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Saturday, August 31, 2019

From Ian:

UN Watch: BREAKING UN urges Palestinians to stop 'hate speech against Israelis that fuels antisemitism'
In a rare UN criticism of the Palestinians, the world body’s racism watchdog urged Ramallah to combat “hate speech and incitement to violence,” saying it was “concerned” about statements by Palestinian public figures, politicians and media officials, as well as in school textbooks and curricula, pointing to “hate speech against Israelis” which it found “fuels hatred” and “may incite violence” and “antisemitism.”

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) further called on the Palestinians to “remove any derogatory comments and images from school curricula and textbooks that perpetuate prejudices and hatred.”

In addition, the panel found that Palestinians laws and policies failed to implement UN treaties on racism, or to properly investigate complaints for acts of racial discrimination.

The 18 independent experts reviewed the Palestinian record and those of six other countries at a session that ended on Thursday, when they issued their findings.

Palestinian Delegate Lashes Out at UN Watch
In wake of the review session two weeks ago, Palestinian representative Ammar Hiajzi lashed out at UN Watch after the Geneva-based non-governmental organization briefed the UN experts on Palestinian incitement.

“We must not allow our discussions to be diverted and side-tracked by those organizations founded and funded to deny the Palestinian narrative, dehumanize the Palestinian people by spreading lies and half-truths about them,” he tweeted on August 15th, prompting a sharp reply from UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer.


In first, UN panel calls on Palestinians to halt hate speech against Israelis
The report marked the first time the panel had criticized Palestinian officials, according to UN Watch, a Geneva-based organization that addressed the session leading to the report.

The committee called on Ramallah to better protect journalists, human rights activists and political dissidents; to act against incitement to violence by public figures, politicians and media officials; and to remove inflammatory and discriminatory images and text from school curricula and textbooks.

The panel also recommended that Palestinian officials ensure that minorities enjoyed full rights and public services, especially Bedouins, and that minorities found adequate representation in politics.

Near the top of the report, titled “Concluding observations on the combined initial and second periodic reports of the State of Palestine,” the committee said that Israel’s presence in the West Bank, its settlements and its blockade of Gaza posed “severe challenges for the State party in fully implementing its obligations under the Convention.”

At the committee’s 99th session, held earlier this month, during a review of the “State of Palestine,” some delegates referred to examples of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish content in Palestinian textbooks and state-owned media outlets.

“What happened this week was unprecedented,” Hillel Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch, said after the session. “Since 1974 when Yasser Arafat and the PLO were welcomed into the United Nations, this is the first time that the world body’s spotlight was officially placed on Palestinian racism, discrimination and anti-Semitism.”

Restaurant in Ramallah backs out of hosting US Embassy meeting with Palestinians
An upscale restaurant in Ramallah backed out of hosting a lunch meeting between the US Embassy’s commercial attache and Palestinian businesspeople earlier this week, according to both an activist as well as a businessman who said he was invited to the lunch.

The restaurant said it would not host the meeting after the National and Islamic Forces in Ramallah, a group of local activists, contacted its management and demanded it cancel the event, according to Isam Bakr, a leading member of the group.

“We called the members of the management and told them that the restaurant should not host this meeting. We asked them how it could permit the gathering to take place on its premises following all of the US administration’s punitive measures against Palestine, including the State Department’s recent decision to erase Palestine from its site,” Bakr told The Times of Israel, referring to the department’s removal of the “Palestinian Territories” section from its website.

“Approximately half an hour later, the management informed us that it would not host the meeting, which we highly appreciated,” said Bakr, who asked that the name of the restaurant not be identified over concerns it could be targeted.

He said that the event was slated for Thursday at noon, but the restaurant decided to cancel it on Wednesday.



Ignoring anti-Semitic assaults signals that Jewish blood doesn't matter when it can't easily be politically exploited
New York City has the largest Jewish population in the United States, and Jewish roots there are long and deep. And yet, the situation for observant Jews is quickly devolving into that of Europe, where Jews cannot safely walk to synagogue or through the streets while wearing a yarmulke without being attacked verbally or physically. This is a disgrace.

Why is everybody standing pat as Jews get targeted in a city where, if anything, they should feel most safe? Why in a voracious 24/7 media environment is it being given so little attention? The simple answer is that highlighting the attacks does not provide any clear partisan advantage.

It would be difficult to tie the attacks in Brooklyn to any comments from President Trump or to rising white nationalism. Additionally, they can't be easily linked to any of Rep. Ilhan Omar's tweets. Thus, this is a failure not only of Mayor Bill DeBlasio, who sanctimoniously tweets about anti-Semitism as he stands idly by as it rages in his own city, but also of major Jewish organizations. These organizations have collected tens of millions in donations to supposedly fight anti-Semitism and yet have proven absolutely useless in pressuring politicians to take action as observant Jews have become unsafe in the epicenter of American Jewish life.

As Rosen wrote, "The fact that the victims are most often outwardly identifiable, i.e., religious rather than secularized Jews, and the perpetrators who have been recorded on CCTV cameras are overwhelmingly black and Hispanic, inverts the perpetrator-victim dynamics with which most national Jewish organizations and their supporters are comfortable."

Anti-Semitism comes in many shapes and forms and is not confined to any one ideological camp. In some cases, it is not attached to politics at all. The only way effective way to fight anti-Semitism is to fight it in all of its manifestations, free from political blinders. (h/t IsaacStorm)
'Jews control White House' he wrote and got a synagogue talk invite
The Israeli-American scholar and commentator Daniel Gordis recently denounced an Israeli government cabinet minister as “a dangerous demagogue with medieval views.”

Name-calling is standard fare in Israeli public discourse, especially in the midst of an overheated election race. But whether or not Gordis meant his accusation literally, he will soon find himself face-to-face with someone who actually meets the dictionary definition of a dangerous demagogue with medieval views—medieval views about Jews and Jewish power, that is.

Later this month, Gordis will appear on stage at a prominent Manhattan synagogue alongside an American journalist who has publicly accused Jews of controlling the White House and paying off members of Congress. I’m speaking about Thomas Friedman of the New York Times.

The dictionary definition of a “demagogue” is someone who seeks to gain “power and popularity” through “use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises.”

That’s pretty much what Thomas Friedman has been doing his entire life: trying to gain popularity for himself, and his extremist views, through false claims, empty promises, and whipping up prejudice—against Israel.

It began during his years as a student at Brandeis University. In 1974, Yasser Arafat, gun holster on his hip, made his infamous first appearance at the United Nations. The Jewish community in New York City organized a huge protest rally against him. Friedman and a handful of his fellow radicals on campus signed an open letter denouncing the anti-Arafat rally.
Seth J. Frantzman: Drone wars: UAVs become terrorists' favorite equalizer in Middle East fighting
Drone technology is a natural field for Israel as part of its wide-ranging arsenal.

They can track and attack a target far beyond the country’s border without having to send precious pilots into enemy airspace. Drones are also a force multiplier for a small country with multiple borders. Israel can monitor threats from groups such as Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Israeli drones such as the Heron TP can fly more than 600 miles for 30 hours.

Israel’s defense industry also produces an array of “loitering munitions” — drones such as the SkyStriker and Harpy that pack warheads and can carry out precise long-range strikes. Israel doesn’t comment on the types of munitions it uses in airstrikes.

Drones also provide a measure of deniability, even when the apparent source of the drone is widely suspected. Although accused of using drones in Iraq and Lebanon in the past week, Israel has not commented on either incident.

“We are operating in many areas against a state that wants to annihilate us,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a nondenial denial Aug. 22. “Of course I gave the security forces a free hand and instructed them to do anything necessary to thwart Iran’s plans.”

The Israel Defense Forces later revealed that an Iranian drone team had been spotted near the Golan Heights and published grainy video of the team.

The footage underscores that Israel is not the only participant with military drone capability. Israel accused Iran of flying a drone from Syria into its airspace in February 2018. Israel’s Iron Dome missile shield, which was built with U.S. support, showed that it could shoot down drones as early as 2015.

Israeli Smart Shooter technology enables rifles to be used against small moving UAV targets. Israel’s Drone Guard and Drone Dome are other defense systems.
PBS NewsHour Propaganda Piece Attacks Israel with Bogus Exploding Bullets Charge
PBS Newshour has once again grossly deceived its audience, with a propaganda piece that could have come directly from Hamas’ playbook. Coming more than a year after the start of the terror organization’s “Great March of Return,” the report twists those violent riots into an indictment of Israel’s military response.

