The United Arab Emirates appreciates continued US efforts to reach a Palestine-Israel peace agreement. This plan is a serious initiative that addresses many issues raised over the years.
The only way to guarantee a lasting solution is to reach an agreement between all concerned parties. The UAE believes that Palestinians and Israelis can achieve lasting peace and genuine coexistence with the support of the international community. The plan announced today offers an important starting point for a return to negotiations within a US-led international framework.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has viewed the U.S. Administration's announcement of its peace plan titled: "Vision for Peace, Prosperity, and a Brighter Future". In light of the announcement, the Kingdom reiterates its support for all efforts aimed at reaching a just and comprehensive resolution to the Palestinian cause. Since the time of the Founder King Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al-Saud, and through the reign of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been at the forefront of the efforts in support of the brotherly Palestinian people, and in standing by their side in all international forums to attain their legitimate rights. Among these efforts was the presentation of the Arab Peace Initiative in 2002, which stressed, in clear terms, that a military solution to the conflict has not brought peace or security to any party, and the comprehensive and just peace is a strategic option. The kingdom appreciates the efforts of President Trump's Administration to develop a comprehensive peace plan between the Palestinian and the Israeli sides, and encourages the start of direct peace negotiations between the Palestinian and Israeli sides, under the auspices of the United States, and to resolve any disagreements with aspects of the plan through negotiations, in order to move forward the peace process to reach an agreement that achieves legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.
But Ma'an reports that the King of Saudi Arabia called up Mahmoud Abbas:
President Mahmoud Abbas received, on Tuesday evening, a phone call from the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. The King stressed to President Abbas that the kingdom's position will not change from the Palestinian issue in order to preserve the rights of the Palestinian people. He said: "Your issue is ours, and the issue of Arabs and Muslims, and we are with you." He called for the necessity of achieving a comprehensive and just peace, considering that peace is a strategic choice, leading to a final solution that achieves the national rights of the Palestinian people.
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The German ambassador to Israel deserves credit for acknowledging that she "feel[s] deep shame given the unspeakable crimes committed by Germans." The German president also spoke movingly on Thursday about German responsibility for the Holocaust's unspeakable crimes and the power of reconciliation, as well as acknowledging that antisemitism remains a German problem.
However, the government both German officials represent often fails to stand with Israel at the United Nations, refuses "to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital or to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization." Worst of all, Angela Merkel's Germany has been loath to stop trading with Iran, which has never been coy about why they wish to become a nuclear power.
Times may change, but human nature doesn't. Speaking up is hard, especially when it means standing alone. There's a reason we typically revere the heroes of history who found the courage to chart their own course, including protecting those who were weaker or politically powerless.
In the case of the Holocaust and its obvious evil, it's easy for anyone living today to insist they would've fought on the side of justice. But how many people flatter themselves?
Antisemitism has been resurgent in Europe since the turn of the century. It is also rising in the United States, where it has already turned deadly. The cost of condemning Jew hatred is lower now than it would have been in 1930s or 1940s Europe. Yet, even with those lower stakes, many people prefer to stay silent, abandoning their supposed friends and allies when their help — and their courage — is most needed.
If the 75th anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation is to be truly meaningful, we must show that we've all learned the lessons of the Holocaust. That includes a widespread willingness to condemn, quarantine, and fight antisemitism wherever we see it, whether right or left, at home or abroad. "Never again" cannot come with caveats.
Notably, while Germany, the instigator of the Holocaust, was represented at the event, no predominantly Arab countries attended. The Holocaust is apparently a calamity they do not mourn.
Forum ceremonies took place at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, a city at the center of so much controversy in 2017 when the United States belatedly recognized it as Israel's capital. This memorial event went a long way toward cementing Jerusalem's centrality to Jewish and Israeli life in the world's consciousness, despite the fact that Palestinians and some UN agencies continue to deny any Jewish connection to the city whatsoever.
Above all, the attendance of so many dignitaries at this event underscores Israel's huge and growing importance on the world stage. Israel represents not only the largest ingathering of a dispersed people in human history, but can boast of unparalleled social, cultural, diplomatic, economic, and military achievements in the past 70 years. Finally, it bespeaks the extraordinary resilience of the Jewish people in the face of one of the world's greatest, most destructive tragedies.
As Jews, as supporters of Israel, as humans, we should surely make reflective observances to remember our millions of brethren murdered by a hateful fanatic — the worst antisemite in history. But we should also celebrate the accomplishment that is Israel.
When God promised the Jewish people the land of Israel, we could never have dared dream of the magnitude of the threats we would face as we traversed history. But we also could never have imagined the powerful, inspiring refuge — and light unto the nations — that Israel would become.
This miraculous achievement makes Israel worth praising, celebrating, and defending, with all our power and determination.
The founding of Israel was not a result of the Holocaust, nor was it "compensation" for the murder of six million Jews. Rather, Israel is the embodied statement of the Jewish people — and people of goodwill everywhere — that the hate that caused the Holocaust will never succeed again.
Today, a growing number of antisemites seek to continue that dismal work.
They downplay the scale of the killing, draw false equivalence with the contemporary world, even outright deny that what happened, happened.
We cannot let them gain a foothold. Because if we allow the likes of Buchenwald, Belsen and Babi Yar to become simply obscure names on a map, we not only betray the memory of those who died there.
We will, in airbrushing the Holocaust from history, succeed where the Nazis failed and offer succour to the thugs and bigots who are the modern-day bearers of that twisted ideology. So we must remember. But we must also act.
After all, speak to anyone who survived the Holocaust and they will tell you that it did not begin with the gas chambers or the pogroms. It began when antisemitic slogans were daubed on a Jewish shop window.
When a Jewish child was abused on a bus. And when ordinary, law-abiding people chose to turn away and do nothing.
So as we look ahead to Holocaust Memorial Day and to the 75th anniversary of liberation, let me make this promise to Jews right across Britain.
As long as I am prime minister, I will never allow this country to forget what happened 75 years ago. I will do all I can to see that we continue to learn the lessons of the past.
And the government I lead will stand with you and fight alongside you so that the darkest of nights is never again allowed to fall upon the Jews of the world.
Not yet two when the Nazis invaded her native Poland, Holocaust survivor Irene Shashar experiences her years spent as a child hidden in the sewers of Warsaw in sensory flashes. Her father was slaughtered in the family's cramped shared ghetto hovel when she was five. Shashar clearly remembers seeing his mangled corpse on the floor, the feeling of her elbow dipped into his spreading, iron-scented blood, oozing from a gash on his neck.
"I have images, flashes of memory of terrible, terrible things," Shashar told The Times of Israel last week from her sheltered living community in the central Israeli city of Modi'in.
As we spoke, she was packing for a trip to New York to deliver a speech at the United Nation's 2020 International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust. Along with Bergen-Belsen survivor Shraga Milstein, 87, Shashar was invited to share her story at the UN's central ceremony on January 27.
As we spoke, the January 23 high-profile World Holocaust Forum in Jerusalem was playing on Shashar's television in the background. She marveled that, whereas heads of state were speaking on that day, she — "Little me! Tiny one meter 46 centimeters tall me!" — would address some of these same people a few days hence.
"It's wonderful that I'll be carrying Israel with me to the UN," she said in anticipation.
A now retired 40-year lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Department of Spanish and Latin American studies, Shashar is comfortable speaking in front of a crowd. And while she has shared her story of survival around the globe, upon receiving the UN's invitation she said she was initially taken aback.
President Reuven Rivlin on Tuesday visited a Jewish high school in Berlin that was used by the Nazis as a deportation center for Jews during the Holocaust.
Rivlin was in Berlin as part of a three-day trip to Germany after he and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier both attended a Monday commemoration at Auschwitz, marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp.
Rivlin and Steinmeier met with students at the Jüdisches Gymnasium Moses Mendelssohn high school. Founded in 1778, the school currently has 414 students, about 60 percent of whom are Jewish.
Sitting alongside Steinmeier and surrounded by a semicircle of students at the high school in the historic heart of Berlin, Rivlin said that "connections between people all over (the world) is the most important thing."
"Unfortunately politicians in our day (are) using hatred in order to gain political power," he added, without elaborating.
A 90-year-old rabbi who survived the Holocaust will deliver the opening prayer in the US House of Representatives on Wednesday, announced Rep. Max Rose (D-NY) on Monday.
"As we commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz and International Holocaust Remembrance Day, I'm honored to welcome Holocaust survivor and Staten Island resident Rabbi Romi Cohn to offer the opening prayer before the House of Representatives this Wednesday," said Rose in a statement.
"Rabbi Cohn's life story is a stark and vivid reminder that not only must we never forget the Holocaust, but we must also learn the lessons from this horrific and evil period to ensure such persecution never happens again," he continued. "Rabbi Cohn is truly a role model and inspiration to so many, including myself."
Cohn was born in 1929 in Pressburg in what was then Czechoslovakia.
In 1942, when the Nazis invaded, Cohn's parents managed to smuggle him over the border to Hungary. Cohn attended the Pupa Yeshiva, the elite Torah university at the time.
After the Nazis invaded Hungary two years later, Cohn returned to Czechoslovakia to join the underground. He was just 16 and became instrumental in saving 56 families during the Holocaust. He was later awarded the Silver Star Medal of Honor in recognition of his valor.
Cohn has written a book about his experiences, titled The Youngest Partisan.
A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is calling on the United Nations to implement recommendations to combat anti-Semitism that were laid out in a report by the organization last year.
