in public affairs after he left office, is expected to remain in Israel to take on this function.
In anticipation of the incoming administration's restoration of Obama's policies towards Israel and the Palestinians, on Tuesday, the foreign ministers of Germany, France Britain, Egypt, and Jordan called on the Biden and his team to lead negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians towards the so-called "two-state solution," replete with an Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 armistice lines. The foreign ministers also called on Israel "to completely end all settlement activities including in East Jerusalem."
The leftist political group J Street issued a call for Biden to officially abandon the Trump administration's peace plan. It also asked the new administration to end scientific cooperation with Israeli institutions located beyond the 1949 armistice lines, to open a diplomatic legation in Jerusalem to serve the Palestinians, and to pledge to open a US embassy to "Palestine" in Israel's capital upon the conclusion of a peace deal.
Efforts by Biden's supporters to blot out the actions and achievements of the outgoing administration extend to the fight against anti-Semitism. One of the most significant achievements that Israel and Diaspora Jewry have accomplished in recent years in the fight against anti-Semitism has been the adoption by governments throughout the world of the definition of anti-Semitism conceived by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
On 7 January 2021 The Guardian published a letter from eight lawyers who claimed that the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which the UK government has instructed UK universities to adopt, undermines free expression. The signatories also claimed that examples included in the IHRA definition have been 'widely used to suppress or avoid criticism of the state of Israel.' Dave Rich, Director of Policy at the Community Security Trust and a leading expert on left-wing antisemitism, argues that the letter rests on a 'misrepresentation of what the definition says and does, 'unevidenced claims' about its impact, and confusions about its legal status and power. The IHRA definition, he contends, offers universities 'a modest, sensible and practical guide to antisemitism that would help Jewish students to play a full part in campus life'.
The campaign against the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism has been running for long enough that it is now possible to identify its common themes. These include repeated misrepresentation of what the definition does, and does not, say about Israel and antisemitism; unevidenced claims about the definition's alleged impact on free speech; confusion of its legal status and power; and an appeal to authority by quoting others from within this same campaign.
A letter in last week's Guardian (where else?), signed by eight experienced lawyers, is a helpful example of how this works. It opens with the claim that, 'The legally entrenched right to free expression is being undermined by an internally incoherent "non-legally binding working definition" of antisemitism.' The letter then cites the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Education Act 1986 before noting that the IHRA definition 'has no legislative or other authority in international or domestic law.'
Given that this is the case, it is hard to see how a non-legal definition with no legal authority could undermine legally-guaranteed rights to free expression and academic freedom. Most universities understand this, even if these eight lawyers don't: the University of Oxford, in announcing its recent adoption of the IHRA definition, stated that, 'The IHRA definition does not affect the legal definition of racial discrimination, so does not change our approach to meeting our legal duties and responsibilities.'
There are other legal restrictions on free expression which these lawyers did not mention in their letter, including the Public Order Act, the Equality Act, the Protection from Harassment Act, the Malicious Communications Act and so on. These all limit free speech, including at universities, but the letter's signatories do not seem troubled by this. Instead, a definition that even they concede is 'non-legally binding' is, apparently, such a grave threat to free expression that it is worth a letter to the Guardian. Why is this the case?
Signers of the Guardian letter had previously accused Jews of dual loyalty; of using their control over the media and banks to manipulate others; of "whining" about the Holocaust and pedaling "fairy tales" about the Final Solution; and of being part of a "pampered religion." They had celebrated terrorists who targeted and murdered innocent Jewish civilians. And they had excused those responsible for vile antisemitism, including the claim that Jews use Christian blood in their rituals, Holocaust denial, and calls to "kill the Jews."
ANTISEMITISM Subhi Hadidi: Jews forever disloyal to home countries One co-signer, Subhi Hadidi, justified the persecution of Jews living in the Arab world by insisting their expulsion underscored a "higher truth": that Jews are disloyal and insular.
In the London-based newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi, Hadidi took issue with historian Geoffrey Alderman's criticism of the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arab lands. It seems Alderman placed blame on the wrong side. The expulsions, Hadidi wrote, were "a textbook case of a greater truth: the failure of most Jewish communities to assimilate into any national culture, their unwillingness to meet a high or sufficient standard of citizenship sense and participation in society, and raising [their] loyalty to Israel, even before it was born, above all loyalties."
The charge of dual loyalties is something of a habit for Hadidi. After the US ambassador to Israel criticized Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas for saying the Holocaust was provoked by the Jewish role in society — "usury and banking and such" —Hadidi insisted the real reason for the ambassador's criticism was that the he was "a Jew before he is an American."
He has also cast Judaism in general as being pampered — "a very spoiled [religion] on a global scale."
Despite this history of flagrant antisemitism, the Guardian felt it was appropriate for him to instruct readers on what is and isn't appropriate language about Jews.
Mohamed Alyahyai: "Jewish media machine" abuses Holocaust Hadidi is hardly the only hen-house guard that looks suspiciously foxy.
Mohamed Alyahyai, another co-signer of the letter, has blamed the "Jewish media machine" for planting guilt in European minds about the Holocaust.
Ali Fakhrou: Jewish "whining" about Holocaust includes lies, fairy tales, exaggerations Ali Fakhrou, a 9/11 conspiracy theorist, has taken such arguments even farther. If his co-signer Hadidi insisted the persecution of Jews in the Arab world is the fault of the Jews themselves, Fakhrou flatly denied any such mistreatment occurred, writing in al-Quds al-Arabi of a "false Zionist claim that the Arab Jews were persecuted."
And just as co-signer Alyahyai charged the Jews with running the media and misusing the Holocaust, so too did Fakhrou, who expanded on the argument by raising doubts about Holocaust historiography.
The sustained nature of the media vaccine libel requires some explanation. After all, unlike previous blood-libels against Israel over its behaviour during military operations to deter Palestinian attacks, the facts about the vaccine and the Palestinian Arabs are easily ascertainable. So why is the media persisting with this? I suggest three reasons.
First, having been deprived of opportunities to demonise Israel because the Palestinian Arabs are no longer the story in the Middle East and there haven't been any wars recently to facilitate the usual lies about Israeli "atrocities", the media spotted in the vaccine story an opening at last for malicious attack and now won't relinquish the opportunity.
Second, to accept that the Palestinian Arabs are actually responsible for administering their own health care would knock a big hole in the central falsehood that Israel is an "occupying" and oppressive force.
