04/28 Links Pt2: Sanders Advisor: Netanyahu Complicit In Rabin Assassination; Glick: Defeating Hamas in America ~ EoZ

From Ian:

Netanyahu Complicit In Assassination Of Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin, Claims Ex-U.S. Official Who Advised Sanders

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu created the circumstances that led to the assassination of former Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin, who was murdered in 1995, claimed former U.S. official Lawrence Wilkerson, who has reportedly advised Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign.
Wilkerson made the statement during an interview earlier this month with The Real News Network, Breitbart Jerusalem has discovered.
He stated:

The current ultra-rightwing leadership in Israel under Bibi Netanyahu – to give a historical context – actually probably contributed to the tension and the incredible shift in political momentum in Israel that lead to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.
It’s not going too far to say that Netanyahu and his group created the circumstances that produced the assassin. This ended for all practical purposes, and other purposes too, the peace effort. The effort to build a two state, two viable stage, economically, financially, culturally, informationally, and so forth, in the region – Israel and Palestine. It ended it. There is no more peace process.
According to Wilkerson’s logic, by opposing Israeli negotiations with arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat, Netanyahu was complicit in the actions of Rabin’s assassin, Yigal Amir, a lone extremist who opposed the so-called peace process.
In February, Politico reported that Sanders is being advised by Wilkerson, a retired U.S. Army colonel who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell and later became a staunch opponent of the war in Iraq.

Simone Zimmerman: Pro-Israel enthusiast turned anti-Israel radical

Simone Zimmerman, Bernie Sander’s national Jewish outreach coordinator, created quite a stir after her year-old profane rant against PM Netanyahu recently became public. This led to her suspension from the campaign two days later.
Her family and friends are baffled how Zimmerman, who grew up in a Zionist home, attended a Jewish day school (about 10 percent of her class serve in the IDF), spent summers in Israel with her youth movement, and seemed destined to become a stalwart of the pro-Israel community, became so virulently anti-Israel.
Zimmerman arrived at UC Berkeley in fall 2009 as a pro-Israel enthusiast, active with AIPAC, who felt her “duty going out into the world is to defend Israel.” However, during her first year Zimmerman changed dramatically.
She became a J Street campus leader, and eventually national president of J Street U.
After graduating, she helped found, and became a leader of, IfNotNow, a J Street offshoot that focuses on disrupting Jewish organizations and aiming to “transform the Jewish community.”

Can leftists be convinced to see the truth about Israel?

There is a new leader of the anti-Israel movement in the US, and his name is Bernie Sanders. It may be unintentional, but he is leading an epic anti-Israel storm that threatens to drown the Jewish State should this leftist Jew become president of the US or continue attracting followers even if not chosen as the Democratic candidate for president.
The New star of the anti-Israel movement has joined forces with BDS and some and Jew-hater activists, who have been flooding American and Canadian university campuses with imported Arab propaganda. Many more left-leaning American Jews have abandoned Israel, accusing the Jewish State of exercising apartheid when it comes to the Palestinians in Israel, in the 'West Bank' and Gaza, using 'disproportionate' force when defending the Jewish state against Hamas during the latest Gazan war in 2014, and continuing to “occupy” and grab Arab land unjustifiably.
Left-leaning ideology is an ideology obsessed with rooting for the underdog, the poor, the deprived, the loser. or whoever they perceived as one of the above. As a rule, the flag bearers of this standpoint are quite aggressive—even to the point of turning violent—in their quest for saving the world from its villains. They represent David against Goliath, Don Quixote against the windmills, “Good” against “Evil”—or so they believe. These left-leaning individuals disregard the fact that their favorite underdog is a war criminal, a mass murderer, an inherent anti-Semite or just a low-life SOB, who has done a disappearing trick with the billions donated to the Palestinian Arabs. Consequently, they rush to offer protection and support to the “poor” Palestinians, accusing Israel of committing war crimes at the same time.

