| 03/19 Links Pt2: Caroline Glick: When Cultural Appropriation and Historical Revisionism Are Acts of War; Guardian op-ed promotes the end of the Jewish state; The Quincy Institute vs. John Quincy Adams Posted: 19 Mar 2021 02:11 PM PDT From Ian: Caroline Glick: When Cultural Appropriation and Historical Revisionism Are Acts of WarTwo weeks ago, a bus filled with veteran Israeli generals from the Bithonistim, a grassroots national security organization, slowly made its way up the slopes of Mt. Ebal in Northern Samaria to visit a biblical-era site that was severely damaged by a Palestinian Authority contractor in late January.
They came to draw the public's attention to the strategic implications of the war the Palestinians are waging against Jewish history.
The site was excavated between 1980 and 1989 by the late Professor Adam Zertal, who identified it as Joshua's Altar as described in the Books of Deuteronomy, (27; 1-9) and Joshua (8; 30-35). The animal remains at the site contained thousands of burnt bones of year-old male, exclusively kosher, animals. They were burned in an open flame 3,250 years ago—the time generally identified as the period of ancient Jewish settlement of the Land of Israel under Joshua. Other remains found at the site included earrings and scarabs made in Egypt at the time of Ramses II, the Egyptian pharaoh often associated with the story of the Exodus from Egypt.
As Zertal explained in a lecture in 2013, the altar was buried under a layer of rocks, in keeping with Jewish prescriptions for preventing the desecration of abandoned holy sites. In keeping with the biblical narrative, the altar is made of unhewn stones; instead of steps, there are two ramps for the priests to alight to the platform—blocks of plaster were found nearby. The altar at Mt. Ebal also matches a Talmudic description of an altar from the Second Temple period, around 900 years later, indicating a continuity of Jewish practices throughout the biblical period.
Although initially controversial, Zertal's general finding that the site is around 3,300 years old and is a Jewish historical site, where sacrifices were carried out in keeping with biblical guidelines, has become widely accepted—although many continue to dispute the specific identification with Joshua.
In late January, the Palestinian Authority (PA) posted a video on its website of 60 meters of the ancient wall surrounding the altar being destroyed to pave a road connecting the Palestinian village of Asira ash-Shamaliya to Nablus. Nablus, built on the ruins of the biblical city of Shechem, is located in northern Samaria between Mt. Ebal and Mt. Gerizim.
Zertal was a fiercely secular son of hardcore socialists. Yet, he explained in a 2013 lecture, his scientific work compelled him to accept that the biblical narrative "from Deuteronomy through the Books of Kings was historically accurate."
"There are people who refuse to acknowledge that the damage done here was deliberate," Major General Gershon Hacohen explained to Newsweek. "That since it was the surrounding wall—rather than the altar itself—that was destroyed, the altar wasn't harmed. That's like saying that if someone destroys the steps to the Acropolis, they aren't harming the Acropolis. It's the same complex."
"They also say the Palestinians weren't trying to damage the site—they just needed stones for their road. But look at this place," he said and waved his hand across the landscape.
The slopes of Mt. Ebal are strewn with loose rocks.
"If they needed rocks for the road, all the Palestinians had to do was bring up a truck and take as many as they needed. Instead, they brought a bulldozer all the way up here and deliberately destroyed 60 meters of a 3,250-year-old wall."
As if to prove Hacohen's point, this week, a group of Palestinians was filmed barbecuing on the altar itself.
The Palestinian effort to destroy the site is of a piece with the PA's long-standing efforts to destroy the physical record of millennia-old Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel. That effort is now focused on destroying and appropriating the artifacts of Jewish history in Samaria.  For the second time in as many months, the Guardian has published an op-ed calling for an end to the Jewish state. The latest piece, ("The Israeli and Palestinian elections offend democracy – each in their own way", March 18) by Salem Barahmeh, director of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy, parrots the narrative of B'tselem in claiming that Israel isn't truly democratic.
In January, Btselem's director Hagai El-Ad penned a Guardian op-ed (based on his group's report) which included the lie that Israel is a non-democratic "Jewish supremacist" state which "rules everyone and everything between the river and the sea" – propaganda we refuted at the time.
Similarly, Barahmeh's op-ed includes the following:
Israel's famed "democracy", like its expansionist policies, doesn't stop at or recognise the green line – if anything it has bulldozed them into oblivion. In practice, Israel effectively exercises total control over the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
He's arguing, much like El-Ad before him, that Israel has "total control" not only over Palestinians in PA-controlled Area A of the West Bank, but, even more absurdly, that Jerusalem has "total control" over the two million Gazans who live under Hamas's authoritarian rule.
Barahmeh then peddles more untruths:
5 million Palestinians vote for the PA, an administrative body that today has only partial control over 40% of the West Bank and is dependent on Israel for its survival. The PA was supposed to exist for five years while Palestinians transitioned to statehood, but that state never came. Successive Israeli governments made sure of that, using settlements and annexation to turn the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem into an archipelago of disconnected Palestinian population centres.
In fact, the PA has both military and administrative control of Area A, where the overwhelming majority of West Bank Palestinians live. Further, contrary to Barahmeh's claim, there was no such promise that, five years into Oslo, a Palestinian state would be born – a myth about the Accords that we've gotten corrected at other publications.
Finally, his suggestion that "Israeli settlements and annexation" have turned the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem into "an archipelago of disconnected population centres" is ahistorical. Since as far back as 1949, when Jordan controlled the West Bank and Egypt controlled Gaza, the two Palestinian population centres were "disconnected". Contrary to myths spread by pro-Palestinian activists, there never was, at any time in history, a sovereign, unified, uniquely Palestinian polity between the river and the sea. The Quincy Institute vs. John Quincy Adamsn the fall of 2019, a group of historians and foreign-policy scholars founded the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Featuring thinkers such as Andrew Bacevich and Stephen Wertheim and funded by the unlikely duo of Charles Koch and George Soros, the organization named after John Quincy Adams calls for a restrained, noninterventionist U.S. foreign policy. Its stated mission is to "set U.S. foreign policy on a sensible and humane footing" based on "diplomatic engagement and military restraint." Its mantra is Adams's pithy quotation that America "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy," which Bacevich contends "has discomfited proponents of militarized liberation or benign hegemony or empire gussied up as social uplift ever since."
According to documents published on its website, the Quincy Institute wants to "reduce U.S. military operations in the Taiwan Strait," concede Chinese military dominance in the South China Sea, "significantly withdraw troops" from the Middle East, offer Iran billions of dollars of IMF loans "to fight the coronavirus pandemic," slash American commitments to NATO, and reduce the military budget.
The recommendations on the Middle East and Iran are of particular note. For among the Quincy Institute's coterie of experts are numerous figures who have been publicly antagonistic toward Israel and America's close relations with the Jewish state. These include Lawrence Wilkerson, a bitter critic of "the Jewish lobby in America"; the indefatigable investigators of American Jews' dual loyalties, Paul Pillar and Chas Freeman; and leading "Israel Lobby" conspiracy authors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.
Bear in mind, the institute is named after a man who in 1825 endorsed "the rebuilding of Judea as an independent nation." That the anti-Zionist scholars of the Quincy Institute are at odds here with their organization's namesake is not surprising. In fact, they misunderstand John Quincy Adams's foreign-policy thinking in general. Bacevich laments, "During the 20th century, particularly its latter half, Americans abandoned the precepts that had guided policy makers back in Adams's day…. Meddling—always in a worthy cause, of course—became fashionable." To him, "Adams's singular achievement, articulated in the Monroe Doctrine, was to position the United States for hemispheric hegemony, while still heeding Washington's dictum to avoid 'interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe.'" He has also praised Adams for "avoiding unnecessary trouble" and continuing an American grand strategy that "emphasized opportunistically ruthless expansionism on this continent, avid commercial engagement, and the avoidance of great-power rivalries abroad." Wertheim adds that Adams "came to strongly oppose U.S. expansionism in the 1840s and 50s." Jewish students fight hate and lies about Israel with truth - opinionUniversity campuses worldwide are in the midst of Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) 2021, initiated in 2005 by students at the University of Toronto. The aim: "To educate people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system and to build the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against the State of Israel." Today IAW operates in at least 55 cities in more than 30 countries.
