A reporter in Portland's KOIN News, Jenny Young, came under fire when she tweeted a very accurate statement.
She described a speaker at a "Day of Rage" rally as "openly anti-Zionist", and the BDS movement as "an anti-Semitic movement that's been admonished by U.S. lawmakers."
All of this is perfectly true.
There was a huge outcry from anti-Israel activists, of course, and the tweet was taken down after an hour.
Bob Horenstein, spokesman for the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland, said he felt the reporter's tweet was an oversimplification of the issue, but said he also took exception with some other organizations' characterization of the BDS movement. He said the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland had made their stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict clear.
"We came out with a statement opposing unilateral annexation of the West Bank. We support a two-state solution," he said.
He said while the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland doesn't believe everyone who supports the BDS movement is anti-Semitic, he said many people believe the effects of the BDS movement harm Jewish people.
He also noted that while some local Black Lives Matter chapters have come out in support of the BDS movement, most around the country have not taken a stand on the issue.
The newspaper already had quoted multiple Muslim leaders who all supported BDS and denounced Israel and Zionists. (It referred to them as "civil rights organizations.") They wanted to hear from the other side for a token comment. And instead of a full-throated expression of support for Israel and against antisemitism and BDS, Mr. Horenstein hedged and dodged and declared how reasonable many Jews are in drawing fine lines between supporting Israel and opposing sovereignty over Judea and Samaria (which the reporter didn't ask about) and how some people who want to see the Jewish state destroyed are perfectly fine people who aren't antisemitic at all, oh no, they just want to boycott Jewish businesses and entertainers and academics from Israel while not boycotting Israeli Arab entertainers or businesses or academics.
He doesn't even know what he is talking about with Black Lives Matter – it is a national BLM decision to support BDS, not local. If Horenstein wanted to make distinctions, he could have distinguished between the Black Lives Matter movement and supporting black lives.
It is possible that the paper selectively quoted Horenstein. He has explicitly called out antisemitism on the Left. But the way that this reads is that both sides are against the decisions of the Israeli government, both sides don't consider BDS to be antisemitic - and the Jews are wishy-washy while the Muslims are passionate.
The tweet should have been defended by the Jewish community. BDS has been recognized as antisemitic not only by US lawmakers but by European leaders as well, and it fits the IHRA definition of antisemitism.
Furthermore, Jenny Young should be supported by the Jewish community for what she wrote instead of getting hung out to dry.
It is this modern politicization of anti-Semitism that ensured that Rebecca Long-Bailey, who would have been instantly awake to a racist jibe directed at any other minority group, could mistake the anti-Semitism in the interview for benign criticism of a state she doesn't much care for.
The belief that every injustice can be traced to Israeli evil was perhaps best demonstrated by another British Labour politician (now mercifully retired), Clare Short, who claimed during a pro-Palestinian conference in Brussels in 2007 that not only was Israel "much worse than the original apartheid state," but that it "undermines the international community's reaction to global warming." Given Short's conclusion that global warming could "end the human race," one can readily connect the dots about how loathsome and threatening Israel must be, and what should be done with it. For good measure, Israel has also been accused of causing domestic violence in Gaza.
More recently, Black Lives Matter, a group ostensibly formed to combat racism, adopted in 2016 a manifesto that, amidst the discourse on incarceration rates, police conduct and racial profiling, also accuses Israel of being an "apartheid state" and committing "genocide" of the Palestinians—whose population throughout the Holy Land has undergone a continuous and spectacular increase since the advent of modern Zionism in the 19th century. The British arm of the movement then paused its tweets on black lives in order to shoot off an anti-Israel medley, including offering its weighty legal opinion that Israel is in breach of international law and lamenting the "gagging" of attacks on Zionism.
The campaign to attach Zionism to every grievance and injustice has its origins in Stalin's deteriorating mind during the last years of his reign. It became the basis for official Soviet anti-Zionism and remains as a vestige in far-left political movements today. But in a sense, it runs even deeper than that. It is the hallmark of an irrational, fanatical mind, incapable of grasping the nuance and complexity of life. Just as traditional anti-Semitism brought ruin and misery, anti-Zionism will corrupt noble movements and worthy causes unless it is finally stamped out.
CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, recently prompted three corrections from The Forward. All involved one of the publication's contributing columnists, Muhammad Shehada.
In one case, he had falsely claimed that, in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, officials in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip "have a shortage of the chemicals necessary to make disinfectants, including hydrogen peroxide and chlorine," because "Israel bans both from entering Gaza under the pretext of 'dual-use' items—items they say can also be used for building weapons."
The correction noted that "an earlier version of this piece stated that Israel bans hydrogen peroxide and chlorine. Israel does not ban either; it restricts hydrogen peroxide. We sincerely regret the error."
Two other corrections that were made just this month pertained to factual misstatements made nearly a year ago in an August 28, 2019 opinion column. In those cases, notably, the publication did not even indicate that they had made any changes.
But these were just a few of the many false claims that Shehada has made over time in The Forward, a national Jewish media outlet that began publication at the end of the 19th century as a Yiddish-language socialist newspaper. And, as described below, some of those that remain uncorrected were of far greater magnitude.
Shehada is on the leadership team at the NGO EuroMediterranean Human Rights Monitor, an organization whose board of trustees is chaired by Richard Falk. Falk was condemned in 2011 by then-British Prime Minister David Cameron for publishing an anti-Semitic cartoon, and in 2012 by the U.K. Foreign Office "for providing a cover endorsement for an anti-Semitic tract called 'The Wandering Who' that compared Jews to Nazis."
Falk has also embraced 9/11 conspiracy theories. In addition to writing for The Forward, which he has been doing regularly since January 2018, Shehada has written for The New Arab, Al Jazeera, Vice and others.
In the last few weeks, around 140 police officers have been injured in this country; 27 in just one night last week in Brixton. A day later, the force's LGBT+ network could be found tweeting their support for asexual people. Perhaps the thugs who assaulted their colleagues in Brixton would have been mollified had they known how supportive the constabulary is of the asexuals in their midst? Or perhaps – and I simply put the possibility out there – such efforts by all branches of the British police do not in fact show how much the police have got with the beat, but just makes things harder for the policemen and women on the actual beat?
When you cast your mind back across recent months what are your most distinctive memories of the British constabulary? Dancing for public likes in TikTok videos? Skateboarding down major London thoroughfares closed down by climate extremists? Officers "taking the knee" before Black Lives Matter activists shortly before some of those same officers had to flee from the protesters who had turned violent?
All of these sights are indelibly linked in the minds of everybody who has seen them. But in the minds of a portion of the public they meld with another vision of the British police. A vision which numerous commentators and politicians have helped to exaggerate in recent weeks.
In the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minnesota, politicians and Left-wing pundits in the UK as much as in the US sought to make some grand strategic play off the back of that appalling incident. In the US, various commentators argued that the Minnesota incident was not isolated, but part of a broader problem of US policing and of American society as a whole. There is a debate to be had about certain aspects of US policing, certainly. But inevitably there were those in our own country who tried to make political gains by claiming the same situation exists here. These people – not least the organisers of BLM UK – wish to present the British police and the American police as being the same and the history of American racism synonymous with all British history.
It is a very dangerous game that such opportunists are playing. Some responsibility at least for the assaults on police officers that have occurred since the first BLM UK protests must be laid at their door. A week before the assault on police in Hackney, the Labour MP Dawn Butler stood in the House of Commons and told the Conservative government that it needed to "get its knee off the neck of the Black, African, Caribbean, Asian and minority ethnic community in this country." It was a disgraceful intervention, that went off almost without censure.
More than anything else, however, Diaspora Zionism was a wake-up call: It asserted that the Jews must awake from their assimilationist slumber and abandon their desire for acceptance into the gentile middle class.
It is this desire, perhaps, that is the greatest obstacle to Jewish self-defense in the US. The century-old American Jewish dream of somehow becoming a middle-class WASP has castrated the possibility of Jewish empowerment. But this is no longer desirable or acceptable in the face of the sudden metastasizing of American antisemitism. If it is to survive as something other than a beleaguered minority dependent on the good will of others, American Jewry must awake from its domestication. It must foster a new ferocity of the soul.
We may be seeing the first seeds of such an awakening in the Jewish security organizations that protected synagogues during the recent riots, such as Magen Am. At the moment, however, these are small and local, and nearly all from the Orthodox community, which with its strong communal sense and tendency not to place middle-class comfort as its first priority, is more suited to collective action. But Jews of all denominations and secular Jews of none must embrace this awakening as well.
What is required, it seems, is a new league. A Zionist League that will unite these nascent self-defense groups into a national movement. One that rejects the sins and failings of its predecessors, but nonetheless insists on the right of American Jews to empower and protect themselves. In doing so, it will honor those who have died for the sanctification of the name, and ensure that no more will be forced to do so. Or at least, if there must be more, they will not have been taken from us without a fight.
Ice Cube is threatening to sue this journalist over the article "Ice Cube's Long, Disturbing History if Anti-Semitism." So whatever you do, do not read that article: https://t.co/Kc49nsD0sthttps://t.co/bfXyG4pn9j
The Black Lives Matter Movement has condemned "antisemitism slurs" directed at BLM UK, a separate entity which claimed that Zionism "gagged" Britain.