Third, the vaccine libel possesses a key characteristic of antisemitism through the ages: that what drives antisemites absolutely wild with pathological jealousy is the evidence of Jewish exceptionalism.
What such people find utterly unsupportable is the idea that the Jews are special in any way. This taps into the prejudice that the Jews are "chosen", which Jew-haters interpret not as chosen for a particular moral burden, which is actually the case, but exceptionally privileged.
This pathology is so twisted that such people are even jealous of the exceptional nature of Jewish suffering, which provokes the ludicrous complaint that the Jews "suck up all the victimhood so there's none left for the rest of us".
So for the Jew-hater, the evidence of exceptional Jewish achievement — worse still, exceptional moral achievement — has to be denied, repudiated or twisted into its opposite.
One other thing, @KenRoth: If the Oslo Accord—the source of the PA's jurisdiction—is stillborn, and they have no ultimate responsibility to take care of their people with the billions they are given, why do you keep arguing they're a state at the ICC?https://t.co/vOZGc6bcM4
No contradiction! We did not ask Israel for vaccines - for our citizens; but we DID ask Israel for vaccines for ourselves. Or maybe: We did not ask Israel for vaccines - because we didn't need help; We DID ask Israel for vaccines when we say it could be used to make them look bad https://t.co/9Pj3S0Rqtf
Perhaps @nytimes ought to have put a disclaimer to this propagandist op-ed by @MustafaBarghou1, that if the Palestinian Authority (which he was part of as Minister) did not pay $300 million + per year in salaries to #Palestinian murderers, they would have more money for vaccines! pic.twitter.com/BrPJrzttV5
One reason it's so easy to feel pessimistic about America these days is that it's got a superpower state, but as a society it is going through a bit of a thing right now. The society part you feel in your bones, because we are humans.
What contempt @camanpour shows to families who have lost loved ones to terror while the PA pays to support the families of the murders! She doesn't even let @gidonsaar make the point that if they can afford that, they can buy vaccines for their people! https://t.co/JOnhBDcLwT
Israel has won praise for vaccination rollout, but drawn criticism for vaccinating settlers in the West Bank yet not Palestinians. Gideon Saar hopes to unseat Netanyahu as PM and says "we would like to help but we will be able to help only after taking care of our own citizens." pic.twitter.com/VcFEgI0FPA
* Amanpour, as always, always believes the worst of Israel. She said the Oslo Accords say Israel needs to vaccinate the Palestinians when, in fact, it says Palestinian Authority is responsible. She quotes an anti-Israel op-Ed, because of course she takes that at face value.
"Since Israel is a democratic state surrounded by essentially undemocratic states which have sworn her destruction, those interested in democracy everywhere must support Israel's existence." This statement might have been written by any number of American candidates for political office, Republican or Democrat. But actually, it was uttered 50 years ago by a prominent African American civil rights icon, Bayard Rustin.
Rustin's public advocacy for Israel was a constant in his career, but it emerged more forcefully in response to the Black Power movement of the 1960s. Some of that movement's leaders embraced the Palestinian cause and declared Israel a pariah state. Rustin, one of the pioneers of the struggle for civil rights, condemned this move and hostility to Jews and Israel, especially as manifested in the Nation of Islam and in the Black Panthers. He met calls for African American separatism with a call for the renewal of the struggle for integration and full equality. Black separatism, he felt, was an expression of despair and disengagement. It was the abandonment of the struggle; not, as claimed, its intensification. And alienating Jewish supporters of the struggle would, in the end, hurt the cause.
Rustin was the grandchild of slaves. His paternal grandfather, Janifer Rustin, migrated in the 1880s from the South to Pennsylvania. He married there, and he and his wife, Julia, came under the influence of the Quakers. Their grandson Bayard was born in 1912. Bible lessons, led by his grandmother, were Bayard's earliest educational experience. As a child Rustin was taught to respect all religions and to sympathize with the oppressed. "My grandmother," Rustin recalled in his later years, "was thoroughly convinced that when it came to matters of the liberation of black people, we had much more to learn from the Jewish experience than we had to learn out of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John."
Rustin's pacifism sprang from his upbringing, and in his early 20s, he declared himself a Quaker. At Wilberforce University, the first of the historically Black colleges, Bayard focused on the study of classical music. He proved to be a talented singer, an avocation he returned to many times in his life. He used his musical talents in political struggles and sang at many meetings and marches. And over his lifetime, he recorded three albums of African American songs. In 1937 Rustin moved to New York City, where he took an apartment in Harlem.
Freshman Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) cautioned about the rise of antisemitism in progressive politics during a wide-ranging conversation in the inaugural episode of Jewish Insider's "Limited Liability Podcast," hosted by Rich Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein.
Torres, who describes himself as "the embodiment of a pro-Israel progressive," said he is mindful of anti-Israel elements within the Democratic Party that have the ability to turn antisemitic. "We have an obligation to combat antisemitism no matter where it emerges, whether it's from the right, from the left. It has to be fought at every turn and in every form," he said.
"My concern is that the pro-BDS left could be to the Democratic Party in American politics what Jeremy Corbyn has been to the Labour Party in British politics," Torres cautioned. "It only takes a few demagogues to pump antisemitic poison into the bloodstream of a political party. And so I see it as my mission to resist the Jeremy Corbynization of progressive politics in the United States."
Torres, a freshman representing New York's 15th congressional district, addressed his hard-fought primary victory, which pitted him against a diverse group of Democratic candidates, from the conservative Rubén Díaz, Sr. to Democratic socialist Samelys López, who had the backing of high-profile progressive leaders and groups.
Subscribe to Jewish Insider's Limited Liability Podcast. Top guests. Broad and engaging content. Bipartisan. Politics, policy, culture, religion, education, food & more. It's what we need right now. First guest: Freshman Congressman Ritchie Torres (D-NY). https://t.co/CsXczDv4Sg
Mondaire Jones made history on Nov. 3 as one of the first two openly gay black people elected to Congress by defeating four other candidates, including Republican Maureen Schulman, receiving 59.3 percent of the vote in New York's 17th Congressional District to succeed retiring longtime Democratic Rep. Nita Lowey, a pro-Israel icon.
Jones, 33, worked in the U.S. Department of Justice during the Obama administration and has worked as a lawyer in other parts of the public sector.