At a time when the vast majority of Jewish students entering university are ill-equipped to counteract the vile distortions of the IAW movement, it should be a major concern for Israel and Jewish communities worldwide to address the turning away from Israel that specifically affects the younger generation of Jews.
Unfortunately, the reality is that many Jewish students – ignorant of Israel's history and reality – are susceptible to the well-oiled and well-financed anti-Israel propaganda machine. Credence is added by those Israeli academics, such as Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe and Avi Shlaim, who are regular lecturers at IAW events.
In the UK, Prof. David Miller, lecturing at the prestigious Bristol University, speaks about an infinite megalomaniac Zionism seeking to impose its will on the world. His Jewish students are inhibited from complaining for fear they will receive low grades. The university body refuses to address the complaints, citing "Freedom of speech" – this in spite of protests from the Community Security Trust (CST), responsible for protecting the UK's Jewish community against antisemitism, plus a petition signed by thousands.
While Jewish student groups on campuses endeavor to involve Jewish students in their activities, the reality of the challenge is enormous. It is fair to say that most Jewish students prefer to avoid conflict situations (which is how they view the Israel - Palestinian dispute), seeing their university years as a time to obtain a degree and enjoy the opportunities of campus life. 'Our History Has Been Stolen From Us': How South African Community Organizer Clive Mashishi Confronts Antisemitism, Holocaust Denial and Hatred of Israel"Our history has been stolen from us," Clive Mashishi protested, as he described the various attempts in his native South Africa to tar Israel as state that practices apartheid. "It's being used in the wrong way."
A former South African political activist who spent his childhood under apartheid, Mashishi has worked as a full-time community leader and organizer in the Vaal region, to the south of Johannesburg, for the last ten years. Previously, Mashishi had been involved with numerous South African political organizations, including the ruling African National Congress (ANC), the center-left Democratic Alliance (DA) and the far-left, pan-Africanist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).
Along that journey, Mashishi frequently encountered the issues of Israel, Zionism and antisemitism. Mashishi goes out of his way to credit his mentor, Arkins Mothale — to whom he became close after he lost his father while still a schoolboy — for introducing him to the ideas and perspectives that changed his way of thinking about the world.
"I was always arguing with my friends in the EFF, because they are anti-white," Mashishi recalled during an extensive conversation with The Algemeiner on Thursday. "I realized that I was in the wrong party and I left politics."
These days, Mashishi spends his time on local community development and advocacy for Israel, activities that are underpinned by his strong Christian faith. He runs a small organization, the Clive Mashishi Foundation, with about 15 volunteers, providing children with free school uniforms, operating a soup kitchen and distributing food parcels to families in need.
Mashishi is acutely aware that while the apartheid system of white minority rule was dismantled over 25 years ago, several of its fundamental inequities remain — most glaringly the acute poverty that still prevails in many Black communities. That is one reason why he disdains the analogy that is drawn by many South African leaders between the apartheid regime and the State of Israel, as well as the cruder antisemitism that often features alongside.
Indeed, over the last year, Mashishi has been fighting the growing distribution of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" — the antisemitic fabrication published by the Russian Tsar's secret police in 1903, alleging a Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world — in communities across South Africa. Ethnic studies curriculum passes 11-0 after one final day of sparringCalifornia's State Board of Education voted unanimously Thursday to approve a controversial model curriculum in ethnic studies for high schools, the first of its kind in the country.
The 11-0 vote came five years after the legislature first approved a bill requiring a different state body, the Instructional Quality Commission, to develop the draft, and more than 18 months after the initial version roiled the Jewish community for its exclusion of lessons on Jewish Americans and its harsh critiques of Israel.
The virtual public meeting Thursday included an acrimonious public comment period that lasted more than three hours. Many of the arguments made over the last year and a half — in the op-ed pages of local and national newspapers and in previous public meetings — were reiterated. Some read from scripts prepared by activist groups.
The public comments focused on whether the curriculum inappropriately carried a left-wing ideology into the classroom or whether, conversely, it had been "watered down" by conservative forces; whether Palestine and Palestinians belonged in the curriculum, or whether a critique of Israel risked demonizing Jews; whether the model focused too much on race or "critical race theory" in a way that would divide students rather than unite them; whether it was sufficiently anti-colonial or too much so; and whether, broadly speaking, it was appropriate for high schoolers.
Accusations against Jewish groups flew through the virtual space, with many claiming the curriculum had been "hijacked" or "whitewashed" by Zionist organizations and so-called "right-wing groups."
Callers attacked the Anti-Defamation League, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council — groups that opposed the first draft. One person angrily called the ADL and JCRC "pro-apartheid groups." Jewish Group Denounces California's Capitulation to Hate-Driven Ethnic Studies CurriculumAMCHA Initiative Director Tammi Rossman-Benjamin issued the following statement today strongly criticizing California's Board of Education for approving an ethnic studies curriculum that is political- and mission-driven, not academically-driven, and will likely incite hate and division among high school students:
"While on the surface, the curriculum approved by the state appears improved over the rejected first draft, it remains firmly rooted in the principles of Critical Ethnic Studies, which unlike the broader field of ethnic studies, has a politically- and activist-driven mission that will incite hate and division and is dangerous for all high school students. Most profoundly concerning for the Jewish community is the portrayal of Jews, filtered through the lens of Critical Ethnic Studies, as 'white' and 'privileged'. At a time when anti-Jewish sentiment, hostility, and violence have reached truly alarming levels, indoctrinating students to view Jews as 'white' and 'racially privileged' is tantamount to putting an even larger target on the back of every Jewish student.
"It is reckless of the state to pour millions of taxpayer dollars into a curriculum that is based on no credible research and is steeped in Critical Ethnic Studies. For those of us who closely monitor and combat bigotry, we know firsthand that a Critical Ethnic Studies approach is very dangerous for all students, and we plan to fight tooth and nail against legislative attempts to make this curriculum a high school graduation requirement. What happens next in California, particularly as it relates to a graduation requirement, is crucial since we know other states often follow California."
Although the ESMC has gone through three revisions since its highly controversial and politicized first draft, Critical Ethnic Studies principles have been at the heart of every draft to date, including the final one.
More than 100 university scholars and academics recently argued that the curriculum "contains numerous empirically false and politically-motivated claims about the educational benefits of ethnic studies" and have asked the state to withhold approval until these claims are removed. Lies in the Cognitive War Against IsraelIntersectionality and the Lie About Israel Being an Oppressor
The obsession with Israel and its various perceived modes of oppression and brutality toward a weak, innocent victim group is consistent with the worldview of many academics in the humanities and social sciences who increasingly find a linkage as they seek to affirm the rights of the victimized and name the villains responsible for this oppression. The more that seemingly unrelated instances of oppression can be conflated, it is thought, the greater the ability to confront these oppressors and neutralize the negative effect they have on society at large.
This trend is called "intersectionality," and it has meant that someone who is a gender studies professor, or queer theorist, or American studies expert can, with no actual knowledge or expertise about the Middle East, readily pontificate on the many social pathologies of Israel, based on its perceived role as a racist, colonial oppressor of an innocent indigenous population of Arab victims. For these Israel-haters, to know one victim group is to know any victim group—with Israel being a tempting and habitual target of their opprobrium.
The idea of brutal, militarized oppression by Israel of the wholly-innocent Palestinian victims is, of course, central to the false narrative that propels anti-Israel activism on campuses where SJP and other anti-Israel groups have a presence, and the current obsession with criticizing and dismantling domestic police forces conflates nicely with a discussion about the way Israel's predations are perceived to be equivalent to the racist, oppressive behavior of white American police officers in their interaction with blacks and other marginalized groups and "people of color."