Campaign Against Antisemitism criticised BLM UK, an entity of unknown provenance that exists only on Twitter and GoFundMe, after it claimed that "British politics is gagged of the right to critique Zionism" following the dismissal of Rebecca Long-Bailey from the Shadow Cabinet for sharing an article that contained the antisemitic trope that Israel is somehow to blame for the racist killing of George Floyd.
Now the Black Lives Matter Movement, which describes itself as having been "formed in London in 2016 and is not affiliated to BLMUK," published an article on its website titled "BLMUK, Palestine and media antisemitism slurs", which insisted that the Black Lives Matter Movement "support[s] the struggle against racism in all its forms" including antisemitism, called for action against racism against black women MPs in the Labour Party (with reference to a controversial internal leaked report), and called the criticism of BLM UK a "witch hunt" which "weakens the fight against all forms of racism" and that this is "the aim of much of the media and the right in this country".
It was not clear why standing up to antisemitism by BLM UK could "weaken the fight against all forms of racism".
Gary Lineker has distanced himself from the Black Lives Matter movement after it published an antisemitic tweet accusing Zionism of having "gagged" Britain.
The footballer-turned-celebrity was asked by actor Laurence Fox on Twitter as to his views on the Black Lives Matter movement following the controversy this weekend, and he responded: "Why do you ask? I didn't retweet it and wouldn't dream of doing so, therefore I can't really understand what your issue is."
Meanwhile on Sky Sports, pundit Matt Le Tissier revealed that studio executives had required him to wear a badge supporting the Black Lives Matter movement and that he is reviewing doing so, while other sportsmen are also reconsidering their support for the movement following numerous controversies, distinguishing between their strongly-felt opposition to racism against the black community and their disenchantment with the Black Lives Matter movement itself.
Wow. They are still at it. Is the most important issue in the Black Lives Matter movement the Jews that this group is so obsessed with us? https://t.co/yPMVFaqD9V
London Shiite Scholar Ahmed Haneef: "Aryanist" Churchill and the British Are Guilty of the Same Crimes as the Nazis: What Hitler Tried to Do to Europe, Europe was Doing Elsewhere pic.twitter.com/7NHkreNRPE
Israel's national airline – El Al – has canceled all its flights as a pilot labor dispute and the ongoing global economic hardships continue to bite.
"El Al CEO Gonen Usishkin has ordered that all aircraft should return to Israel, including those on cargo flights. El Al has stopped flying. The company has canceled two passenger flights and four cargo flights scheduled for today," according to a report in Globes.
The decision to cancel flights after negotiations between Pilots Committee Chairman Nir Reuveni and Usishkin ended without resolution on Tuesday evening.
Reuveni reportedly said that El Al was not upholding agreements that it came to with the pilot's union about a month ago and that the airline's management was unwilling to help the company deal with the ongoing crisis.
The economic downturn due to the coronavirus pandemic has hit airlines particularly hard and El Al is no exception. A company statement released Tuesday highlighted that the airline has hemorrhaged $140 million in the first quarter of 2020.
Israeli start-up Nanoscent is currently in trials with Sheba Medical Center, testing technology that can "smell" COVID-19 in less than 30 seconds.
Dozens of trial participants have already been successfully tested for coronavirus infections. In light of this success, Magen David Adom (MDA) has begun incorporating the testing method into their drive-thru testing stations located across the country. A number of hospitals have also followed suit, including the Sourasky Medical Center and the Poriya Medical Center.
With the technology, suspected coronavirus patients blow air through their nose into a plastic bag fitted with sensor chips that can electronically pick up on scents emitted by COVID-19 – diagnosing the patient in half a minute, allowing for early detection of the virus in a world where the current methods take hours at best.
Current testing methods in Israel incorporate the common PCR (polymerase chain reaction) approach, which takes several hours – causing bottlenecks in testing while hindering the government's ability to isolate and stymie the viral spread in hot spots and problem areas. Nanoscent's method itself was previously and successfully tested by researchers at the Technion University in conjunction with medical researchers at the Rambam Health Care Campus back in mid-March.
Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) discussed their legislative effort to establish a joint partnership with Israel against COVID-19 during the American Jewish Committee's (AJC) Advocacy Anywhere webinar on June 24.
Coons said that he and Cruz are looking to include an amendment in the upcoming National Defense Authorization Act that allocates $12 million toward a bilateral program with Israel to fight COVID-19 during fiscal years 2021-2023.
"The purpose of our amendment together is to invest in that partnership, to look for a partnership from Israel and investment by the people of the United States in joint work to develop the therapeutics, the vaccines and the responses to this pandemic that will contribute to the security of Israel and to the United States," Coons said.
The amendment has 26 cosponsors — 13 Republicans and 13 Democrats.
Cruz said the amendment is important because it decreases the U.S.' dependence on China for medical and pharmaceutical supplies. "The Chinese communist government has systematically targeted the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals, working to drive U.S. manufacturers out of business," Cruz said, adding, "We saw in the midst of this pandemic that one Chinese state-owned newspaper explicitly threatened to cut off lifesaving pharmaceuticals to the United States as a tool of economic warfare. That is a vulnerability that is deeply, deeply concerning."
I think we see a similar form of denial on the left over their support for the Palestinians. Having alighted on this cause as the signature motif of progressive conscience, they will not, cannot acknowledge that it is in fact an agenda of exterminating Israel based on profound, religious-based hatred of the Jewish people. Consequently, they just don't see or hear the voluminous evidence of the demented, Nazi-style antisemitism that pours out of the so-called "moderate" Palestinian Authority in its educational materials or TV broadcasts; they don't register at all the history of the region and the fact that the Jews are the only people with a legal, historical or moral right to the land; and they shut their minds to the evidence that the only people who have refused a Palestinian state over the past ninety years are the Palestinian Arabs themselves.
The point is that all these facts about these and other issues, all the evidence that is plain for all to see, all the inescapable logic of a situation, all of this is simply invisible to the dogmatic leftists who are so prevalent today. And that's largely because of their great, overpowering fear that if they admit any of it, if they allow reality to chip away at any of their beliefs, their entire moral and political personality will be smashed to bits and they will become… right-wing.
No greater horror can there be. And so the the whole fantastic edifice of destructive, often vicious and sometimes murderous fantasies grows ever larger and more monstrous – while sad-eyed realists and truth-tellers are defamed, harassed, censored and fired, and the statues of a civilisation crash to the ground.
Seumas Milne, Jeremy Corbyn's divisive senior aide, and Thomas Gardiner, Labour's Director of Governance and Legal Affairs, have both quit their employment with the Party.
Mr Milne, who has a record of espousing extreme political views, served as Executive Director of Strategy and Communications under Jeremy Corbyn. As a political appointee, his departure following the election of Sir Keir Starmer as Leader of the Party was widely considered inevitable.
Thomas Gardiner's role in Labour Headquarters involved overseeing the catastrophic complaints process, and became known for his decision that a meme showing an alien crustacean with a Star of David emblazoned on its back sucking the life out of the Statue of Liberty was somehow not antisemitic.
Mr Gardiner's departure represents the next stage of the clearout of controversial Labour staff by the new General-Secretary, David Evans, who replaced Corbyn ally Jennie Formby.
Mr Gardiner is being replaced by Alex Barros-Curtis, an aide of Sir Keir, on a temporary basis.
While the removal of tainted staff is a welcome development, the promised independent disciplinary process has yet to materialise.
StandWithUs (SWU), in cooperation with the Iranian American Jewish Federation (IAJF) are using truck ads to fight back against vicious anti-Israel and antisemitic hate groups holding rallies and "caravans" in seven cities across the US and Canada. The trucks will drive around the vicinity of these events in Los Angeles (July 1), San Diego (July 1), San Francisco (July 1), New York (July 1), Chicago (July 1) Miami (July 2), and Toronto (July 4).
"Al-Awda and other hate groups that organized these rallies are dedicated to ending Israel's existence and promoting antisemitic propaganda," said Roz Rothstein, CEO of StandWithUs. "While there is nothing wrong with having an open and vigorous debate about Israeli policies, that is not what these events are really about. We are answering hate with a message highlighting the urgent need for Palestinian leaders to choose peace negotiations over hatred and violence."
Importantly, these ads do not signal a position on Israel potentially applying sovereignty to/annexing parts of the West Bank/Judea & Samaria. StandWithUs will release educational materials about the many sides of this issue when a decision is made one way or another by Israel's democratically elected government.
Concerned members of the public are strongly urged NOT to drive to the locations where these hateful "caravans" are being held, to avoid a chaotic situation where it may be extremely difficult to ensure public safety. Especially given the heightened political polarization in our communities in general, we do not want to see opposing groups in cars protesting each other in the middle of the road. Nor do we encourage groups of people to gather in a way that risks the spread of COVID-19. This is precisely why we chose to use truck ads as a platform to express our opposition to hate and violence against Israel.
In order to fracture the Jewish community, Anti-Israel orgs like @IfNotNowOrg & @jvplive have been attacking stalwart Jewish orgs @ADL & @AJCongress portraying them as right wing betrayers of Jews & Jewish values.
Here's Jenny Manson of JVL openly saying she CHOSE to identify as a Jew to attack Israel better. Like you we should all be comfortable & have common sense to call out BS, ignoring bad faith sophistry that we have no right to question this sort of stuff pic.twitter.com/tvYSpbX81b
Just days after Campaign Against Antisemitism exposed a journalist's record of inflammatory social media posts, he is no longer featured as a writer at the online magazine for teenagers.