Glick: Defeating Hamas in America

To defeat the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel, it is first necessary to understand it.
The BDS campaign is an extraordinary phenomenon.
Activists from US coast to coast robotically parrot the same lies, employ the same tactics of bullying, intimidating and silencing pro-Israel activists and speakers on campus after campus.
Their goals are uniform. They seek to silence pro-Israel voices in US academia as a means to destroy general public support for Israel in America.
And they seek to make Jew-hatred socially acceptable in elite circles in America for the first time since the Holocaust.
This month it was leftist MK Tzipi Livni’s turn to fall victim to BDS bigotry and defamation. During a public appearance at Harvard Law School, one of the heads of BDS movement at the school, Husam el-Qoulaq, asked her why she is “smelly.”
Qoulaq is the head of Students for Justice in Palestine at Harvard Law School.
SJP is the central engine of the BDS movement.

Melanie Phillips: Brexit and the Jewish question

Far from strengthening its member states, the EU has eviscerated them. Most important, there is no European identity with which people can identify.
People feel bound to their nation through shared ties of language, law, religion, history, culture and tradition expressed through democratically elected and accountable institutions. Only if Europe’s nations restore this connection will their people fight and die to defend them. The West can only be defended by an alliance of independent nations. No one will ever fight and die for Brussels.
There are other ways in which an independent Britain would benefit America, whose culture is also under siege from anti-Western loathing. That has been exported to it in large measure from Britain. If Britain leaves the EU and becomes again a proud and independent nation, it will detach itself correspondingly from the anti-democratic creed of utopian universalism.
That in turn will undermine its belief that Western nations are innately illegitimate and oppressive and the developing world always their victims. And that will lessen its hostility to Israel.
So would Brexit be good for the Jews? Let’s put it this way. It would give Europe and the West a fighting chance against those waging war on the entire Judeo-Christian world. All that remains is for Britain and Europe to see it.

Ben-Dror Yemini: From freedom to enslavement

The incitement against Israel these days is reminiscent of the incitement against Jews in the 1930s. But there is a difference: This time, many Jews are joining the chorus of cries against the Jewish state.
We just celebrated Passover, the holiday of freedom. Democracy, human rights, freedom of speech, women’s equality, and the rule of law are the free world’s foundational principles. It seems we’ve reached the age of freedom.
But something went wrong. Freedom of speech includes the right to spread lies. The liars have become, over time, much more efficient. If you repeat a lie a thousand times, it breaks through. If thousands of intellectuals, journalists, and politicians have said over the past decade that “Israel is the main source of violence in the world” – and they have – then the free(!) world’s opinion will lean towards believing that.
Rothschild Award recipient Professor Nathan Linial recently decried Israel’s fascistic turn during his acceptance speech. That was another sad moment in Israeli discourse. His statements weren’t different from those of other members of his social strata. Sometimes it seems that if you don’t say that “Israel is fascist” you may no longer count yourself among the ranks of the enlightened.
It's easy to understand where Linial is coming from. It’s doubtful whether a day passes without the only paper he likely reads calling Israel fascist. When it has been written so many times, these are the results. And any silly statement by a minor MK turns into proof of this. After all, are there no fascists and anti-Semites in the British Parliament? Of course there are. The parliaments of Europe are filled with racist and fascist members such as George Galloway and David Ward. UKIP in Britain, the French National Front, and the Freedom Party of Austria are all bigger and more extreme than the Bayit Yehudi party in Israel.

The Death of Free Speech: The West Veils Itself

The West has capitulated on freedom of expression. Nobody in the West launched the motto "Je Suis Avijit Roy," the name of the first of the several bloggers butchered, flogged or jailed last year for criticizing Islam.
Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, sided with the Turks. She condemned the German comedian's poem, called it a "deliberate insult," then approved the filing of criminal charges against him for insulting the Turkish president.
The West is veiling its freedom of speech in the confrontation with the Islamic world: this is the story of Salman Rushdie, of the Danish cartoons, of Theo van Gogh, of Charlie Hebdo.
Iran's foreign minister, Javad Zarif, just released an interview with Italy's largest newspaper, Il Corriere della Sera, where he suggested a kind of grand bargain: We Iranians will discuss with you our human rights situation, if you Europeans suppress freedom of expression on Islam.