The Deadly Exchange campaign, the name Jewish Voice for Peace and other anti-Israel groups have given to these police training programs, takes the accusation of racism one step further, making it part of a global, ongoing campaign to slander and delegitimize Israel by ascribing to it the worst moral characteristics, including, specifically, the one accusation that is the most grievous and unforgivable: racism. And not only does it provide yet another opportunity for anti-Israel activists to trumpet the predations of the Jewish state, to stress once again the alleged racism, apartheid, and ethnic subjugation of Arab Palestinians, it can also smear Israel with another, even more sinister, accusation: not only has Israel perfected its brutality and oppression toward the Palestinians but now, thanks to these cooperative training programs with U.S. law enforcement personnel, Israel now exports its moral depravity and cruelty, and its racism can metastasize itself in minority communities in the United States, too. The placards seen at protests for years now, reading "From Ferguson to Palestine," echoed that very theme, purporting that the racial injustices experienced by blacks in America are mirrored in the experience of Palestinians who suffer under the similar racism and oppression of Israel.
That Israel has become of the embodiment of evil, that its racism, militarism, and oppression now are so powerful that they cross borders and infect minority communities in America, and that the Jewish state can now be held responsible for bigotry on campuses far from its own borders indicates how powerful the anti-Israel narrative has become, and how the obsessive hatred by activists against the Jewish state ensures that the oldest hatred shows itself in yet another hateful permutation. Skidmore College Refuses To Recognize Club Due to 'Troublesome' Pro-Israel StanceSkidmore College's student government refused to recognize a progressive, pro-Israel student group due to its "troublesome" perspective despite recently recognizing the anti-Israel Students for Justice in Palestine.
The Skidmore College Student Government Association denied Progressive Zionists for Peace's request for a club trial period in a Zoom meeting on March 13. The organization's leaders were told the group would need to "gain more diverse perspectives" before receiving official club status. Student senator Sarah Baker said a "dialogue focused" group with "one perspective" could be "troublesome."
In its request for recognition, Progressive Zionists for Peace said their intention was to "create a space for pro-Israel, pro-peace students" to promote a "more peaceful, secure, and democratic future for both Israelis and Palestinians." The group said they would provide a "supportive environment" wherein students can learn about "peaceful Zionism" and how to fight anti-Semitism.
"Ultimately, we hope to create an environment that facilitates mutual understandings between Skidmore students with regards to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and all its nuances," Progressive Zionists for Peace's mission statement reads.
Progressive Zionists for Peace president Nessa Goldhirsch Brown said in a Facebook post that the reasons she was given for her group's denial were "false, unclear, and transparently partisan." Skidmore College spokeswoman Sara Miga said that Progressive Zionists for Peace were not officially denied recognition and told the Washington Free Beacon that the group was just "asked to return at a later date to clarify their mission and goals."
Despite rejecting the pro-Israel group, the student government recently granted a club trial period to Students for Justice in Palestine, according to a letter from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).
School officials, the student government, and Progressive Zionists for Peace will meet Friday to discuss the club's official status. Asa Winstanley & Ali Abunimah Deny Uighur GenocideThe founder of the Electronic Intifada Ali Abunimah and Associate Editor Asa Winstanley deny that a genocide of the Chinese Uighur minority is taking place in the country.
Writing in the Electronic Intifada Abunimah claims:
"The allegations of genocide, forced labor and mass internment are rooted in dubious claims, falsehoods and outright speculation"
Backing up his boss on social media Winstanley tweeted:
Not content with just the one genocide denying tweet Winstanley went on a spree of them:
It will be interesting to see whether Warwick Student campaigners are bothered by this bearing this in mind his support of them:
How did Winstanley get to be an "initial signatory" of the petition? Wonder how that will go down with Uighur and Syrian students on Warwick campus, bearing in mind that Winstanley has also tweeted that there was no genocide in Syria:
"It was only a decade ago that some "Syrian exiles" were claiming there was a "genocide". But that was all a way to justify the invasion & occupation of Syria, laundered as a "No-Fly Zone". Holocaust Education Bill Passes Wisconsin Senate After Delays Due to CoronavirusA bill to require Holocaust education in schools passed the state senate in Wisconsin on Tuesday.
It mandates that Wisconsin schools teach students about the Holocaust and other genocides at least once each during middle and high school, The Cap Times reported. The proposal was considered by legislative lawmakers when they convened the senate and assembly floor periods on Tuesday.
The same bill passed unanimously in the state assembly last year; however, it was never voted on by the full senate during that legislative session due to the breakout of the coronavirus pandemic, according to The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle.
Rules state that the state assembly must now pass the bill again before it can be signed by Gov. Tony Evers into law.
The bill would require the state superintendent to consult on Holocaust education with the Nathan and Esther Pelz Holocaust Education Resource Center (HERC), a program of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation. Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) wrote the bill after she was approached with the idea by a HERC representative, reported The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle.
"Unfortunately, we are losing voices of firsthand accounts of Holocaust survivors," Darling said in a statement. "This bill will help make sure those voices are preserved forever and the important lessons of the Holocaust are never forgotten." Columbus Man who Harassed Jewish Neighbors with 'Hitler' Taunts Charged with Federal Hate CrimeA Columbus, Ohio man who harassed his Jewish neighbors with antisemitic insults and threats was charged in a federal district court on Thursday with a hate crime.
Douglas G. Schifer, 65, appeared before US District Magistrate Judge Elizabeth A. Preston Deavers on a misdemeanor count of criminal interference with right to fair housing, which carries a potential sentence of up to 12 months in prison.
Schifer was last year alleged to have repeatedly targeted his neighbors, Nick and Tiffany Kinney, a Jewish couple from California who had recently moved to the Olde Towne East neighborhood of Columbus.
Interviewed last November, the Kinneys described how Schifer had confronted them three days after the US presidential election, showering the couple with antisemitic abuse.
"He's tired of us liberals," Nick Kinney recalled. "Horrible things about Hitler, 'It's no wonder Hitler burned our people' — he knows we are Jewish."
Schiffer threatened that "I'll put a bullet through your head like Hitler," Tiffany Kinney recalled.
"Real disappointing and painful, the way this man must feel about Jews," she commented.
Alongside the verbal insults, the Kinneys said that Schifer threw rocks through their patio door and windows, shattering the glass. The incident was captured on a neighbor's doorbell camera.
"It literally exploded, we are still finding shards of glass," Nick Kinney said at the time 'Soup Nazi' restaurant name provokes anger, vandalism in Washington stateThe restaurant signage went up on Tuesday in Everett, Washington: The Soup Nazi Kitchen, a reference to the famous episode of "Seinfeld" that features the angry owner of a soup eatery.
By Wednesday afternoon, the unopened storefront was riddled with pellet bullet holes and spray paint, according to the Everett Herald Business Journal. And owner Andrew Ho, who has a history of controversial opinions, had heard complaints from the small city's local Jewish community. So he removed "Nazi" from the sign.
The restaurant's logo featured a cartoonish woman looking angry and holding a whip.
"It really diminishes and makes light of the horrors of the Holocaust," Rabbi Rachel Kort of Everett's Temple Beth Or told the Herald Business Journal.
The Anti-Defamation League's Pacific Northwest regional director, Miri Cypers, also objected to the name, saying it dredged up painful memories of Nazis starving Jews in death camps. Everett Mayor Cassie Franklin lamented that she could not require the restaurant to change its name.
"The City of Everett is a Safe City and strives to be inclusive and welcoming for all residents and visitors," Franklin wrote in a social media post on Wednesday. "Unfortunately, recent US Supreme Court decisions have greatly restricted the City's authority to regulate the wording of signs and largely prohibits the City from banning signs based on the hateful or offensive wording in that sign." Greece to focus on education as leader of International Holocaust Remembrance AllianceGreece will assume the rotating presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance next month, the foreign ministry said Thursday, as yet another Jewish memorial was vandalized overnight.