Toby Maxtone-Smith, who worked at The Day, responded to a report about antisemitic Chelsea fans performing Nazi salutes, singing about 'Yids' and imitating a gas chamber by complaining on Twitter about "snide journos [journalists] desperate to make a quick buck ruining someone's life for behaving like a d***head while pissed".
He also made jokes about foreskins and claimed that the reason the Labour Party's antisemitism scandal was covered by the media supposedly to an extent greater than Jeremy Corbyn's vote against the Falklands War was because "Jews are over-represented among the kind of people journalists know. The media is very bad at checking its own biases."
Mr Maxtone-Smith has made further worrying comments on a different Twitter account, and he has also made derogatory comments about Chinese people and Roma, as well as women.
With Israel's pending decision to apply sovereignty to Judea and Samaria, Canadian media outlets devoted considerable coverage, much of it was misleading and lacked context, while some reports contained outright falsehoods.
Case in point, on June 24, CBC Radio's flagship World at Six program aired a feature-length segment by former Mideast Bureau Chief, Margaret Evans, which was replete with errors and which lacked vital context about Israel's plans.
CBC Anchor Susan Bonner introduced the report by erroneously saying the following: Israel is facing heavy diplomatic over its plan to start annexing parts of the Palestinian territories in the occupied west bank. Something it may start doing as early as next week. Today, the United Nations Secretary General condemned the proposal, so did more than 1,000 prominent lawmakers in Europe. Much of the world regards the land as illegally occupied and annexation could further destabilize the Mideast. Margaret Evans reports."
As is commonly known, the status of the territories (which Israel regards as Judea and Samaria) is in dispute and the Palestinians have never had sovereignty over these areas. For this report to claim that Israel is making a de facto land grab of sovereign Palestinian territory is without foundation.
Secondly, while indeed much of the world regards Israel's presence as "illegal", Israel strenuously disputes this and Ms. Evans's report should have acknowledged that. Secondly, the United States (the most important nation in the world arguably on this file) no longer views the settlements as being illegal, a fact omitted by Ms. Evans.
Citing server problems and widespread user ignorance, Facebook Tsar Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly contemplating a 'total ban' on anything related to the polarizing Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
"Look, I'm a billionaire genius and I didn't build this social media platform for Israelis and Palestinians to hate-post as if they're all suffering from OCD, and certainly not for a bunch of white people outside the region who know fuck all about the conflict," Zuckerberg reportedly said. "All of these Facebook Pages, Facebook Groups, and individual comments on timelines are really screwing up our system…except for The Mideast Beast. We're all kind of fine with those idiots."
Such a ban would mark a significant escalation in the social media behemoth's efforts to censor user activity. As The Mideast Beast's long-time reporter and full-time onanist Marcus Thunderbolt reported, Facebook has also previously mulled introducing a 'minimum postgraduate education requirement for commenting' on Israel and Hamas' repeated military confrontations, as well as the Arab-Israeli Conflict in general.
However, despite Zuckerberg's enthusiasm, the proposed ban on 'anything related to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict' is unlikely to be enforced. "We're struggling with a concept widely known as 'Freedom of Speech,'" said a Facebook legal expert. "I won't lie, sometimes I wish it was known as a 'privilege' rather than a 'freedom' or a 'right' – kind of like having a driver's license or health insurance in the U.S."
Zuckerberg, who is Jewish, insisted that his heritage had nothing to do with the proposed ban. "Are you kidding me? I love Arabs. They gave us the number zero, and I could never have built Facebook and become a billionaire without it."
An Oklahoma man with a penchant for flying swastika flags and wearing Nazi uniforms remained in police custody on Wednesday, following an incident last Sunday in which he shot a woman who was attempting to remove one of the offending flags on display outside his home.
Alexander Feaster, 44, has been charged with assault and battery with a deadly weapon, and shooting with intent to kill, and is due to appear in court on July 9.
Police officers in the town of Hunter, about 90 miles north of Oklahoma City, found the woman — identified as 28-year-old Kyndal McVey — lying in a ditch after she had been shot in the back by Feaster between three and five times with a 5.56mm rifle, Garfield County Sheriff Jody Helm said.
According to a police affidavit, McVey was approaching Feaster's porch where a Nazi flag was hanging when he appeared brandishing a Colt AR-15 A2 assault rifle.
"Without warning, Feaster opened fire on Kyndal as she was running away from the residence," the affidavit said. "On the video footage, it appeared that Feaster fired approximately 7-8 shots very rapidly, several of these rounds striking Kyndal. It is important to note that Kyndal did not appear to be in any way a threat to Feaster due to her obviously running away from his residence with only a flag in her hand."
McVey is presently in hospital and is expected to recover from her wounds.
According to the police affidavit, she had been attending a party across the street from Feaster's residence prior to the shooting incident.
A swastika was spray-painted in white on the sidewalk in front of a synagogue in Bangor, Maine.
Bangor police are investigating the incident, which occurred Thursday night. Security camera footage taken by Congregation Beth Israel captured clear images of the teenagers who drew the swastika.
"I do hope, rather than criminal mischief or vandalism charges, we can rope these kids into some kind of restorative justice," Beth Israel President Brian Kresge said in a post on the congregation's Facebook page.
Kresge used black spray-paint to cover the swastika before the start of the synagogue's services on Friday evening, which are being held outdoors due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The synagogue installed security cameras in 2012 after antisemitic graffiti was spray-painted on the front of the synagogue building.
In an accidental breakthrough made while blowing kids' soap bubbles, Israeli scientists have observed light behaving in a "beautiful" manner never before seen by the human eye.
They captured the process on camera and wrote an academic paper declaring themselves the first people to see a physical phenomenon called "branched flow" in action, which will be the cover story in Thursday's edition of the renowned journal Nature.
"There is nothing more exciting than discovering something new, and this is the first demonstration of this phenomenon with light waves," said Uri Sivan, president of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Anatoly Patsyk, a PhD student involved in the discovery, called it "another one of nature's surprises."
Technion physics professor Moti Segev told The Times of Israel that he had no idea, at first, what he was looking at.
"We were shining light into bubbles, and started to notice a very pretty and peculiar scattering process, in which the light splits into branches, like branches of a tree," he said.
They had no idea why this was happening.
"I thought maybe it's accidental, but little by little we unraveled the physics and then saw it was related to branched flow," said Segev.
This process was discovered in 2001, but the closest scientists got to witnessing it was through an electron microscope, which doesn't provide an actual view of the target being examined, but rather uses electrons to probe the target and construct an image of what is happening. Only limited scientific exploration is possible from this image.
Soap bubbles used by the scientists in order to see branched flow, illuminated with white light, as observed in the microscope (courtesy of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology)
Segev said his lab team was amazed when it dawned on them that what they were looking at — mostly through a magnifying glass or microscope, but also visible to a point through the naked eye — was branched flow.
Ibex Medical Analytics, a maker of cancer diagnostic software, in collaboration with UK's LDPath, a provider of digital pathology services to England's National Health Service (NHS), has started rolling out its clinical grade applications for prostate cancer detection in pathology for the first time in the UK.
Traditional pathology involves manual processes that have remained unchanged for years, with slides analyzed by pathologists using microscopes, and reporting often carried out on pieces of paper. But even as cancer rates have increased over the years, the number of pathologists globally is in decline.
The number of active pathologists in the US, for example, has plunged by some 17.5% between 2007 and 2017, putting the nation at a shortage, and a smaller workforce needs to handle a bigger workload, according to aMay 2019 study published in JAMA Network Open.
A shortage of pathologists in the UK has led to up to six-week waits in cancer diagnosis and, together with increased demand, is exerting tremendous pressure on pathology departments while raising concerns about diagnostic accuracy, Ibex said in a statement on Tuesday.
LDPath, which provides histopathological imaging and reporting services to 24 NHS trusts throughout the UK, including large teaching hospitals and district general hospitals, will integrate Ibex's prostate solution into its digital pathology workflow.
"Imagine a tourist arriving in a foreign city," the Israeli intel officer tells me, "the first thing they do is open Google Maps and look for a restaurant. Google helps them find a place. Helps them navigate. Helps them get there on time. We do the same." Well, not exactly. The augmented reality mapping application Lieutenant-Colonel "N" is describing is designed to find hidden terrorists, not restaurants. "Mistakes can be fatal," he tells me, "we need to get the right house on the right street."
Welcome to the battlefield of the future—artificial intelligence, multi-source data fusion, augmented reality. Everything edge-based and real-time. Except this isn't really a battlefield, as such. "What happened to us," the officer tells me, "is that our enemies have adopted a technique to merge into urban areas populated with civilians, we need to unveil the enemy, precisely, and stop the threat."
So, now you start to get the picture. Think Google Street View—except it's not Google. And an augmented reality overlay that comes from the fusion of multiple sources of highly classified intelligence not big tech's cloud servers And if that isn't enough, there's also AI running pattern analytics on prior enemy tactics, techniques and procedures to infer what a hidden enemy is likely to do next, in real time.
This is military augmented reality and it's not unique—such systems are under development, gaming-style headsets overlaying friendlies and likely combatants, helping targeting and the avoidance of blue on blue. Israel's new system is different, though. The augmented reality comes from the fusion of multiple intel sources, the intent is not to present ground troops with an advanced gaming-style view of the battlefield, but to use live data to infer where actual targets are hiding.