In a letter to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday led by Reps. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), David Cicilline (D-R.I.), Brian Mast (R-Fla.) and Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) and signed by 104 House members, the lawmakers argued that the U.N. should implement the report's call for the appointment of a senior-level point within the secretary general's office that would be responsible for engaging with Jewish communities around the world.
"Under the report's recommendation for the United Nations System, it suggests that the Secretary General should consider appointing 'a senior-level focal point in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General with responsibility for engaging with the Jewish communities worldwide, as well as for monitoring antisemitism and the response of the United Nations thereto,'" the letter said.
"We strongly urge you to implement this recommendation, as we believe the appointment of a senior-level leader – similar to roles that have been created in the United States, European Union, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom – would enable the United Nations to take significant steps in the fight against hatred of the Jewish people," the letter continued.
The letter also noted a string of anti-Semitic attacks in the United States that have drawn attention to growing anti-Semitic violence.
Five people were stabbed in an attack on a Hanukkah party in New York state in December. Earlier that month, a man opened fire on a Jersey City, N.J., kosher supermarket.
On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which commemorates the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed on Monday the Never Again Education Act, a bill that seeks to expand Holocaust education in the United States.
The final tally was 393-5, with four Republicans and one Independent, Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, voting against the bill.
If enacted, it would expand the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's education programming to teachers nationwide, requiring the museum to develop and disseminate resources to improve awareness and understanding of the Holocaust and its lessons.
The bill heads to the U.S. Senate, whose version slightly differs from the one in the House.
"We have learned over time that it's not enough to simply condemn these attacks and disgusting actions," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), who co-introduced the bill with Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) last year, at a press conference on Capitol Hill on Monday ahead of the House vote.
"We also need to get to the root causes of the hatred, denial, intolerance that drives these acts," she continued. "Studies have shown that education is one of the best ways to knock down the lies and the denials, and foster mutual understanding and respect."
Under the House bill, which had 299 co-sponsors—204 Democrats and 95 Republicans—$2 million would be allocated annually for this year and each of over the next four years to the Holocaust Education Assistance Program Fund, administered by the USHMM's governing body, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. Private donations for the fund would be permitted.
"It's a start, but it's an important start," Maloney told JNS at the press conference when asked how the bill would keep up with the demand in terms of funding for Holocaust education.
US President Donald Trump has signed into law legislation that provides $375 million for synagogues and other houses of worship and nonprofits at risk as part of the federal Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP).
The program allows houses of worship and other nonprofits to apply for grants of up to $100,000 for each institute. The money can be used for security measures such as fencing, cameras, stronger doors and hiring of security personnel.
Last Friday, Trump signed the Securing Faith-Based and Nonprofit Organizations from Terrorism Act of 2019. According to the Orthodox Union, the new law authorizes $75m. annually for each of the next five years to fund the NSGP.
Congress already approved raising the grants by 50% at the end of 2019, from $60m. a year to $90m. Now, with the additional $75m. a year, the available amount would be $165m.
The Duke of Cambridge has promised to "do our best" to keep the memory of the Shoah alive for future generations as he and the Duchess attended the national commemoration marking 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn and Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis were among more than 1800 political, religious and civic leaders also at Methodist Central Hall for the service, organised by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.
On arrival, the royal couple made their pledge to survivor and former Olympian Sir Ben Helfgott before taking their seats alongside him. Addressing the audience, the Duke read a letter from a friend of his great-grandmother Princess Alice detailing her efforts to save a Jewish family, the Cohens, in 1943.
He said: "The princess put a small two-room apartment at the disposal of Mrs Cohen and her daughter. The members of the Cohen family left the residence three weeks after liberation, aware that by virtue of the princess's generosity and bravery had spared them from the Nazis."
He was joined by his wife to light two of six candles in memory of the victims of the Shoah and subsequent genocides, as survivors of Rwanda, Darfur and Bosnia took to the stage with Archbishop Justin Welby and Imam Qari Isim.
Johnson said he was "lost in admiration" at the courage of survivor Mala Tribich, who had had met when signing the Holocaust Educational Trust's Book of Commitment.
He expressed "shame" at the resurgence of antisemitism in Britain and reiterated his commitment to the creation of a national memorial and learning centre by Parliament.
The harrowing atrocities of the Holocaust, which were caused by the most unthinkable evil, will forever lay heavy in our hearts. Yet it is so often through the most unimaginable adversity that the most remarkable people flourish.
Despite unbelievable trauma at the start of their lives, Yvonne Bernstein and Steven Frank are two of the most life-affirming people that I have had the privilege to meet.
They look back on their experiences with sadness but also with gratitude that they were some of the lucky few to make it through.
Their stories will stay with me forever.
While I have been lucky enough to meet two of the now very few survivors, I recognise not everyone in the future will be able to hear these stories first hand.
It is vital that their memories are preserved and passed on to future generations, so that what they went through will never be forgotten.
I recall reading the Diary of Anne Frank as a young girl. Her sensitive and intimate interpretation of the horrors of the time was one of the underlying inspirations behind the images.
I wanted to make the portraits deeply personal to Yvonne and Steven – a celebration of family and the life that they have built since they both arrived in Britain in the 1940s.
The Duchess of Cambridge's poignant photographs of Holocaust survivors and their families will help bring this crucial initiative to the attention of millions worldwide – puncturing holes in the narrative of denial that still finds a place in dark corners of the internet.
But it requires further context to fully understand the significance of the future Queen's involvement, alongside more than 10 professional photographers.
Of course Kensington Palace don't routinely provide behind-the scenes detail on the machinations that go into such projects but to me, as the grandson of a refugee from the Nazis, it's important people know this was far from a 'point and click' job. I hope that I won't be sent to the Tower but this time I'll take the risk.
Having approached the Palace six months ago with the seeds of an idea for a photography project involving the Duchess to mark 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, I was delighted (not to mention surprised given the weight of requests the Royals receive) to receive a call asking for more details. Further calls followed and it wasn't long before Palace aides suggested bringing in the Royal Photographic Society, where she is a patron, to help make my vision of 75 images a reality, and involving the families of survivors to highlight their fortitude in building full lives after the horrors.
But I didn't dare believe this project would happen until I learnt how much time and thought the Duchess was personally putting into it. The fine art graduate spent several days researching what she could bring to the table in order to best capture these individuals for the future. She was at pains to ensure the survivors were comfortable with the vision and that the spotlight was on the heroes to be pictured and not the Duchess herself. The idea of an exhibition bringing together all 75 images – most of which will be taken over the coming months by fellows of the RPS – followed .
A new study completed recently is now trying to provide another legal perspective in order for its authors to suggest that the court allegedly erred in its ruling denying compensation to Farhud victims on the same terms as Holocaust survivors. Israel Hayom reports:
The study was carried out by Dr. Nissan Sharifi, a lawyer and son of Iraqi immigrants, and Prof. Gideon Greif, a historian engaged in the study of the Holocaust. The study examines the case through legal eyes while analyzing the relevant laws alongside the chain of historical events in Iraq during the relevant period.
On June 1 and 2, 1941, a serious pogrom was carried out on the Jews of Baghdad, the capital of Iraq. 179 Jews were massacred, thousands injured, hundreds of women raped and tens of thousands of homes looted and vandalized. This pogrom was later known as "Parhud" (terror against the controlled) and was the culmination of a campaign of incitement and Nazi propaganda in Iraq, which began with Hitler's rise to power in 1933. Iraq had known many coups during those years, but most of its leaders at that time were pro-Nazis. King Ghazi, who ruled Iraq intermittently from 1933 to 1939, was Hitler's friend and ally and even received a magnificent gift from him.
Nazi propaganda in Iraq was spread among other things, through Berlin's Arabic radio and the newspaper Al-Al-Arab. The newspaper was bought by the embassy in the early 1930s, and published, among other things, chapters from Hitler's book "Mein Kampf" which were translated into Arabic.
The person behind Hitler's translation of German into Arabic was Iraq's propaganda, economic and security minister Al Bassawi, who served under Prime Minister El Kilani, who was also a pro-Nazi.
"[T]here is no reason to give the all-clear. The threat situation in Germany remains tense; it has stabilized on a high level...Germany continues to be a target of jihadist organizations such as ISIL or al-Qaeda. Consequently, Germany as well as German interests in various regions in the world are facing a constantly serious threat, which may any time manifest itself in terrorist attacks motivated by jihadism." — 2018 Annual Report on the Protection of the Constitution, Germany.
The new governmental initiative, however, appears to be directed only against anti-Semitism committed by right-wing extremists.
The question, then, is why jihadi anti-Semitism does not appear to have been included in the German government's package of initiatives to combat anti-Semitism?
Given the official threat scenario, the German government owes all its citizens an explanation as to why it is so "selective" in its response to anti-Semitism.
Listen to the stories of these survivors, as told by their grandchildren (or great-grandchildren), who are keeping the memory of the darkest of times alive. pic.twitter.com/V7gjV3L36w
My Grandfather Survived The Holocaust and This is His Story.
"To all those who query Israel's right to exist...I say to you in a clear, strong voice: We are here."
The story of Arie, a Holocaust survivor.
This is the story of Arie, who against all odds, survived the Holocaust and built a family in Israel. Last year, at the age of 90, Arie was one of the few survivors who participated in the "March of the Living".