Foreign Ministry Spokesman Alexandros Papaioannou said Athens would take over the IHRA presidency on April 1.
"We attach particular importance" to the event, Papaioannou said, adding that Greece's first-ever IHRA presidency would focus on education.
Anti-Semitism remains a problem in Greece, whose Jewish community was nearly wiped out during the Holocaust.
The central board of Jewish communities in Greece said a recently completed mural about the Jews of Thessaloniki, 50,000 of whom were exterminated in Nazi death camps, had been vandalized.
In October, several Jewish cemeteries and a Holocaust memorial had also been vandalized after the leaders of the Greek neo-Nazi organization Golden Dawn were jailed in a landmark trial.
Interior minister Makis Voridis in 2019 denied anti-Semitic beliefs after a prominent Greek Jewish official said he had a "dark past."
A self-styled nationalist, Voridis said he had "never been an anti-Semite, though he had "coexisted politically with people who had such unacceptable ideas." Seth Frantzman: Israel starts research center for GPS-free navigationIsrael's Ministry of Defense opened a new research center to develop navigation systems that don't rely on easily disrupted GPS.
As militaries across the world work to provide stronger GPS signals and alternatives, the Advanced Navigation Technology Center, opened with state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries, will manufacture highly accurate inertial sensors.
"These sensors will enable the production of next generation navigation systems, and will significantly increase their performance and capabilities," a March 10 ministry statement said.
Brig. Gen. Yaniv Rotem, head of research and development at the ministry's Directorate of Defense Research and Development, said the center will aid Israel's technological independence.
The goal is to field an independent solution for navigation that can go longer periods of times, through all its missions, without using GPS.
Avi Elisha, general manager for IAI's division for electro-optical and navigation systems, said the center will use the company's unique technologies. "Only a handful of countries have this technology, which is a game-changer in the field of inertial navigation."
Beyond helping in GPS-denied environments, IAI systems and sensors that work without satellites also provide more accurate navigation, offering the measurements of a gyroscope and from sensors that track acceleration and distance traveled, according to Zalman, head of technologies and research and development at IAI's navigation division. The company did not provide his full name for security reasons. Life Coach Tony Robbins and Grandson of Viktor Frankl Developing 'Man's Search for Meaning' Film About Holocaust Experiences, Survival MethodsAuthor and life coach Tony Robbins is part of team working on the feature film "Man's Search For Meaning," based on a 1946 memoir of the same name by the late psychiatrist Viktor Frankl about his life in Nazi concentration camps and methods of survival.
The film is being produced by Straight Up's recently launched media company Straight Up Impact, the firm announced on Tuesday. Robbins is partnering on the project with Frankl's grandson, Alexander Vesely, and screenwriter Angela Workman ("The Zookeeper's Wife"). Pam Roy, who is a co-founder of Straight Up Impact, will serve as executive producer of the film, which is in development and slated for release in 2023.
"We are honored that Viktor Frankl's family has entrusted us to tell his incredible life story," said Straight Up Impact co-founder Kate Cohen. "Our mission is to share his teachings with the world in the hopes that more people find meaning in their lives."
Born in Vienna in 1905, Frankl was a trained psychiatrist and neurologist, and began counseling suicidal patients in the 1920s. He spent three years in concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and his parents, brother and wife died in the camps. After World War II, he continued his work in Vienna.
Frankl's memoir, which has sold more than 16 million copies, recounts his experiences in the death camps and explains the psychotherapeutic approach he founded, known as logotherapy — founded on the belief that people are motivated by the search for purpose and meaning in their lives, rather than the pursuit of things that bring pleasure or happiness. In "Man's Search for Meaning," Frankl explained that prisoners in Nazi concentration camps who were able to find some form of meaning in life — even if only to help someone else live through the day — were more likely to survive.
"When suffering is inevitable, the attitude we choose matters most," said Vesely, a licensed logotherapist and co-founder of the Viktor Frankl Institute of America. "Despite experiencing unspeakable horrors and loss, my grandfather continued to help others to find meaning in life, even when great adversity and tragedy are a part of it. I hope this film inspires anyone dealing with their own struggles." 5 Israeli firms on Fast Company 2021 most innovative listsThree Israeli companies made Fast Company's list of the world's most innovative companies for 2021 and another two appear on its list of 10 most innovative companies in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
Surgical Theater appears in the Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality category.
"Surgical Theater was founded by a couple of Israeli fighter pilots who thought surgeons could benefit from surgery simulations in the same way pilots benefit from flight simulations. They were right," Fast Company writes.
"The company's VR software lets surgeons walk through and visualize complex surgeries, including brain surgeries, in VR before ever touching the patient. This year hospitals have discovered that the software is also useful in the informed consent process, because it allows patients to see, in VR, exactly what a surgeon intends to do to their body before they give their consent. The company made national news last March when its software rendered a full, 360-degree VR depiction of the ravages of COVID-19 on the lungs of a real patient."
Theator was chosen in the Data Science category.
"By analyzing over 30,000 hours of surgical videos, Theator has gained deep understanding of everything from gallbladder removal to hernia repairs. It applies this knowledge to feedback it gives surgeons and residents on their own procedures. In 2020, partnerships with organizations such as McGill University, Stanford University, and the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons helped bring Theator's insights to thousands of surgeons and surgeons-in-training," Fast Company explains.
TytoCare was included in the Health category for its at-home device that lets doctors monitor a patient's heart, lungs, ears, throat, abdomen, temperature, and heart rate remotely.
TytoCare works with 150 healthcare providers in the United States. During the pandemic, TytoHome – sold at Best Buy — became a popular alternative to doctor office visits. New Israeli research could transform cancer immunotherapyCancer immunotherapy may get a boost from an unexpected direction: bacteria residing within tumor cells. In a new study published in Nature, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science and their collaborators have discovered that the immune system "sees" these bacteria and shown they can be harnessed to provoke an immune reaction against the tumor. The study may also help clarify the connection between immunotherapy and the gut microbiome, explaining the findings of previous research that the microbiome affects the success of immunotherapy.
Immunotherapy treatments of the past decade or so have dramatically improved recovery rates from certain cancers, particularly malignant melanoma; but in melanoma, they still work in only about 40% of the cases. Prof. Yardena Samuels of Weizmann's Molecular Cell Biology Department studies molecular "signposts" – protein fragments, or peptides, on the cell surface – that mark cancer cells as foreign and may therefore serve as potential added targets for immunotherapy. In the new study, she and colleagues extended their search for new cancer signposts to those bacteria known to colonize tumors.
Using methods developed by departmental colleague Dr. Ravid Straussman, who was one of the first to reveal the nature of the bacterial "guests" in cancer cells, Samuels and her team, led by Dr. Shelly Kalaora and Adi Nagler (joint co-first authors), analyzed tissue samples from 17 metastatic melanoma tumors derived from nine patients. They obtained bacterial genomic profiles of these tumors and then applied an approach known as HLA-peptidomics to identify tumor peptides that can be recognized by the immune system.
The research was conducted in collaboration with Dr. Jennifer A. Wargo of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas; Prof Scott N. Peterson of Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, La Jolla, California; Prof Eytan Ruppin of the National Cancer Institute, USA; Prof Arie Admon of the Technion- Israel Institute of Technology and other scientists.
The HLA peptidomics analysis revealed nearly 300 peptides from 41 different bacteria on the surface of the melanoma cells. The crucial new finding was that the peptides were displayed on the cancer cell surfaces by HLA protein complexes – complexes that are present on the membranes of all cells in our body and play a role in regulating the immune response. One of the HLA's jobs is to sound an alarm about anything that is foreign by "presenting" foreign peptides to the immune system so that immune T cells can "see" them. "Using HLA peptidomics, we were able to reveal the HLA-presented peptides of the tumor in an unbiased manner," Kalaora says. "This method has already enabled us in the past to identify tumor antigens that have shown promising results in clinical trials."