The Aug. 20th special report by special correspondent Jane Ferguson, entitled “Gazans suffer life-shattering injuries when border protests turn violent,” focuses on Palestinian rioters who were injured or lost limbs during the riots, amplifying Hamas propaganda claims about criminal Israeli soldiers targeting innocent, peaceful Palestinian youth and – its central claim – using exploding bullets to maximize the damage inflicted upon their Palestinian victims.

The first two thirds of the 10 minute broadcast is devoted to interviews with injured Palestinians, their surgeon, and representatives from anti-Israel NGO’s to condemn Israel and exonerate the Gazan rioters. Ferguson does not interview any Israeli who might challenge the accusations and condemnations. Instead, she reads an IDF statement – 7 minutes into the broadcast– which she immediately refutes by citing a widely rejected report by the biased UN Human Rights Council.

Exploding Bullets Propaganda
A central feature of the report is the claim that Israeli troops employ exploding bullets as they target innocent Palestinian “protesters”:

CAMERA immediately debunked the claim:

According to ballistics experts and doctors, though, it is typical for exit wounds to be larger than entry wounds. “At high velocities, mainly over 2,000 fps the bullet deformity and tumbling in the body usually causes a larger and more irregular exit wound than the entrance,” doctors Nimrod Rozen and Israel Dudkiewicz explain in their chapter on “Wound Ballistics and Tissue Damage” in the book Armed Conflict Injuries to the Extremities: A Treatment Manual. (Wounds from low velocity bullets may behave differently.)

According to the British Journal of Surgery, “The exit wound is usually the larger.” A piece in the Canadian Medical Association Journal likewise explains that “exit wounds … are often larger than entrance wounds.” An article on gunshot wounds to the skull in Forensic Science International studied 17 entrance and exit gunshot wounds and found that, in all but one case, the exit wound was larger than the entry wound. And so on and so on and so on. (AP Sidesteps Skepticism and Science in Relaying Palestinian “Explosive Bullets” Charge)
Behind the ‘Our Boys’ backlash
The killings by Hamas of the Jewish teens is the starting point for the series, which is divided into three plot threads.

The main one is about Simon (Shlomi Elkabetz), a Shin Bet officer in charge of investigating Jewish extremists, who learns early on, after the first kidnapping, that the three boys have been killed and fears that the many intense prayer vigils calling for their safe return will backfire once the bodies are found. As soon as the deaths of the Israeli teens are confirmed, he is apprehensive about revenge killings, and when Abu Khdeir is abducted from his street in Jerusalem and a body is found soon afterward in the Jerusalem forest, he suspects Jews are the killers.

The second thread is the ordeal of the Abu Khdeir family, and the third is the story of the killers themselves, three Jews who feel they are misfits because they have not excelled in the yeshiva world.

When the fact that the series would focus on the killing of Abu Khdeir and the ordeal of his family rather than the murders of Fraenkel, Shaer and Yifrah was revealed in the pre-release publicity, the backlash began. Liat Collins wrote in her Jerusalem Post column: “The words ‘based on the true events’ are telling. This, of course, is neither the whole truth nor the whole story.”

Once the first two episodes of the series aired in mid-August, 120 Israelis who lost relatives — both soldiers and civilians — to terrorism signed a letter to HBO protesting the angle the series takes.

Their letter said, in part, “The kidnapping and the murder of the three youths is one of the many instances in which Jews have been murdered. The murderers receive... encouragement and are treated like heroes. In contrast, [Muhammad Abu] Khdeir’s murder was met with shock and condemnation by the vast majority of the Israeli public. Dozens of Jews are murdered as a result of the ongoing incitement by the Palestinian Authority every year. The Arab street does not condemn the murder of Jews and even supports and encourages it.”

Matan Peleg, the head of Im Tirzu, a right-leaning Zionist group, called the show’s focus “morally reprehensible.”
Why HBO’s series on revenge murder of a Palestinian teen is causing controversy
On July 8, following escalating tensions with the Gaza-based terrorist group, Israel launched a ground operation in Gaza known as Protective Edge.

But the series, which premiered on Aug. 12, does not spend much time on the kidnapping and its immediate aftermath.

Instead it uses the incident as the backdrop to the tragedy that followed: the revenge kidnapping and murder of a 16-year-old Palestinian, Muhammed Abu Khdeir. Autopsy results suggested that he had been burned alive. In 2016, a Jewish-Israeli man, Yosef Ben-David, was convicted for the murder along with two minors.

The decision to focus on the murder of the Palestinian teen has drawn criticism in Israel, despite what the creative team said was a conscious choice.

“We were drawn to understanding the perpetrators of this murder more than we were interested in understanding the victimhood of our side,” Hagai Levi, one of the filmmakers, told Drama Quarterly.

The series is “a story of pain turning into revenge,” he added.

Some 120 Israeli families who lost members in terror attacks disagree. They wrote a letter to HBO criticizing the show’s viewpoint, saying it equates two events that differ in significant ways.

“Khdeir’s murder was met with shock and condemnation by the vast majority of the Israeli public,” the parents wrote, according to Israel Hayom. “Dozens of Jews are murdered as a result of the ongoing incitement by the Palestinian Authority every year. The Arab street does not condemn the murder of Jews and even supports and encourages it.”

The Palestinian Authority has a policy of paying stipends to the families of terrorists either in prison or killed in the attacks — a policy that Israel has dubbed “pay to slay.” Its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, rarely speaks out against attacks against Israelis, though he did condemn the kidnapping of the teens.


Soldier lightly injured by shrapnel as thousands protest on Gaza border
An Israeli soldier was lightly injured Friday evening from shrapnel during violent protests in the Gaza Strip. The army said it was not clear whether the shrapnel came from a grenade or a firecracker.

Some 6,000 Palestinians were said to be taking part in the protests. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said 75 Palestinians were injured during clashes with Israeli troops, 42 of them from live fire.

Israeli soldiers captured four Palestinians who crossed into Israel from the Strip armed with a grenade and a knife. The four were arrested shortly after crossing the border and taken in for further questioning, the army said.

The incident came shortly after an incendiary balloon launched from Gaza sparked a fire in the Sdot Hanegev Regional Council and as Palestinians took part in the weekly “March of Return” rallies along the border.

Recent weeks have seen an increase in violence from Gaza, which is ruled by the Hamas terror group.


Iranian judoka allegedly coerced to avoid fight against Israeli seeks asylum
An Iranian judoka who was allegedly pressured into throwing a match to avoid facing off against an Israeli opponent has requested asylum in Germany.

The International Judo Federation confirmed Saeid Mollaei’s asylum request and expressed its backing of him, Radio Farda reported Saturday.

On Thursday, the chairman of the Israel Judo Association said Mollaei was coerced into throwing his semifinal battle against Belgium’s Matthias Casse a day earlier at the World Judo Championship in Tokyo in order to avoid facing Israel’s Sagi Muki in the final. Muki went on to win the championship, becoming the first Israeli man to win a World Championship gold.

In the past Iran has forbidden its athletes from competing against Israelis. In May, the International Judo Federation said it had reached an agreement with Iran to end the boycott, though the head of Iran’s national Olympic committee later denied it.

Mollaei has been accused of faking injuries and intentionally losing fights in the past to avoid facing Muki.

IJA head Moshe Ponti, speaking to Army Radio on Thursday, said that an hour before Wednesday’s semifinals, the Israeli team heard that Mollaei, ranked No. 1 in the world, “intended to continue the contest, even if he had to face Sagi Muki at the final. We heard he’d asked the head of the Iranian judo association to ensure his family was kept safe.”
MEMRI: Unofficial Hamas Fatwa Forbids Independent Jihad Operations By Individuals, Sparks Debate Among Gazan Social Media Users
In the recent weeks there have been a number of attempts by armed Palestinians to penetrate into Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip, which resulted in the killing of the Palestinian operatives by the Israeli security forces. Although neither Hamas nor any of the other Gazan factions officially claimed responsibility for these attempts, they made sure to praise them after the fact, calling them "heroic actions" by "angry young men" who were acting independently.[1] According to Gazan reports, Hamas's "restraining force" is present on the border to prevent such actions,[2] but at the same time the movement uses them as another means to pressure Israel in the indirect negotiations towards a long-term arrangement in Gaza. The Lebanese Al-Akhbar daily reported that Hamas had indirectly informed Israel that it was not behind these actions, yet threatened that the continued economic crisis in Gaza could lead to many further attempts of this kind in the coming period, which it would not be able to prevent.[3]

Following the August 17 attempt by an armed terrorist cell to cross the border into Israel, Gazan Facebook pages and the Hamas-affiliated paldf.net forum circulated a religious ruling (fatwa) by the "Shari'a Committee in the Gaza Strip" prohibiting independent "jihad operations" by individuals unless coordinated with the Gazan armed factions and/or authorized by their commanders. It should be noted that Hamas did not publicize the fatwa on any of its official media platforms, but neither did it renounce the fatwa. This allowed it to maintain an ambiguous position on these actions, in the face of Israeli accusations that it was instigating them and, on the other hand, condemnations from the operatives for restraining them.