Marseille Synagogue to Become Mosque as More Jews Leave French City

A Marseille synagogue will be converted into a mosque as the Jewish population in the southern French city continues to dwindle, Newsweek reported on Wednesday.
The Muslim organization Al Badr Association purchased Or Thora synagogue and will reopen the religious site as a mosque this summer — hoping to cater to the overflow from the organization’s other mosque, filled to beyond capacity with a growing number of worshipers.
Or Thora, which was sold for $400,000, is located near the Saint-Charles train station. The synagogue sometimes has no more than 10 worshipers at once, though it has a capacity of 250, according to the French daily La Provence. In contrast, Al Badr’s mosque is often so full that congregants have no choice but to pray outside the complex on Friday, Islam’s holiest day of worship.
Marseille has a population of 800,000, of which approximately 250,000 are of Arab descent, and some 80,000 are Jewish, Newsweek reported.

Paris terrorist's lawyer deems him a 'moron'

Belgium extradited Paris terrorist Salah Abdeslam to France on Wednesday, causing a media frenzy after his own lawyer called him a "moron."
Abdeslam, 26, was one of four terrorists who murdered over 130 people in Paris in November in a series of coordinated attacks throughout the city.
Despite this, Abdeslam is a "moron" with the "intelligence of an ashtray," his lawyer, Belgian attorney Sven Mary, stated to the press Wednesday.
"He is the perfect example of the GTA (Grand Theft Auto video game) generation who thinks he lives in a video game," Mary fumed, to French paper Liberacion. "I asked him if he had read the Koran, and he replied that he had looked up what it meant on the Internet."

Anti-BDS bill advances in Iowa

The Iowa state Senate voted to approve a bill aimed at countering the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS, movement against Israel.
The bill approved Wednesday by a vote of 38-9 prevents state funds from being invested in companies that boycott Israel.
The bill was passed in February year by the Iowa state House. The bill applies to funds invested by the state treasurer, Iowa Board of Regents, Iowa Public Employees’ Retirement System and some other state pension funds, and does not allow a public entity from entering a contract of more than $1,000 with a company that boycotts Israel, according to the Des Moines Register.
The bill now goes to Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican, for his signature.
In a voice vote on Wednesday, the Iowa Senate also approved a resolution “in support of the Jewish State of Israel,” as well as a negotiated two-state solution.
Iowa is the eighth state to pass a resolution opposing BDS, behind Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana and South Carolina.

German Left Mainstreaming Anti-Israel Hate

Anti-Israel boycott campaign, the so-called BDS movement, and other anti-Israel groups are carrying out a coordinated campaign to hijack the May Day demonstrations in Germany with an aim of spreading their anti-Semitic and anti-Israel message. The blatant anti-Semitism and the hatred of Israel these groups propagates is getting so repugnant that it is unnerving even the old left-wingers who otherwise never missed a chance of criticising the Jewish State.
The attempts by some moderate groups to keep anti-Israel agitators from taking over the Labour Day events have failed. A resolution tabled by a prominent left-wing activist Jutta Ditfurth seeking to expel openly anti-Semitic groups from the event was rejected overwhelmingly by the organising committee, forcing Ditfurth and her environmentalist group groups to leave the alliance.
May 1, Germany’s Labour Day is traditionally used by the Left to mobilise the base around left-wing issues. Berlin-based small Jewish newspaper Jüdische Algemine writes:
Jutta Ditfurth is well acquainted with the German radical left. “Never before did we witness this sort of hate filled anti-Semitic discussion in a supposedly left wing alliance,” says the Frankfurt-based journalist who is active within the “Ecological Left” and has an office in Frankfurt’s old Town Hall.
She is referring to the confrontation over Berlin’s “Revolutionary May Day Demonstrations.” Anti-Israel BDS Movement accompanied by F.O.R. Palestine — abbreviation for “For One State and Return in Palestine” — will be taking part in the event. The group calls for the “destruction of Zionist colonial system” allowing only “non-Zoinist Jews” to live in the land.