It's unclear why cancer cells should perform a seemingly suicidal act of this sort: presenting bacterial peptides to the immune system, which can respond by destroying these cells. But whatever the reason, the fact that malignant cells do display these peptides in such a manner reveals an entirely new type of interaction between the immune system and the tumor. CBS to Create American Remake of Hit Israeli Series 'Shtisel'CBS Studios announced on Tuesday that it is developing an American adaptation of the popular Netflix-distributed Israeli drama "Shtisel."
The American remake will be written by "Insatiable" creator and "Dexter" writer Lauren Gussis, and directed by Oscar-winner Kenneth Lonergan, reported Deadline.
The publication said the show is being described as a modern take on "Romeo and Juliet" and will center on an "ultra-progressive, over-achieving secular 18-year-old young woman on the verge of personal freedom, and the strictly observant Orthodox young man to whom she is powerfully drawn—so powerfully that she is willing to uproot her entire life to be with him."
The remake will reportedly be shopped around soon to potential buyers. Fremantle is the co-studio.
The "Shtisel" adaptation will be a TV directing debut for Lonergan, who has so far only directed features that he wrote himself. The "Manchester by the Sea" filmmaker was drawn to the storyline, and after many conversations with Gussis and several rabbis, joined the project, according to Deadline.
CBS Studios has recently amped up its investment in international local production, developing and producing new shows in Germany, Israel and the Netherlands. Jewish group shipping 650 pounds of matzah to Saudi Arabia, other Gulf statesA newly formed Jewish group in the Persian Gulf is having 650 pounds of matzah imported to the region ahead of Passover.
The shipment is the latest step in the growth of Jewish communities in the region following Israeli normalization agreements with two of its countries. Israel signed the agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain last year, establishing diplomatic relations with both countries.
The matzos are also being shipped to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and Kuwait.
The umbrella organization coordinating the shipment, the Association of Gulf Jewish Communities, was founded in February to facilitate Jewish life and ritual observance in the six countries. The Jewish populations of the countries range from a handful to hundreds.
Alongside the normalization deals, Jewish culture and religious life in some of the countries is growing. The UAE, which has seen an influx of Israeli tourists, now has establishments offering kosher food.
The Jewish association will also be providing Passover resources to American troops in the region.
"It is very exciting to see such demand for Passover programming in the Gulf this year," said Rabbi Elie Abadie, a Jewish leader in the UAE.
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| Cartoon of the Day: Give Palestinians leeway Posted: 19 Mar 2021 11:00 AM PDT |
| 03/19 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: Abdullah the Irrelevant of Jordan; Former Ambassador Friedman sifts through ‘transformative’ accords and their future success; Schrödinger's War: The Palestinian Redux Posted: 19 Mar 2021 10:08 AM PDT From Ian: Caroline Glick: Abdullah the Irrelevant of JordanThis then brings us back to King Abdullah and his decision to prevent Netanyahu's trip to Abu Dhabi last week. If the raging success of Netanyahu's regional diplomacy causes ideological and political distress to Israel's rabidly political and ideological media, it presents a strategic challenge to Jordan and is a source of existential angst for the Hashemite regime.
The Hashemite royal house in Jordan is an artifact of Britain's colonial regime in the region a century ago. The Hashemites are a small minority of Jordan's population. And the country they control is poor, and resource-strapped. The principal source of the longevity of the Hashemite regime is Israel. Jordan is located between Israel and Iraq and shares a border with Israel and Syria. Its position has long made it a buffer state. And its (relative) moderation has served as a deterrent to Iraqi and Syrian aggression against Israel. As a consequence, Israelis – particularly Israeli military leaders – long viewed the Hashemite Kingdom as indispensable.
As things stand today, the threat of war between Iraq or Syria (or both) and Israel has never been lower. Both Iraq and Syria are failed states at advanced levels of decomposition. And as a result, today, Jordan's importance as a buffer state has never been lower.
So too, for many years, Jordan, which has long owed its financial survival to support from and the remittances of Jordanian workers in the Gulf states, served as a bridge between Israel and those states. It's been almost a decade since Jordan has been asked to serve in that capacity.
The Obama administration's decision to realign the US Middle East alliance structure towards Iran and away from Israel and America's traditional Arab allies spooked the Emiratis, Egyptians, and the Saudis sufficiently to convince them to develop defense ties with Israel. Once that happened, Jordan, which was close to the Obama administration, became more of a nuisance than a bridge.
Jordan's transformation into an irrelevancy was on display last Thursday. By blocking Netanyahu's flight to the UAE, Abdullah showed that far from a bridge, he is an obstacle to the Gulf States' ties with Israel. So too, Netanyahu's announcement – subsequently repeated by the UAE – that the Emirates intend to invest $10 billion in Israel showed that Abdullah's ability to serve either as a bridge or an obstacle to relations is a mirage.
No one cares what Jordan does.
This then brings us to the Palestinians. Aside from the PLO and its Palestinian Authority, the greatest Arab champion of the Palestinian veto over Arab-Israeli peace has been King Abdullah. Whereas Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi welcomed the Abraham Accords, Abdullah joined Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in condemning them. So too, whereas the UAE and Bahrain sent their ambassadors to the White House to celebrate when then-President Donald Trump presented his peace plan, which included Israeli sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria, Abdullah condemned the plan.
As Israel moved forward with its plan to apply its sovereignty to those areas of Judea and Samaria in accordance with the Trump plan, Abdullah let it be known that such an Israeli-US move would cause him to abrogate Jordan's peace treaty with Israel.
One of the regional developments that keep Abdullah up at night is the still-unofficial alliance between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Abdullah lives in fear that in exchange for Saudi Arabia's official normalization of ties, Israel will provide the Saudis with an official position in managing the mosques on the Temple Mount at Jordan's expense. For its part, as the current custodian of the mosques on the Temple Mount, Jordan has torpedoed every Israeli effort to stabilize the situation at the holy site.  U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman came to his position as an attorney without a background in politics or diplomacy. Not being allegiant to a particular point of view, he said, "gave us an open field to chart our own course which we are very proud of."
Friedman served for four years under the Trump administration, which delivered a number of remarkable achievements for Israel, including recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel; moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem; recognizing Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights; and launching an ambitious and game-changing peace plan known as the Abraham Accords.
The "us"—meaning Friedman and his team, including Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt and Avi Berkowitz among others—thought the way that the United States and the rest of the world were looking at the Palestinians was that "they were giving them a pass on egregious human-rights violations, a pass on the inability of Hamas and P.A. [Palestinian Authority] to ever coalesce on anything, a pass on terrorism, a pass on pay-for-slay, a pass on not creating any of the institutions necessary for an economy … and yet people were talking about a Palestinian state."
"This was putting the cart before the horse," he said.
Sitting down in conversation with Martin Kramer, founding president of Jerusalem's Shalem College, as part of this week's Tikvah Fund's Jewish Leadership Conference, Friedman said that when he came to office, "the Middle East was due for some unconventional thinking."
The primary advantage of coming in without a diplomatic background, he said, was "not being wed to the past" and harnessing "problem-solving skills taken from past experience"as part of his career in the legal field.
Asked which conventional wisdom needed deflation, Friedman said "the most wrong was the indulgence of the Palestinian cause to the point where it negated the notion of accountability."
"There would be this equivalence between building settlements and acts of terrorism. You can be pro or against settlements, but you cannot possibly equate the two," he added. Schrödinger's War: The Palestinian ReduxWhen discussing the Israel-Palestinian conflict, President of the Middle East Forum Daniel Pipes is fond of using the remarkable story of Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda of the Imperial Japanese Army as an analogy. Lt. Onada had been living on an island in the Philippines engaging in acts of a war that had, to the rest of the world, ended decades previously.