JNS talked with Jones by phone on Dec. 10. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Q: What's your overall stance on the U.S.-Israel relationship?
A: My stance is that the United States should continue to be a close ally of and partner to Israel. One that works in earnest to achieve a two-state solution [with the Palestinians], so that we can get lasting peace and security in the region and, of course, ensure that everyone is able to live with dignity.
Q: What role do you see Israel playing in your district?
A: I'm always careful not to conflate what is happening … there is great diversity within the Jewish community, and there are a number of people in my district who care very deeply about the State of Israel and its security, and the ability of its residents to thrive. (h/t Jewess)
One of Montreal's largest synagogues was found with its doors spray-painted with large swastikas Wednesday, and a synagogue guard played a role in arresting the man suspected of the vandalism.
The man who was apprehended reportedly brought a canister of gasoline to Congregation Shaar Hashomayim, a 160-year-old Modern Orthodox synagogue that is known internationally for nurturing, and burying, the legendary singer and poet Leonard Cohen.
Police were summoned to the scene at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday and arrested a 28-year-old man they said would be evaluated for mental health problems, according to local news reports.
Canadian Jewish groups decried the vandalism, with Rabbi Reuben Poupko of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs calling it "vile" and B'nai Brith Canada's CEO Michael Mostyn calling it "a jarring reminder of the constant need for vigilance in protecting our Jewish communal institutions."
The synagogue, like others in Montreal, is currently closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. That was the case as well in May, when vandals ransacked a different Montreal Orthodox synagogue, destroying its Torah scrolls in the process.
Adam Riga, a BDS supporter, has been arrested for vandalizing a synagogue in Montreal yesterday with swastikas.
A gasoline container was found in his possession and police believe his intention was to set the synagogue and adjacent school on fire.
Biden announced his choice of Clarke on Monday, which earned praise from the Anti-Defamation League.
The following day Tucker Carlson, a Fox News Channel host, uncovered 1994 stories in the Harvard Crimson about the Martin controversy. Subsequently, statements from liberal Jewish groups backing Clarke were more pointed in rejecting the bid to stigmatize her with actions she took as a student.
"This week, Kristen Clarke acknowledged she made a mistake when, as a student at Harvard, she gave a professor who promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories a platform," Bend the Arc: Jewish Action said Thursday on Twitter. "She unequivocally denounces antisemitism — and acts upon that commitment in fighting religious discrimination."
Also praising Clarke on Thursday for her work combatting antisemitism were the National Council of Jewish Women, the Jewish Democratic Council of America, and Joel Rubin, the American Jewish Congress executive director.
Rabbi Jill Jacobs, who directs T'ruah, a rabbinical human rights group, said in an interview that Clarke's statement this week was a "model of teshuvah," or repentance, and derided those on the right who would stigmatize someone for something they said as a teenager.
Some of Carlson's attacks on Clarke include remarks by Clarke, ripped from context, about white supremacy during her Harvard years, when she contrasted it with black supremacy.
"It's not accidental that people on the right are specifically going after women of color and trying to dig up anything from their past even if it's something that happened when they're 19," Jacobs said.
Glad that progressives like @rabbijilljacobs are willing to forgive @KristenClarkeJD for her ties to a totally whack anti-Semite on the grounds that it was in college, & she has expressed regret. I hope this becomes new level of foregiveness in our cancel culture, but I doubt it https://t.co/K6NQDk9UDm
While last week's attack on the US Capitol has drawn widespread bipartisan condemnation, two prominent Democrats now say they support the riots after hearing that they are similar to Kristallnacht, a 1938 pogrom against Jews in Nazi Germany.
Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, both members of a far-Left democratic faction known as The Squad, have endorsed the storming of the Capitol after initially calling for President Trump's impeachment over the attack, which left at least five people dead. Their position changed after actor and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger compared the event to Kristallnacht in a viral video earlier this week.
"At first I was against the insurrection at the Capitol, because they were trying to kill us, they were Trump supporters and worst of all, most of them were white," Omar said. "But if it really was like Kristallnacht, then things are about to get really good."
Tlaib added that she opposed the Capitol riots initially but that her opposition softened when she saw shirts reading "Camp Auschwitz" and "6MWE," an acronym for "six million wasn't enough," a reference to Jews killed during the Holocaust.
The final item in the January 11th afternoon edition of the BBC World Service radio programme 'Newshour' concerned the latest chapter in a story the BBC has been covering for nearly five years.
Presenter Razia Iqbal introduced her interview (from 49:00 here) with Father Francesco Patton, the Custos of the Holy Land, with an inaccurate claim: Iqbal: "For more than five decades the site where Jesus is thought to have been baptized was inaccessible because it was mined heavily during the Six Day War between Israel and Arab nations. That site has been successfully cleared of mines now and is once again a shrine and a place of prayer."
The thousands of landmines that were cleared from the area (which had previously been under Jordanian occupation) were not laid "during" the Six Day War but after it. "Following the 1967 War, a War of Attrition began on the eastern front. At a meeting in Damascus, on June 23, 1967, headed by Yasser Arafat, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leadership decided to continue the armed struggle against Israel by moving all organizations' headquarters into the occupied territories. This resolution opened a new front in the Jordan Valley, followed by armed terror squads crossing the Jordan River and the Jordan Valley on their way to the eastern mountains of Samaria. The purpose of these infiltrations was to stir up the Palestinians in the West Bank into a popular rebellion or disobedience, to supply them with weapons and to prepare an effective leadership to initiate and execute terror operations in the future."
In at least four previous reports published or aired since May 2016 the BBC has similarly failed to provide its audiences with an accurate account of when and why the mines were laid at Qasr al Yahud:
No reason whatsoever there to include Netanyahu, PM of Israel. Only because reflects @KenRoth's own vicious Jew hate and obsession. https://t.co/qg1ua7GsNt
On Tuesday morning, an EU-funded NGO, B'Tselem, published a report titled, "A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid." ("Leading human rights group calls Israel an 'apartheid' state," by Joseph Krauss, January 12, 2021.)
The invocation by B'Tselem of the term "supremacy" seems designed to latch on to trends in American politics. In fact, however, the language of "Jewish supremacy" recalls the title of David Duke's 2004 book "Jewish Supremacism: My Awakening on the Jewish Question." Although the phrase "Jewish supremacy" should have raised red flags everywhere, many mainstream news organizations published articles amplifying the group's claims. Among those was the Associated Press – though the newswire did at least seem to know better than to repeat the phrase itself.