The memory of the Holocaust is fading. Soon there will be no more survivors to tell the story. Now it's our duty to share and make sure the memory is not forgotten. #VoicesofLight #CombatAntisemitism
Tucked into the far north-west corner of the country, the Lake District is one of the most picturesque and secluded parts of England. An idyll of deep glacial lakes, rugged fell mountains and picturesque valleys and villages, it is one of the United Kingdom's most popular holiday destinations.
In the summer of 1945, however, it was to provide a place of sanctuary, recuperation and rest for children and young people who, just weeks earlier, had experienced and witnessed scenes of unimaginable horror and suffering in the Nazi death camps of Europe.
The story of the 300 Holocaust survivors flown from Prague to the UK in August 1945 is the subject of a BBC dramatization, The Windermere Children, which will be shown this month to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The program, which is also due to air on Germany's ZDF, draws on the first-person testimony of some of the real-life survivors.
One of their number, Jack Aizenberg, a teenager who had survived Buchenwald and a 200-mile death march, described their journey as "like going from hell to paradise" in a 2010 BBC documentary.
Meet the Palestinian professor who took his students to Auschwitz
i24NEWS Middle East correspondent Emily Rose takes us to East Jerusalem where one Palestinian, Professor Mohammed Dajani Daoudi, is trying to change the way Holocaust education is viewed in the Arab world
Today I announced @StateDept's intention to contribute an additional $2M to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, in cooperation with Congress. This is in addition to the $15M we previously provided so the world will #NeverForget the unspeakable crimes of the Holocaust.
Democratic representative Ilhan Omar and UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn have both been slammed by Jews after they tweeted in support of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
"On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we mourn the lives of 6 million Jews who were systematically murdered," Omar tweeted Monday morning, adding "Today and every day, we must redouble our efforts to confront anti-Semitism and all forms of religious discrimination and say #NeverAgain."
Monday marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, where more than a million Jews were murdered at the hands of the Nazis. Nonetheless, the tweet was not welcomed by Jewish people.
"How dare you defame memory of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust!" tweeted Arsen Ostrovsky, international human rights attorney and executive director of the Israeli-Jewish Congress, who was tweeting in a personal capacity.
"Your Antisemitism, however you cloak it, knows no bounds. Barely one year ago, you tried to pass boycott law comparing Israel to Nazi Germany & now you seek destruction of Jewish state! Have you no shame?," he added.
Labour's Emily Thornberry has used a speech at a Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration to praise Jeremy Corbyn for "always calling out those people who play the race card".
Speaking during an emotional event at Islington Assembly Hall, the shadow foreign secretary praised presentations by local school children on the lessons that needed to be learned 75 years after the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp.
With Mr Corbyn also present, Ms Thornberry said it was not just the pupils who needed to carry on learning the lessons of history but "adults, especially the politicians amongst us".
Insisting that Islington had remained largely unified "with a bit of tension here and there," she added "Jeremy will always call out" those who play the "race card".
Ms Thornberry - who is an outside contender to replace Mr Corbyn as Labour leader in April - continued: "And I will too."
In his own speech, the Labour leader spoke of the need to recognise how "the Nazi Party rose to power and how the murdered six million Jewish people along with all the travellers and gypsies they could, along with lesbian and gay people."
The Democratic Party failed to condemn anti-Semitism, and that failure sent a message which Omar and Tlaib heard quite clearly. They were given a free pass to traffic in and promote anti-Semitism.
They're not afraid to cash it in. Tlaib's amplification of a blood libel over the weekend and her refusal to apologize for it shows that the congresswoman and her "Squad" of far-Left colleagues are determined to keep testing the boundaries of how far they'll be allowed to go, how plainly they will be able to display their anti-Semitism.
Outside of the Jewish press and conservative media, Tlaib's latest Twitter behavior has been met with silence. Much of the liberal media and most of Tlaib's Democratic colleagues haven't even bothered to highlight the event, let alone condemn it. (However, it's of note that the CEO of the left-leaning Anti-Defamation League has condemned Tlaib's blood libel.)
But many others on the broader Left have not condemned Tlaib. They have accepted that an American lawmaker is not only an anti-Semite, but not shy about it, either.
The Rubicon has been crossed. One of the two major political parties in this country is openly accepting of anti-Semites in its midst. We have not even begun to understand what the ramifications of this new reality are.
She shared a false blood libel against Jews and then waited 4 days to pretend like it would be some high standard to not regularly do so. And the person she is RT'ing runs an organization that does it regularly.
A day after retweeting and later deleting a post falsely accusing Israelis of kidnapping and killing an eight-year-old Palestinian boy, US Rep. Rashida Tlaib has now blamed Israel for the death of popular Planters mascot Mr. Peanut.
"Sad to see Mr. Peanut thrown off a cliff by a herd of violent Israeli settlers," Tlaib tweeted, citing a tweet by anonymous twitter used @MelGibsonFan69. "First Jesus, then Arafat, and now Mr. Peanut – when will it end?"
Mr. Peanut had in fact been killed off as part of an ad campaign set to run during the Super Bowl. While the spot did show the beloved character fall off a cliff, Israel was not involved in his death.
Tlaib later deleted the tweet, after @MelGibsonFan69 posted a follow-up message acknowledging that his previous post was incorrect.
For the first time, J Street's affiliated political action committee will raise money for a presidential candidate, arguing that any of the Democrats running is preferable to President Donald Trump.
Ben Shnider, J Street's vice president for political affairs, said the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group's affiliated PAC would raise $1 million for whoever emerges as the Democratic nominee. In addition, the PAC also plans to raise $5 million this election cycle for 2020 congressional candidates that J Street endorses, matching its total from the 2018 races.
"We feel an incredible sense of urgency about doing everything we can to remove Trump from office and replace him with somebody who shares our values and who is ready to lead on the international stage," Shnider told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last week in an interview that was embargoed until Monday.
Shnider specifically cited the "unsustainability of the status quo" in the Middle East. J Street sees the Trump administration as advancing policies that would kill the two-state solution, particularly in reports that the president plans to give Israel the green light to annex portions of the West Bank.
Former vice president Joe Biden on Monday praised a woman at his Iowa campaign event for her "profound" question comparing President Donald Trump's immigration policies to the Holocaust.
The questioner, who identified herself as Kathy, used the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz to ask how Biden plans to deal with the ways "we are living in the 1930s again."
"What can we do, given what Donald Trump is doing at the border with those children who are incarcerated, so that they don't go out and experience the kind of stigmatization that so many Jewish people and gypsies and Romas did in Europe?" the woman asked. "It's so important, particularly when anti-Semitism in the United States is on the rise again and it's frightening. We are living in the 1930s again in so many ways."
Biden did not push back against the comparison, instead calling it "profound." He went on to address the recent rash of anti-Semitic violence by blaming it on Trump.
"There's a phrase in the Jewish community, which is 'Never again.' Never again, meaning we'll never allow this to ever happen again, but it is happening in other parts of the world, but it's not just in this case—it's not just Jews now," Biden said. "In America, they are being victimized. There have been more attacks on synagogues and on Jewish houses of worship than any time in American history since this man's become president of the United States."
The Democratic Party has faced increased scrutiny over the last year for anti-Semitic scandals, prompting the House of Representatives to pass a resolution last March condemning anti-Semitic and racist rhetoric, understood as a response to Rep. Ilhan Omar's (D., Minn.) comment that supporters of Israel were being paid off.
Yet the Quincy Institute's hires include a string of figures who have courted controversy due to their views of Israel and American Jews.
Lawrence Wilkerson, a nonresident fellow at the institute, said in a 2007 documentary that "the Jewish lobby in America" and "AIPAC in particular" played an outsize influence in the run-up to the war — and, in fact, had more of an impact than the administration's belief that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction or the president's belief in spreading democracy. He singled out Jewish officials like Bush national security aide Elliott Abrams, former deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz, former undersecretary of defense Doug Feith, and former Defense Policy Advisory Board Chairman Richard Perle.
He came under fire again in 2013 for arguing that Syrian chemical weapons use "could've been an Israeli false-flag operation." There is no evidence to support such a claim and investigations by the United Nations and the United States intelligence community concluded that Bashar al-Assad had ordered the deadly attack on civilians.
"I think there is this view, going back to the 1930s, and maybe it's shared by some today, that those who would get us into foreign conflicts were part of some elite, and maybe they saw in that elite Jewish influences," the veteran diplomat Dennis Ross told the Free Beacon.
The Quincy Institute is also home to several experts who have accused American Jews of being loyal primarily to Israel, a charge that has often been used to slur Jews.
Paul Pillar, a veteran CIA officer and now a Quincy Institute expert on intelligence and terrorism, has argued that the Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson's first loyalty is to Israel, writing in 2014, "The Republican party isn't even his first love among political parties. That would be the Likud party." He continued, "Nor is the United States Adelson's first love among countries."
A second report emerged on Sunday alleging that federal law enforcement officials are reviewing allegations of criminal activity by far-left Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) over claims that she married her brother.
The story, first reported by The Blaze, was confirmed on Sunday by The New York Post, which reported that investigators from the FBI were reviewing the claims against Omar.
"Two FBI agents held an hours-long meeting in Minnesota in mid-October with a concerned party who handed over a trove of documents regarding Omar's 2009 marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, a source with knowledge of the event said," The Post reported, adding, "the agents discussed concerns the Somali-born Democrat married Elmi, a British citizen rumored to be her brother, so he could obtain a green card and study in America, the source said."