There are three possible explanations for the appearance of this fatwa. One is that it serves an actual need, following a deterioration of discipline in the ranks of Hamas. In fact, the organization is reportedly acting to form general frameworks, including a regular army called the Al-Quds Army, and this requires tightening discipline and banning independent operations by individuals. Since Hamas is unable, for ideological reasons, to openly condemn jihad operations, it is trying to convey this understanding by circulating a religious ruling that was clearly issued on its behalf but does not officially bear its seal.

A second explanation may be the Hamas authorities' need to deal with the rising power of other jihadist and/or Salafi groups in Gaza, whose tension with Hamas recently erupted into open clashes.[4] Hamas fears that these groups may attract young members of its ranks who are disappointed with its current level of action and policy of restraint.
Report: Iran Has Stopped Cooperating with Nuclear Weapons Inspections
An upcoming report by the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog organization, known as the International Atomic Energy Agency, includes new language suggesting the Islamic Republic has not been cooperating with international nuclear inspectors who are mandated to provide oversight on the Islamic Republic’s weapons program, according to multiple sources familiar with the contents of the report.

The IAEA’s yet-to-be-published report on the matter began circulating late Friday among reporters and Iran watchers in Washington, D.C., and it is said to show that Iran has stopped adhering to its transparency commitments under the landmark Obama-era nuclear agreement.

Iranian leaders have been warning for months that the country has ended its cooperation surrounding the nuclear portfolio, including efforts by Iran to enrich uranium to levels prohibited under the nuclear deal and necessary for a functional nuclear weapon.

The IAEA’s findings, the contours of which were confirmed by sources to the Washington Free Beacon, are likely to fuel calls by Iran skeptics on Capitol Hill for a full snapback of international sanctions on Iran, which were lifted under the JCPOA, the acronym used for the nuclear deal. This issue is more than likely to come to a head as top Trump administration officials and diplomats from across the globe gather in New York City for the U.N.’s upcoming General Assembly meeting.

New language in IAEA's latest report indicates claims that "ongoing interactions between the Agency and Iran relating to Iran's implementation of its Safeguards Agreement [and] Additional Protocol require full [and] timely cooperation by Iran," according to a portion of the report published Friday by the Institute for Science and International Security, a nuclear watchdog group that routinely has access to such reports. "The Agency [IAEA] continues to pursue this objective with Iran."
Confusion as Turkey Says Iranian Tanker Now Headed to Lebanon
Turkey said on Friday that an Iranian tanker at the center of a confrontation between Washington and Tehran was headed to Lebanon after changing course several times, although Beirut said it was not informed of the plan.

According to Refinitiv tracking data, the Adrian Darya, formerly called Grace 1, made a U-turn on Friday and headed for Turkey’s Iskenderun port — 200 kilometers (124 miles) north of Syria’s Baniyas refinery, the tanker’s suspected original destination.

However, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the tanker, which was carrying 2 million barrels of oil when released at Gibraltar, was headed to “the main port in Lebanon.”

On the sidelines of a forum in Oslo, Cavusoglu told Reuters that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke of the ship’s coordinates with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday. “We are monitoring (the tanker) very closely,” he added.
In Tweet, Trump Says US Not Involved in Iran Satellite Launch Failure, Wishes Tehran Regime ‘Good Luck’ in Determining Cause
US President Donald Trump said on Friday that the United States was not involved with a failed Iranian rocket launch, and he wished Tehran luck at finding out what went wrong.

“The United States of America was not involved in the catastrophic accident during final launch preparations for the Safir SLV Launch at Semnan Launch Site One in Iran,” Trump said on Twitter. “I wish Iran best wishes and good luck in determining what happened at Site One.”

The rocket exploded on its launch pad at a space center in northern Iran on Thursday, an Iranian official said. A US official also said Iran suffered a satellite launch failure.

The US has warned Iran against rocket launches, fearful the technology used to put satellites into orbit could enable Tehran to develop the ballistic missile capability needed to launch nuclear warheads.

Tehran denies the US accusation that such activity is a cover for ballistic missile development.
MEMRI: Saudi Columnists: Homosexuality, Which Is Condoned In The West, Is Repulsive And Contravenes Islam; We Must Defend Our Societies Against It And Impose The Death Penalty On Those Who Engage In It
Several columnists in the Saudi Al-Madina daily have recently written against the phenomenon of homosexuality in the world in general and in Saudi Arabia in particular, noting that Islam forbids it and treats it as an offense punishable by death. They wrote that this practice, which is tolerated in the West and even condoned by Western leaders, goes against nature and threatens to bring humanity to a level lower than that of animals. They also praised the Catholic Church for condemning homosexuality, and one called on all religious organizations in the world, especially Islamic ones, to protect mankind from the "heresy" of homosexuality, which threatens it. Another article also called to sentence homosexuals to death.

The following are excerpts from the articles:
Muhammad Al-Baladi, a columnist for the Al-Madina daily, wrote: "A [recent news] report said that an American grandmother had given birth to her own granddaughter after carrying her in her womb for nine months as a surrogate, so that her homosexual son and his partner could have a child and form an 'alternative' family. Here are the details: Cecile Eledge, aged 61, gave birth to her granddaughter, Uma Louise, in Nebraska, USA, after offering her gay son, Matthew Eledge, to serve as a surrogate for him and his partner, Elliot Dougherty. The egg was donated – and this is not a typo – by her daughter (the baby's aunt), in order to complete the homosexual family [consisting of] a husband, husband and children.

"I apologize to the reader for this nauseating news item, but presenting it was essential in order to clarify the extent of the West's moral absurdity that is threatening the world, and the alarming escalation of [practices] which undermine the divine natural order of creation in favor of homosexual filth that is mounting in the industrialized and civilized world. [This world] is apparently threatening to bring mankind to a level lower than that of animals, for animals naturally abhor many of these acts, which are being performed in the name of personal freedom and human rights. As a matter of fact... I do not know where this horrific moral erosion, headed by the coalition of barbaric capitalism, or [this] immoral practicality that is gradually taking over the world and completely overturning its moral balance, based on perverted standards, is taking us!
RFK assassin Sirhan Sirhan wounded in prison stabbing
Sirhan Sirhan, imprisoned for more than 50 years for the 1968 assassination of US senator Robert F. Kennedy, was hospitalized Friday after being stabbed by a fellow inmate at a San Diego prison.

A statement from the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said the stabbing occurred Friday afternoon at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego.

“Officers responded quickly, and found an inmate with stab wound injuries. He was transported to an outside hospital for medical care, and is currently in stable condition,” the statement said.

The statement did not name Sirhan, but a government source with direct knowledge confirmed to The Associated Press that he was the victim. The source spoke under condition of anonymity, citing prison privacy regulations.

The stabbing was first reported by TMZ.

Corrections officials reported that the alleged attacker has been identified and has been segregated from the rest of the prison population pending an investigation.

Sirhan, a Palestinian born in Jerusalem, was convicted of shooting Kennedy shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, immediately after the New York senator had declared victory in the previous day’s California Democratic presidential primary.
Jeremy Corbyn says Labour peer who signed advertisement protesting Labour antisemitism “lowered himself”
Jeremy Corbyn has responded to a critical advertisement by accusing one of the signatories of having “lowered himself”.

Last month, 67 Labour peers took out a full-page advertisement in the Guardian accusing Mr Corbyn of having “failed the test of leadership” over his handling of antisemitism. The advertisement stated: “The Labour Party welcomes everyone* irrespective of race, creed, age, gender identity, or sexual orientation. (*except, it seems, Jews). This is your legacy, Mr Corbyn.”

Asked by a local Cumbrian newspaper about the endorsement of the advertisement by Lord Liddle, who is also a local councillor in the area, Mr Corbyn said: “I’m very sorry that he lowered himself by putting his name to that advertisement.”

The Labour leader went on to say that “Our party is big, our party is open, our party is diverse — there is no place whatsoever for antisemitism, xenophobia or any other form of racism, not just in my party but in our society. That kind of thing only divides people and weakens us all as a community. Our strength is our diversity.”
Wannbe Labour Candidate's Epic Selection Video
Epic from Tareq, shame he’s a terrorist sympathiser…

He’ll fit right in with Jeremy.
'Diversity' Training for Michigan Teachers Glorified Islam, Bashed Christianity and America
PJ Media's Tyler O'Neil examines a new Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) report showing how Huda Essa---a Dearborn resident and founder of the Michigan-based consultancy Culture Links, L.L.C.---subjected teachers in Michigan's Novi Community Schools District to a 2017 two-day "diversity" training presentation in which "Islam was glorified, Christianity disparaged, and America bashed—all funded by Novi taxpayers."