Instead of questioning why a group would employ such terminology, the AP reporter refers to B'Tselem as "a respected Israeli organization." But, as CAMERA has pointed out before, in 2011, a B'Tselem photographer staged a scene that was passed on to an Israeli journalist falsely as a portrayal of Israeli soldiers treating a Palestinian child harshly. And in 2014, B'Tselem was forced to admit – after initial denials – that it was employing a Holocaust denier. Is this what the AP thinks of as "respected"?
Referring to B'Tselem simply as "Israeli" also conceals important information. NGO Monitor reports that, "based on financial information submitted to the Israeli Registrar of Non-Profits, in accordance with the Israeli NGO Transparency Law, B'Tselem received NIS 46,258,659 [about $14.6M] from foreign [i.e., non-Israeli] governmental bodies in 2012-2020." NGO Monitor further reveals that between 2012 and 2016, such foreign donations comprised almost two thirds of B'Tselem's budget. While the group operates in Israel and employs Israelis, it could not operate as it does without support from outside the country.
A courier working for food delivery app Deliveroo has been jailed by a French court for four months for discrimination, after he refused to collect orders from two kosher restaurants in the city of Strasbourg.
The court's decision came after the owners of the establishments filed a complaint against the courier, who has not been named. A lawyer for the restaurateurs explained that last weekend, the restaurants had prepared the orders received from Deliveroo only to be told by the courier, "I don't deliver to Jews," when he learned that the establishments served Israeli food.
"French law prohibits discrimination of any kind. You have to respect everyone in this country," Judge Bertrand Gautier said at the trial.
He added that the courier, an Algerian who entered France on a tourist visa that has since expired, fraudulently used an associate's Deliveroo codes and had his proceeds transferred to the account of a third person.
The suspect was also ordered to leave the country after serving his sentence, a deportation confirmed in a tweet by Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin.
Speaking via an interpreter, the courier admitted to canceling the orders but denied saying he would not deliver to Jews.
A Waitrose customer has accused the supermarket giant of failing to act after she was allegedly racially abused by an unmasked shopper at a branch in north London.
Emma Bloom, 46, from Hendon, said she confronted the person for not wearing a face covering and for jumping the queue into the Mill Hill East store.
The woman, who she said appeared to be in her 60s, had by this stage come closer to her.
"That's when she turned around and goes 'f**k off, you f**king Jew. Go back to where you came from, you c***.'"
"I was in shock. I couldn't believe it," Ms Bloom said, adding that she asked customer services to intervene but was told to "walk away".
Ms Bloom said she then dialled 999 but was told the incident was not a police matter.
Skiers and tobogganers have been seen sledding and skiing at the memorial on the site of the Buchenwald concentration camp, some leaving tracks across graves, German news site Der Spiegel reported Thursday.
Memorial staff have increased security and called for locals to show respect and refrain from winter sports at the site of the camp, according to the German site RTL.
"Some of the tracks ended at the graves," Jens-Christian Wagner, the director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials foundation told Der Spiegel.
Wagner also said that the site's parking lot has been completely full, not with cars of visitors to the memorial but with the cars of winter athletes. While he expressed that it is understandable that the coronavirus pandemic and ensuing regulations have made many desperate for outdoor activities, Wagner asked that visitors in the area refrain from disturbing the peace and disrespecting the area, according to Der Spiegel.
The memorial fund asked on Twitter that locals "show respect for the victims."
Three Israeli machine-learning start-up companies appear in Forbes 2021 list, according to data taken by Crunchbase, a platform known for finding business information about private and public companies.
One of the start-ups is Databand. Based in Tel Aviv, Databand provides platforms for machine learning development. They assist engineering teams to "scale production data infrastructure" reported by their website.
Another company included on the list, RideVision, was founded in 2018 by Uri Lavi and Lior Cohen. RideVision's purpose is to enhance motorcycle-safety by improving the strength of artificial intelligence and image-recognition technology, thus enhancing motorcyclists' awareness of their surroundings.
The third company, Augury, has the ability to determine mental health by combining real-time monitoring data from production machinery with AI and machine learning algorithms. Augury's machine health solutions create a "real-time, prescriptive source of truth for the health and performance of industrial assets," according to the company's website. It also records machine data, from temperature to vibration to determine if any potential malfunctions exist. The company has offices in New York and Haifa.
CES, the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, like so many other mainstays in our pandemic world, went virtual this year. The all-digital conference ran from January 11-14.
About two dozen Israeli companies were scattered around virtual CES this year. An additional 19 startups were featured in the Israel Export Institute's Israeli Pavilion, a quarter of them from Israel's booming mobility sector.
"We know it's not the same as going to Vegas in person, but we still have amazing Israeli innovation," says Noa Avrahami, director of digital media technologies, smart mobility and lifestyle for the Israel Export Institute.
Below we have highlighted nine of these startups as well as four Israeli companies that won CES awards this year – OrCam, Voiceitt, Vayyar Imaging and Tactile Mobility.
It is 2021 and while we may be seeing the light at the end of this COVID-19 tunnel, we are not quite there yet. In addition to this pandemic, the world seems to be getting increasingly unstable day by day in the political arena. There are so many big problems we are dealing with regularly, we are often distracted and forget about the people who are less fortunate than us and are having an even harder time than we are.
Have you ever stopped to think how dependent we've become on technology, and specifically location-based technology? I know that I rarely get into my car without activating Waze. Well, where does that leave the visually impaired and the blind? How do they find their way?
This question is amplified by the novel coronavirus pandemic because if an individual with partial or full blindness could ask for directions before COVID-19, now, due to social distancing, that has become much more challenging, if not impossible.
So whether it is in an outdoor setting, a mall (remember those?), or any other indoor setting, how has technology made the lives of the visually impaired easier and more manageable, if at all?
Well, I happen to have had a phone call this week with an old friend who works at Google and who has made accessibility in the technology sector her baby, but even she'll agree, not enough has been done, and we can do better.
Jewish-American billionaire Sheldon Adelson was buried Friday in a small funeral on the Mount of Olives, overlooking Jerusalem's Old City, with only close family present.
Jewish families have buried their dead on the Mount of Olives since time immemorial, with an estimated 150,000 people interred there. In 2012, the authorities who run the cemetery said there is barely any room left.