"The two agents said they would share the information with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the US Department of Education, but did not commit to opening an investigation into the firebrand lawmaker, the source said," The Post added. "If Omar did marry her brother, she could be found guilty of committing marriage fraud — a felony offense punishable with a prison sentence of up to five years and a fine of up to $250,000."
Honest Reporting: Antisemitism at York University
Horrible displays of antisemitism at York University.
On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the York University student union hosted it's annual multicultural parade. Only this year, the opening ceremony was led by a student wearing a shirt which read "Anti-Zionist vibes only".
It's an example of the bigotry Jewish students face on North American campuses.
Since he blocked me, I wanted to make sure that lots of people could be exposed to the intellect of this assistant professor at @UUtah.
Literally every word is not only false but the opposite of the truth. it takes skill to be so utterly wrong while being so sure of yourself. pic.twitter.com/OnoudE71Dj
A psychiatrist has found Grafton Thomas incompetent to stand trial on federal hate crime charges stemming from a machete attack at a Hanukkah party that wounded five Hasidic Jews, Thomas's attorney said Monday.
Defense attorney Michael Sussman said in a statement that he has asked a federal judge to hold a competency evaluation for Thomas, who was arrested hours after a stabbing attack on Dec. 28 in Monsey, an Orthodox Jewish community north of New York City.
The federal court has given the US Attorney's Office two weeks to respond to the application for a competency evaluation, Sussman said. The US Attorney's Office declined to comment to the media on Monday.
Thomas has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and other charges in Rockland County. He pleaded not guilty to 10 hate-crime charges in federal court on Jan. 13. Thomas is being held without bail in federal custody.
Investigators found anti-Semitic writings in Thomas's journals and articles on Jews and Nazis on his cell phone, according to a complaint filed by the US Attorney's Office.
French President Emmanuel Macron was locked in a dispute with senior representatives of his country's judiciary on Monday, after earlier expressing support for putting the alleged antisemitic murderer of a Jewish woman on trial.
In a speech to French Jews in Jerusalem last Thursday, Macron addressed the widely-condemned Dec. 2019 decision by prosecutors in Paris to excuse the accused killer, 29-year-old Kobili Traore, from a criminal trial.
The prosecutors deemed that Traore's intake of cannabis on the night that he tortured and murdered Sarah Halimi — his 65-year-old Jewish neighbor — had rendered him delusional and therefore criminally not responsible for his actions.
In his remarks in Israel, Macron appeared to disagree with that ruling.
"Even if, in the end, the judge had to decide that criminal responsibility is not there, the need for a trial is there," the French president said.
That assertion resulted in stern reminder for Macron of the independent status of the French system of justice from two of its leading representatives.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum released a series of photos entitled "The Sobibor Perpetrator Collection" on Tuesday, one of which may show John Demjanjuk (1920-2012).
Demjanjuk was initially sentenced to death in Israel for being the so-called "Ivan the Terrible" camp guard at Treblinka in Poland. The guilty verdict was overturned on appeal by the Supreme Court in 1993 after new evidence emerged pointing to a case of mistaken identity.
This may be the first time that Demjanjuk has been identified in photos of the Sobibor death camp, where he served as a guard at the time the photo was taken. The Holocaust Memorial Museum wrote it is "possibly" him among the guards and officials.
Demjanjuk was extradited from Israel to Germany from his home in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2009 to stand trial. He attended the 18-month court proceedings in Munich – the birthplace of Adolf Hitler's Nazi movement – in a wheelchair and sometimes lying down. He denied the charges against him but otherwise did not speak at his trial.
Once at the top of the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of most wanted Nazi war criminals, the Berdychiv, Ukraine-born Demjanjuk said he was drafted into the Red Army in 1941 and then taken prisoner by the Germans the following year.
A New York City woman accused of slapping three Orthodox Jewish women on the street in December will be charged with federal hate crimes, Attorney General William Barr announced in a press conference Tuesday.
Speaking to a group of Jewish community leaders in Brooklyn, AG Barr said his office filed three charges against Tiffany Harris, who confessed to police she targeted the women in late 2019 because they were Jewish.
"These are the kinds of cases that maybe in the past would have been treated locally but I think it's important for the federal government to plant its flag and show zero tolerance," Barr said. "And this will not be an isolated case. We will move aggressively when we see this kind of activity."
Harris was arrested after slapping three Jewish women who were walking down the street in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights, which has a large Orthodox population. The women were wearing clothes that made them "identifiable as Jewish," according to the criminal complaint. Harris told police she remembered slapping the women and saying "Fuck you Jews."
Her case drew attention in New York City when she was released without bail and arrested a short time later for a different assault. The day after Harris slapped the three women, a man wielding a large knife injured at least five people at a Hasidic rabbi's home in Monsey, New York during a Hanukkah party. The man accused of the stabbings is also facing federal hate crime charges.
At the Tuesday meeting, Barr discussed the recent uptick in anti-Semitic violence in New York and beyond.
"I'm extremely distressed by the upsurge in violence — hate crimes — committed against the Jewish community," Barr said, noting the entire country is seeing a "marked increase of this violence." (h/t Zvi)
An upstate New York woman has been charged with a hate crime for throwing pieces of pork at a local synagogue.
Tara Rios, 47, of Hudson, was arraigned in Livingston Town Court on Saturday and charged with first-degree harassment as a hate crime, according to local reports.
Rios went to Congregation Anshe Emeth in Greenport on January 19 and threw a package of pork chops on its front steps, CBS 6 Albany reported. She returned to the synagogue at 3 a.m. to photograph her actions, police said.
She was released on her own recognizance and is scheduled to return to court on Monday.
Armenia's small Jewish community never suffered antisemitism in their adopted homeland. Most of them left in the early 1990s, after the severe earthquake in the north of the country in 1988 and the collapse of the Soviet Union. At that time, during the Karabakh war, Armenia suffered from a harsh economic crisis and shortage in basic necessities. Many people left the country seeking better life abroad. Not only Jews left, but the Jews had an easy way out – moving to Israel. They did not leave because they faced any antisemitism; they left because they sought better life.
Jaffe-Hoffman refers to what she calls the "brutal invasion" of Nagorno-Karabakh by Armenia. She "forgets" to mention that this region has been inhabited since antiquity mainly by Armenians. They were still the majority there even after 70 years of Soviet Azeri sovereignty and Azeris striving to change that demographic situation.
She also ignores the fact that Karabakh's Armenians demanded liberation after a long history of pogroms by Azeris in Baku, Shushi, Sumgait and other places, starting in the early 1900s, then around 1920, and again in 1988. History is a wonderful Hollywood-style movie with clear distinction between good guys and bad guys when you ignore facts that do not support your thesis.
I will conclude with drawing the attention to three facts. The first is that for many years now there is a monument standing in the heart of Yerevan with inscriptions in Hebrew and Armenian, commemorating both the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide. Unfortunately, there is no parallel such monument in Israel.
Second, Armenia sent its highest-ranking citizen to the World Holocaust Forum in Jerusalem, H.E. Armen Sarkissian, the president of Armenia.
The third is that Armenia has decided to open an embassy in Israel soon, regardless of whether Israel opens one in Yerevan. There could be no clearer statements that Armenia opposes antisemitism.
A virtual medical assistant launched by Microsoft last year and used by healthcare providers and labs in the US was developed by the tech giant's team in Israel.
The Microsoft Healthcare bot, powered by artificial intelligence, aims to provide healthcare organizations with virtual health assistants to offer better service and enable patients to go to the doctor — if needed — armed with more information about their condition and where to seek help.
The chatbot is an "intelligent, virtual health assistant," said Hadas Bitran, who heads the 20-person Microsoft Healthcare team in Israel and was the force behind getting the project off the ground.
The bot "does not aim to replace the doctor," or nurses, she said. "It aims to allow patients to get more information about what they should be doing, what is the next step. I have this symptom, what should I do, how urgent is it?" The Microsoft healthcare bot was developed by its Israel's R&D team. (Courtesy)
Better informed patients reduce the burden on doctors and nurses who can then spend more time dealing with more critical cases, she explained.
I'll be taking a daytrip on February 13 to the land of unicorns – right here in Jerusalem.
For the third year in succession, I've been invited to be the main stage host for the largest business event in Israel's history, the OurCrowd Global Investor Summit.
Among the 20,000 investors, entrepreneurs, nobel prizewinners and business leaders registered to attend the largest investor event in the Middle East, I'll be trying to spot Israel's next unicorns – private companies valued at $1 billion or more.
Israel now has at least 20 unicorns – more than France, Germany and Australia combined. In world rankings, only the US, China and UK have more. Because tech companies have a tendency to be acquired or go public before they hit the billion-dollar mark, the addition of nine new unicorns to Israel's portfolio in 2019 suggests the local market is maturing, providing more jobs and more benefits for the local economy.
The OurCrowd Summit is Israel's premier occasion for spotting these rare and wonderful creatures, adding to the magic of the event. The Summit features drones and phones, VCs and PCs, blockchain, the supply chain, and the latest technology in health, stealth, sight, sound, voice and vision. Ticket-holders can attend sessions on medtech, mobility and media, health, hacking and happiness, AI, VR and E-commerce, food tech, agtech and fintech. Last year, they could stroll through a Korean Pavilion, wander around Impact Alley, saunter through an Italian Innovation Plaza, surf down to Aussie Tech Beach, wonder at the India Pavilion and – for medical and research purposes only – cruise down to the Cannabis Greenhouse.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
A psychiatrist hired to evaluate Grafton Thomas, has declared that Thomas' mental illness deems him incompetent to stand trial on federal hate crimes charges.