Among other radical and unfounded claims, Essa alleged that hijab-clad Muslim women in America had been subjected to a relentless onslaught of "Islamophobia," including being spat upon, having hot liquids poured over them, and being beaten and murdered.

In a canard recently invoked by Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, Essa implied that white Christian males are more of a terror threat than Islamist terrorists. She also engaged in Islamic supremacist propaganda that involved denigrating Christianity and Judaism.

Perhaps most disturbing of all, and as summed up by O'Neil, "the Novi school district did not fully vet Essa before her presentation and the district did not have documents showing any sort of investigation to fact-check her presentation. However, the request did reveal that the district paid $5,000 for the presentation. During the past five years, the school district has not forced teachers to take any seminar on Christianity, Judaism, or any other religion — only Islam."
Our cousin the Israeli professor who calls to boycott the Jewish state
Why, my children ask, would our Israeli cousin be a traitor to his own country?

In response, I try to explain about his illness, this most dangerous of hatreds, the eternal self-hate that some Jews have been infected with throughout our history.

But still, it is our family’s scandal, our shanda.

Our cousin, an Israeli professor paid by the taxpayers of Israel, exploits his position as an “expert academician” to tour university campuses throughout the world to accuse Israel of racism and apartheid, and he even publishes articles advocating boycotts of Israel.

And we feel deep shame that our cousin is often quoted in anti-Israel media, such as Al Jazeera and other anti-Jewish publications and websites, where he happily allows those who seek to destroy Israel to use him as evidence of how wicked Israel is, for here is a Jew who “speaks the truth” about the "evil" Jewish state.

At gatherings, the younger family members spit out his name, calling him a traitor to the Jews and his family. But the old men quietly sigh and shake their heads, since they know the very ugly truth.

For the old men share the knowledge that the cousin-professor’s self-hate has nothing to do with his screaming about "justice", or seeking to rectify "wrongs" or eternally protesting for the "underdog."

Rather, with complete certainty and heartbreaking pity, the old men know that the professor is acting out his deep, personal and emotional problems when he strikes out at Israel, since he can never acknowledge the true target of his rage, which is really his family.
Stand With Us: Strongly Condemns Antisemitic Event in Fresno
StandWithUs strongly condemns an antisemitic event taking place at Clovis Community College (CCC) on September 18th. The event is being hosted by a media outlet called GV Wire.

"This event features a speaker notorious for spreading vicious hate and wild conspiracy theories about Jews and Israel," said Roz Rothstein, CEO of StandWithUs. "While CCC may be legally required to allow this event to go forward, GV Wire and the organizations listed as cosponsors have no such obligation. If they do not withdraw support from the event, they will be complicit in promoting antisemitism - an increasingly deadly form of racism."

In addition to GV Wire, organizations listed as supporters of the event include Fresno State University, Fresno City College, Fresno Pacific University, Peace Fresno, Community Alliance Newspaper, and CAIR Central California.

CCC issued a press release, stating that "no organizations shall be denied the use of District facilities because of the content of the speech to be undertaken during the use." However, President Dr. Lori Bennet also said that, "Clovis Community College does not endorse hate speech or anti-Semitic remarks."

The event speaker, Alison Weir, has been widely condemned, even by anti-Israel organizations. Her record includes promotion of medieval antisemitic slurs and conspiracy theories about Jewish power, echoing the antisemitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Australian Antisemitism in Arabic
Farah News and the evil Jews
An Australia-based Arabic-language online news and commentary platform is spreading viciously antisemitic content. An investigation into the Farah NewsOnline website has uncovered articles depicting Jews as an evil force conspiring to subdue humanity, caricatures featuring Nazi propaganda motifs against Israel and conspiracy theories about Zionism as a plot for world domination.

What is Farah News?
Farah News Online (www.farah.net.au) is a news portal publishing in Arabic and English. It is based in Sydney, and was established in December 2008. The website claims it is “managed by a group of qualified people and is updated around the clock.” It contains barely any original content, but rather republishes reports, articles and poems mainly originally published in Middle Eastern media, with some material from Australian sources, such as press releases by the Lebanese Embassy in Canberra, community notices and ads.

Farah News’ mission statement attests to its commitment to “objectivity, moderation and accuracy.” The disclaimer notice also emphasises that the website “does not accept any legal or moral responsibility for what is published on its pages of opinions, articles and comments. What is published [solely] represents the viewpoint of the writer”.

According to an Australian records search, the domain name for the website is registered to Rafic Dehaibi, owner of TPP Wholesale Pty Ltd and the C.H. Stop N Save store in Liverpool, New South Wales.

Website analytics suggest that Farah News is being viewed by up to 250 unique visitors a day, each reading two pages on average (the homepage being one of them). The Facebook page associated with the website is quite popular, with more than 17,000 followers as of August 2019.

Despite the claim on the Farah News website that it has “no relation with any political party or any foreign country”, it does seem to be aligned with Lebanon’s March 14 Alliance movement, which opposes Syrian and Iranian intervention in Lebanese politics, including by the Lebanese Shi’ite terrorist organisation Hezbollah.
Experiencing Antisemitism Firsthand in Scandinavia
In Finland, I realized that antisemitism stems not only from immigrants, as was mainly the case in Sweden, but also from the native Finnish population.

My next-door neighbor — who I later found out belonged to a far-right organization — ran after me with a hammer and knife when he heard me speaking Hebrew. Thankfully, some neighbors were able to restrain him. The police only arrived a half hour later. A few months later, my assailant came before a judge, who ordered him to pay 300 euros in compensation to me. It baffled and frightened me that the Finnish judicial system not only failed to protect me from the attacker, but also allowed him to walk free with practically no consequences.

The extreme right is deeply entrenched in Finnish society and government, and Jews suffer because of this. The Nordic Resistance Movement — a Neo-Nazi organization — marches in the streets, and is growing in popularity. That is why I was not surprised to learn in the news that the Israeli embassy in Helsinki has been attacked at least 15 times in the last 18 months.

I still live in Scandinavia because I believe that things can change for the better. But time is running out. The Finnish and Swedish governments must act immediately and forcefully to combat the terrible antisemitism plaguing those nations, and terrorizing the Jews living there.
Twitter CEO and co-founder’s hacked account tweets racism, pro-Nazi tweet
The account linked to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted a series of mysterious and increasingly racist, antisemitic and Holocaust denying tweets Friday night.

Initial reports indicated it had been hacked.

Despite his pinned tweet claiming that Twitter is committed to increase collective health, openness and civility, the account @jack tweeted the n-word, and that “Hitler is innocent.”

His account also tweeted that Twitter’s headquarters is “blowing up” as well as re-tweeting a tweet saying “Nazi Germany did nothing wrong.” The series of tweets went on for about ten minutes before it appears that staff of someone at Twitter was able to get a hold of the account a little after 4 p.m. EST.

By 4:07 the racist tweets and the re-tweets of antisemitic pro-Nazi tweets had been removed.
Polanski film on Dreyfus divides critics, as director stays away from premiere
Roman Polanski’s “An Officer and a Spy” drew mixed reactions from critics Friday at its Venice premiere, hailed as “handsome and involving” by one but “lacking” by another who said parallels drawn by the director between his life and his art were “obscene.”

The 86-year-old, a fugitive from the US since he was convicted for the statutory rape of a 13-year-old in 1978, did not attend the Venice Film Festival red carpet event for his film about French Jewish army officer Alfred Dreyfus.

But its stars, including “The Artist” Oscar-winner Jean Dujardin and fellow French actor Louis Garrel, cracked smiles as they signed autographs for fans.

Campaigners have said the mired-in-controversy Polanski’s inclusion in the running for the top prize is out of touch in the era of the #MeToo movement.


The Dreyfus affair: The story behind Polanski’s film
The Dreyfus affair, subject of the new Roman Polanski film which is premiering at the Venice Film Festival, triggered a national crisis over anti-Semitism in France in the late 19th century.

Here is an account of the scandal, which had wide international repercussions.

Alfred Dreyfus was a 36-year-old Jewish French army captain, from the Alsace region of eastern France which was at the time occupied by Germany.

He was accused in October 1894 of passing secret information on new artillery equipment to the German military attache.

The accusation was based on a comparison of handwriting on a document found in the German’s waste paper basket in Paris.
On trial

Dreyfus was put on trial, against the background of a virulent anti-Semitic press campaign.