The coffin carrying the pro-Israel and GOP megadonor arrived in Israel Thursday evening. It was draped in US and Israeli flags and was on display at Ben Gurion Airport, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Adelson's wife, Miriam, and other family members paid their respects.
"He will be remembered as a great Jewish patriot, this is a great loss for the Jewish people," Netanyahu was quoted as saying by the Israel Hayom free daily, which Adelson controlled and operated with his wife, the paper's publisher.
Adelson, who owned the Las Vegas Sands gambling empire, died from complications related to treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, Sands and his wife announced Tuesday.
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.
The Apartheid accusation in Btselem's recent report is not just totally false, it is anti-Semitic. Apartheid is not just a term for policies one dislikes – it is an international crime defined as "inhumane acts committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups, and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime." These "acts" include such things as "widespread" murder and enslavement. The legal standard for labeling a government an "apartheid regime" is set quite high—indeed, so high that no country since the end of South African apartheid has ever received the distinction. Despite massive systematic oppression of racial and ethnic minorities in countries from China to Sri Lanka to Sudan, the apartheid label has never been applied to those countries or any other country by the U.S. or anyone else.
Invoking the heinous crime of Apartheid to criticize Israeli policy is a classic anti-Semitic rhetoric: it accuses Jews, uniquely among the peoples of the world, of one of the most heinous crimes, while also judging the Jewish state by a metric not applied to any other country. And the clear agenda is to entirely delegitimize Israel: the remedy for apartheid is not reform, it is the abolition of the regime itself and a total reshaping of the government.
The very essence of apartheid was the physical separation – apartness – of people based on a legislated racial hierarchy. There is no racial or ethnic distinctions in Israeli law. Under the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act of 1953, municipal grounds could be reserved for a particular race, creating, among other things, separate beaches, buses, hospitals, schools and universities. Inside of Israel there are no separation of this sort. In Judea and Samaria Israelis and Palestinians buy at the same stores, work together and etc.In South-Africa Public beaches, swimming pools, some pedestrian bridges, drive-in cinema parking spaces, parks, and public toilets were segregated. Restaurants and hotels were required to bar blacks. In Israel and all territories under its jurisdiction, Palestinians patronize the same shops and restaurants as Jews do. It is true that Jews are de facto excluded from Palestinian-controlled territory, but that is not the Apartheid Btselem has in mind.
Though funded by EU countries, @btselem's is working to convince Israelis NOT to make territorial concessions to Palestinians. By claiming Israel commits "Apartheid" in Gaza, it says to Israelis: Instead of "land for peace," you get "land for accusations of Apartheid."
A bill that would impose American sanctions on supporters of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) or their affiliates has been reintroduced in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Brian Mast (R-Fla.) reintroduced the Palestinian International Terrorism Support Prevention Act on Thursday. Hamas and PIJ are U.S.-designated terrorist groups.
The bill passed the House in 2019 but died in the U.S. Senate.
If enacted, the bill would require the president to submit to Congress an annual report for the next three years identifying foreign persons, agencies or instrumentalities of a foreign state who knowingly and materially assist Hamas, the PIJ or an affiliate or successor of one of those organizations.
It would also require the president to report to Congress on each government that provides support for acts of terrorism and provides material support to Hamas, PIJ or any affiliate or successor organization.
Additionally, the president would need to prohibit that government's transactions in foreign exchanges that are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and prevent that government's transfers of credits or payments between financial institutions subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which serves Palestinian refugees, admitted on Thursday that its educational materials contain exhortations to violence, hate speech, and terrorism that violate UN regulations.
In a statement by UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini one day after the release of a report by the group IMPACT-se examining the materials, UNRWA asserted that its educational curriculum — which is used to teach over 500,000 children — "emphasizes the UN values of neutrality, human rights, tolerance, equality, and non-discrimination with regard to race, gender, language and religion."
The agency claimed that the inclusion of the offensive material was due to bureaucratic problems prompted by the shift to remote learning during the coronavirus pandemic.
"Unfortunately, in the rush to continue students' education uninterrupted, some material the Agency had previously identified as not in line with UN values was mistakenly included," the statement said. "As soon as the issue was identified, the Agency conducted a thorough review of the entirety of the self-learning material that UNRWA developed and took steps to address it."
"UNRWA has a zero-tolerance policy for discrimination and for incitement to hatred and violence in its schools and in all of its operations," it claimed. "Any breach reported is dealt with firmly. The Agency adheres, in its education program, to the highest standards of neutrality, humanity, and tolerance."
Marcus Sheff, the CEO of IMPACT-se, commented, "After years of hearing UNRWA's claims that it does not teach hate and has safeguards in place, we have for the first time taken a [peek] behind the curtain and what we see is shocking."
We suspended funding to UNRWA, which is riddled with waste, fraud & concerns of support to terrorism. UNRWA is not a refugee agency; it's estimated <200,000 Arabs displaced in 1948 are still alive and most others are not refugees by any rational criteria. https://t.co/SdyigJPHiH
It is easy and almost natural to throw out the baby with soiled bathwater. But it is a mistake to do so.
What I mean is that it would be a colossal mistake for the incoming American administration to throw out the Trump administration's Middle East policies – successful policies that made the US and Israel safer and stronger! – because of outgoing-US President Donald Trump's vulgarity and improbity.
Indeed, distinguishing between a politician and his policies is hard. It takes political maturity and self-restraint to do so. Most presidents fail at this. But US President-elect Joe Biden must make every effort to avoid falling into this trap – despite the poisonous partisan climate in Washington created first by president Barack Obama and his adversaries, and appreciably amplified by Trump and his adversaries.
For the benefit of Biden, and for the benefit of Israelis too (who owe a debt of gratitude to Trump), here is a summary of the Trump administration's Mideast policy innovations and accomplishments. Biden should be building upon these valuable advances, not bulldozing them. Insisting on historical truths: The Trump team did a great service to the cause of long-term Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab peace by insisting and acting on basic historical truths that long have been distorted by "peace-process professionals" and the so-called "international consensus."
Jerusalem municipal authorities said Wednesday they have given preliminary approval to a location for a new US Embassy in the city.
In a statement on Twitter, Deputy Mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum said the city's building and planning committee approved the plans.
She said another committee must still grant approval, which she expects to happen in the coming weeks.
The location is on the city's Hebron Road, a central thoroughfare, and not far from the current temporary embassy.