Thomas is accused of using a machete to attack Jews attending a Chanukah party at the home of Rabbi Rottenburg in the Forshay neighborhood of Monsey on Dec. 28.
According to Attorney Michael Sussman, "Mr. Thomas was not competent to stand trial" following an evaluation by Dr. Andrew Levin, who has asked a federal judge to hold what he termed a competency evaluation.
Apparently, Thomas's attack, which injured 6 Jews and put a man in the hospital in a coma with a fractured skull, was not done out of hate -- contrary to his Google search for "Zionist temples" -- but because he neglected to take his meds.
Also:
"He has no history of like violent acts and no convictions for any crime," Sussman has said in a statement. "He has no known history of anti-Semitism and was raised in a home which embraced and respected all religions and races. He is not a member of any hate groups."
In other words, his lawyer is also arguing for leniency on the basis of this being Thomas's first offense.
The lawyer also wants Levin's report and all related documents sealed in order to protect his client's privacy.
Sussman has not yet offered any suggestions on how to protect Jews from his client in the future should he get off without having to go to prison.
o In 2003, Sebastian Selam, was stabbed to death by a Muslim who said afterward: "Mother, I'm going to heaven. I killed a Jew!" The murderer, Adel Amastaibou, was found unfit to stand trial -- even though he had no previous history of mental illness.
o In 2015, a Muslim man, Farid Haddouche, was deemed unfit initially to stand trial for his stabbing attack of Jews in Marseille -- because of mental issues. He shouted about Allah during the attack. He had no history of mental illness. After protests by Jewish groups, Haddouche was sentenced to four years in jail.
o Sarah Halimi, a Jewish physician, was murdered in Paris in 2017 by Kobili Traore, a Muslim. A review by an independent panel of psychiatrists determined that Traore was generally mentally competent, but because not on the night of the murder, because he consumed cannabis. The judge in the case went so far as to order a third psychiatric examination -- independent of the defense attorney. More recently, in February 2018, the investigator finally admitted in writing that the attack was antisemitic. But by May 2019, Traore was still being considered unfit for trial.
But there is also a second excuse being used for denying the antisemitism behind attacks on Jews, though it is not as widely used. Yet.
This week a German regional court ruled that the 2014 firebombing of a synagogue in Wuppertal, a region just east of Düsseldorf, was an act of criminal arson, but not anti-Semitic. Instead, the court found it was a protest against Israel, even though the synagogue was obviously not in Israel and those who worship there are Jews, not Israelis. [emphasis added]
The decision upheld that of a lower court, which stated the perpetrators, a trio of Palestinian-born German residents, wanted to "call attention to the Gaza conflict" when they prepared and then lobbed Molotov cocktails at the synagogue one July night in 2014. No one was injured, but the attack caused €800 in damages. The men were ultimately given suspended sentences.
But this is not the first time that antisemitism has been excused on the basis of political protest.
After the National Socialists took power in 1933 and when the newly emerging Swiss front movement became more and more aggressive, the pressure on the Swiss Jews and the Jewish refugees living here increased. Through brochures and pamphlets, racist anti-Semitism, which had already incorporated traditional religious anti-Judaism at the end of the 19th century, reached ever broader sections of the population. The Swiss Association of Israeli Municipalities (SIG), which saw itself as a representative of Swiss Jewry, had to act: under the motto "Defense and Enlightenment", it tried to avert the increasing threat with legal and journalistic actions and to defend the principles of the rule of law and equal rights.
That "legal and journalistic" defense by Jews sounds similar to what we are attempting today -- just substitute "social media" for journalism.
The problem was the fear that being too aggressive would further fuel antisemitism. Besides, there was no legal tool specifically for combatting the distribution of antisemitic publications. But when the "National Front" distributed the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" at a rally in 1933, SIG filed a criminal complaint with the Israelite cultural community in Bern for violating a Bernese statute prohibiting the distribution of "immoral, obscene or brutalizing" texts.
The trial at the Bern district court was opened in the same year. The plaintiffs, who were represented, among others, by the lawyer Georges Brunschvig, did not primarily pursue the goal of convicting the accused frontists as quickly as possible; rather, they sought legal certification that the "protocols" were falsified. So the SIG went all out: it wanted to suppress anti-Semitism by depriving it of a "main weapon" and basis of legitimation - the popular "protocols". It first appeared in the German-speaking world in 1919 and soon reached a circulation of over 100,000 copies; In 1929 they appeared in the ninth edition in the party publishing house of Hitler's NSDAP and from 1934 were official teaching material at German schools. They were particularly widespread in the United States, where they were propagated by automobile manufacturer Henry Ford. By the early 1930s, they had been translated into sixteen languages.
The plaintiffs' strategy seemed to be working: their prominent witnesses (including several Russian historians), but above all the bipartisan opinion of the Bernese writer Carl Albert Loosli, let the courageous judge, who was not impressed by the Nazi expert brought in from Germany by the accused, 1935 come to the conclusion that the "protocols" are plagiarized and violate the law. The frontists were fined. The SIG and with it a democratic public - press representatives from all over the world had followed the process - welcomed the verdict.
In his May 24, 1935 column, The Week in Review, Milton Brown described the verdict as "a blow not only to the Nazis in Switzerland but to the entire anti-Jewish propaganda conducted by Nazis all over the world":
The verdict once and forever puts an end to the legend which was invented thirty years ago by the officials of the Czarist Secret Political Police, that the Jews have mapped a definite program to dominate the world. Although everyone knew the legend to be false, anti-Semites throughout the world did not hesitate from time to time to revive it.
...The verdict of the Berne court will go down in Jewish history as an important victory over bigotry and falsehood. The London Times, after an investigation, long since established the falsity of the notorious "Protocols". Now this falsity has been officially established in a court. The verdict will remain the best argument of the Jews against all those who have been trying to utilize the "Protocols" for their anti-semitic purposes
Of course, we know that is not how things worked out -- "The Protocols" is still going strong. The victory was premature.
In fact, it backfired.
Back to the NZZ Online:
But neither the frontist press in Switzerland, the National Socialist press in Germany nor the accused were impressed. They appealed and were acquitted in second instance in 1937: the question, according to the Bern Higher Regional Court, as to whether the "minutes" were genuine or not, was irrelevant for the assessment of the facts. They are a "political weapon", not trash literature and therefore do not violate the law. They are unlikely to incentivize a crime. [emphasis added]
The immediate result of the acquittal was the opposite intent of bringing the case to the court to begin with:
the entire anti-Semitic and National Socialist press exploited the acquittal propagandistically, claiming that the authenticity of the "protocols" had now been proven...the attempt to legally refute the "authenticity" of the "protocols" paradoxically strengthened the aura that surrounds it today. In retrospect it seems almost tragic how some honest men tried to expose the "protocols" as "fakes" and welcomed the court ruling as a defense against anti-Semitism.
So here we are.
Reading about the measures being taken around the US to curtail the antisemitic BDS movement, we can only hope that those laws are more effective and -- more permanent.
But when we expect the law to be able to protect against Jew-hatred, I am reminded of the Charles Dickens book, Oliver Twist:
If the law supposes that," said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, "the law is a ass — a idiot. If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience — by experience."
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
A video circulated showing that the American ambassador to the Occupying Power, who the Palestinians call "the settlement ambassador", or "the settler ambassador", David Friedman, traveled on the plane of the Israeli occupation government president [sic], Benjamin Netanyahu, on his trip to Washington to meet with President Trump.
The video showed that Friedman, who was famous for encouraging settlements by raising millions of dollars in favor of building settlements in the occupied West Bank, was performing Talmudic prayers on a Netanyahu plane, during the trip from "Tel Aviv" to Washington.
Palestinians have always been far more frightened of religious Jews than secular Jews. They know that religious Jews are the ones who have emotional ties to the Land of Israel. Just as they use religion to scare gullible Westerners, they are scared of Judaism that pre-dates Islam and whose ties to the land also pre-date Islam.
They think they can win arguments based on international law or recent history but they know that in terms of religion and the emotional ties to the land, they fall way short.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
A new report issued on Monday by the research institute NGO Monitor found that eight Palestinian NGOs, which receive support from Western nations, maintain ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a terrorist organization.
NGO Monitor claimed that the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, France, Ireland, Norway, and Belgium funneled millions of dollars to the Palestinian groups. The support was not limited to EU countries as the US, Canada and Japan were also among the donors. UN-OCHA and UNICEF were among the international organizations who also donate.
Over 70 current and former staff, board members, and general assembly members, as well as senior management and founders at these NGOs have direct ties to the PFLP, the report found.
Founded by George Habash in 1967, the PFLP is a Palestinian, secular, Marxist-Leninist terror group, originally supported by the USSR and China.
The PFLP was involved in suicide bombings, shootings, assassinations and other attacks targeting Israeli civilians. The group was well-known for hijacking commercial airlines in the 1960s and 1970s
It would be fair to say that Marxist elements on the political left can freely love the victims of the Nazis. The tragedy of the Holocaust and the anti-nationalist ideologies of the modern left are a perfect fit. What better way to show everyone how evil some of their ideological enemies are, than by holding aloft the furnaces of Auschwitz?