His family tried in vain to defend him and he protested his innocence.

Despite the lack of evidence, he was convicted of treason on December 22, 1894, and sentenced to life imprisonment at the infamous Devil’s Island penal colony in French Guiana and publicly stripped of his rank.

The scandal rocked the assumption that Jews had become an integral part of French life — revealing the depths of anti-Jewish sentiment in the country.
On the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II
The 80th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II is approaching. Today one can regrettably notice how a politicized propaganda campaign sharing equal responsibility for this global catastrophe between both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union is gaining momentum. Its ultimate goal is to slander modern Russia, and doubt the legitimacy of its role in international affairs as one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council.

In order to get an unbiased picture of the true causes and culprits of the bloodiest conflict in human history, I suggest taking a closer look at the period which followed the Munich Agreement on the division of Czechoslovakia, signed by Great Britain, Germany, Italy and France on September 29-30, 1938.

The Munich Agreement marked the climax of the policy of appeasement of Hitler conducted by London and Paris in the 1930s, while increasing the international isolation of the USSR, particularly taking into account all non-aggression pacts signed by both Great Britain and France with Nazi Germany (September 30 and December 6, 1938). Nevertheless, the Soviet government was eager to establish a collective security system in Europe along with the British and French in order to retaliate against Nazi Germany.

Up until the second half of August 1939, trilateral Anglo-Franco-Soviet negotiations were held. The draft agreement proposed by the USSR required immediate military assistance to be provided by Great Britain and France in case of a Nazi attack. However, London and Paris followed their own way. Negotiations were being delayed by endless amendments and farfetched discussions regarding the definition of “indirect” and “direct” German aggression. The breakdown of talks was the eventual result.

Now, 80 years later, one can come to an unambiguous conclusion: These were British and French approaches toward negotiations – considered as a pressure tool to achieve yet another compromise with Germany – which led to such a failure.
When Shoah witnesses are gone...
September 1 marks the 80th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland. Survivors of the Shoah – the Holocaust – are fading rapidly, and very few of those in their 80s or 90s have any clear recollection of what happened to them.

What they know is essentially what was told to them by whoever took care of them as children, or what they discovered later as adults when going through the various search options.

One of the great tragedies – other than the losses of human life and the atrocities to which so many who were murdered and so many who survived were subjected – is that close relatives who lost contact with each other were in many cases convinced that they were the sole survivors of their families, and were separated for decades not knowing of each other’s existence.

In some cases, they actually lived in the same neighborhood in a city far from where they were born, but never bumped into each other until the twilight of their lives, or only discovered that one of them had died when reading a death notice in a newspaper.
Today, with the use of DNA, tracing is easier, but not every survivor knows about it and of those who do, not everyone is willing to undergo a DNA test.

Unlike pre-20th century tragic events in Jewish history, future generations of Jews – thanks to people such as film producer Steven Spielberg and others like him in different parts of the world – will not have to rely on historical “facts” in the eyes of a handful of beholders such as, for example, Josephus.
Auction in NYC to feature Torah Ark made by American soldiers during WWII
Guernsey’s Auction House will host auction featuring a Torah Ark made by American Soldiers for refugees of the Krumbach displaced persons camp in Germany.

The auction will take place on September 19, 2019 at the 5th Avenue Synagogue in NYC.

This Ark may have facilitated some the first organized prayer services in Europe after WWII, and its sale is made to help a museum in Brooklyn that feeds the homeless.

Other items on sale during the auction include letters from, and a self-portrait of, Marc Chagall. As well as letters drafts and comment on Israel's constitution with signatures original to Golda Meir, David Ben-Gurion, and Moshe Dayan



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The most problematic part of this video is perhaps not the attack itself, but that UNIFIL kept it under wraps.


Exclusive video obtained by Fox News shows a peacekeeping patrol under attack by the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hezbollah. An intelligence source confirmed to Fox News the Iranian proxy force was behind the attack.

While the U.N. described the attack in a report, the video and the ensuing chaos following the ambush show how dangerous Hezbollah has made the situation for UNIFIL, or the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.

The video shows groups of men block off the convoy with their cars. Once blocked off several men set upon the vehicles, trying to break in through the windows with hammers and stones.

At one stage, gasoline is poured over the second U.N. armored vehicle and then lit on fire. As it burns one peacekeeper leaves the vehicle while being accosted by the men. Another peacekeeper comes running out from behind the lead armored vehicle with his gun drawn, only to retreat. Another peacekeeper leaves the APV, surrendering his weapon to the terrorists. Men carrying automatic weapons can be seen during the melee.
By not letting anyone know, UNIFIL is essentially protecting Hezbollah - a terror group.

(h/t Irene)



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.

Friday, August 30, 2019

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Puncturing the big lie of Palestinian identity
Nazmi al Jubeh, an associate professor of history and archaeology at Birzeit University outside Ramallah, told a UN conference last June that there was no evidence linking the Jews to Jerusalem.

Thus far, so predictably mendacious. But thanks to the Elder of Zion website, a piece has now surfaced written by al Jubeh in 2006 in which he demolished the myth of Palestinian identity and made plain that it was invented solely to destroy Zionism and Israel.

Not that he acknowledged the Jews’ own history in the land. He made correct but passing reference to the Romans renaming Judea as “Palestina” in order “to challenge the memory of the Jews” after the Romans put down “the Jewish rebellion.”

Yet he didn’t provide the context for this by explaining that the Romans had crushed the Jewish kingdom, which had existed for centuries before being conquered in turn by successive waves of colonial invaders.

Instead, he claimed that the “Palestinian Jews, an essential component of the Palestinian people, started at the beginning of the twentieth century to identify themselves with the Zionist movement, thus separating themselves from the rest of their own people … ”

Despite this egregious and absurd falsification of Jewish history, the striking element of al Jubeh’s account is his admission of what we know to be objectively true – that, from the earliest times, there was no Palestinian identity.

Myth: Palestine was heavily populated with Arabs before the Zionists arrived.
For many centuries, Palestine was a sparsely populated, poorly cultivated, and widely neglected expanse of eroded hills, sandy deserts, and malarial marshes. This was Mark Twain’s description when he visited in 1867:

A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds—a silent mournful expanse.

A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action?.?.?.?We never saw a human being on the whole route.

There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of the worthless soil, had almost deserted the country (Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (London, 1881).

As late as 1880, the American consul in Jerusalem reported the area was continuing its historic decline. “The population and wealth of Palestine has not increased during the last forty years,” he said (Melvin Urofsky, American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust (Bison Books: 1995), p. 29).

Take a look at some of the photos from the late 19th and early 20th century to see the desolation Twain talked about:
To European Leaders, Jewish Flesh Is Cheap
The Oslo Accords were based on the illusion that the PLO could totally change and suddenly become a "partner for peace"... It soon became clear that the Palestinian Authority was still the PLO: terrorist attacks quickly multiplied. The money received by the Palestinian Authority was used to continue incitement to murder and payments to incentivize it.

In 1967, a change of strategy took place. No one, the PLO decided, would speak of a "war for the destruction of Israel". Instead, they would call it a "war of national liberation". From then on, the PLO was presented as a "liberation movement".

Arabs who had left Israel in 1948-49, many of whom remained in refugee camps, were defined as the "Palestinian people"; in this way were the Palestinian people invented. As PLO Executive Council member Zuheir Mohsen said in 1977: "The Palestinian people does not exist... Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people..."

The leaders of the Palestinian Authority have, in fact, never stopped resorting to "armed struggle", the name they give to terrorism and murdering Jews. To "frustrate all the schemes of Zionism", they invented the Palestinian people; their "struggle for national liberation" gave them international recognition. By renaming terrorism and murdering Jews "armed struggle", they made their use of terrorism and murder acceptable. By signing the Oslo Accords, they could appear interested in peace without having to renounce terrorism. They could even demonize Israel and give it the image of a barbaric and cruel country while continuing to murder Jews.

"If you look at history... what ends conflicts is one side giving up.... and then it's over.... in World War II, [the Germans] were forced to give up... and note how much they benefited by giving up." -- Daniel Pipes, historian, November 19, 2017.

No U.S. president had ever told Palestinian leaders that they were lying, or had required them to stop inciting murder and financing terrorism, and no U.S. president had ever decided to cut funding for the Palestinian Authority as long as it continued to incentivize terrorism. President Donald J. Trump did.