Vassar student body REJECTS Israel boycott

The Vassar student body voted the past two days on two anti-Israel referenda sponsored by Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace.
For background on anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activism at Vassar, see Tuesday’s post, Vassar students start voting on anti-Israel referenda.
The results were just announced by email, and both referenda were rejected.
The vote was close. The BDS resolution was rejected 573 Against, 503 For. The spending resolution was defeated 601 Against, 475 For.
Under the circumstances, with a years-long anti-Israel propaganda campaign supported by vocal faculty members, this must be considered a huge victory for the voices of reason on campus.

Gerald M. Steinberg: Academics tackle anti-Zionist anti-Semitism

It has become politically fashionable to claim that attacks against Israel are simply a form of reasonable criticism and that allegations of anti-Semitism seek to censor this legitimate discussion. Or that the virulent attacks result from the post-1967 "occupation," and that a return to the previous armistice lines would end this demonization.
But the line between reasonable criticism and obsessive hostility and hate speech toward Israel and Israelis is being crossed with increasing frequency at universities, the United Nations, political institutions (such as the British Labour Party), the media, "progressive" churches and elsewhere. Through campaigns such as BDS (boycotts, divestment and sanctions) and the free use of terms such as "war crimes," apartheid, racism and similar labels, the demonization of Jewish sovereign equality has moved into high gear. The facade of merely opposing Israeli policies is no longer necessary, as shown in the recent Harvard Law School incident in which a student and leader of a Palestinian activist group asked Knesset member Tzipi Livni why she, as a Jew, was "so smelly."
In the past, many academics have ignored such blatant hatred and the violent attacks to which it contributes around the world (and some also participate in the hate), but this is changing. An increasing number of scholars are now turning their attention to what is recognized, at least by some, as a major problem.

Shmuley Boteach: BDS disgrace at NYU

The Jewish Week has just reported that not one but two BDS resolutions passed recently at New York University.
This is an absolute disgrace.
NYU has more Jewish undergraduates than any other private university in America. That these BDS resolutions have been voted in by the Student Union betrays not only growing anti-Semitism in the heart of New York City, but an utter lack of leadership among the Jewish campus professional and students, something I wrote about extensively in the New York Observer when my son was an NYU undergraduate before joining the IDF, where he currently serves as a lone combat soldier.
(Our family is in Israel visiting him for Passover.) How could rabbis on campus not mobilize the Jewish students to oppose the BDS resolution? How could the approximately 6,000 Jewish students allow Israel to be maligned on their campus in such an extreme way? The sole purpose of BDS is to destroy Israel. It has no interest whatsoever in Palestinian rights. If it did it would be boycotting Egypt for destroying hundreds of Palestinian homes on the Gaza border in October 2014 to stop Hamas from smuggling weapons.
If BDS were about Palestinian rights it would be boycotting Mahmoud Abbas for becoming a dictator and running a kleptocracy in the Palestinian Authority. If BDS were about Palestinian rights it would be boycotting Hamas for its “honor” killings and assassinations of Palestinians who protest its brutal rule.

Bannister: Divesting from Israel is counterproductive, simplistic, biased

Singling out Israel before all other states justifiably makes Israelis and Jews in general feel targeted. The companies mentioned by NU Divest do business with some of the most repressive regimes on earth. It is insulting and unfair for the divestment movement to target a small Jewish democracy over far larger and more violent actors. It indicates that the real distinction between Israel and its neighbors isn’t the actions of its government or its ties to the United States, but the identity of its people.
The greatest flaw in NU Divest isn’t its binary understanding of the Israeli conflict, but its attempts to effectively levy sanctions against a foreign state. NU will continue to be allowed to invest in other countries with human rights violations such China, Turkey, Russia, Egypt and even Iran. But it will not invest in Israel. The perversity of this double standard is alarming to many Northwestern students, as it should be.
University President Morton Schapiro and the NU administration are not fools. They will never undermine the integrity of NU as a neutral forum for ideas in order to mollify the injured feelings of a single party. Nor will they jeopardize the school’s reputation by punishing the Jewish state before numerous other human rights violators. Actions like that would provoke a harsh response from the national media as well as justifiable accusations of anti-Semitism. That is why NU Divest has and will continue to be stonewalled by the administration.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an issue that needs to be discussed. It is a complex and sensitive subject that impacts the lives of many people. That is why each student on this campus, no matter what their position on this issue is, should help push the dialogue away from punishment, sanctions and finger-pointing and towards something based off of rationality and mutual respect.