Picture this Street View lookalike again—no screenshots, I'm afraid, it's classified. Arrows and graphics explain to a soldier on the ground why the third-floor apartment with the wrought iron balcony is deemed a hostile environment, why anyone exiting the building can be considered a combatant. The intent is to root out threats, but also to keep others safe, to avoid collateral damage. "We need to make sure we only target the aggressor and not any civilians," Lt-Col "N" tells me.
The story that I am about to tell is that of my late father, Yahya Qassim, the owner and editor of Al-Sha'b—a newspaper published from 1945 to 1958, when Iraq was under the rule of the Hashemite monarchy. The story is focused on Qassim's defense of Iraqi Jewry in the tremendous ordeal that the Iraqi Jewish community faced immediately before and after the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. This story almost certainly would have been forgotten had it not been recounted by professor Orit Bashkin in her 2012 book New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq.
The Jews of Iraq occupy an important place in Judaism, as the country was home to the oldest and second-largest Jewish community in the Arab world. As with other Jewish communities in various parts of the world, Iraqi Jewry suffered from varying forms and different degrees of repression, persecution, and pogroms throughout history—spanning biblical Babylonia, the Islamic Caliphate, the Mongol invasion, the Ottoman Empire, and modern Iraq in the 20th century. Prior to discussing the events of 1947-1953 in relation to the ordeal faced by the Jewish community in Iraq at the time of the creation of the State of Israel, it is interesting to highlight the major phases of the history of the Iraqi Jewish community in the modern era.
What is known today as Iraq consisted under Ottoman rule (1533-1917) of three provinces (Wilayats in Turkish): Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra, corresponding to the northern, central, and southern regions of present day Iraq. During this period, the Jewish community in Iraq had been generally treated fairly. This was one more point in the similarity between the Ottoman and the Austrian empires: Both were multiethnic and relatively benign toward their constituent ethnicities; both entered WWI on the same (eventually) losing side along with the German Empire; and both met the same fate, namely collapse and dissolution at the end of the Great War.
The Iraqi Jewish community, along with the rest of the population in Iraq, suffered great hardships during WWI, but under the British occupation that followed, Iraqi Jews enjoyed greater security and prosperity. Then came the Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq (1921-1958). Under Hashemite rule, a pluralist Iraqi identity was created, forged, and nourished, and Jews were increasingly integrated into Iraqi society as a whole. However, this trend suffered a major interruption in April 1941, when an anti-British and pro-Nazi group of Iraqi army officers, supported by civilians, staged a coup d'etat and installed a short-lived dictatorship. Immediately after the dictatorship was ousted in late May, the Jewish communities in Baghdad and Basra suffered a pogrom at the hands of street mobs in an incident known as the Farhud (Arabic for pogrom). Rioters killed around 200 Jews and injured 1,000, raped an unknown number of Jewish women, and looted around 1,500 Jewish stores and homes. However, after the restoration of the Hashemite monarchy, the Iraqi Jewish community's stability and prosperity not only began to recover, but also showed clear signs of growth.
Returning to the core of my story—Al-Sha'b (the people in Arabic) was launched in 1945 by Yahya Qassim with the aim of using the editorials he penned to advocate daily and emphatically for a pluralist, democratic Iraq, where citizens—whether Muslim, Christian, Jewish, or of any other set of personal faiths and beliefs—are considered fully equal under the rule of law. In less than a year, Al-Sha'b rose to become the leading newspaper in Iraq in terms of its circulation, its liberal editorial policy, and its independence from any political party or group. True to Qassim's pluralist principles, there were several Jewish professionals working at Al-Sha'b alongside Muslims and Christians, both as journalists and in administrative positions.
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Recently the European Union announced that it would reopen its borders to visitors from some other countries. Israel was not on the list (neither was the US). Many Israelis reacted indignantly, but objectively our Coronavirus situation is not good.
On June 30, Israel marked the highest number of new cases of Coronavirus since the beginning of the pandemic, with 803 reported. After succeeding to extinguish the first wave with an economy-crushing lockdown, the re-opening was marred by some strategic mistakes, for which we are beginning to pay the price. Here is a graph of new cases per day:
Although there has been a recent increase in the daily number of tests done, a Health Ministry employee said on 16 June that "the proportion of positive tests was higher than before," and therefore the increase in reported new cases was indicative of a new wave of infection.
I don't pretend to be an expert, but some of the reasons were obvious. In the educational system: it was necessary to reopen the schools, because Israelis have a lot of children, and it's very difficult to get people back to work when there's no solution for child care. The usual safety valve for parents, retired grandparents, was not available due to the danger to them from the disease. The first mistake was to open all grades almost at once. It would have been possible to open the lower grades first, which would have freed the parents to work, while reducing the risk. What followed was a sharp spike in the 10-19 year age group and a smaller one in the 0-9 group at the start of the second wave in early June.
The Education Ministry devised a plan that would separate students and teachers in the schools into "capsules" which would be isolated from one another, students would sit 2 meters apart, masks would be required for students and teachers, and so on. The second mistake was not following the plan. I am not sure if it proved unworkable, or if teachers and administrators didn't take it seriously enough, as some said. But in many schools, compliance was lax. Schools in which cases of Corona occurred were closed, but the damage was done.
Coronavirus transmission is believed to be primarily by droplets released when an infected person sneezes, coughs, talks, or sings. These droplets may remain in the air for a few minutes. It is also thought that the more viral particles a person ingests, the more likely they are to become sick, although it is not clear if this affects the severity of the illness. Transmission outdoors where droplets may be blown away or dehydrated by breezes and diluted in a larger volume of air, is much less likely than in a confined indoor space. Masks may not be fine enough to prevent viral particles from passing through, but they do greatly impede the much larger droplets; they are useful both when worn by the person who is infected and by others nearby. There is also the possibility of droplets impinging on a person's eyes, so a face shield is useful in addition to a mask.
Israelis love "life cycle events" like circumcisions, bar mitzvahs, weddings, and so forth. Big weddings are the rule, often held in large event halls. There are even websites that help you decide how much money to give according to the type of event, your relationship to the principals, and so on. These events are often held indoors, and the Health Ministry allowed event halls to reopen when the first wave subsided. There are guidelines on the number of people allowed at an event, but they were liberal. Religious services, which were initially sharply restricted, were reopened with more relaxed guidelines. These actions may have been premature, and some restrictions have been re-imposed.
What everyone wants to do is to find ways to protect the population without destroying the economy. The best way to do that (at least, until a vaccine or effective treatment is developed) is to identify each and every sick person and isolate them before they can infect others. This requires a) the ability to do enough tests, b) a rapid turnaround of test results so that it is possible to identify someone as a carrier of the disease before they can infect others, and c) trained people to investigate the sources of infection so that those exposed can be tested. While the number of tests has been increasing, the turnaround time has been poor. In the early part of the second wave, when many cases were detected in schools, the labs were unable to keep up with the tests. As far as investigations are concerned the Health Ministry reports a serious shortage of personnel trained to do this; and it has been accused of poor management as well. They have just hired several hundred medical students and paramedics for this function; it's mysterious why this took so long.
The public, which was relatively disciplined during the first wave, seems to have decided that "the Corona is over," and that masks are best worn around the chin, to be moved up when a police officer, who might give them a ticket worth 500 Shekels ($146), is nearby. The latest news is that specific cities and neighborhoods will be placed on lockdown in order to try to break the chain of infection.
PM Netanyahu got good marks for his handling of the crisis during the first wave, when he made good decisions such as closing the country's borders quickly. The removal of restrictions, however, has not been handled so well. Employment has not snapped back – unemployment stands at near 21% – and the epidemic has moved into a second wave, which could be as bad or worse than the first one. Some industries, like tourism and performing arts, have been devastated and little has been done to help them. Of course, everything isn't his responsibility, but he is known for micromanaging what he believes are areas of importance, and many Israelis feel that he doesn't believe that they are of importance.
It isn't helping that after the scandal of the obscenely bloated unity government of 36 ministers and 9 deputy ministers, and after the unity negotiations produced unprecedented perks for the Prime Minister and his alternate, Bibi got the Knesset to pass legislation to exempt him from taxes on work done on his private residence by the government. He did not improve his image when he remarked that although he deserved the tax break, his "timing was wrong." No kidding.
***
Israel's approach to the Corona has been very – Israeli. First, we tried to overcome it by brute force. Then we became overconfident. And now, hopefully, we'll try to be smart.
It's July 1, the day that Benjamin Netanyahu has been touting. The day that the Palestinian Arabs and their fans have declared a "Day of Rage." The day that has been causing great angst in Western Europe. The day that countless articles and op-eds have been declaring the end of Israeli democracy. The day the UN said will witness a massive violation of international law.
The main reason seems to be that the Trump administration has not agreed to any change in the status quo, and possibly that it wanted Israel to make more concessions to Palestinians in concert with the move.
While I think Israel extending sovereignty on areas that it insists on keeping in any possible peace agreement is a good move that can contribute to peace, this entire affair was handled poorly and amateurly.
Here's a scorecard:
Bibi is the biggest loser. His unfulfilled promise, especially one with a deadline, is a major blow to his credibility which has already been hit hard with his legal troubles and his insistence that he deserves tax breaks when the economy is in trouble.