No One Cares About Attacks Against The Orthodox Because You’ve Been Dehumanizing Us For Decades
You’ve all heard the story: A Haredi Jew violently assaulted in broad daylight somewhere in New York City. It happens so often now, with what is almost a chilling regularity, it’s virtually impossible to miss. According to the NYPD, anti-Semitic hate crimes have skyrocketed in the past year; the 145 complaints so far in 2019 alone are sharply up from 88 in that same time frame a year earlier — a year which itself saw a 22% increase from 2017.

As Tablet Magazine’s Armin Rosen put it so pithily, “Everyone Knows.” And yet, as Forward Life editor Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt pointed out yesterday, nobody cares.

After every attack, the same playbook repeats itself: The perfunctory condemnations from elected officials roll in and out, barely stopping for a moment to take a breath. It’s better than nothing, I suppose, but not much better.

Why does no one care? Because the past few decades have seen a steady increase in the otherization of Orthodox Jews, to the point where we are being attacked with bricks and no one cares.

The replies to Chizhik-Goldschmidt’s article on Twitter were instructive. So many were filled with people — other Jews — blaming Orthodox Jews for what has been happening to us. A friend — not Orthodox — texted me in shock at the replies. I was not shocked. I got some of that same treatment last night when I shared an utterly offensive video the Republican Party of Rockland County posted to their Facebook page, which portrayed Orthodox Jews as an invading host that is threatening the good white folks of Rockland. It’s your fault that people hate you.

No other minority group in this country would be subjected to this sort of rhetorical abuse — to say nothing of the violent attacks — and see the same sort of wholesale hand-waving we see when Orthodox Jews are abused.

But it doesn’t start with physical violence. It starts when people deliberately otherize Haredi Jews in pursuit of whatever their agenda happens to be. The Rockland County issue is perhaps most overt, but similar situations are playing out further upstate, in Kiryas Joel and Chester, and in New Jersey towns bordering Lakewood where I live. In each of these instances, Jews are portrayed as greedy developers, outsiders who want to “invade” these towns, with misinformation about their supposedly nefarious plans spread via Facebook pages which do more than just dabble in overt anti-Semitism.




New York Police Pledge Increased Patrols in Crown Heights Section of Brooklyn Following Latest Assault on Jewish Man
Police officers in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn pledged to “step up” their patrols on Friday following the second violent attack on a visibly Orthodox Jewish man this week.

Brooklyn North Police Chief Jeffrey Maddrey told Chanina Sperlin of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council (CHJCC) that he will be sending extra patrols to the neighborhood in response to the recent uptick in crime, local Jewish website COL Live reported.

The website also quoted Inspector John Buttacavoli — commanding officer of the New York Police Department’s 77th Precinct — saying the NYPD will increase patrols in the area, as the spate of assaults on Orthodox Jews over the last year has shown few signs of abating.

The latest attack occurred on Thursday afternoon. A delivery truck driven by an Orthodox Jewish man was being held up in traffic when a group of African American youths approached the vehicle and threw a stone through the glass of the driver-side window. The rock hit the Jewish man in the eye, and he sustained cuts to his face. He later filed a report with the NYPD.

The incident is now being investigated by the NYPD Hate Crime Unit. It followed Tuesday’s assault by a lone African American male on 63-year-old Rabbi Abraham Gopin, who fought off his brick-wielding assailant and sustained several injuries in the process.


Truth? That’s What the Slaveholders Say!
In an August 29 Washington Post op-ed, the journalist Eve Fairbanks goes after the arguments of a group she calls “reasonable right.” By reasonable, she means unreasonable. And by right, she means closet racists.

Neither Fairbanks nor the Post’s fact-checkers can be bothered even to verify that the objects of her smear are, you know, conservatives. For example, she gives us Jonathan Haidt, co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind. Haidt is a self-identified, and seemingly actual, centrist. Then there’s Sam Harris, the militant, and by no means conservative, atheist. But that doesn’t matter because Fairbanks is simply using the term “conservative” to apply to anyone with the gall to criticize left-wing intolerance. The individuals she names—from Haidt to Harris to Bari Weiss of the New York Times—have nothing in common apart from the opinion that freedoms of speech and thought should be defended against efforts to curtail them.

That’s the problem for Fairbanks, you see, because one of the arguments that Southern slaveholders made was that the North was infringing on their freedom of speech and thought. Advocates for slavery, she explains, “anointed themselves the defenders of ‘reason,’ ‘free speech’ and ‘civility.’” Get it? By her bizarre logic, while advocates of free speech and thought aren’t slaveholders, per se, they sure are slaveholderish.

There’s not much more to Fairbanks’s disgraceful argument than that, and in truth, it all goes the other way around. As Nadine Strossen has observed, the claim that certain speech should be suppressed because it inflicts “emotional injury” was made by slavery defender John C. Calhoun. Free speech advocates often point out that abolitionists like Frederick Douglass were on their side of the argument, whereas the proslavery crowd, where it could, made anti-slavery speech a crime.

Strossen is right. Once you adopt, in the hope of suppressing speech you consider unjust, the argument that emotional hurt can be grounds for suppressing speech, you’ve got nothing to say when the same argument is made to suppress speech you consider just. The resemblance between Calhoun’s argument and arguments made by some of today’s speech restrictionists is more than an interesting echo. Unlike Fairbanks’s claim.
Watch - Yair Netanyahu to Germany: Stop Funding Anti-Israel NGOs
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son Yair has called on Germany to immediately stop its “outrageous” policy of providing funds to radical Israeli and Palestinian NGOs that are bent on bringing an “end to the Jewish state” and making Israelis feel as if Germany sees the Jewish state as its “colony.”

“For some reason the German government, the ministry of foreign affairs and especially the German ministry of economic cooperation (BMZ) are funding hundreds of radical NGOs and foundations in Israel that work tirelessly to destabilize the country,” the younger Netanyahu said at a speech to a Christian audience in Stuttgart, Germany earlier this month (video above).

“These organizations are openly anti-Zionist, anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, anarchists and pro-Palestinian,” he added.

He noted that Germany was also funding radical organizations tied to the Palestinian Authority that support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

Netanyahu told his pro-Israel audience that the number one way they can help the Jewish state is to put pressure on the German government to stop using public money to fund these NGOs.


Overwhelmingly, U.S. Jews Support Israel and Vote Democratic
For several years, numerous newspaper and magazine articles and even entire books have been devoted to the theme of a growing divide between Israel and American Jewry. Yet U.S. Jews overwhelmingly tell pollsters that they support the Jewish state. Frank Newport takes a close look at the results of several different surveys:

My recent review of the available data shows that about nine in ten American Jews are more sympathetic to Israel than to the Palestinians, compared with about six in ten of all Americans. Additionally, 95 percent of Jews have favorable views of Israel, while 10 percent have favorable views of the Palestinian Authority—[making Jews] significantly more pro-Israel than the overall national averages of 71 percent having favorable views of Israel and 21 percent views of the Palestinian Authority.

Research conducted in 2013 by the Pew Research Center showed that 76 percent of Jews (identified by religion) said they were at least somewhat emotionally attached to Israel. In addition, almost half said that caring about Israel is an essential part of being Jewish, with most of the rest saying it is important although not essential, and nearly half reporting that they had personally traveled to Israel.


Nonetheless, Jews’ longstanding loyalty to the Democratic party remains unchanged:

The clear majority of Jewish Americans identify with or lean toward the Democratic party, and we find no evidence that this has changed significantly during the Trump administration so far. Donald Trump took office in January 2017, and Gallup’s aggregated surveys conducted from February through December of that year show that 68 percent of Jews identified as Democratic or as independents who leaned toward the Democratic party, while 28 percent identified as or leaned Republican.The clear majority of Jewish Americans identify with or lean toward the Democratic party, and we find no evidence that this has changed significantly during the Trump administration so far. Donald Trump took office in January 2017, and Gallup’s aggregated surveys conducted from February through December of that year show that 68 percent of Jews identified as Democratic or as independents who leaned toward the Democratic party, while 28 percent identified as or leaned Republican.


'We need people to stand up against the Hamas wing of Congress'
Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle campaigned Wednesday for North Carolina State Sen. Dan Bishop, RealClear Politics reported.

Bishop is the Republican nominee for the Ninth Congressional District special election, scheduled for September 10.

At the event, Trump. Jr. Said: "We need guys like Dan in Congress, people who are willing to stand up to that, not people like he's running against who are getting support from what I call 'the Hamas wing of Congress.' And the Squad."

The Squad is a group of freshmen Democratic congresswomen, who are all considered to be "women of color."

"People like he’s running against who are getting support from what I call 'the Hamas wing of Congress," WFAE 90.7 quoted him as saying. "And the Squad. No, no… think about it…[they are] perpetuating socialist values and policies."