At the state level, Jonathan Schwarz in a 2006 Mother Jones piece aptly titled Schrödinger's War compared the schizophrenic nature of the Bush administration's approach to the Iraq war to a well known physics conundrum:
"The famous "Schrödinger's Cat" thought experiment posits a situation in which, according to quantum theory, a cat could be both alive and dead. Today, America is in much the same situation. We're not at war, since the attorney general insists Congress has not declared it. Yet at the same time, we are at war, because the entire Bush administration says so as often as possible."
Most people in the State of Israel and around the world believe the Israel-Palestinian conflict has ended and has been since 1993 with the signing of the Oslo Accords, but the conflict is very much alive at the same time. While there is no negotiated solution, and acts of murder and bloodshed occur sparingly, these are frequently seen as disconnected from the reality of war as Onada was from the end of the Second World War.
Unfortunately, for us, the Palestinian leadership still very much believes they are in a war that will end in Israel's destruction.
This might be obvious for Hamas, but it also remains true for Fatah and other groups which rule or are active in Judea and Samaria.
According to Palestinian Media Watch, Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub has announced that Fatah urges "all the national activity factions" to run together on a joint list in the upcoming elections.
"[PFLP] emphasized its firm opposition to recognizing the racist Zionist entity, and its determination to continue with all forms of the struggle, and foremost among them armed resistance, in order to liberate every grain of the soil of Palestine," PMW quoted Ma'an, a Palestinian Arab news agency, a day earlier.
In other words, Fatah, the party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, is happily embracing and officially calling to partner an organization dedicated to the end of the Jewish State through violence and terror.
It might be useful to try and bring a comparison to Israeli or U.S. politics, but no party exists which calls for the violent destruction of a whole nation. On this day 2012: Jewish massacre in Toulouse, France leaves 4 deadOn this day, nine years ago, four people were killed, including three children, simply because they were Jews in France. On March 19, 2012, the Islamic terrorist Mohamed Merah targeted a Jewish school in the French city of Toulouse.
The children killed were 8-year-old Myriam Monsonego, and the brothers Arié and Gabriel Sandler, 6 and 3. The fourth victim was their father, a teacher at the school, Rabbi Jonathan Sandler.
Merah, 24 at the time, was shot dead by police after he jumped, guns blazing, from the window of an apartment where he was holed up a few days after his killing spree in March 2012.
The Merah killings were the first major incident of the kind since the Paris subway bombing in the mid-1990s by Islamist militants linked to the GIA group in Algeria, a former French colony.
Since the Toulouse attack in 2012, antisemitic attacks have been on the rise in France - such as the 2014 protests in Sarcelles and the 2015 Hypercacher terrorist attack, in which four other Jews - Yohan Cohen, Yoav Hattab, Michel Saada and Philippe Braham - were killed.
Two years later, in April 2017, Sarah Halimi, a Parisian 65-year-old Jewish woman, was beaten and thrown out of her third-floor window apartment to her death by her 27-year-old Muslim neighbor. Last month, he was excused of the alleged antisemitic murder from a criminal trial because of his heavy intake of cannabis that supposedly compromised his "discernment," or consciousness. Almost 4.5 million fully vaccinated as positive test rate drops below 2%Israel's coronavirus outbreak continued to rapidly diminish Friday amid the widespread vaccination campaign which has seen almost 4.5 million people receive two doses of the inoculation while the rate of positive test results fell below two percent.
According to Health Ministry data, 5,150,505 people have received at least the first dose of the vaccine and 4,480,810 have received both doses.
Meanwhile the positive test rate stood at 1.9%, continuing the steep decline since January, when it was over 10%.
The number of serious cases stood at 558. They included 244 classified as critical with 206 patients on ventilators. The number of serious cases peaked at 1,237 on January 17 and was last under 600 on December 25.
There were 21,143 active reported cases in Israel as of Friday morning, including 1,225 new confirmed infections on Thursday, bringing the total number of cases since the start of the pandemic to 826,217.
The death toll climbed to 6,071.
The data was released after ministers on Thursday evening approved a further easing of coronavirus lockdown measures, increasing attendance at cultural and sporting events and opening up other public activities. Scientist behind Pfizer vaccine: mRNA shots for cancer coming 'in couple years'The scientist who won the race to deliver the first widely used coronavirus vaccine says people can rest assured the shots are safe, and the technology behind it will soon be used to fight another global scourge — cancer.
Ozlem Tureci, who co-founded the German company BioNTech with her husband, was working on a way to harness the body's immune system to tackle tumors when they learned last year of an unknown virus infecting people in China.
Over breakfast, the couple decided to apply the technology they'd been researching for two decades to the new threat, dubbing the effort "Project Lightspeed."
Within 11 months, Britain had authorized the use of the mRNA vaccine BioNTech developed with US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, followed a week later by the United States. Tens of millions of people worldwide have received the shot since December. Israel, the world leader in vaccinations per capita, is overwhelmingly using the Pfizer jabs.
"It pays off to make bold decisions and to trust that if you have an extraordinary team, you will be able to solve any problem and obstacle which comes your way in real-time," Tureci told The Associated Press in an interview.
Among the biggest challenges for the small, Mainz-based company that had yet to get a product to market was how to conduct large-scale clinical trials across different regions and how to scale up the manufacturing process to meet global demand.
Along with Pfizer, the company enlisted the help of Fosun Pharma in China "to get assets, capabilities and geographical footprint on board, which we did not have," Tureci said. Ukraine to let in vaccinated Israeli pilgrims for Rosh HashanahUkraine will let in vaccinated pilgrims from Israel for Rosh Hashanah amid negotiations on Israeli deliveries of COVID-19 vaccines to Ukraine, the European country's interior minister said.
Arsen Avakov made the statement Friday following a telephone conversation with his Israeli counterpart Aryeh Deri.
Last year, thousands of pilgrims in Israel protested being prevented from visiting the gravesite of Rabbi Nachman, founder of the Breslov Hassidic sect, in the Ukrainian city of Uman due to the pandemic. Some were stranded in Belarus and Moldova for days.
Many of the pilgrims are voters of Shas, the Sephardic Orthodox party led by Deri. It's been a key coalition partner of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party. Israel will have a general election on Tuesday.
Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky, a Jewish actor who won a landslide victory in 2019, has been slipping in polls as the pandemic hurts Ukraine's already ailing economy. His Servant of the People party failed to win in any of Ukraine's large cities during last year's mayoral elections.
In the statement about Ukraine allowing in vaccinated pilgrims, Avakov's office wrote that "the key condition for the implementation of this large-scale measure will be the normalization of the epidemiological situation in Ukraine and the preliminary vaccination of newcomers." 'Inquisition against the Jewish State at UN Human Rights Council'The Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations and Observer to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva, Dr. Shimon Samuels, on Thursday sat through three excruciating hours of defamation of the State of Israel.
Twenty-nine of the slanderous member-states were Muslim, including some Abraham Accords signatories: Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan and - an otherwise friend of Israel - Azerbaijan (speaking on behalf of the non-aligned members). These states committed a blood libel against the Jewish State.
Only the United Arab Emirates made a more balanced statement: "We wish to see two states at peace, Israel and Palestine side by side."
After the High Commissioner for Human Rights introduction, the speaking order included the following Muslim states: Palestine, Syria, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Libya, Sudan, Bahrain, Indonesia, Senegal, Mauritania, Bangladesh, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Malaysia, Morocco, Maldives, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, Algeria, Lebanon, UAE, Oman, Djibouti, Tunisia, Yemen, Turkey.
The UNHRC presents, at each yearly session, "Item 7 - human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories." This item is an inquisition against Israel, since it singles it out as the only country having its own "item."
Other speakers at the session were North Korea, Russia, China, Sri Lanka, Timor-Leste, Namibia, South Africa, Nigeria, Venezuela, Mexico, Cuba, Chile, Ireland and Luxembourg.