Beyond that, Netanyahu didn't plan for the day that sovereignty was to be extended. Israeli media was filled with stories about how no maps were prepared, no one who needed to know the details from the army to local mayors were kept in the loop. It was simply a fiasco. Major details like whether Palestinians in the newly sovereign territories would be offered citizenship were never clarified, allowing Israel's haters to define the terms of the argument.
Bibi is normally a master strategist, but this was bungled from the start, and the lack of a contingency plan in case Trump didn't approve is a huge rookie mistake.
Israel is a major loser. The plan generated lots of animosity towards Israel – and Israel doesn't yet get any of the benefits. Furthermore, this fiasco has been a major speedbump in Israel's improving relations with Gulf countries. It has damaged Israel's relations with much of Europe. No one in the world has defended the plan. And Israelis themselves have not generally supported the plan; it was heavily criticized from the left and the right.
American Jewry and American Zionists have lost. This aborted plan has caused big splits in the community as organizations were forced to take positions they weren't altogether comfortable with, with insufficient information as to the extent of the plan. Jewish unity towards Israel has already been battered by Obama and by Trump, but now it was done by the prime minister of Israel who never properly explained what extending sovereignty meant and the benefits it would have for everyone.
The Palestinian Authority has lost. Their attempts to inflame anger among their people has failed. No one cares. They cannot even claim victory, because Bibi might end up slowly extending sovereignty over some settlement blocs, and a single square millimeter would be considered a major loss to them.
Israel's haters have won, but not because their tweets had any effect. They've won because Israel has lost credibility and its friendship with many countries has been hurt. They've won because they have had months of opportunities to slander Israel without Israel being able to answer because the plan was never solidified.
Possibly worst of all, this fiasco isn't over. If Netanyahu decides to extend sovereignty over bits and pieces of Judea and Samaria, every single move will generate more anger, more negative media and more denunciations from world leaders who are otherwise sympathetic with Israel. Instead of weathering the world's opprobrium all at once, it will be spread out over months or longer.
If Bibi abandons the plan altogether, it makes Israel look weak in a Middle East where only strength is respected.
It's hard to think of a more prominent anti-Semite in American public life over the last 30 years than the Rev. Al Sharpton. Louis Farrakhan may give him a run for his money, but the leader of the so called Nation of Islam remains a pariah—Barack Obama was photographed with him once, in 2005, and never made that mistake again.
Sharpton is a different story. He has never apologized for leading a pogrom against the Jews of Brooklyn that marked the worst outburst of anti-Semitic violence in modern American history, but despite all that, or perhaps because of it, has laundered himself into an elder statesman and star television host whose endorsement ambitious Democratic politicians must now seek.
Look no further than MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, who personally introduced a resolution condemning Sharpton's "racist and anti-Semitic views" in his previous life as a Republican congressman. In his present life as a Trump-hating MSNBC host who has toyed with a presidential run, Scarborough celebrates Sharpton's moral clarity about Facebook.
We never thought we'd see Sharpton embraced by Jews, but that's what's transpiring now as the Anti-Defamation League strays onto the Reverend's turf—leading a boycott campaign against one of the most successful Jewish-owned businesses in the world. Its CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, has tapped Sharpton as a partner in a political project to police objectionable speech that both are trying to cast as a modern civil rights issue.
Sharpton has come a long way. So has the ADL.
As Crown Heights burned, the organization had no trouble identifying Sharpton as an enemy of the Jewish people. "Anti-Semitism is all over the place in Crown Heights," the ADL's then-director, Abraham Foxman, told the New York Times in August 1991. "It is ugly, it is crude, it is classical and it is deadly. And the fact that it is American and it is black should not make it invisible or tolerable."
A new Fox Broadcasting Company streaming channel canceled on Monday a scheduled live feed of an address by antisemitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan after facing a torrent of criticism.
Fox Soul — which is geared toward African Americans — advertised the July 4 speech under the title "The Criterion: The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan Speaks Live," but soon after removed the ad from Twitter.
Following the widespread outcry, Fox Soul tweeted later on Monday that the Farrakhan speech would not be aired.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center had called for the broadcast to be scrapped, recalling, "Since the 1980s, Louis Farrakhan has denigrated the Jewish people, Judaism, and the Jewish State, members of the LGBT community, the United States of America, and entertainment leaders from Hollywood."
It called Farrakhan "a demagogue and divider at a time when all Americans need to hear messages of unity and hope."
"We urge Fox Television Network to cancel the speech by a person who has spent his adult life spitting on everything July 4th stands for," they concluded.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders joined four House Democrats on Tuesday in calling for the United States to cut or withhold aid from Israel if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu carries out his plan to annex parts of the West Bank or enacts policies to facilitate an eventual annexation, according to a source familiar with the matter.
A new letter to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urges the reductions to the $3.8 billion in annual American assistance to Israel if Jerusalem moves to unilaterally extend its sovereignty to West Bank territory.
The letter was orchestrated by the progressive powerhouse Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and has thus far also been signed by Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, Washington state Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal and Minnesota Congresseoman Betty McCollum.
Sanders's signature adds new weight to the missive as Ocasio-Cortez continues to circulate it among liberal lawmakers on Capitol Hill, in an effort to gain more supporters. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, left, testifies before the House Oversight Committee on July 12, 2019 (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
"Should the Israeli government move forward with the planned annexation with this administration's acquiescence, we will work to ensure non-recognition as well as pursue conditions on the $3.8 billion in U.S. military funding to Israel, including human rights conditions and withholding funds for the off-shore procurement of Israeli weapons equal to or exceeding the amount the Israeli government spends annually to fund settlements, as well as the policies and practices that sustain and enable them," a draft of the letter says, according to a copy obtained by Jewish Insider.
The current level of US military assistance to the Jewish state was solidified in a 2016 memorandum of understanding between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government — roughly $38 billion over 10 years.
Michael Roth, a longtime president of Wesleyan University, is not one to bow to political pressure. He leads a university whose brand is emphatically left-wing. But in 2013, when the American Studies Association pledged allegiance to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel, Roth said that the boycott was "a repugnant attack on academic freedom." Many university presidents rejected the boycott. But Roth's rejection stood out for its clarity and force.
So when Roth opines that higher education has a special duty to "step up" as "anti-fascist," I assume he means it. That's unfortunate because, as noble as it sounds, the idea that universities should oppose fascism in the way Roth suggests is corrosive.
What does Roth mean by anti-fascist? Fascism, he argues, varies in character but shares some "core ingredients." It "promises the return to a mythic greatness and an escape from the corrupt, weak and feminized present." It "creates an enemy or a scapegoat whose elimination or domination will allow for those true, full members of society to thrive." It "attacks ideas, science and education in the name of a deeper, pure belonging." Let's stipulate to Roth's characterization. Being anti-fascist, then, means actively opposing fascism so understood, and not, as Roth makes clear, joining the antifa movement.
Universities, when they stick to their principles, are naturally inhospitable to fascism. In principle, university communities are distinguished by their willingness to follow arguments where they lead and to be ruled by the better argument. Without being closed to the value of myths, they aren't friends of the "mythic." In principle, university environments welcome inquirers of every kind. They aren't friends of scapegoaters. In principle, universities are homes of science and education. Without being closed to the possibility that science does harm, they aren't friends of the enemies of science. If, as the philosopher Jason Stanley has said, fascist politics is about "smashing truth and replacing it with power" universities, as friends of the truth, stand against fascism when they go about their business.
But when Roth says that universities should be antifascist, he means more than that. Now is no time to support "free inquiry and expression in the abstract" because "peaceful protesters are being beaten and gassed." We "need to do more."
I spoke with @NachumSegalNet about Black Lives Matter's structural anti-Semitism and the American Jewish community's refusal to acknowledge it or oppose it.https://t.co/f8Vvz0Q4Lh
Former Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad: Muslims Should Attack Israelis, Not Europeans or Americans; We Should Support Blacks in the U.S. as a Means to Reduce American Pressure on Us pic.twitter.com/2f90DUEtLc
slamic terror group ISIS has seen a surge in popularity, particularly among left-leaning millennials, after officially changing its name to "Anti-ISIS."
The group emphasized that it has not altered its mission or ideology and will continue to inflict mass casualty attacks on innocent civilians, primarily in the Muslim World. But calling itself Anti-ISIS has allowed the group to frame all its opponents as ISIS supporters.
"Why does that infidel Donald Trump keep dropping bombs on us, Anti-ISIS?" the leader of the terror group asked at a recent press conference. "Isn't being anti-ISIS good? I guess he must support ISIS."
Terrorists from the group said they were inspired by the success of their American counterpart Antifa, whose violent attacks against journalists, elderly and disabled people, and other civilians have been excused because their name literally means "anti-fascist."
"I never thought Americans were dumb enough to embrace a violent nihilist group simply because they liked their name," Anti-ISIS leader Amir Muhammad al-Mawla told The Mideast Beast. "I am very happy to say that I was wrong."
We counted every instance in 2020 that HRW chief @kenroth tweeted "war crime," "war criminal" or "war criminals."
The results demonstrate a pathological obsession with demonizing Israel & the US.
So long as ideologues like Roth dominate world bodies, they will remain tainted.
Again I asked: "We just heard about Islamophobia from Pakistan for the Islamic states. Yet if they truly care about Muslims, why have they failed to bring a single resolution for 1 million Muslims detained in camps & persecuted for their religion by China?"