Lawyer in Discrimination Suit: President of CUNY College Pressured Jewish Faculty Member to Withdraw Antisemitism Complaint

A lawyer representing a New York City professor in a suit against his university for alleged antisemitism told The Algemeiner her client was previously pressured by the school’s president to drop an internal complaint.
Brooke Goldstein, director of the nonprofit legal think-tank the Lawfare Project and co-counsel to the plaintiff — Jewish professor of business Jeffrey Lax — said that City University of New York (CUNY) Kingsborough Community College President Farley Herzek repeatedly instructed Lax to withdraw a formal CUNY complaint lodged against Stuart Suss, former vice president for academic affairs and provost at Kingsborough. Herzek, according to Goldstein, told Lax to “let it go.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Lax filed a lawsuit in February against senior Kingsborough administrators, claiming they limit the hiring and promotion of Jews and maintain a hostile work environment for them. According to the suit, which named Suss specifically, Jewish faculty members were frequently mocked for wearing religious head coverings and keeping kosher, and were referred to as “the Devil” and “evil.”
Before filing the lawsuit, Lax submitted separate informal complaints to Kingsborough’s General Counsel and the Interim Provost. Both were ignored, he claimed, forcing him to file a formal complaint with the CUNY human resources department. As a result, the suit alleges, “discrimination and harassment only intensified” against Lax.

Leftist Antisemitism: All About Yves's

The guy in this picture isn't, as might be thought, baying at the moon.
To quote the online caption relating to this photo in the Toronto Star (27 July 2014) he's shouting '"Keep killing Palestinian children" towards the Pro-Israel Torontians gathered at Queen's Park to hold a peaceful, positive rally and pray for peace, truth and co-existence'.
His name's Yves Engler and he's a Canadian leftie whose subjects for denouncement regularly include Israel.
In the Huffington Post last week Engler wrote a grubby little piece describing antisemitism as "the most abused term in Canada".
It in fact provides an ugly insight into the antisemitism that motivates leftist anti-Zionism, with what has been termed "rich man antisemitism" (the perception of, and consequent hostility to, Jews as plutocrats) not far from the surface.
His nonsense exemplifies that very curious camaraderie with Islam that leftist "anti-Zionists" exhibit despite Islam's attitude towards all the things which the Left is supposed to hold dear. Despite all the antisemitism inherent in Islam and the antisemitism emanating from sections of the Muslim umma today (vide the situation in Europe and videos of Islamist preachers), he implies that Jews are making victims out of Muslims.

CAMERA Notes Intimidation of Journalists in The Washington Times

The murders of journalists like James Foley and Steve Sotloff by ISIS received extensive coverage. That was one of ISIS' objectives. Yet, when terrorists' goal is to urge “journalists to report according to their media rules” and to “practice self-censorship” — thereby assisting propaganda efforts — this attempted or achieved distortion often goes unmentioned.
For that reason alone, the death of a journalist-turned-persecutor of the press ought to have received more attention.
Occasionally a reference to constraints imposed by terrorists or despotic regimes does appear. In a June 25, 2003 Op-Ed for The Jerusalem Post (“Access and Ethics at The New York Times”), Andrea Levin, executive director of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), noted comments made by Douglas Jehl, then a New York Times correspondent and now Washington Post foreign editor, during a June 2003 Washington symposium. Mr. Jehl acknowledged that threats made him “more cautious as a reporter.” On Iran's nuclear program and Syrian support for the terrorist group Hezbollah, Mr. Jehl admitted he “wrote about these issues, but couldn't dig as deeply as he'd like, and did recognize that the more of these [critical] stories one writes, the more difficult it would be to get back in.”
Intimidation and exploitation of the press is nothing new. The Palestine Liberation Organization under Yasser Arafat employed the tactic in Lebanon during the 1970s and 1980s. As former Israeli journalist turned political adviser Ze'ev Chafets noted in his 1985 book “Double Vision: How the Press Distorts America's View of the Middle East,” the PLO routinely intimidated journalists, creating “enemies lists” of those who didn't cooperate. This, and the PLO's ability to deny access to, or if necessary, murder those who were critical, led New York Times reporter Thomas Friedman to observe in his 1989 book “From Beirut to Jerusalem” that “the Western press coddled the PLO.” Indeed, as Mr. Chafets wrote, Arafat fondly referred to the press corps headquartered in Beirut's Commodore Hotel as his “Commodore Battalion.”
Like Arafat, Hassan Hanafi was trying to raise his own media battalion. Some who refused to enlist were murdered.