Libya, Bahrain and Iraq called for an updated international boycott list of company names working in the settlements, also requesting the Human Rights High Commissioner to make the list public. Report: ICC gives Israel, Palestinians 1 month to apply for probe deferralThe International Criminal Court (ICC) announced on Thursday that it has formally notified Israel and the Palestinian Authority of its upcoming probe into alleged war crimes on the Palestinian territories.
The act gives both parties a one-month period to apply for deferring the case, the ICC said; to do so, a party must prove that it is capable of investigating the matter on their own.
According to the Associated Press, the notifications were sent to all signatories of the Rome Statute, the court's founding charter, as well as Israel and Palestinians, on March 9, with Channel 13 News confirming that Jerusalem received it and had yet to respond.
Under Article 16 of the Statute, an ICC investigation or prosecution can be deferred for up to a year on a request from the UN Security Council, which must first approve the appropriate resolution.
According to the AP report, Israel could submit an overview of its own actions taken to probe the possible violations during Operation Protective Edge in 2014 in Gaza, which followed the murder of three Israeli teenagers by Hamas.
The murder itself does not fall under the ICC jurisdiction due when the PA joined the court.
Should the court accept the outline, Israel could potentially conduct the investigation on its own, with occasional supervision by the ICC. HRC Prompts CBC Correction: Murder of 3 Israeli Teens Not in ICC Investigative ScopeA March 3 CBC Radio report on the International Criminal Court's (ICC) announcing that it will open up a "war crimes" investigation on Israel and Palestinians "militants" saw freelance journalist Irris Makler erroneously state the following:
She (ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda) will also investigate the Palestinians for the kidnap and murder of three Israeli soldiers in May 2014."
This statement was patently false. The ICC statement made no mention of this at all. Instead, the statement led by saying the following:
Today, I confirm the initiation by the Office of the Prosecutor ("Office") of the International Criminal Court ("ICC" or the "Court") of an investigation respecting the Situation in Palestine. The investigation will cover crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court that are alleged to have been committed in the Situation since 13 June 2014, the date to which reference is made in the Referral of the Situation to my Office."
Why is this date so important? As the Times of Israel observed: "The June 13, 2014, date is significant. Palestinian terrorists kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teenagers in the Gush Etzion area of the West Bank the day before. By asking for an investigation beginning on June 13, the Palestinians ensured that the ICC will not look into the killing of Eyal Yifrach, Gil-ad Shaer, and Naftali Fraenkel." StandWithUs: Outrageous INTERPOL decision, Israel aid to Equatorial Guinea & More This week we will talk about Interpol's outrageous decision to drop its arrest warrant against convicted Palestinian terrorist Ahlam Tamimi and more.
This is 'Israel Weekly' with Tamir Oren, bringing you all the important Israel events you might have missed this week. Khaled Abu Toameh: How Arabs Discriminate Against Palestinians"Palestinians have effectively been stripped of their identity and travel documents by successive Iraqi governments," according to another report by Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.
In 2003 alone, 344 Palestinian families were forcibly expelled from their homes [in Iraq] by militias. Between 2003 and 2016, an estimated 300 Palestinian refugees were killed by these militias.... Palestinians have been demonized even in social media posts as potential 'terrorists' by accounts linked to the [Iraqi] interior ministry." — Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.
In 2017, Iraqi President Fuad Masum approved a law that stripped Palestinian refugees living in Iraq of their rights and classified them as foreigners.
The international reaction would, of course, have been completely different if Israel taken such measures against Palestinians. Evidently, no one really does care about the plight of the Palestinians. They are only cared about if they can be made to appear as victims of Israel, never of an Arab country.
Palestinian leaders are much too busy attacking Israel and demanding that the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecute Israelis for alleged "war crimes" against the Palestinians to notice the suffering of Palestinians at the hands of an Arab country.
The ICC, which appears obsessed with Israel, is unlikely to launch an investigation into Iraq's ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Likewise, the United Nations Security Council is unlikely to hold an emergency session to denounce Iraq for its discriminatory measures against the Palestinians. The international media, for its part, will also continue their usually venomous -- and usually unjustified -- attacks on Israel, while ignoring the horrendous treatment the Palestinians receive from their Arab brothers. Palestinian killed by IDF during stone-throwing clashesIDF soldiers shot dead a Palestinian on Friday during stone-throwing clashes in the West Bank, a Reuters witness said.
The man, initially identified as Sheikh Atef Yousef Hanaisheh, was shot in the head and taken to a hospital near the West Bank city of Nablus where he later died, the Palestinian health ministry said.
Asked for comment, the IDF said the incident was under examination.
Hanaisheh, who is in his forties, was involved in a weekly protest against Israeli settlements in the village of Beit Dajan, near Nablus. A group of Palestinians threw stones towards two IDF soldiers posted there, and the soldiers then opened fire, said the Reuters witness, a photographer.
A group of Palestinians carried the man away. MEMRI: In 'Al-Quds' Article, Hamas Head Isma'il Haniya Outlines Two-Pronged Tactic: Expressing Commitment To Palestinian Unity And Popular Resistance In Order To Gain International Legitimacy, While Maintaining Commitment To Armed ResistanceAmid the Palestinian Authority's preparations to hold elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), the presidency and the Palestinian National Council (PNC), and following recent talks in Cairo ahead of the elections, attended by representatives of the various Palestinian factions, the Palestinian daily Al-Quds, based in East Jerusalem, published an article by Hamas Political Bureau head Isma'il Haniya aimed at "clarifying Hamas's position on and vision of" the elections.
In the article, published on March 17, 2021, Haniya states that Hamas sees the elections as a way to end the Palestinian schism; build a new political system incorporating all the Palestinian factions, both inside Palestine and in the diaspora, and unite the efforts of the Palestinians and of the entire Arab and Islamic nation to confront Israel and stop the regional process of normalization with it. Haniya stresses that Hamas is committed to the elections and to the understandings that have been reached in this context, and has no intention of reneging on these understandings.
Two essential points stand out in Haniya's article. First, he emphasizes that Hamas prefers to run for the PLC elections, scheduled for May, as part of "a joint national list encompassing the widest possible spectrum of national [forces]." Second, he stresses that after the elections the Palestinians will have to formulate a strategy for confronting Israel "using all forms of struggle that are possible for our people – chief of them military resistance, while focusing on popular resistance at the present stage."
These two statements give rise to significant questions regarding Haniya's intensions and their practical implications. The issue of a joint list has been debated for some time by Hamas and Fatah officials, but has yet to be settled. The suggestion is that Fatah and Hamas, and all other movements wishing to join the list, will agree on the number of members from each movement and on their place on the list. The advantage of a joint list for Fatah and Hamas is that it enables both movements to secure places for their members in the next PLC, and also to determine in advance the division of seats between them – so that no side will face a landslide victory by the other. A joint list can therefore serve as an effective compromise, ensuring that elections will indeed be held and will not be postponed again, and that the PLC will renew its activity – even if its makeup will not necessarily reflect the will of the voters.
For Hamas, which does not enjoy international legitimacy because it refuses to meet the demands of the Quartet – namely the demands to recognize Israel and the agreements with it and to renounce the armed struggle[1] – running in a joint list has another advantage. Entering the PLC with a Fatah seal of approval may prevent a scenario whereby the international community refuses to recognize the outcome of the elections. FDD: The Biden Administration's Playbook for Lifting Iran-Related Terrorism SanctionsIn his confirmation hearing, Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated that lifting terrorism sanctions on Iran would not advance U.S. national security interests. Weeks later, however, the Biden administration established the blueprint for doing so, by weakening and then rescinding terrorism sanctions against the Iranian-supported Houthi group, officially known as Ansar Allah, and its leadership.
On January 10, 2021, the Trump administration announced it had designated Ansar Allah as both a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT). Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo noted that if Ansar Allah "did not behave like a terrorist organization, we would not designate it as an FTO and SDGT." Pompeo proceeded to cite Ansar Allah's targeting of civilian infrastructure, ties to the Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and seizure and imprisonment of U.S. nationals.