No joke: last summer 50 U.N. Human Rights Council reps PRAISED China for locking up 1 million Muslims: 🇵🇸 State of Palestine 🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia 🇰🇵 North Korea 🇿🇼 Zimbabwe 🇻🇪 Venezuela 🇨🇩 DR Congo 🇵🇰 Pakistan 🇧🇮 Burundi 🇩🇿 Algeria 🇷🇺 Russia 🇪🇬 Egypt 🇸🇾 Syria 🇮🇷 Iran 🇮🇶 Iraq ... READ: pic.twitter.com/ptSfmLOdIP
During an Instagram live session with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) yesterday, Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour called on Jamaal Bowman, who currently leads Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) in last week's Democratic primary in New York's 16th district, to follow the legislative priorities of 'The Squad' — the group of progressive representatives comprised of Tlaib, Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) — with "no questions asked."
"We told him, when you get to Congress he has very special instructions," Sarsour said of Bowman. "You're following four women of color there. When Rashida, Ilhan, AOC and Ayanna tell you to do something, no questions asked, you do what they say," Sarsour said added while Tlaib chuckled.
Rebecca Katz, a spokeswoman for Bowman, told JI that Bowman "plans to work alongside the members of the Squad and all his colleagues." Katz added: "As you will soon see, he will definitely ask plenty of questions."
A subsequent post on Sarsour's Instagram Sunday afternoon included a fundraising appeal on behalf of Tlaib, who is facing a serious challenge in her August 4 primary. Detroit City Council President Brenda Jones, who narrowly lost to Tlaib in 2018, is gaining in the polls on the incumbent.
Could Ann Arbor voters possibly pick a worse choice than Mozhgan Savabieasfahani for Ward 4?
If you lived in Ann Arbor, a leafy enclave in Michigan, you might be concerned about the cost of housing, or the deteriorating infrastructure. You might want to elect representative to the City Council with a commitment to fix "the damn roads".
Or not.
Mozhgan Savabieasfahani is hoping what motivates Ward 4 voters is local involvement in an intractable foreign conflict thousands of miles away from Michigan. She is running for Ann Arbor City Council on a "Divest from Israel platform" Mozhgan Savabieasfahani , Candidate for Ann Arbor City Council
Savabieasfahani is no stranger to activist politics. Her facebook page is full of the language of demonization and dehumanization as she urges her followers to boycott Israeli "butchers"
Most alarming, Mozhgan Savabieasfahani is part of a contingent that has been harassing members of a local synagogue every Shabbat, when they go to pray. Much of the signage is unabashedly anti-Semitic.
The harassment has been going on for years, but was given wider attention when the Lawfare Project filed a lawsuit against the City, and the protesters. The plaintiffs are Beth Israel Congregation member Marvin Gerber and Ann Arbor resident Dr. Miriam Brysk, a Holocaust survivor.
Brooke Goldstein, Executive Director of The Lawfare Project described the situation: "The City of Ann Arbor has completely abdicated its responsibility to protect the Jewish community from targeted, racist harassment at the hands of these protesters. There are few greater civil rights violations than impeding the free exercise of worship and assembly, and we are here to demand the city hold the protestors accountable under existing federal, state, and local laws."
Iowa state Sen. Randy Feenstra defeated longtime Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) on June 2 in the Republican primary in Iowa's 4th Congressional District.
Leading up to the election, King had made numerous remarks perceived to be bigoted, including inflammatory rhetoric condoning white supremacists and antisemites. These remarks, as well as similar ones over the years, were widely denounced by the American Jewish community, including conservative Jewish groups.
Last year, King lost his committee assignments and was heavily criticized in a resolution passed in the US House of Representatives that called him out by name after he asked how the term "white supremacist" was offensive.
Given King's history, the Republican Jewish Coalition took the rare step and endorsed Feenstra against a sitting GOP incumbent.
In the lead up to the primary, Feenstra touted his conservative record and received key endorsements from social conservatives, pro-life groups and the US Chamber of Commerce. He also has an "A" rating by the NRA. Feenstra, who proudly noted his involvement in passing anti-BDS legislation in the Iowa state legislature in 2016, is looking to get back to basics and to bring an effective conservative agenda, Iowa values and strong support for Israel, to Washington.
In a television appearance on Monday, UK Labour leader Keir Starmer defended his decision last week to fire a top party official who tweeted and praised an interview with a British actress who claimed that Israel was responsible for police brutality against minorities in the US — an assertion Starmer described as an "antisemitic conspiracy theory."
In an interview on the "Good Morning Britain" program, Starmer referred to the ousting of Shadow Education Secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey, saying, "I don't want the Labour party and antisemitism in the same sentence ever again."
Under Starmer's predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour was plagued by antisemitism scandals, some involving Corbyn himself.
Starmer replaced Corbyn in April, in the aftermath of Labour's resounding electoral defeat last December.
Labour's Nia Griffith has said that defenders of Rebecca Long-Bailey are guilty of antisemitism while her colleague, Claudia Webbe, has refused to say whether she believes that the conspiracy theory publicised by Ms Long-Bailey was antisemitic or not.
Ms Long-Bailey was sacked from the Shadow Cabinet last week for sharing an article in The Independent in which the actress Maxine Peake promoted an antisemitic conspiracy theory that Israel was somehow to blame for the racist killing of George Floyd. Far-left factions of the Labour Party, including MPs have rallied to Ms Long-Bailey's defence.
Ms Griffith, the Shadow Welsh Secretary, when asked whether MPs who supported Ms Long-Bailey were themselves guilty of antisemitism, replied: "Well I think they are and I think they're also in danger of going backwards and going back over old arguments and old mistakes because what we need now is clear, decisive action to make sure that we root out antisemitism in the party."
Among those defending Ms Long-Bailey are John McDonnell, the former Shadow Chancellor who launched a petition calling for Ms Long-Bailey's reinstatement, and other MPs such as Claudia Webbe.
Ms Webbe appeared on BBC radio and was asked whether she believed that the conspiracy theory that appeared in the article shared by Ms Long-Bailey was antisemitic but refused to answer. "Was it antisemitic or not?" the host, Emma Barnett, asked at least four times, and Ms Webbe responded that "the leader himself has said that he didn't fire Rebecca because she did something antisemitic," an erroneous assertion that was quickly corrected by Ms Barnett. Ms Webbe refused to be drawn on whether the conspiracy theory was antisemitic, saying only "I've given you my answer," "you're not actually going to get any further from me" and "the conspiracy theory is wrong. Of course it's wrong…I do know that it is a conspiracy theory absolutely."
Ken Livingstone, who was suspended from Labour for comments about Hitler and Zionism, has also maintained, even following Ms Long-Bailey's dismissal, that there is no antisemitism problem in the Party. Ms Webbe used to serve as a full-time advisor to Mr Livingstone.
Campaign Against Antisemitism has called on the BBC to ban Maxine Peake for appearances on its television and radio platforms until she makes amends for promoting an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
Ms Peake is reported in The Independent to have said: "The tactics used by the police in America, kneeling on George Floyd's neck, that was learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services." Rebecca Long-Bailey MP subsequently shared the article and was consequently sacked from the Shadow Cabinet.
Ms Peake subsequently said for promoting the notion that Israel is to blame for the racist killing of George Floyd, saying: "I feel it's important for me to clarify that, when talking to The Independent, I was inaccurate in my assumption of American Police training & its sources. I find racism & antisemitism abhorrent & I in no way wished, nor intended, to add fodder to any views of the contrary."
However, Ms Peake did not apologise.
A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: "Sir Keir Starmer has shown leadership by sacking a senior frontbencher for sharing Maxine Peake's antisemitic conspiracy theory. The BBC should follow suit and end its work with Maxine Peake until she formally apologises for promoting an antisemitic trope and agrees to undertake antisemitism training. Her mealy-mouthed 'clarification' is not enough. If the BBC fails to act after having taken strong action against some of its own presenters for racial comments against other minorities, the public will rightly conclude that it has a double standard when it comes to antisemitism."
An adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Austin whose salary is funded by taxpayer dollars launched a tirade on Twitter this weekend, in which he articulated a desire for Israel to be destroyed and for Catholicism to "die."
First reported by the Young America's Foundation, Spencer Wells was challenged by another user on his support for Iran bombing Israel and then launched into the hateful attack.
As YAF reported: "After being questioned by a Twitter user if he was using sarcasm when encouraging Iran to bomb Israel, Spencer Wells replied: 'Nope – I despise the Israelis. If you want to see the post-apocalyptic vision of what Apartheid in South Africa would have looked like in 2020, visit Israel. The Palestinians have suffered for far too long – bomb it until the sand turns to glass…'"
Wells also tweeted "F*** the Catholic Church" and an article detailing "10 Secrets the Catholic Church Hopes You've Forgotten," with the hashtag #CatholicismMustDie.
According to his bio, Wells is a geneticist, anthropologist, author, entrepreneur, adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and owner of Antone's, an iconic nightclub in Austin, Texas. (h/t jzaik)
"We are witnessing right now in the United States one of the most remarkable uprisings of black people against the structural regime of racial domination," exclaimed Rutgers University law professor Noura Erakat. In a June 3 Arab Center Washington, D.C. (ACW) webinar alongside the equally extreme Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, this Palestinian-American academic duo drew on the intellectually vacuous rage of "intersectionality," and the cult of victimhood it supports to connect America's and Israel's supposed sins. Along with five other panelists addressing the webinar's topic, "The Threat of Israeli Annexation: Regional and International Implications," the pair denounced America and Israel as allied imperialists.