When I began the undercover work into antisemitism it never crossed my mind that Holocaust denial would exist on the Marxist left. Yet just as antisemitism has evolved and mutated so too has Holocaust denial. In fact, 'left-wing' antisemitism today is so rooted in Holocaust denial it would be unable to have spread into the mainstream without it. It sits hidden away in an antisemitic sewer titled 'Rothschild Conspiracy'.
Many people I know – indeed even many people who fight antisemitism – consider Rothschild Conspiracy as something akin to a racist joke. Antisemitic – but put away with Icke's lizards as a silly and almost laughable version of it. An adaptation of the 'socialism of fools' that blames Zionists rather than Jews for the inequality of the world. Marxists hate bankers, antisemitic stereotypes paint Jews as bankers, therefore antisemitic Marxists hate Jews.
This misses the point entirely. Rothschild Zionist Conspiracy – is not throwaway foolishness, nor is the inherent Holocaust denial within accidental. It is all an absolutely vital part of anti-Zionist ideology. 20,000 Jewish children burn
The problem is this: Israel is an ethical imperative. It is why elements of the left supported the early Zionists as a liberation movement even before the rise of the Nazis. The more the Nazis rose – the more of the left understood the necessity of Israel. What the Holocaust managed to do, was simply end the argument. Even amongst Jews – there was near universal support. Zionism was no longer just based on history or universal human rights, but on an undeniable contemporary necessity. Had Israel existed earlier, millions of Jews could have been saved.
This image is from a file at the British archives. The Polish consul sought agreement from the British for 20,000 Jewish children from Poland to be allowed to immigrate into the Mandate of Palestine. The date 18 Sep 1939.
US presidential contender Michael Bloomberg pledged on Sunday to "always have Israel's back," while separately joking he was the only Jewish candidate who does not want to turn the United States into a "kibbutz."
The joke, made during a speech on antisemitism and foreign policy, referred to collectivist farms in Israel and was an apparent dig at fellow Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders.
Bloomberg and Sanders, who are both Jewish, are vying for the Democratic nomination to take on Republican President Donald Trump in the November election.
Sanders is a front-runner in the race and proposes left-wing policies like abolishing private health insurance in favor of a government-run Medicare-for-All program, based on the government program for older Americans.
Sanders spent several months in Israel in the 1960s as a volunteer on a kibbutz, and calls himself a democratic socialist.
Bloomberg has more centrist positions and has largely avoided attacks against individual Democratic candidates. A former mayor of New York whose wealth is estimated at about $60 billion, he has pledged to spend from his fortune to support the eventual Democratic nominee even if he loses the contest.
Bloomberg previously criticized leading Democratic candidates as too liberal to beat Trump. His remarks on Sunday appeared to take aim at Sanders, although he did not mention the senator from Vermont by name.
"I'm not the only Jewish candidate running for president. But I am the only one who doesn't want to turn America into a kibbutz," he told a campaign event at a synagogue in Miami.
There are two Jewish presidential candidates.@BernieSanders of them has always distanced himself from Judaism and has surrounded himself with antisemites.@MikeBloomberg is proudly Jewish and has always supported Israel.
Survivors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp recalled their suffering as they marked the 75th anniversary of its liberation on Monday, returning to the place where they lost entire families and warning about the ominous growth of anti-Semitism and hatred in the world.
About 200 camp survivors attended, many of them elderly Jews and non-Jews who traveled from Israel, the United States, Australia, Peru, Russia, Slovenia and elsewhere. Many lost parents and grandparents in Auschwitz or other Nazi death camps, but were joined by children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren.
They gathered under an enormous, heated tent straddling the train tracks that had transported people to Birkenau, the part of the vast complex where most of the murdered Jews were killed in gas chambers and then cremated. Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet army on January 27, 1945.
Ronald Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, brought the crowd to tears with the story of a survivor who was separated from his family: The man watched watched his young daughter, in a red coat, walk to her death, turning into a small red dot in the distance before disappearing forever.
"Do not ever let this happen again to any people," Lauder said, warning about the rising anti-Semitism.
After the end of the war, when "the world finally saw pictures of gas chambers, nobody in their right mind wanted to be associated with the Nazis," he recalled. "But now I see something I never thought I would see in my lifetime, the open and brazen spread of anti-Jewish hatred."
President Reuven Rivlin, in a meeting on Monday with his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda, fired the latest salvo in a spat between the two nations over the complicity of Poles in anti-Jewish violence during and after World War II, noting that although the Polish people fought against Nazi Germany, "many Poles stood by and even assisted in the murder of Jews."
During a meeting in Krakow in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the Israeli president added that although Nazi Germany was the architect of the Holocaust, others in Europe who helped must also take their share of responsibility.
"We remember that Nazi Germany initiated, planned and implemented the genocide of the Jewish people in Poland and other places and that it takes full responsibility for its actions. And we also remember, with distress, that significant assistance came from across all of Europe, and that also demands the acceptance of responsibility," Rivlin said.
He added that he invited Duda to Jerusalem for "discussions that will strengthen our relations and the important cooperation between our countries."
The president noted the "unbreakable bond" between the two nations, but said that history should be left to historians, without political interference.
Our map shows the last recorded residence—or birthplace, if the pre-Holocaust home is unknown—of all identified Jews killed at Auschwitz https://t.co/HuTy6JELr9
The Holocaust was a crime "against God and humanity," which must never be allowed to happen again, US President Donald Trump said on Monday, in recognition of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Americans must resolve to combat evil and oppressive regimes worldwide with "democracy, justice and the compassionate spirit that is found in the hearts of all Americans," Trump said, invoking the memories both of those who died in the Holocaust and those who sacrificed their lives to defeat the evil of Nazism and ensure that freedom prevailed.
Acknowledging the antisemitism still suffered by Jews, the president highlighted his executive order, issued in December, to help combat antisemitic discrimination. "Antisemitism will never be tolerated, and this action bolsters my administration's efforts to create a culture of respect that deeply values the dignity in every human life," he said.
And he continued: "As we come together as one nation on this International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we ask God to grant strength to those who survived the depravity of the Nazi regime, and comfort to the families of the victims whose lives were cut short.
"We ask that the world reflect on this day and seek to ensure that we stand united against intolerance and oppression of people of every race, religion or ethnicity," he said. "And, in order to ensure that these horrific crimes against God and humanity never happen again, we must resolve to combat evil and oppressive regimes with democracy, justice, and the compassionate spirit that is found in the hearts of all Americans."
WATCH: In memory of 6 million men, women and children who were murdered just because they were Jewish.
Thankfully, there is some important good news. A growing chorus of Muslim leaders has been increasingly active in countering this pernicious hate, speaking out in support of tolerance and against Holocaust rejectionism. These range from the king of Morocco, who has publicly declared the Holocaust to be "one of the most tragic chapters of modern history," to the secretary-general of the Saudi-based Muslim World League, who denounced Holocaust denial and is now making his own high-profile visit to Auschwitz.
Including Muslim victims of Auschwitz alongside the nearly million Jewish victims and the thousands of Christian victims will help bring Muslims into this critical historical narrative and contribute to this positive trend. After all, while the Holocaust was an overwhelmingly Jewish tragedy, the Nazi quest for global domination based on a warped sense of racial supremacy continues to animate annihilationist rhetoric and apocalyptic strategies one hears from extremists in Muslim societies. And the genocide the Nazis attempted to perpetrate on the Jewish people has, regrettably, been replicated since then by genocidal attempts to wipe out millions of other innocents, many of whom have themselves been Muslim, from the Kurds of northern Iraq to the Rohingya of Myanmar.
The Muslims who died at Auschwitz may not have been killed because of their faith but their faith did not exempt them from their fate. Remembering them — Ismail Mamatdzanon, Nasreddin Tadzubajev, Mohammed Sultanov, Hassan Mamedov and their co-religionists — is a small step that could reverberate far beyond the killing fields of the Polish countryside.
Jewish, Arab and Druze national service volunteers are expected to attend a joint, multicultural ceremony in Yad Vashem on Monday to commemorate the Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
National-civic service is Israel's alternative voluntary for those who do not serve in the Israel Defense Forces, being mainly Religious Zionists and Arab Israelis.
The event is organized by Bar-Ilan University UNESCO chairwoman Prof. Zehavit Gross, who acts as the Higher Education Council's representative in the National Service Council. Participants, including National-Civic Service Authority director Reuven Pisnki, the director's adviser Einat Dermer, Yad VaShem and youth movement representatives, will focus on rescue during World War II.
According to the organizers, the topic was chosen due to its human, universal nature that ignores racial, ethnic, religious, gender or class differences.
The event's goal, they say, is to create solidarity among all groups within Israeli society, using the memory of the Holocaust as a link to create empathy and tolerance and draw attention to human rights.
Despite the World Holocaust Forum, Gross says that the memory of the Holocaust has been fading in recent years, especially among the younger generation. She says that today's youth find it difficult to connect to the Holocaust because they lack basic knowledge about it.
The Philippines being a refuge for the Jewish people began in 1937, against the backdrop of the war between China and Japan. Then, the American high commissioner of the Philippines, which was a US territory at the time, waived visa requirements for 28 Jewish families, allowing them refuge in the South Pacific country. Manila's Jewish community then took in Jews from Germany after they reached Shanghai.
Outraged over the treatment of Jews in Germany during the war, Quezon dedicated himself to bring even more Jews to the country and worked with the US government to do so, The Jerusalem Post reported.
Quezon devised a plan to bring some 70,000 Jewish refugees to the Philippines to work across several industries, but his plans were thwarted when the country was invaded by the Japanese.