"It's a winning track record that we need to perpetuate. It’s why we need more people who are willing to fight. It’s why we need you out there fighting for Dan."
Census Bureau abruptly ends just-announced partnership with Muslim advocacy group CAIR
The Commerce Department on Thursday terminated its just-announced planned partnership with the nation's largest Muslim advocacy group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, after Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight" asked about the arrangement -- given CAIR's reported ties to the terrorist group Hamas, and its repeated attacks on the president.

"Based on further review, the Census Bureau is no longer partnering with CAIR," the Commerce Department said in a statement to "Tucker."

The plan, according to the group, was to enhance outreach efforts to Muslims using CAIR's network of local offices. The census, conducted once a decade, has been used not only to determine congressional apportionment, but also as a critical planning tool for state, local and federal agencies.

However, CAIR and the Trump administration would have been strange bedfellows -- and tension in the relationship was evident earlier Thursday. Reached by Fox News prior to the Census Bureau's decision, CAIR openly derided the Trump administration as "white supremacist" despite the partnership.

"The Census Bureau, like CAIR, is nonpartisan," the organization said. "CAIR is not receiving any government funding as part of this project to promote Muslim participation in the U.S. census. We continue to believe that President Trump and his administration promote a white supremacist, anti-immigrant and Islamophobic agenda."
President of NAACP chapter blames 'Jewish media' for portraying him as anti-Semitic
Jeffrey Dye, the president of the Passaic's chapter of the NAACP, blamed the "Jewish media" for getting him fired from his job at the New Jersey Labor Department after it was revealed he had a history of controversial comments on his Facebook page.

"Ok To Everyone Looking At This Racist Bullshit I Want You To Be Clear, The Statement ( 'I Don’t Talk To F--king Jews' ) Is Simply A Lie By David Wallstien Who Is A Jewish Reporter For The New Jersey Globe," Dye said in a Facebook post Wednesday. Dye also blamed another Jewish Assemblyman, Gary Schaer, of trying to get the "Jewish Media" to fire him.

Schaer, a political ally of Gov. Phil Murphy, said Murphy had made a mistake in hiring Dye in the first place. "His election was at best unfortunate. He is divisive," Schaer said. "He has not bordered but well-surpassed anti-Semitism. He has also made comments that were anti-Latino and anti-White."

Dye was fired last week from his job at the labor department after anti-Semitic and racist statements on Facebook were exposed by the New Jersey Globe. When confronted by a reporter about his posts, Dye responded "I don't talk to f---ing Jews." "Get the f--k out of here," he added in a brief phone interview.
Will 2020 Democratic Platform Trash Israel?
If one were to look at the 2008 Democratic Platform, it would be hard to see much of a difference from the Republican Platform regarding Israel. Both parties considered Israel a strong ally and backed Israeli positions.

But Obama made a strategic pivot away from Israel running as an incumbent in 2012. With the blessing of left-wing groups like J Street, the Democratic Party officially changed courseon several key issues:
- Refugees. Until 2012, the Democrats agreed with Republicans that Palestinian refugees would find a home in a new state of Palestine, not Israel.
- Hamas. Until 2012, Democrats agreed that Hamas should be isolated until it renounced terror and recognized Israel’s basic right to exist.
- Borders. Until Obama, Democrats agreed with Republicans that a new Palestinian state would NOT be established along the 1949 Armistice Lines, but reflect current realities and need to ensure Israel’s security.
- Jerusalem. Until Obama, the Democrats and Republicans agreed that Jerusalem would remain a united city and the capital of Israel.

Those points – with the exception of Jerusalem which was bitterly contested on the convention floor – would disappear from the 2012 Democratic platform.

Years before Donald Trump considered running for president and the rise of the alt-left, the Democratic Party pulled back from supporting Israel’s position regarding establishing peace with the Arab world.


How to Visit Israel as a Muslim Woman
With the BDS drama and the Al-Quds Day charade, the Left aligning themselves with the Islamists have made a platform of nothing but antisemitism, and the two Congresswomen are key players in this regard. Their remarks about the Jewish community as a whole are offensive, inflammatory and hateful.

As a Muslim woman who has been to Israel a dozen times, let me tell them how it’s done. I fully support Israel’s right to exist with Jerusalem as its capital and the right of the Jewish people to be free from orchestrated antisemitic attacks.

In my travels to Israel, I go with an open mind and no pre-conceived notions. I’m well aware of the problems, and I’ve met and spoken to people from both sides of the equation. I’ve met policy-makers, activists and ordinary citizens and heard their stories. It always amazes me how critical Israelis can sometimes be about their own government, but this is what a democracy is all about.

So I invite Omar and Tlaib to come with me. I will show them what Israel stands for and the beauty of the Israeli people.

Please feel free to contact me any time.
EU's product labeling is skewed
Those lines had no real legitimacy and now for the EU to retroactively demand that the territory gained in the 1967 Six-Day War should not have the same status as territory gained in the 1948 War of Independence (that is, by demanding, as it were, Israel go back to those lines without peace or other final status arrangements), is not only unfair and wrong but quite prejudicially discriminatory.

Jordan, invading Israel in June 1967, effectively put an end to the legitimacy of those lines. To sanctify, as it were, the “pre-1967 borders” is an act of nonsense.

Now, between you and me, everyone knows that Israel has extended its administrative rule to those regions of the Land of Israel that were under British Mandate rule until 1948, a rule quite legal and internationally recognized. That is the meaning of “belligerent occupation,” that is, as the result of military engagement. Israel, in an act of self-defense, thwarted the intentions of the invaders and assumed administration over Judea and Samaria, as well as Gaza. Judea and Samaria are the heartland of the homeland.

Those regions were geographically part of the area of “historic Palestine” that the League of Nations awarded to the Jewish people to, among other purposes, "encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish Agency, referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews, on the land, including state lands and wastelands."

From 1922 until 1967, no recognized country or state legally ruled those areas except the Mandate. Jordan was an illegal occupier. In Hebrew, Mandatory Palestine was translated as “Land of Israel.”

All this leaves us with a simple solution for the requirement of the EU to note the origin of the product: the Land of Israel.
Kentucky Governor Signs Bill to Block BDS Movement
Gov. Matt Bevin signed Senate Bill 143, a law which will allow the Commonwealth to refuse to do business with companies that boycott other countries with which Kentucky has open trade, into law Tuesday.

The bill was supported by local Jewish leaders who say it will prevent openly antisemitic businesses from operating in the state.

Bevin was joined by Congressman Andy Barr, Rabbi Shlomo Litvin of Chabad of the Bluegrass and Kentucky State Senate President Robert Stivers as he signed SB143. The bill was born from an executive order aimed at companies engaged in the Boycott-Divest-Sanctions movement.

The BDS movement is a Palestinian led boycott of companies that support Israel.

The bill was sponsored by Stivers and senate majority whip Mike Wilson. The legislation does not specifically mention Israel, but rather states that Kentucky can terminate a contract if the company boycotts a person or entity with whom the state has open trade.

Members of the Jewish communities across the state gathered to participate.
Jewish socialist philosopher who met with Hamas is running for president
A Jewish socialist philosopher who met with the leader of Hamas is running for president.

On Wednesday, Jerome Segal announced that he would run as the nominee of the Bread and Roses Party he founded last year. The party supports wealth redistribution, as well as guaranteed employment and income.

Segal, 75, is cleared to appear on the 2020 ballot in Maryland, where he lives, and is hoping to qualify in other states.

He told the Washington Post that he does not “have any fantasies about actually being president” but wants to add “something to the current political discourse that is lacking.”

Segal is an outspoken critic of Israel’s right-wing government and has met with leaders of various Palestinian groups, including the Palestine Liberation Organization and Hamas.

The PLO even took a significant portion of its 1988 declaration of independence from an op-ed he penned in the eastern Jerusalem daily Al-Kuds.

In 1989, Segal founded the Jewish Peace Lobby as a dovish alternative to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Ofcom orders Starz television channel to apologise for broadcasting “highly offensive and antisemitic” caricature
The broadcasting regulator, the Office of Communications (Ofcom), has published their sanction decision in relation to Starz, a UK satellite TV channel, for broadcasting an antisemitic caricature.

After an investigation, Ofcom concluded that this is a serious breach of the UK Code of Broadcast Advertising and has issued a sanction.

According to the decision published by Ofcom: “On 11 March 2018 at 14:30 Starz broadcasted an image submitted by a viewer alongside a music video. It depicted a cartoon caricature of a Jewish person which conformed to racist stereotypes. In Ofcom’s view, the image, which could be found on various neo-Nazi websites, was likely to have been interpreted by viewers as being highly offensive and antisemitic. Over the next 51 minutes, the image was repeatedly reshown in rotation with photographs submitted by other viewers.” The image was shown 22 times and in total for seven minutes and five seconds.