Erakat's family has a history of hostility towards Israel. She is the niece of PLO Secretary General Saeb Erekat. Earlier this week her cousin, Ahmed Erekat, was killed by Israeli border guards at a checkpoint after a car-ramming terrorist attack in which he swerved, accelerated his car at a checkpoint and struck a guard, sending her flying through the air and leaving her with minor injuries. A video he made at some point before the attack shows a distraught Erekat (Campus Watch independently confirmed the translation) insisting he never betrayed his country, i.e., wasn't a collaborator with the Israelis, that he had "degraded his parents and himself," and that his "cowardice had driven him to this place," meaning apparently suicide by police via his attack.
Despite this evidence, Noura Erakat went on the offensive, blaming Israelis for their "vicious, dangerous and disgusting allegations that this was a car-ramming," calling it an "execution." She claimed that "Israeli cowards" shot him and allowed Ahmed to "bleed out," rather than render assistance (Israel denied the charge). "You lie. You kill. You lie," she wrote; "the only terrorists" are the Israeli border guards who were attacked.
During her presentation, Erakat's hatred for the West was equally clear, as she resorted to hackneyed leftist tropes about the American "empire" and "its colonies" even as looters nationwide destroyed productive free enterprises, often owned by minorities. America's current rainbow coalition of rioters is thus "emblematic of a racial capitalist system that is built on settler-colonialism, which affirms once again the international nature of the black freedom struggle."
Gibson's extremist Catholic doctrine of hatred was evident in his film The Passion of the Christ. A nun who attended the clergy screening with me called it "a Jesus snuff film," with the Jews in a strong supporting role directly responsible for the torture and crucifixion of Jesus. Even the Vatican denounced this interpretation, which had served as the basis for centuries of persecution of Jews by Christians.
Shortly afterwards, Rob Reiner invited me to his home to address a group at a screening of the film. A non-Jewish high-end carpenter pulled me aside later that night, and said, "Rabbi, I built Gibson's library and at the end of a working day, he would sit me down for a drink. After imbibing four or five drinks, he would begin with his F*ng Jews rants. It made me extremely uncomfortable and I wanted to share this experience with you ."
On rare occasions, you can convert a truly repentant antisemite into an ally in the battle against hatred and bigotry. With Gibson, there was never a chance of that happening. One is left wondering why his friends in the industry won't confront him on his bigotry. One also wonders why black Muslim celebrities and athletes won't condemn another vicious antisemite, Louis Farrakhan. Ignorance as displayed by Chelsea Handler and others is no excuse, and failure to call out hate is unacceptable — especially these days.
Jewish actress and "Shameless" star Emmy Rossum posted a Twitter thread earlier this week about antisemitism in the film industry, prompted by the latest controversy involving Mel Gibson.
The Golden Globe nominee, 33, shared an article about Jewish actress Winona Ryder's claim in a recent interview that at a party in the 1990s Gibson called her an "oven dodger," a clear reference to the crematoria at Nazi concentration camps during World War II, and told her friend who was gay, "Oh wait, am I gonna get AIDS?"
Gibson denied the allegations.
Rossum — whose mother is of Russian-Jewish descent — commented, "This stirred up a lot for me in a time when I'm already pretty stirred. It's disgusting. It's sad. And yet not a surprising or unique experiece [sic] of the white supremacy and bigotry that pervades our country and industry at all."
The "Phantom of the Opera" star then shared her own experiences with antisemitism in Hollywood.
"On multiple occasions I've had people — both in the industry and not — be surprised to learn that I'm Jewish. They usually react with "Oh! Wow. You don't really LOOK Jewish,'" she wrote. "And when I offer no response and let the statement linger they continue with some kind of defensive qualifier like 'I mean that in a GOOD way! As if 'looking Jewish' — whatever that means to them — is something I should want to avoid. This makes me sick."
Antisemitic French comedian Dieudonné Mbala Mbala's channel on YouTube was abruptly closed down on Tuesday morning as part of the online video platform's effort to remove racist content.
A spokesperson for Google, which owns YouTube, told the news agency AFP that Dieudonné's channel had been deleted due to his "repeated violations of our YouTube community policies."
The comedian's channel was one of "more than 25,000 channels violating hate speech rules" shut down by the platform over the last 24 hours.
Banned from the UK, Canada and Belgium among other countries, Dieudonné has been convicted numerous times in France for violating laws against hate speech and Holocaust denial.
In 2013, he suggested that a prominent Jewish journalist belonged in a "gas chamber," which brought him a fine of $24,000.
Two years later, Dieudonné was hit with a seven-year suspended prison sentence and a $106,000 fine for a Facebook post in which he expressed sympathy with the Islamist terrorist who murdered four Jews in a kosher supermarket in Paris in January 2015.
In July 2019, he was fined 200,000 Euros and handed a two-year suspended sentence for tax evasion.
One of Dieudonné songs, titled "Shoananas" — a word that combines "Shoah," the Hebrew word for "Holocaust," with "ananas," the French word for "pineapple" — pokes fun at the six million Jewish victims of the Nazis. The comedian is arguably best known for inventing the "quenelle" — an inverted Nazi salute that went viral in 2013.
Significantly, listeners were not informed that as yet no "plans" concerning what the BBC chooses to term 'annexation' have been made public.
As we have noted on previous occasions, the BBC has a history of ignoring stories which explain the need for security checks before permits are given to residents of the Gaza Strip to travel to or through Israel for the purpose of medical treatment. Knell made no effort to make up for that gap in BBC audience knowledge.
Notably, Yolande Knell did not interview Mahmoud Abbas or any of the other Palestinian officials responsible for the decision to harm only their own citizens by cutting off cooperation on medical issues, ostensibly as a way of protesting an Israeli action which has not yet taken place.
Instead – despite the fact that there has been no change at all in Israel's approach – she echoed a campaign organised by assorted political NGOs by implying that Israel is also responsible for the failure of patients to receive medical treatment.
While it is obviously beneficial to BBC audiences that the BBC has finally shown some interest in at least one consequence of the Palestinian Authority's decision to end "all agreements" with Israel, their understanding of the story would of course have been improved had Yolande Knell spoken to those responsible for the situation rather than just helpless patients and hospital staff.
Bateman refrains from informing readers that Givat Eitam – which lies within the jurisdiction of the Efrat local council – includes land owned by the Jewish National Fund subsidiary Himanuta as well as state land. Contrary to Bateman's claim that "judges are due to rule", various Hebrew media outlets reported in early May that the ruling has already been given.
Bateman recycles the 'apartheid' smear already seen in a previous BBC report.
"The Palestinian leadership, along with almost 50 experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council, say this would formalise a system of "apartheid" in the West Bank – two peoples ruled by one state in the same space with unequal rights."
Bateman's road trip includes a press conference in Ramallah and readers get an extensive view of the Palestinian Authority prime minister's stance. In addition to the headline portraying "Palestinians in despair", readers are told that "[t]he Palestinians are defiant" but with the exception of the farmer from Artas, readers hear nothing of the views of ordinary Palestinians which may or may not support Bateman's descriptions.
Tom Bateman's account of his road trip does not provide readers with any new insights into the topic that the BBC has been pushing for almost a month and a half. The fact that audiences have not been given an objective and accurate account of the history of the region where Israeli civilian law may or may not be applied in the future in all that time indicates that the BBC is far more interested in promoting a chosen political narrative than in meeting the requirements of its public purposes.
David Irving - Can you trust ANYTHING he wrote?
Can you trust ANYTHING that David Irving wrote? In 1996, David Irving sued Deborah Lipstadt for libel (in the "Irving vs Penguin Books Ltd" trial) because Deborah Lipstadt had said Irving was a Holocaust Denier. Historian Richard Evans was called upon as an expert witness, and he examined Irving's works for two years, discovering many major factual errors in David Irving's works. Richard Evans came to the conclusion that Irving cannot even be classed as a 'historian', and says "not one sentence" in any of his speeches or written works can be trusted. Richard Evan's "Telling Lies About Hitler" presents a solid case against David Irving that casts serious doubt about every 'historical' text that Irving wrote, and this video presents 3 examples from Evan's brilliant book (this video is not a sponsored video, I genuinely think Evan's book is brilliant and you should get yourself a copy) that really should make you question the opinions of those who still promote Irving's works. (h/t MtTB)
Lithuanian lawmakers want to make 2021 the year of Juozas Luksa-Daumantas - a nationalist accused of participating in a Holocaust-era massacre of Jews.
Witnesses placed Luksa-Daumantas, a leader of the pro-Nazi Lithuanian Activist Front militia during World War II, at the 1941 Lietukis Garage massacre in Kaunas, where locals tortured and beat to death dozens of Jews.
Luksa-Daumantas was killed in 1951 by Soviet security services.
Celebrity chef Pete Evans has thrown his support behind notorious conspiracy theorist and Holocaust denier David Icke.
Evans, 47, who himself is an anti-vaxxer and hoax peddler, interviewed the British author, 68, on Monday for an upcoming episode of his controversial podcast, Evolve With Pete Evans.