The site is near an invisible line that divides West and East Jerusalem, the part of the city captured by Israel from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War and claimed by the Palestinians for a future capital. It was not immediately clear if it crosses the boundary.
In a controversial move, the outgoing Trump administration recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city in 2018. It was one of a string of diplomatic gifts delivered by US President Donald Trump to Israel.
"From #Trump to #Biden: The Way Forward for US National Security" is a clear-eyed assessment that reviews Trump's policies, details which achievements Pres. Biden should preserve, & provides recommendations on critical issues confronting US foreign policy: https://t.co/SAzlqmFrKf
In a December 22, 2020 article in the London-based daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Saudi journalist Mishaal al-Sudairy wrote that Israeli Arabs are not likely to renounce their Israeli citizenship, since their situation in the country is good: they are part of the Israeli economy, working as doctors, lawyers and artists, among other professions. Israeli Arabs hold political positions, represent Israel abroad, and even serve in its security apparatuses. There are also Arab athletes on Israeli sports teams, he noted, such as footballer Dia Saba, who was formerly acquired by an Israeli team for a record transfer fee of over €2m, and has now joined the UAE Pro League club Al-Nasr and will represent it in the Gulf League.
The following is an English translation of the article published on the Saudi Al-Arabiya website.[1]
"A Palestinian woman named Huda Naccache was recently selected to be Israel's representative to the Miss Earth beauty pageant in the Philippines. Huda stated that she participated in the pageant to cast light upon her Arab-Israeli community.
"I looked at Huda's photos and read her words, and I must admit that she has both the looks and the brains.
"Some people attacked Huda for representing Israel, but this is such a frivolous attack for two reasons. First, Palestinians represent at least 22 percent of Israel's citizens, and this share is expected to increase to 50 percent within the next five decades due to their high [birth] rate.
"Second, before Huda, when poet Mahmoud Darwish was living in Israel and holding an Israeli passport in the sixties, he was part of the Israeli delegation to the Youth Festival of Socialist Countries (World Festival of Youth and Students) in Moscow in the Soviet Union, as a member of the Israeli Communist Party.
"A young Palestinian girl blows soap bubbles near the Dome of the Rock at al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's old city on the first day of Eid al-Adha on August 21, 2018. (AFP)
"It is out of the question for Palestinians who live in Israel to renounce their Israeli citizenship, just like Indian Muslims categorically refuse to renounce their Indian citizenship to hold that of the Muslim country of Pakistan, for reasons pertaining to living conditions, practicality, rights, democracy, and even the future.
"Many Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship engage in professional life there, and there is no shame in that. They are employees, doctors, engineers, lawyers, and artists. Many Palestinian men and women are even unabashedly and winningly involved in public security and the army in the Israeli territories or on the borders. They even take an oath upon graduation from security and army colleges and salute the Israeli flag.
"Furthermore, many Palestinians hold key positions in Israel as ministers, ambassadors, and deputies. Palestinian youth of both genders play in different sports clubs and represent Israel in international competitions. For instance, the Israeli football team includes a large number of Palestinian players.
Israel's energy minister held a video conference call with his counterparts in the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Sudan and Bahrain for the first time on Thursday, according to a statement from his office.
The Israeli minister, Yuval Steinitz, said the conference call discussed recently normalised ties and what impact there could be on sectors including oil and gas, renewable energy and research and development, the statement said.
The four Arab states, in deals brokered by the United States, have agreed to set aside hostilities with Israel.
Also on the call were energy ministers from the United States and Egypt. Cairo made peace with Israel in 1979.
"The ministers discussed how diplomatic relations between the countries could revolutionize national security, economic prosperity and adding content to the peace agreements, including investments in energy research and development, deploying infrastructure and technology," the statement said.
Miracle: Nations that met in 1967 at Khartoum's Arab Summit to declare the three no's—"no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations"—are now uniting in peace with Israel.
Today's call: 🇮🇱 Israel 🇪🇬 Egypt 🇸🇩 Sudan 🇧🇭 Bahrain 🇲🇦 Morocco 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates https://t.co/oZEhY0j6qd
US President-elect Joe Biden named Samantha Power, a former US ambassador to the United Nations, to a top foreign aid post on Wednesday.
Power — notable during her UN tenure in part because of her role in allowing through an anti-settlements resolution at the tail end of the Obama administration — was tapped as the administrator of the US Agency for International Development. Biden elevated her position to include a seat on the National Security Council, a reflection of his determination to roll back President Donald Trump's diminishment of US assistance overseas, including to Palestinians.
Power, an expert on genocide, had a good relationship with the pro-Israel community during President Barack Obama's first term, when as a member of the National Security Council she forcefully advocated for a robust U.S. presence in the international community.
That soured to a degree during Obama's second term when she was U.N. ambassador and took a more central role in the increasing tensions between the administration and the Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Power became a locus for pro-Israel anger when she would not veto a resolution condemning Israel's settlements policy, although she would not vote for it either.
Biden has said he wants to restore the assistance to the Palestinians, part of it administered through USAID, that Trump all but eliminated.
Jewish groups praised Power during her U.N. stint for raising the Israeli delegation's profile, convening a conference on anti-Semitism and pushing through the recognition of Yom Kippur as an official holiday.
Some groups applauded Biden's choice of Power to lead USAID.
Kuwaiti newspaper apologizes for using 'Israel' instead of 'The Zionist Entity.' https://t.co/bDR0cTWg7X
The March 2020 elections gave Arab Israelis an unprecedented 15 Knesset seats, the highest showing for their community in Israeli political history.
"From the first elections in 1949 until today, we have not received this degree of support and this number of seats," Joint List chair Ayman Odeh said in a statement hailing the victory at the time.
With hopes running high, the Joint List recommended Benny Gantz for prime minister. It was a nearly unprecedented historic moment, the first time in nearly three decades that an Arab party had recommended a mainstream Zionist politician for the premiership. (After every election, the president of Israel solicits recommendations from each Knesset party head as to whom he should task with forming and leading a government.)
The move could have given Gantz the opportunity to form a government without Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, if he were able to corral the anti-Netanyahu parties into line behind the move. Instead, Gantz wound up joining forces with the right-wing premier, beginning the unhappy life of one of Israel's most divided governments. The Joint List was again left out in the cold.
Internally divided and the target of ire within the Arab community, with little to show for the past year's work, the Joint List now appears on the verge of disintegration.