The image depicted a cartoon caricature of a man with a large hooked nose, wearing a Jewish skullcap or “kippah” and a prayer shawl or “tallit” bearing a blue Star of David. The caricature was set against a backdrop of gold coins, with the man smiling widely and his hands flat against his cheeks framing his open mouth. Antisemitic caricatures often portray Jews as having large noses and being obsessed with money.
NY Times Corrects on BDS: It’s Not Merely Anti-occupation
After corresponding with CAMERA staff, the New York Times corrected a story that had falsely characterized the BDS campaign as seeking only an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank.

The Aug. 21 article had claimed BDS, an anti-Israel boycott, divest, and sanction campaign, “advocates cutting ties with Israel until it ends its occupation of the West Bank.”

BDS, which targets Israelis for boycott but has also taken aim at non-Israel Jews, seeks to impose a range of demands that, according both to proponents and opponents of the campaign, would lead to the destruction of Israel.

The New York Times correction, published in print on Aug. 29, removed the passage casting BDS as merely anti-occupation and replaced it with language that, though less precise, is more accurate:
An earlier version of this article referred incompletely to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. It is an organization that promotes strong advocacy for Palestinian interests and hostility to the policies of the Israeli government.

The correction is an imperfect improvement. The paper has a long history of mischaracterizing BDS by downplaying its extreme goals and suggesting it seeks only to influence Israeli policy in the West Bank. For editors to now acknowledge BDS isn’t just an anti-occupation group is an important step, and will hopefully lead to more complete and informative descriptions of the campaign in the future. (That said, readers should have been informed that the campaign isn’t just hostile to the policies of this Israeli government, as the correction put it, but to the Jewish state’s very existence.)
BBC World Service radio’s OS promotes narrative over fact
In the video former IDF chief military prosecutor Maurice Hirsch clarified that the claims that teenagers had been asked to sign confessions “they couldn’t understand” is not true. That information was not communicated to listeners to this programme and as we see, Megha Mohan chose to repeat those unsubstantiated allegations anyway.

The BBC is clearly very keen to widely promote this report to its audiences even though it is based entirely on claims that the BBC has obviously not been able to independently verify made by a handful of teenagers convicted of acts of violence whom it is quite possible were put in contact with the BBC by the political NGO Addameer whose director was featured in the video.

But the BBC evidently has no intention of allowing facts to get in the way of the political narrative to which Yousef Eldin and Megha Mohan have self-conscripted.
Building Holocaust Memorials in Europe is No Substitute for Fighting Anti-Semitism
Nearly every country in Europe has memorials to the Holocaust; its history is frequently evoked, or alluded to, by politicians and intellectuals. But while it is often taken as a given that commemoration of, and education about, the Shoah can inoculate against anti-Semitism, the continent’s recent experience suggests otherwise, as the Economist columnist writing under the name Charlemagne writes.

A poll by the European Union of 16,000 Jews in twelve member states found that 89 percent thought anti-Semitism had risen in the past five years, and that one in three had experienced harassment in the past year. Sometimes resurgent anti-Semitism is violent and proud, as with the beating with a belt of two men wearing skullcaps in Berlin last spring. Elsewhere it wears a mask of false innocence. . . . The leaders of Britain’s Labor party have for years tolerated anti-Semitism in the ranks. All this in a continent awash with memorials of what happens when one turns a blind eye to bigotry.

There are two possible conclusions to draw. One is that Europe’s commemorations of the Holocaust simply need to be bigger. But ten minutes by cab from the site of last year’s belt-beating in Berlin is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a sea of gravestone-like pillars taking up an entire city block. If prominence were the key, this should curb the attacks. The more awkward conclusion is that memorials are not enough—that, read wrongly, they can imply that anti-Semitism belongs only to the past, and engender complacency about the present.

Law enforcement must crack down systematically on anti-Semitic crimes. Leaders must shun politicians who blur the boundaries between mainstream politics and anti-Semitic filth. . . . [T]he past cannot merely be contained by designated places of memory. It seethes and writhes insistently, barely below the surface of everyday life. To learn the lessons, that surface must be broken.
Germany makes citizenship easier for descendants of refugees from Nazis
Germany will on Friday enforce two decrees to make it easier for people, mainly Jews, who fled the Nazi regime because of persecution as well as their descendents to have their citizenship restored, the interior ministry said.

The move follows a campaign by descendents of refugees from Nazi Germany who are angry that their applications for citizenship have been rejected despite constitutional guarantees.

Britain's 2016 Brexit referendum triggered a jump in applications from the descendents of people who fled there between 1933 and 1945.

"Germany must live up to its historical responsibilities," said Interior Minister Horst Seehofer in a statement, adding that he wanted to help people whose parents or grandparents had to flee.

"With the legal degrees which come into force tomorrow, we will create a swift ruling that is immediately valid for these people to get German citizenship," he added.

Article 116 (2) of Germany's Basic Law states that former German citizens who between 1933 and 1945 were deprived of their citizenship on political, racial or religious grounds and their descendents can have their citizenship restored.

However, the "Article 116 Exclusions Group" represents more than 100 people, mostly of Jewish descent, who have had applications rejected or been told they are not eligible to apply.
Muslim Woman Poking Fun at Notion of Israeli Apartheid
Sarah Zoabi, who says she’s a “proud Arab, Muslim, Zionist Israeli,” happens to also have a great sense of humor. When Boomerang Fighting for Israel asked her to comment on news and social media accusations of Israel being an “apartheid state,” she invited us to follow her around several Israeli locations where she was the only recognizable Muslim woman, complete with her modest burqa and her thick, Arab accent, and try to catch Israeli Jews treating her as anything less than an equal.

Sarah went into Jewish restaurants and stores, walked around on the streets, struck up conversations with complete strangers, and finally stopped her car on the side of the highway, lifted the hood and asked for help.

Wherever she went, she was treated with respect, even friendliness. At one point, after borrowing a Jewish shopkeeper’s phone, she told him not to be concerned if he gets a call from someone with an Arab accent – he’s family.

Naturally, Israeli motorists gladly stopped next to her car on the side of the highway to fill up her radiator with water.

We won’t lie to you, Sarah Zoabi, whose cousin is the vehemently anti-Semitic Haneen Zoabi, is not very popular in her Israeli Arab society. She has been shunned by family members, received death threats and even beatings. But she appears to be unafraid, and her son Mohammed, who is a young adult now, is as fierce as his mother in voicing his support for the state of Israel.
I embrace my Israeli Arab identity
Television host Yaron London's comments about Arab culture [earlier this week, the TV veteran referred to Arabs as "wild men" and called Arab culture "a failure"] spoke to a truth with which we are all familiar. It's not just me saying it – Arabs say it all the time, all over the world. If you ask any one of them during a casual conversation, even the biggest hater of Israel will tell you honestly that they prefer a conflict with Jews to a conflict with other Arabs, which would naturally result in brutal, unchecked bloodshed. The Arab citizens of Israel will admit that they prefer the Israeli government to an Arab one, even if from their comfortable positions at Israeli universities they prefer to call it "the occupation."

I'm not thrilled to agree with London – if only I could tear down his remarks. If only I could feel pride in and a connection to Arab culture without any hesitation. My "Arabness," the language, the music, and the tradition, are an inseparable part of my identity, and I would like to be proud of and feel connected to them.

But I, and I'm saying this carefully, feel shame. The Arab world, starting with its governments that are tainted by corruption and tribal alliances and including the man in the street, who exists on a basis of ignorance and violence, does not attempt to keep any of this a secret. Anyone with eyes in their head can point out these flaws, which should be addressed by a fundamental reform in thinking. You don't need to be an intellectual or a seasoned TV personality to understand that.

So I embrace my Israeli identity: I am an Israeli Arab because it's important to me to distinguish myself from the wider Arab culture. It's important to me to turn my back on what is happening in Syria and what happened in Lebanon and the story of Egypt's tragic fall. Because when I'm Israeli – I can feel proud sometimes.
KISS’ Gene Simmons Makes A Very Controversial Statement About The Middle-East
The famous Israel supporter and well-known social media account, Stand With Us posted a new photo on Twitter and shared the thoughts of Gene Simmons, who is an Israeli – American Rock music legend about the Middle-East.

Here are Gene’s words about it:

“Israel is an astonishing little place, even though there are very few people in it.

The Middle East needs Israel to exist.”


Yesterday, Paul Stanley posted a really tear-inducing photo with his long-time buddy and bandmate, Gene Simmons.




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