CAMERA Prompts Wall Street Journal Correction on Temple Mount

CAMERA was informed that an earlier version of the piece did refer to the sites holiness to Jews, but that the passage was "inadvertently dropped."
After CAMERA made editors aware of the omission, the piece was commendably updated to note:
Under regulations backed by the Israeli government and the country’s chief rabbinate, Jews are allowed to visit but not pray on Temple Mount, a hilltop plaza where two biblical-era Jewish temples once stood, and that is Judaism’s holiest site.
It also is one of the holiest sites in Islam, known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and home to the Al Aqsa mosque.
The site is also sacred ground for Christians.
A correction was appended to the online article.

CBS News Plays the Palestinian Propaganda Game in Gaza

For the last segment of the April 7, 2016 TV broadcast of CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley, substitute host Charlie Rose presented a three-minute report filmed in the Gaza Strip. Correspondent Barry Petersen and camera crew had filmed several Palestinian Arab men practicing the game of parkour (overcoming physical obstacles through the use of acrobatic and tumbling feats).
CBS News, under the guise of presenting life affirming – even heroic – optimism in the face of great adversity in the Gaza Strip, provides anti-Israel propaganda. What is the cause of this adversity confronting the men, according to the CBS report? Alleged Israeli aggression victimizing the helpless Gazans. Not a word about the reality that the main cause of the adversity is Gaza's rulers, Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement), who repeatedly have rejected a "two-state solution" and orchestrated the firing of rockets on Israeli towns and burrowing terrorism tunnels into Israel in an effort to hurt and kill civilians. This behavior is consistent with the Hamas charter, including the section that quotes Islamic hadith literature, "The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: 'Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.'" As to Israel's counter-attacks against Hamas and its allies in the Gaza Strip, in November 2014 Gen. Martin Dempsey, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that Israel had gone out of its way to avoid civilian casualties.
Rose introduced the segment this way: “The physically demanding sport of parkour held its championships in Las Vegas last weekend. But a top team of Palestinians was a no-show, stuck in its war-torn homeland. Barry Petersen spent time with these athletes, who get their joy through jumping.”

Community suggests naming local primary 'Adolf Hitler School for Friendship and Tolerance'

A row over the renaming of an elementary school in Austin, Texas, has led to members of the public submitting a number of parodic suggestions for what the institution should be known as in future.
Last month the Austin Independent School District board voted to accept a recommendation that the Robert E Lee Elementary should change its name, following recent controversy surrounding public buildings named after Confederate figureheads.
The board asked for suggestions from the local community for a new name for the school - and it has now released the full list of nominations, which includes Schooly McSchoolerson (a nod to Boaty McBoatface), Bleeding Heart Liberal Elementary, and Adolf Hitler School for Friendship and Tolerance.

Swastikas daubed throughout Brooklyn neighborhood

A vandal drew swastikas on public and private property in a Brooklyn neighborhood.
The swastikas were drawn in white marker early Monday morning, the New York Post reported on Wednesday.
They were found on garbage can lids, a residential gate, a traffic control box, and the door of a building in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn.
The vandal, a white male wearing dark clothing, was caught on surveillance video at about 4 a.m. on Monday.