Promoting the interview via his Instagram on Monday night, Evans wrote: 'Just finished a 2 hour podcast with @davidickeofficial. Thank you David for a stimulating and enlightening heart opening conversation into the realm of infinite possibilities.'
Icke is known for his bizarre conspiracy theories such as claims the world is run by shape-shifting alien reptiles, that the moon isn't real and that the Jews bankrolled Hitler.
It is not suggested that Pete Evans endorses the views of David Icke relating to Holocaust denial.
Icke was banned from YouTube in May for making dangerous and unproven claims about COVID-19, including suggesting that the virus is linked to the 5G mobile network.
Israeli startup Healthy.io, a maker of an FDA-approved smartphone app that allows users to take urine analysis tests at home, has acquired US competitor inui Health for $9 million to "cement its leading position in the market" and increase its presence in the US.
In a blog post announcing the acquisition, Yonatan Adiri, the founder and CEO of the Tel Aviv-based firm, said that six years after its founding, the "Middle Eastern 'Technology Camel' is acquiring "a company from the valley of unicorns," referring to Silicon-Valley based inui Health.
"inui Health has been working towards the same vision, back when routine home urine testing sounded crazy," Adiri wrote. "Integrating the IP and know-how of the only other company to receive a Class II FDA clearance in our field will cement our leading position in the market, and will help us accelerate our ability to serve US patients."
Healthy.io uses image recognition and artificial intelligence technologies to transform a smartphone camera into a scanner, to analyze urine test strips with clinical-grade precision. The firm was the first in the world to win US Food and Drug Administration approval for a smartphone camera used as a medical device that compares with a lab scanner.
Urine is the second most frequently conducted diagnostic test in the world. People around the world who need to get their urine tested — among which are pregnant women, diabetics and people with high blood pressure — generally need to go to a lab, pee in a cup, and hand in the sample to a nurse. The nurse dips a stick into the urine and scans it in a designated device that performs the analysis. The results are provided hours later to the doctor or the patient.
An Israeli startup, Redefine Meat, unveiled Tuesday what it said was the world's first plant-based steak created using industrial 3D-printing and said it will start testing the alt-beef cuts at high-end restaurants in Israel as soon as next month, followed by marketing in Israel and elsewhere.
"We are actually printing steaks," said Eshchar Ben-Shitrit, who set up the company, formerly known as Jet Eat, in 2018. "We have a product. It is something we are doing already in large amounts."
The product fully replicates the muscle structure of beef. It is high-protein, no-cholesterol and looks, cooks, feels and tastes like beef.
"Today's announcement marks the start of a new era in alternative meat – the alt-steak era," Ben-Shitrit said.
The firm recently hosted Israeli chef Assaf Granit at its offices for a tasting. The chef said, in a video for The Great Big Jewish Food Festival, that eight out of ten people wouldn't know the difference between real meat and the alt-meat produced by the company, and that the flavor of one of his recipes made with the Redefine Meat product was "almost identical" to the original.
The global meat substitute market is expected to reach $8.1 billion by 2026, according to data firm Allied Market Research.
Israeli Farmers Turn to Owls for Natural Pest Control
Carl Reiner, the legendary Jewish-American comedy producer/writer/director/actor who created The Dick Van Dyke Show, movies such as The Jerk and the comedy skit, "The 2000 Year Old Man," passed away at his home in Beverly Hills, California on Monday night at the age of 98, according to Variety.
Reiner, whose career began before World War II and continued to his last moments, set the standard for the Jewish-inflected humor that reshaped Hollywood and influenced all of American society. In one way or another, his Jewish identity was always an integral part of his work.
And, as the father of director/actor Rob Reiner, he was the patriarch of a comedic dynasty.
An enthusiastic Twitter user who posted several tweets on his last day on Earth, he regularly weighed in on the issues of the day or anything that piqued his interest.
His passing was mourned by a diverse group of luminaries on Twitter, including Steve Martin, Bette Midler, Natasha Lyonne, Mitzi Gaynor, Mel Brooks' son Max Brooks, Dan Rather, Bill Kristol, Josh Gad, Ed Asner, Joy Behar, Alan Alda, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and David Simon.
The National Library of Israel is taking part in I-Tal-Ya Books, a new effort to create a unified listing of all Hebrew books in Italy.
The initiative, which will catalog some 35,000 books, is a collaborative effort by The Union of Jewish Communities in Italy, the Rome National Central Library, and the National Library of Israel. It is supported by the Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe.
According to the National Library of Israel, there have been Jewish communities in Italy for more than two millennia, and they have played a critical role in global Jewish history, particularly as a significant center for manuscript production and printing.
Italy is home to thousands of uncatalogued rare Hebrew books, dating back hundreds of years. They are found among collections belonging to local Jewish communities, as well as in libraries owned by the state, the Italian Church Institutions, and the Vatican.
Until now, there has been no single integrated and standardized listing of the holdings, making it difficult for scholars and historians to find books.
The I-TAL-YA BOOKS initiative will ensure the protection and preservation of the books, using technology developed specifically for the project. The Union of Jewish Communities in Italy will oversee the project, with the Rome National Central Library hosting the catalog, and the National Library of Israel providing the relevant training, support and expertise related to Hebrew books.
Rare evidence of when and how Jerusalem was resettled after the Babylonian exile of 586 BCE has been discovered in an excavation in the City of David, just outside the Old City walls.
The two recent discoveries in an ongoing excavation in the Givati parking lot — a clay "official" seal impression and a strange DIY pottery sherd seal with fake writing — help illuminate the enigma that is 6th century BCE Jerusalem history. There are only 10 other similar artifacts discovered in Israel that date to the Persian period (circa 536 BCE-333 BCE).
"The Persian period is a black hole in archaeology," Israel Antiquities Authority's Dr. Yiftah Shalev told The Times of Israel on Tuesday. "Every time we find something, it's like lighting a new candle — it gives a new light."
Whereas the seal impression is made in an official imperial style, perhaps depicting a god, the crude clay seal is locally made, presumably by an illiterate underling. Combined, said Shalev, the seal and seal impression illustrate all levels of officialdom in the reviving city. They indicate, he added, that after the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of the Jews, Jerusalemites were rebuilding the city, including its bureaucracy, as told in the Bible.
During the Persian period, Jews are traditionally thought to have accomplished a "return to Zion" after the exile that followed the destruction of the First Temple, as depicted in the Biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah. The twin discoveries were uncovered in what appears to be a sort of shanty camp set up in the courtyard of an earlier Iron Age building destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and filled with two meters of debris.
"We knew there was a bureaucracy during the Persian period," said Shalev. But the two seals — evidence that officialdom continued in the ruined city — represent "the first time that these things are shown in context in Jerusalem."
Shalev said they date to the start of the Persian period and illustrate "how people are beginning to rebuild."
Twenty years after the first woman took to the skies as Israel's first combat pilot, the Israel Air Force will soon have its first female F-35 pilot, sources have told The Jerusalem Post.
She will reportedly fly in the 116th squadron, nicknamed "Lions of the South," based out of Nevatim in southern Israel.
Israel was the first to use the F-35 in in a combat arena in 2018, just months after it declared operational capability. And according to foreign reports, Israel continues to use the jet for a range of missions.
By November, the IAF will have 27 F-35i Adir aircraft out of a total of 50 planes set to land in the coming years to make two full squadrons by 2024.
Once she gets her wings, she is expected to fly combat missions along with her fellow IAF pilots.
While there are several female F-35 pilots in the US Air Force, it is believed that she will be only the second woman to fly the advanced 5th-generation stealth fighter jet in combat.
In early June, US Air Force Capt. Emily "Banzai" Thompson made history by becoming the first woman to ever fly the F-35A Lightning II in combat out of Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates.
"There's a lot of females who have come before me, and there's a lot of females already flying combat sorties in other platforms," Thompson was quoted by a US Air Force news release as saying. "So just to be the person who gets that honor, that first, it just meant a lot."
Last week, three women received their wings from IAF Commander Maj.-Gen. Amikam Norkin, joining a growing list of women who have taken to the skies in Israel's air force.
Legendary Israeli Musician Performs for IDF's Newest Pilots
Israeli singer-songwriter, Idan Raichel, was joined by the Commander of the "Hatzerim" Base, in a special performance for the new graduates of Israeli Air Force Flight Course 180.
The 40 graduates of the course received their wings on June 25, 2020, after completing the rigorous 3-year-long course. In the course, the new airmen underwent rigorous combat training—which included training with the IDF Paratrooper's Brigade—learned to pilot a variety of aircraft, and attained a Bachelor's degree in one of the optional tracks. These new graduates are prepared to defend Israel's skies!
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In Madrid, they helpfully point out that they aren't just against "annexation" but Zionism and Israel altogether.
In Los Angeles, the Jewish community is nervous that the protest will spread into rioting through the Jewish community. Notice it says "Zionist consulate."
In Chicago, one of the sponsors is the Palestinian American Council, whose webpages do not have that logo.
Looking at that logo closer, it shows Israel not existing and "Palestine" is the flagpole for an American flag. The implication is that the destruction of Israel is a patriotic act.
Because we know how pro-America Palestinians are.
I somehow don't think that the Palestinian American Council was upset when Abbas didn't accept a phone call from the US vice president – or when Palestinians burn American flags.