Recent polls show the Joint List shedding as many as one-third of its seats, and internal rifts may weaken it even further, potentially sending some of its constituent factions tumbling below the election threshold.
Recent public opinion polls show that the Joint List is set to lose four to five seats in the upcoming general election.
The Joint List's plummeting numbers is the result of growing dissatisfaction with its members, as well as internal differences and an aspiration for change in the Arab citizen's relationship with the Israeli establishment.
Some Arab political activists are now searching for alternatives to the Joint List. Some have formed their own parties, while others are seeking to join other parties.
In the 2020 election, the Joint List, headed by MK Ayman Odeh, increased the number of its seats from 13 to 15, remaining as the third-largest party in the Knesset until Yesh Atid slit off from Blue and White to lead the opposition.
At this stage, it's not clear whether the four parties comprising the Joint List – Hadash, United Arab List, Ta'al and Balad – would again run together in the next election.
Some Arab Israelis believe that the recent rapprochement between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mansour Abbas, head of the United Arab List, will drive away many former voters of the Join List.
A Palestinian alleged "military expert" disseminates the lie that Israeli rabbis are teaching Jewish kids to "kill everyone who is not Jewish," as reported by Palestinian Media Watch. Now Wasef Erekat has taken his libel a step further, claiming that the rabbis specify that Jewish kids should "kill the Palestinian children": Official PA TV "military expert" Wasef Erekat: "The Jews, the Israeli rabbis, are indoctrinating the Jewish kids: "Kill whoever is not Jewish." They are indoctrinating the Jewish children: "Kill the Palestinian children."' [Official PA TV, Passport, Jan. 6, 2021]
Ironically – and sadly - it is the PA that teaches Palestinian children to attack Israelis.
Earlier this month, senior Fatah official Abbas Zaki took pride in Palestinian children attacking and terrifying Jews, demonstrating the PA's fundamental approval of Palestinian kids who seek to murder Jews. Zaki enthusiastically and approvingly told a story of a Palestinian boy who was waiting with a rock in his hand to "slaughter Jews":
Senior Fatah Official Jibril: The "Criminal Jackass" Trump Was Thrown into the Garbage Bin of History; Arab Leaders who Succumbed to Trump's Pressure Will Be Thrown There As Well pic.twitter.com/NWTzj8BKVM
Nasrallah stated in his recent speech that Hezbollah was attempting to bring reproachment between Hamas and Syria after the breakdown in ties during the Syrian war. I won't be surprised if Hamas members will be visiting Assad this year. https://t.co/BmtQ5Bl4mD
The Lebanese are worried that their country will meet the fate endured by Iraq, Syria and Yemen, where the Iranians and their militia proxies are playing a major role in the civil wars currently plaguing these countries.
The Lebanese are demanding an end to Iranian occupation of their country; they are clearly hoping that the international community will intervene to assist them in freeing Lebanon from Iran's control.
A policy of appeasement or engagement with the mullahs will yield only one thing: blood running even more freely in the streets of Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq -- as well as nuclear weapons.
AS IF THIS weren't an illustration of the degree to which Democrats misunderstand – or are willfully blind to – the mindset of the Iranian mullahs, Blinken goes on to make a ridiculous assertion. The cancellation of the JCPOA, he tweeted, "makes getting to yes with North Korea that much more challenging. Why would Kim Jong Un believe any commitments... Trump makes when he arbitrarily tears up an agreement with which the other party is complying? And... Trump's attacks on the substance of the Iran deal constitute self-imposed pressure to get a stronger outcome with North Korea. Will... Trump get Pyongyang to dismantle the vast bulk of its nuclear enterprise up front, as Obama did with Iran? Will he be able to impose the most intrusive inspections regime ever, again as Obama did with Iran? Not likely."
In the first place, Trump didn't "arbitrarily" rip up the deal; he did so as a result of Iranian violations, aggression and a refusal to allow inspections of the nuclear sites. The idea that the "other party" was complying with the JCPOA is laughable, as the more than 110,000 documents retrieved by the Mossad from a warehouse in Tehran revealed. It is likely – as Blinken should know – that Trump made the final decision to exit the deal after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed him the contents of the trove.
Furthermore, North Korea did not "dismantle the bulk of its nuclear enterprise" when Obama was in the Oval Office. And Kim Jong Un is buoyed by Biden's election, since it was Trump with whom negotiations for "denuclearization" broke down. With all his protestations of friendship with the dictator in Pyongyang, Trump didn't concede. Kim expects a different attitude from the next administration.
In preparation for what is a happy turn of events for him, Kim has been rattling his nuclear sabers while calling America a "war monster" and his country's "worst enemy." He, like Iran's leaders, knows that this is the way to get Biden's team on bended knee – a pose that they've been practicing and perfecting for the past four years.
Israel needs to prepare for this new reality in which its ability to combat Iranian forces and proxy groups is concerned. The Democrats in the White House, State Department and Capitol building are lying in wait to lead the world, as Obama proudly did, "from behind."
Even if the deal negotiated in 2015 by the Obama administration were worth the effort, it is impossible to imagine the Iranians willingly recommitting to enrichment levels they have long since blown past. No one believes in their professed "peaceful use" of nuclear energy. So why does a return to the deal make any sense?
The killing of top terror-funding IRGC official Qasem Soleimani by the US military and Iran's relatively toothless retaliatory attack against two US bases in Iraq suggest that the regime fears what an escalation of tensions would mean to its own future more than it desires to stab at the "Great Satan." The regime may finally be on the verge of collapse.
Those sanctions are the only leverage the U.S. really has against Iran, and they may finally succeed, much as the Reagan administration was able to do to the USSR in the 1980s. Now is not the time to reduce or remove them in exchange for paper promises born of a campaign slogan, from a regime whose movements suggest it fears its days are numbered.
Through covert operations, hidden diplomacy, an intense military buildup, and a series of actions designed to throw sand in the gears of the Soviet economy, American policy destroyed the USSR from its fingertips to its heart. Former Soviet leaders including Mikhail Gorbachev have admitted it with grudging admiration. The only ones who were wrong were those in the liberal foreign policy establishment who pretended it was all just a coincidence.
Israel and like-minded Arab states have a shared message ahead of US President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration next week: Don't reduce the pressure on Iran.
The countries aligned with Israel on this matter are not just its new allies in the Gulf, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, but also include Egypt and Jordan, an official involved in the matter said on Thursday.