An FTO designation institutes a visa ban, allows U.S. banks to block the assets of the designated organization, and establishes the broad extraterritorial application of criminal prohibitions on any U.S. person who provides the FTO with material support. The SDGT authority enables the United States to target terrorist financiers who access the U.S. financial system. In 2019, the SDGT measures were strengthened and expanded by the Trump administration to include secondary sanctions on individuals or entities, including businesses, that allow SDGTs to use their services.
By contrast, Yemen-related sanctions under Executive Order (E.O.) 13611, which President Barack Obama signed in 2012, contain fewer effective measures to target those providing Ansar Allah with financial and material support. The executive order authorized sanctions against Ansar Allah's leadership but does not impose the same extensive secondary sanctions. Indeed, the Trump administration's primary aim in designating Ansar Allah as an FTO and SDGT was to increase the risk for Ansar Allah's foreign facilitators beyond the restrictions in E.O. 13611.
On January 25, 2021, the Biden administration issued a general license allowing companies to conduct a wide array of business with Ansar Allah. Nearly one month later, the administration lifted the FTO and SDGT designations on Ansar Allah in their entirety. Blinken stated that while the conduct leading to Ansar Allah's terrorism designations has not changed, the decision to delist the group is "a recognition of the dire humanitarian situation in Yemen." Republican Pressure Mounts to Stop Biden's Return to Iran Nuclear DealRepublican foreign policy leaders in Congress filed two new bills on Friday that would increase economic sanctions on Iran as part of an effort to handicap the Biden administration's attempts to pursue a revamped nuclear deal, according to a copy of the new measures exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The two new bills would formally designate Iranian-backed militia groups in Iraq as terror organizations and apply new sanctions on Iranian human rights abusers, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. They were filed just a day after members of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), the largest conservative caucus in Congress, held a virtual strategy session with former State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus and former special representative for Iran Brian Hook about "how to defend President Trump's maximum pressure campaign on Iran in Congress," according to sources familiar with the content of the meeting.
The RSC's legislative push, helmed by Reps. Joe Wilson (R., S.C.) and Jim Banks (R., Ind.), comes as the Biden administration considers a range of concessions, including sanctions relief, meant to entice Iran back to the bargaining table. While the GOP legislation stands little chance of passing in the Democrat-controlled Congress, it is meant to send a message to Tehran and European powers that a significant portion of American lawmakers oppose the administration's diplomacy and stand ready to reimpose any sanctions that might be lifted in the coming weeks and months. The effort could gain steam among hawkish Democrats, at least 70 of whom recently wrote to President Joe Biden urging him not to lift sanctions on Iran as a precondition for talks about its growing nuclear program.
Congressional sources close to the RSC said the meeting with Hook and Ortagus—both of whom were key to Trump's maximum pressure campaign on Iran—persuaded GOP leaders to "push back on Biden's radical Iran policy," both by legislation and by investigating its efforts to lift sanctions without first consulting Congress. Republicans have been mostly left in the dark about the administration's diplomatic plans with the Islamic Republic. U.S.-Iran envoy Robert Malley has yet to provide them an in-depth brief about his conversations with China and other countries regarding a new nuclear deal. The Biden administration has also been secretive about a reported effort to help South Korea provide Iran with around $1 billion in ransom after Tehran seized a ship belonging to the Asian country.
"President Trump's max pressure campaign worked—it slashed Iran's defense budget by 25 percent and Joe Biden's response is to do a complete 180? Under Joe Biden's maximum concession campaign, sanctioning terrorists who've murdered Americans is beyond the pale, but policies that boost Iran's defense budget and endanger our regional allies are perfectly acceptable," Banks told the Free Beacon. Melanie Phillips: Jared Kushner's curious change of heartLast month, Iran attacked a US base in northern Iraq, killing an American contractor and wounding several other civilians. The American military wanted to respond by attacking Iranian assets in Iraq, but this was vetoed by Biden.
Instead, the United States launched an attack on Iran-backed Shiite militias in northern Syria, in which no Iranians were killed.
This may have been because the United States notified the Russians about their attack plans in advance and the Russians promptly tipped off the Iranians. Or it may have been because these Iran-backed militias were non-Iranian Shiites – meaning there weren't any Iranians there anyway. Either way, it was no more than a limp-wristed gesture.
As Abdulrahman Al-Rashed, former editor-in-chief of the Saudi newspaper Ashraq Al-Awsat, has written: "In Tehran's eyes, Biden is a pushover." In addition to Iranian attacks in Yemen and Iraq, he wrote, "Lokman Slim, Iran's most prominent and vocal opponent in Beirut, was murdered and his body was found on the sidewalk."
Appallingly, Biden is turning the United States into a laughing stock in Tehran. Yet Kushner wrote: "Thanks to his policies, America holds a strong hand."
In his article, Kushner boasted about the Abraham Accords. Yet even here, his choice of words revealed an astonishing ignorance. For while he rightly observed that this agreement had destroyed the "myth" that ending the Arab-Israel "conflict" depended upon Israel and the Palestinians resolving their differences, he went on to say: "The Abraham Accords exposed the conflict as nothing more than a real-estate dispute between Israelis and Palestinians that need not hold up Israel's relations with the broader Arab world."
"A real-estate dispute"? But the "conflict" was a war by the Arab world against Israel's very existence. Its presentation as a "real-estate dispute" is what's been the actual myth.
That, indeed, was the fiction promoted by the Palestinians to gull the West into believing that a Palestinian state would solve the conflict. This propaganda achievement, which has fueled the West's animus against Israel, evilly repackaged the Arab war of extermination against Israel as a Palestinian struggle for land. Iran has not yet recovered from Natanz explosion hit - exclusiveIran has yet to recover from a devastating explosion at its Natanz nuclear facility last July, sources have told The Jerusalem Post, undercutting IAEA reports this week that the Islamic Republic has made progress with advanced centrifuges for enriching uranium.
On Tuesday, Reuters disclosed an IAEA report which claimed that Iran has started enriching uranium at its new underground Natanz facility using advanced IR-4 centrifuges.
This could be highly significant because until now, most of Tehran's centrifuges were the slower IR-1 model, with a smaller number of IR-2ms. The more advanced IR-4 centrifuges could shorten the timeline for breaking out to a nuclear weapon, and having the machines underground could severely complicate or even prevent the IDF's ability to attack them in the future.
Despite the report and these implications, sources have revealed to the Post that Iran is still far from a full recovery following the July 2 explosion at an above-ground structure at the Natanz facility. The structure was the main site for assembling advanced centrifuges like the IR-4 and the IR-6.
The explosion was attributed to the Mossad. Sources emphasized that Israel's activities to prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon never end and that there is no site, old or new, which is safe. White House Envoy: Iranian Attacks on US Assets 'Not Really Helping' Prospects of Return to Nuclear DealThe White House's Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley told the Voice of America that Iran-backed attacks against Americans stationed abroad is making it more difficult for the US to engage with Iran on a possible return to the 2015 nuclear deal.
In an interview on Wednesday with VOA Persian, Malley said, "It's not really helping the climate in the US to have Iranian allies take shots at Americans in Iraq or elsewhere, and the US will respond as it has responded and it will continue to respond."
Malley said that the US is committed to resuming negotiations with Iran, but added that if the Iranian attacks are "aimed at speeding things up, it's hard to see how that is going to work."
He also appeared to indicate that the US may be seeking more than a return to the original 2015 deal, preferring further agreements that will address other issues as well.
The Iran deal, Malley said, "has shown that it is fragile, and we believe it can be strengthened with a follow-on deal. And we will press Iran and try to convince Iran that it's in their interest as well to get a follow-on deal."
"Of course, Iran will have issues that it will want to bring to the table," he conceded.
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