However, thanks to Quezon's "Open Doors" policy, 1,300 refugees were able to call Manila their home and, today, that act of kindness is the foundation of bilateral relations between the Philippines and Israel.
"Jews were not welcome in many countries.This was a unique effort by a leader of a country," Alan Schneider, director of the B'nai Brith World Center, told The Jerusalem Post.
Monday's event in Tel Aviv will feature a panel discussion with Professor Robert Rockaway of Tel Aviv University, as well as screenings of excerpts from the ABS-CBN iWANT documentary, The Last Manilaners, and Star Cinema's feature film on President Quezon's decision to accept Jewish refugees, Quezon's Game.
Two new surveys show that about one in five Germans – and more than half of right-wing populists – think the Holocaust gets too much attention in the country.
The surveys, released on the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, come amid warnings. Reflecting on the Nazi's crimes was a priority in post-war West Germany, but "this consensus is crumbling," Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said Sunday, in a statement on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
"If we do not take countermeasures now, our democracy could be seriously endangered," Schuster said, urging a greater commitment to Holocaust education.
Germans mark the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz — as well as other significant dates in Holocaust history throughout the year — with a wide range of programs, both official and private.
And this is appropriate, said 45 percent of the 2,052 Germans surveyed by the Yougov Institute on January 22-23 for the German news agency dpa. But while this survey found that 24% of respondents thought the topic should get more attention, 22% felt the opposite.
A full 56% of those who identified with the far-right, anti-immigrant party "Alternative for Germany," agreed that Holocaust remembrance is given too much weight. In recent years, prominent AfD politicians have decried Berlin's Holocaust memorial as "a monument of shame" and called the Third Reich "a mere bird-sh** in more than 1,000 years of successful German history."
Yemeni TV host Hamid Rizq: Islamic Scholars' Visit to Auschwitz - Harsh Provocation against Arab and Islamic World pic.twitter.com/PGVu0wpIs4
Egyptian Historian Mohammad Al-Shafi'i: The Jews Profited Most from the Holocaust; Extorted International Community for Reparations pic.twitter.com/VplPZD663s
Far-left Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), who has a documented history of anti-Semitism, promoted a false blood libel story last week demonizing Israelis for the death of a young Palestinian boy and, after significant backlash, deleted the retweet but has refused to apologize for her latest anti-Semitic incident.
The tweet that Tlaib promoted stated: "KIDNAPPED & EXECUTED 7 year old #Palestinian child Qusai was kidnapped by a Herd of violent #Israeli settlers, assaulted & thrown in a water well was found this morning frozen to death in Beit Hanina, #Jerusalem after #Israeli forces assaulted search teams."
The claim from a random Twitter account then went to the account of a Palestinian official, who wrote: "The heart just shatters. The pain is unbearable. No words."
Tlaib then promoted the tweet from the Palestinian official to her nearly 900,000 followers.
"In fact the boy was found by Israeli emergency services dead in a cistern on Saturday morning after going missing on Friday. Nevertheless, some Palestinian social media accounts incited against Israel, with small clashes resulting in East Jerusalem," The Jerusalem Post reported. "The tweet accusing Israelis of kidnapping and murder and which actually shows the boy's body being taken from the cistern by medical personnel has now been viewed 125,000 times. It has led to an outpouring of incitement against Israel."
The Palestinian official issued a weak apology for promoting the false claim, writing, "My apologies for retweeting something that's not fully verified. It seems that the news of his being kidnapped is not certain."
Tlaib on the other hand has not apologized for promoting the false claim to her hundreds of thousands of followers.
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt slammed Tlaib and noted that she had not apologized for her actions, writing, "This is an example of how the blood libel works in 2020. @RashidaTlaib retweets a vicious lie steeped in centuries-old accusations used to demonize Jews, then says nothing when it's disproven. An apology is overdue."
Tlaib is notorious for spreading false and inflammatory information that promotes an agenda that divides people along racial lines.
Israel Advocacy Movement: Rashida Tlaib resurrects a 700 year old blood libel
Rashida Tlaib shared an antisemitic trope almost identical to a medieval blood libel that led to the massacre of Jews.
This is an example of how the blood libel works in 2020. @RashidaTlaib retweets a vicious lie steeped in centuries-old accusations used to demonize Jews, then says nothing when it's disproven. An apology is overdue.https://t.co/s8n97T0CVB
A Congresswoman who shared a false online post regarding a Palestinian child, according to which Israeli authorities kidnapped and murdered him,when in fact the boy had fallen into water and drowned, posted again today to express remorse for taking down the false tweet, and vowed not to let such removal happen again.
Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) retweeted a Twitter post about eight-year-old Qusai Abd Abu Ramileh of Jerusalem, who went missing over the weekend, to the effect that he had been kidnapped, and later deleted her tweet when news reports came to light that the boy had slipped and fallen into a rain-filled ditch, and that Israeli police had taken a leading role in the search and rescue attempts. An online furor erupted over Ms. Tlaib's doing so without comment, a furor that led this morning to the Congresswoman posting again that she will henceforth demonstrate more care online to avoid removing material that makes Israel look evil, regardless of its veracity or lack thereof.
"I would like to apologize for deleting my tweet about the poor Palestinian boy Qusai Abd Abu Ramileh," she tweeted this morning (Monday). "In the emotion of the uproar and the moment I rushed to take measures that I now see were in error, and regret." A later tweet reaffirmed the lawmaker's resolve to stick to her anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetorical guns – though she has not specifically ruled out non-rhetorical ones for this purpose – even when such rhetoric arouses intense opposition.
Aides to the Congresswoman explained that the heightened tension of the atmosphere in Washington surrounding the presidential impeachment proceedings had contributed to the ill-advised deletion. "Rashida has a lot on her political plate, as you can imagine," noted Jiffa Sharmuta. "It's not just the excitement and intensity of the impeachment itself; Rashida, remember, was the one who, to celebrate her election to office, yelled, 'Let's impeach the mother******!' So she's personally tied to what's going on to an extent that many of her colleagues are not, and she can get preoccupied. We'll all try to help her be more careful, but nobody's perfect."
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn faces angry calls to distance himself from a pro-Palestine group – of which he is a patron – after a local branch was accused of promoting rampant Holocaust denial on social media.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign's Brixton branch (PSC), which backs boycotts against the state of Israel, drew fierce criticism from online users and activists at the weekend amid claims it promoted antisemitism and Holocaust denial in a tweet.
The tweet, seemingly deleted after it was sent from the official account for the branch on 25 January, contained a link to an article appearing to suggest the number of Jews murdered during the Holocaust could have been "exaggerated."
The opinion piece, entitled The Jewish Holocaust And The Palestinian Nakba and published on the blog "Days of Palestine" last week, appears to draw comparisons between the Holocaust and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
It claims that "accounts vary" on the number of Jewish victims murdered in the Holocaust, saying that while "some historians" estimate the figure to be six million, others "reduce it to hundreds of thousands."
The piece also suggests a "tendency to exaggerate the number of Jewish victims" could have been used as a "cover for the daily Israeli crimes against the indigenous people of Palestine."
"This exaggeration has been an attempt to label all those who possess the courage to reject the occupation's policies and stand in solidarity with the just struggle of our people as 'antisemitic,'" the article states.
Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, the Unite general secretary hit out at what he called "despicable" critics of the Labour leader who had used the row over anti-Jewish abuse in the party's ranks to damage Mr Corbyn.
He said: "I'm absolutely convinced that there were those individuals who opposed Jeremy Corbyn's election right from the beginning used the anti-semitism issue to undermine him - there is no doubt about that."
And the Unite chief added: "Lots of people were genuinely concerned, I have no problem with that. But there were others who were disingenuous."
Mr McCluskey, whose union has thrown its weight behind Rebecca Long-Bailey in the race to succeed Mr Corbyn as Labour leader, acknowleged that the party had "never handled the anti-semitism issue correctly".
Labour is currently being investigated by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission over its approach to dealing with complaints of anti-Jewish abuse.
Mr McCluskey's comments have already attracted criticism from some Labour MPs.
#Marr asks Unite General Secretary Len McCluskey if he minimised Labour anti-Semitism concerns
"Individuals who opposed Jeremy Corbyn's election from the beginning used the anti-Semitism issue, which I think is quite despicable,… to undermine Corbyn"https://t.co/Yl7TVjd6wBpic.twitter.com/hFABOSD1CZ
The Government has said that it will investigate educational material for children comparing Gaza to Holocaust, in breach of International Definition of Antisemitism.
The material – a course titled 'Genocide Memorial Day' – is recommended for children aged twelve and over, and was reportedly designed and circulated by a controversial pro-Iranian charity known as the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC). The material was reportedly uploaded to the respected TES digital educational service, an open resource platform for teachers formerly known as the Times Educational Supplement, and also emailed to educators across the country in January.
The material makes repeated equations between the Nazi treatment of the Jews and Israeli Government policy. It also describes the "Israeli assault on Gaza" in 2009 as a genocide and includes images of Hamas flags. Hamas is proscribed as a terrorist organisation and seeks the genocide of all Jews worldwide.
A one-minute video produced by the IHRC promoting 'Genocide Memorial Day' also minimises the Jewish element of the Holocaust, such as by referring to the "eleven million victims of the Nazi Holocaust." Alongside the Holocaust it also lists what it describes as genocides in Gaza.
The Definition says that "Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis" is an example of antisemitism.