From Anti-Semite to Jew

There was word, Csanad Szegedi was told, of a secret so explosive it would destroy his career.
By 2012, the 30-year-old Szegedi was a rising star in the hothouse world of Hungarian politics, vice president of the extreme-right Jobbik party and a Member of the European Parliament. Jobbik had, in less than a decade, taken on an outsize place in Hungarian politics, resuscitating a long-dormant authoritarian tradition, and its deeply held anti-Semitic prejudices along with it. In 2007, Szegedi had helped to form the Hungarian Guard, a brownshirt organization whose iconography deliberately, and frighteningly, echoed that of the World War II-era Hungarian Fascist Arrow Guard. The rumor being peddled by Zoltan Ambrus, an ex-skinhead with a grudge, was that Szegedi—an anti-Semitic provocateur and pronounced Holocaust skeptic who had once made reference to the extensive damage done to the Hungarian Holy Crown by Jewish artists and intellectuals—was himself Jewish.
Szegedi, in disbelief, turned to his grandmother, Magdolna Klein, who shocked him by confirming the story in all its details. Not only was she Jewish, but she was herself a Holocaust survivor.
Three weeks before deciding to leave Jobbik, Szegedi’s grandmother had told him for the first time about his grandfather’s wartime experiences. He had been deported from Hungary as part of a forced-labor battalion, leaving his first wife and two children behind. When he returned after the war, he discovered that his entire family had been sent to Auschwitz and murdered. At the time, Szegedi’s children were the same age as his grandfather’s murdered children, and the chronological conjunction—one father contemplating another’s unbearable loss from a nearly identical vantage point—was irrefutable.

From Anti-Zionist to Zionist: An interview with Noor Dahri

This is an interview with Noor Dahri about his journey from Anti-Zionist to Zionist.
Why did you join the Zionist Movement?
I was born and raised as a Muslim in Pakistan. We were taught to hate Jews and Israel and I had frequently participated in anti-Israel and anti-Zionism demonstrations, especially in Al-Quds day. I never knew that Jews were humans as we are. In fact, I considered Jews worse than animals and the enemy of humanity, particularly those against the Muslims and Islam. I accepted only some Jews, however, only those who stood with Palestinians and never with the Zionists. For me, the Zionist was a devil worshiper and was against Allah/HaShem. For this reason, being a religious Muslim, my dislike and hate against Zionists was natural.
As I told you before, I was taught to hate Jews. They manipulated many religious texts in efforts to spread hatred towards other religions. I must mention the name of a kind lady, who was not only my colleague but my first Jewish friend in my life.

Desalitech wins Global Water Award

Israeli-founded Desalitech — which provides high-efficiency water treatment for industrial, agricultural and wastewater reuse and concentration applications – has won a top prize at the 2016 Global Water Awards.
Judges at the prestigious contest — held at the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi, UAE — chose Desalitech as the Breakthrough Water Technology Company of the Year.
The prize category sought out “the early-stage technology company which made the most impressive commercial breakthrough into the global water technology market in 2015.”
“The slow build-up of salinity in aquifers and waterways is one of the great environmental challenges of our age. Desalitech’s breakthrough technology represents a remarkable step towards a practical, affordable solution,” reads an explanation on the Global Water Awards website as to why Desalitech was honored.

Israeli Hydro-Engineers Help Farmers Grow More With Less Water

The agriculture industry is the world’s largest consumer of water, accounting for approximately 70% of the global freshwater supply. Much of that irrigation water is lost due to wasteful and unsustainable farming methods, which strain limited water resources in the face of growing demand.
Israeli hydraulic engineer Simcha Blass, confronted with an arid Middle Eastern climate and severely constrained access to water, first helped address this challenge in the 1950s by developing a water-saving system that revolutionized modern drip irrigation and was adopted by farmers across the world. Years after Blass first helped Israel’s deserts bloom, the country’s experts are finding new ways to optimize water usage.
Projections show that Israel will need to nearly doubt its water supply, mainly for food production, Avi Shaviv, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, told documentarians from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“Our research in cooperation with our farmers came to different solutions, developing new agro techniques which allow farmers to produce much more per unit area with less water,” said Shaviv. “Israel is leading in being efficient in water for agriculture, and especially for crop production. By doing so we manage to be about six to seven times more efficient in water use than we were about 50 years ago. Therefore, we can allocate the saved water that was needed for agriculture to other resources.”