"Our message to Biden is that we would hope he would take into account the attitudes of Middle East allies before he went ahead and did anything with Iran," the official said. "Many Arab states are on the same page on this issue."
Biden has said he intends to have the US return to the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers, if the Islamic Republic returns to compliance with it. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the Iran deal is officially known, was meant to limit uranium enrichment such that it would extend the time it would take for Tehran to develop a nuclear weapon. At the same time, it gradually lifted international sanctions against Iran, so that by 2030 there would no longer be any.
The official denied reports that Israel is seeking to have changes made to the JCPOA so that it would address the Islamic Republic's ballistic missile program and its malign actions in the region and beyond.
The deaths of Soleimani and Muhandis left the militia structure decapitated. Assassination is an uncertain weapon, sometimes resulting in the emergence of a leader more formidable than the one removed. This has not been the case. Esmail Ghaani, who replaced Soleimani at the head of the Qods Force, and Abu Fadak al-Mohammadawi, now heading the pro-Iran militia structure in Iraq, are proving far less capable than the men who preceded them. The militia structure worked primarily on informal relationships, created by Soleimani over a period of years. These cannot simply be handed over to a replacement.
Alongside the drone strike that killed Soleimani and Muhandis came the US policy of "maximum pressure". The sanctions imposed on the Iranian oil, financial and banking sectors in 2018 starved the economy of funds. This meant the closing of the tap for the militias. Hezbollah in Lebanon, for example, suffered a 40 per cent reduction funding in 2020. Similarly, the four top pro-Iran militias in Iraq saw their income fall from £3-4m per month to £1-2m.
The absent leadership and lack of money is having a dramatic affect. In Syria, where there is no large Shia population, Iran has had to use cash to entice recruits. This is no longer available. In Iraq, discipline and unity have begun to break down. In their own right, the powerful militias control oil fields, checkpoints, property and land. They are not prepared to mutely follow orders from fresh commanders for whom they have little respect.
There is now a real possibility that the winds are about to change once again in Iran's favour. President-elect Joe Biden has made clear his desire to re-negotiate the 2015 nuclear accords with Iran. As a prerequisite, the theocracy is insisting on the lifting of all sanctions. In an attempt to focus American minds, it has threatened to expel international nuclear inspectors from the country on 21 February unless the money starts to flow again.
An early capitulation by the Biden administration would give away any leverage that the US currently holds, reducing any chances of achieving the improved deal the president-elect has said that he wants. Lifting sanctions would revitalise the cashflow to the militias, threatening to revive their forward motion. Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis and Major General Qasem Soleimani are gone. Muhandis will stay in Najaf, where they buried him, until further notice and Soleimani will not be leaving the Kerman Martyrs Cemetery in southeast Iran any time soon. The structures these men created, however have not been wrecked but are only low on fuel.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards fired "abundant" surface-to-surface ballistic missiles and tested locally manufactured new drones in a military exercise on Friday, state television reported.
The drill, which it said was overseen by Guards commander Major General Hossein Salami in the central desert region, came in the waning days of high tensions with US President Donald Trump's administration.
It followed short-range naval missile tests on Wednesday, as well as exercises earlier this month that featured a wide array of domestically produced drones.
"The bomber drones struck the hypothetical enemy missile shield from all directions, completely destroying the targets," the state TV broadcast said of Friday's drill.
"Also, an abundant number of a new generation of ballistic missiles were fired at selected targets, inflicting deadly blows to the hypothetical enemy bases."
Iran, which routinely boasts of technological advances in its armed forces, has one of the biggest missile programs in the Middle East, regarding them as a deterrent and retaliatory force against US and other adversaries in the event of war.
There have been periodic confrontations between Iran's military and US forces in the Gulf since 2018, when Trump abandoned Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and reinstated harsh sanctions against Tehran.
Three fake journalists who seeded dozens of anti-Israel and anti-American stories on social media may have been part of an Iranian disinformation plot, a report said.
A Daily Beast investigation published Tuesday identified three purported journalists as posting stories on social media that seemingly came from reputable news outlets but were fake. Other fake stories were posted by accounts impersonating real people. Some fake stories eventually made it to legitimate news sites.
Characteristics of the fake news blitz were consistent with a known Iranian-aligned disinformation campaign, according to the Daily Beast, which reported that Facebook and Twitter were removing the fake postings.
Among the fake stories were an account of the head of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency visiting with US troops in Iraq; a phony threat of a Yemen-based terrorist group attacking an Israeli peace initiative launched in Bahrain; and a conspiracy by Israel and the United Arab Emirates to win President Donald Trump a second term.
Some stories were bizarre: One impersonated a French politician and claimed he got the coronavirus infection from Chicken McNuggets.
Israeli journalist and author Ronen Bergman advised readers to avoid a new Persian edition of Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations, which he said was an apparently false and distorted version of his 2018 book.
"I strongly recommend NOT TO READ this edition: I have never received a request from this publishing house, never gave [license] to publish Rise And Kill First in Persian, and never received, certainly not approved, a text of it in Persian," the author tweeted Wednesday. "[F]rom what I read- it's false and distorted!"
Bergman, who writes on Israeli military affairs at Yedioth Aharonot and The New York Times Magazine, authored a comprehensive account of the country's use of targeted killings, based on what he says were 1,000 interviews over eight years. According to the Tehran Times, the book was translated into Persian and brought to Iran by the Martyr Kazemi Publishing House.
The book presents assassinations as a key element of Israel's strategy against its enemy Iran. In Nov. 2020, Bergman and Times colleagues reported that Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the country's top nuclear scientist, was killed in a roadside ambush, in what sources said was an Israeli attack.
Former Iraqi PM Ayad Allawi: Former U.S. President Barack Obama Surrendered Iraq to Iranian Influence pic.twitter.com/xZ20oCeCxt
Iranian Researcher Fadi Al-Sayyed: Iran Is Ready to Protect Arab Regimes If Only They Remove Themselves from Under the American and Zionist Cloak pic.twitter.com/VJEFQjAqzt
Unfortunately, there's no shortage of anti-Semites online. Most are anonymous cowards. Iran's Supreme Bigot Khamenei is out in the open. I could not be prouder that @StateDept convened the first-ever U.S. conference to fight these online haters in October 2019. pic.twitter.com/9QTT2GQKR7
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