Today, #HolocaustMemorialDay, the leader of the rabidly antisemitic @BDSmovement Omar Barghouti, will be speaking at @KingsCollegeLon. Maybe this will make Kings and others think twice about allowing those who breach the IHRA a platform to spread their hate in the future https://t.co/NzfR8DeXwL
Ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which will be commemorated around the world on Monday, the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs on Sunday published its report on anti-Semitism for 2019.
The report reveals extremely disconcerting trends of increased and intensifying anti-Semitic incidents across the globe in general, and in Western Europe and the United States in particular.
In 2019, according to the report, seven Jews and non-Jews were murdered in a series of anti-Semitic attacks, and many others were wounded. The report also states that anti-Semitic violence came from different directions and was inspired by various ideologies, by the far-right, white supremacists, the extreme left, radical Islam and even escalating street violence perpetrated by African-American youths.
The epicenters of anti-Semitism: Western democracies
The report reveals that anti-Semitism mainly poses a threat to Jews living in Western democracies with large Jewish communities – the US, France, Great Britain and Germany. The US saw a rise in the number of violent anti-Semitic incidents, with over 100 violent street attacks in Brooklyn alone in the past year.
In France, too, there was a drastic increase in the number of reported anti-Semitic attacks in the first half of 2019. And for the second consecutive year, online anti-Semitic abuse intensified, with many anti-Semitic commenters no longer searching for an excuse, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to spew classic anti-Semitic rhetoric.
In Germany, there was a 20% increase in anti-Semitic incidents, among them the Halle synagogue shooting on October 9, in which two bystanders lost their lives. Additionally, throughout 2019 Jews were assaulted in the streets, targeted with insults and threats, and neo-Nazi groups and political parties openly disseminated neo-Nazi propaganda and called for the release of Holocaust deniers from prison.
Anti-Semitic acts increased in France last year by 27%, acts against Muslims inched higher, and anti-Christian acts remained stable, but were the highest of all, France's interior minister said Sunday, denouncing the situation as intolerable.
On top of that, acts described as bearing a racist and xenophobic character, mostly threats, more than doubled between 2018 and 2019 — increasing from 496 to 1,142, according to a statement by Interior Minister Christophe Castaner.
"Expressions and acts of hate, whether they target origins or religious beliefs, whether they take the form of physical violence or verbal threats, are an intolerable attack on our common project, the foundations of our social … pact," the statement said.
To mobilize against forces of hate, and its banalization, the ministry is creating a network of special investigators around France. And it has designated experts on racism and anti-Semitism in gendarmeries and departments, the statement said.
The statistics revealing the "permanence of anti-Semitic hate" take on a particular meaning as the world marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, he noted. (h/t Zvi)
Two eleven-year-old girls were subjected to antisemitic abuse on the eve of Holocaust Memorail Day, when a man shouted at them: "Hitler was the best, he was right, we hate Jews."
The girls ran home in terror.
The incident took place yesterday, on 26th January, in Stamford Hill, and was reported by Stamford Hill Shomrim, the Jewish volunteer neighbourhood watch patrol.
Jobbik, a Hungarian far-right party that critics call institutionally anti-Semitic, has elected a man with Jewish roots, Peter Jakab, as its president.
Jakab, 39, received more than 87 percent of the vote in a primary election Saturday, the news site 444.hu reported.
Jakab, a practicing Catholic, has been accused of anti-Semitism in Hungarian media after he blamed Jews for generating anti-Semitism for financial gain. He has also denied that he or Jobbik were anti-Semitic.
His election to the party's most senior post comes three years after its leaders took steps to rehabilitate its image. One of Jobbik's recent leaders, Gabor Vona, led this policy, which included extending Hanukkah greetings to the leaders of Hungarian Jewry.
Last year, Jobbik allied itself with left-wing parties to hurt the ruling Fidesz party of Prime Minister Viktor Orban in local elections. The alliance was effective in taking several key municipalities away from Fidesz
Jakab has often spoken openly of his Jewish ancestry. "Since my childhood, I knew from my parents that my grandmother is Jewish," he said in a 2014 interview for Alfahir. "She raised 11 children in a peasant farmhouse in poverty but in dignity. I was also aware that my great-grandfather died at Auschwitz," Jakab added.
Jakab has cited this background to qualify his statements about Jews and Israel, which prompted the popular Origo news site to report in 2018 that anti-Semitism "is the one constant element in Peter Jakab's career."
Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of the Italian town of Mondovi to protest against antisemitism after the house of a former World War II resistance fighter was daubed with Nazi-style graffiti last week.
Friday's candlelit demonstration came in response to the vandalism of the house of Lidia Beccaria — a resistance fighter who survived the women-only Ravensbruck concentration camp. Beccaria's son Aldo now lives in the house. The door to the property was defaced with the German words "Juden Hier" — "Jews are here" — above a scrawled Star of David.
Pointing to the offending slogan, first seen in Nazi Germany during the 1930s, Stefano Casarino — head of Italy's National Association of Italian Partisans (ANPI) — told the marchers: "This happened here, in Mondovi, in 2020."
Aldo Beccaria also addressed the crowd, slamming the "utter ignorance" of the vandals. His mother — a powerful voice in Italy for Holocaust commemoration after the war, who passed away in 1996 — was not Jewish herself.
Not all heroes wear capes!
Just went down to the playground to see if anything could be done and a local resident who had seen the graffiti on social media had brought materials to remove it and was making sure it was gone.
Full construction work is due to start this week on a solar energy project that will supply electricity to 87,000 homes and businesses in Burundi, one of the poorest countries in the world, thanks to a Dutch company with American investors that has offices in Israel.
Gigawatt Global's 7.5 MW photovoltaic solar panel project will add 15 percent to the East African country's generation capacity and represents the biggest private-sector investment in that nation's energy sector in 30 years.
The company would not say how much the project is worth, but it is understood to be in excess of $10 million. The solar field will be located on a 115,000-square-meter (28.4-acre) plot of private land that has been leased in the village of Mubuga, some ten kilometers (six miles) from Gitega City, seat of the Kingdom of Burundi until its abolition in 1966. Last year, Gitega replaced Bujumbura as the country's capital following a decision by the Burundian parliament.
"We hope this historic solar project will further warm our bilateral relations and shine a light in Africa on practical solutions to both economic development and the climate crisis," said Raphael Morav, Israel's ambassador to Burundi.
ELTA Systems, a subsidiary of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), has successfully tested its new anti-drone solution at "several large international airports," the company said on Monday.
The "Drone Guard" solution serves rapidly growing demand by airport operators in the aftermath of severe disruption caused to London's Gatwick Airport in December 2018 by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), IAI said. Specialist equipment deployed by the British Army to enable the reopening of the airport runway after 36 hours of interruption included the deployment of the "Drone Dome" system, developed by Israeli defense company Rafael.
Drone Guard was tested at airports in Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia during daily routine operating hours, demonstrating the detection and neutralization of drones without hindering flight timetables or impacting passengers.
The system has also already been deployed to protect leaders and infrastructure at the 2018 G20 Buenos Aires summit and the opening ceremony of the Buenos Aires 2018 Youth Olympics.
In what sounds like something straight out of science fiction, Israeli and US researchers say they have created nine different mini human Organs-on-a-Chip that will pave the way for researchers to test out drugs as if on humans. Not only that: the researchers also managed to connect the nine Organs-on-a-Chip they have developed — including a Brain-on-a-Chip, a Heart-on-a-Chip and a Liver-on-a-Chip — creating what they call a "mini Human-on-a-Chip."
Two new studies by researchers in Tel Aviv University and Harvard University on the subject were published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering on Monday.
Organs-on-a-chip were first developed in 2010 at Harvard University. Then, scientists took cells from a specific human organ — heart, brain, kidney and lung — and used tissue engineering techniques to put them in a plastic cartridge, or the so called chip. Despite the use of the term chip, which often refers to microchips, no computer parts are involved here.
What is new in the two studies published on Monday is the fact that the researchers have now managed to link-up the various organs, and have proven that these can react to drugs in the same way as human organs would in a clinical trial, said Dr. Ben Maoz of Tel Aviv University's Department of Biomedical Engineering and Sagol School of Neuroscience in an interview with The Times of Israel.
When developing drugs, researchers try them out first on rodents and only then, if successful, on humans. But some 60%-90% of the drugs that are successful in rodents fail in humans, explained Maoz, a co-author of the studies.
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An article in Ammon News by Bassam Al-Amoush, a law professor, former member of Jordan's parliament and former head of Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood:
Those who follow the history of the children of Israel find that it is a troubled history: they were humiliated under the rule of the Pharaohs, and the mission of the Prophet Moses, peace be upon him, was to free this people from shackles. They said to him when seeing the sea in front of them and Pharaoh behind them: We were hurt by what we came from and we'll be hurt now! And when God drowned their enemy before them, their faith did not increase. Rather they said to Moses "make us a god" as the other peoples have gods !! They killed the prophets and took the head of the Prophet Yahya [John the Baptist]!! They plotted against their brother the Prophet Joseph and lied to their prophet Jacob and used crocodile tears !!
A disgraceful black history made the world hate them and I will not talk about the Nazis criminals against the Germans and the world, but I am talking about Henry Ford, the American Ford Motor Company owner who wrote a book entitled "The International Jew" in which he describes the greed and deception of the Jews....
A country was established for them but it is a country of torment where there is no security or stability but rather fear, because thieves live in fear and they have been thieves since 1948 , and even today. ...
He certainly makes no distinction between Jews and Israelis.
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