Israeli defense company wins $20 million contract in Europe

Israeli-based Elbit Systems has won a $20 million contract to provide advanced tactical radios to a unnamed western European country. The contract will last for three years.
The radios are based on the E-LynX models, which include advanced mobile ad-hoc networking (MANET) and are fully function in any terrain. They also allow video transmission and tracking forces in the field through radio waves.
Udi Vered, the company's general manager, says: "We are proud to supply our customer with our new software-based radio system from the E-LynX family. It is based on generations of proven experience in the field of radio technology and products. The modern battlefield requires sophisticated networking capabilities for maneuvering forces, as a basis for orientation in the terrain and for holding ground.
"This success is the result of our continuing effort and investment in research and development, in order to produce military networks and modern radio capabilities," he added.

Francisco Partners buys Israel's SintecMedia for $400 million

San Francisco-based private equity firm Francisco Partners will buy Israel's SintecMedia for $400 million, the companies announced on Wednesday.
Founded in 2000 and employing over 800 people in 12 offices, Jerusalem-based SintecMedia makes internet-based management software systems for TV and media companies including NBC, ABC and BBC. Its products manage ad sales, traffic, billing, programming and rights, processing over $33 billion in advertising revenue.
Technology-focused Francisco Partners has already bought two Israeli firms: ClickSoftware for $438 million, and homeland security firm NSO for more than $100 million.
The deal is expected to be signed in the coming days.
Citing industry estimates, Israel's financial daily Calcalist said SintecMedia has annual revenue of $100 million to $120 million and a profit margin of as much as 40%.

PreOccupiedTerritory: I Hope That Red Sea Incident Doesn’t Raise My Chariot Insurance Premiums (satire)

By Thutmose III, Ruler of Egypt
We all have accidents on the roads, even the best drivers. Sometimes circumstances are simply beyond a driver’s control. Given that fact, I’m relying on the insurance company writing off the loss of my chariot fleet at the Sea of Reeds as an Act of God and deciding not to charge a heftier premium next time around.
For one thing, it was undeniably an act of God, though not necessarily the way the term is used in insurance. I can, however, check the appropriate box on the claim form, secure in the knowledge that I’m telling the unvarnished truth. I don’t have to include the part about driving the fleet into the sea in the first place – that would only complicate matters. There isn’t really room on the form to go into detail about the cloud, the pillar of fire, the east wind, the dry land that suddenly appeared. I should just keep it simple. No headaches for me or them that way.
Besides, this kingdom can’t afford a premium increase right now. Our economy is in the toilet after a series of calamities, and the treasury is basically empty. I have to rehabilitate the country’s agriculture, livestock, public health, infrastructure, you name it. I can’t have the bean-counters at Mutual of Memphis tell me I need to shell out more money up front.

Conan O’Brien Throws ‘Pharaoh’ Through Giant Wall of Matzah in Passover Sketch (VIDEO)

Conan O’Brien celebrated Passover on his late night show this week by throwing the villain of the Jewish exodus story through a wall of unleavened bread.
Having his assistants bring a giant sheet of matzah onto the stage, O’Brien said he thought “an amazing way” to celebrate Passover would be to throw Pharaoh through the baked wall. He then pointed out a man in the audience who was placed there as part of the skit and dressed in a Pharaoh costume, complete with a headpiece and a long, fake beard.
After a security guard escorted the man to the stage, O’Brien asked him, “Pharaoh, are you going to let my people go?”
“I’m not a pharaoh. I work at an Egyptian restaurant,” said the man, seemingly joking about why he is dressed like the Egyptian ruler from the Passover story. When asked the same question again, he said, “I’m Catholic. I live in Chicago.”
O’Brien then shouted, “See you pharaoh!” and threw the man through the wall of matzah, to audience applause.

1st Annual CONAN Throwing A Pharaoh Through A Wall Of Matzo

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.