02/03 Links Pt2: Diaspora Jews lose the moral plot; Ayaan Hirsi Ali SLAMS Women's March Organizer ~ EoZ

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Diaspora Jews lose the moral plot

The Diaspora Jewish world is terrified of asserting Jewish uniqueness and difference from everyone else.
Jews can and should make common cause with Muslims who really do reject not only Islamist extremism but also Jew-hatred. The problem, though, is that some Jewish leaders refuse to discriminate against Muslims who do not.
The chief rabbi, who said in 2015 that his visit to a refugee camp in Greece made him think of Auschwitz (even though he was advised to conceal his kippa in case it enraged the camp’s residents) has urged Britain and Europe to open their doors to more refugees.
But surveys suggest that some 13% of Syrian refugees support ISIS while 82% think it was created by the United States and its “allies” – in other words, Israel.
So the call by Jewish leaders to admit more Syrian refugees means importing many more who hate the West and hate Jews.
The demonization of those who take any action at all against Muslims to protect people against Islamist terrorism has become a collective madness which undermines the security of the West.
It is deeply troubling that so many Diaspora Jews can’t see they have put themselves on the wrong side of the most dangerous issue facing the free world.

The Palestinian narrative

In response to the Amona eviction, Abd Rahman Abu Salah, council head of the Palestinian village of Silwad managed to capture, in a few simple words, the essence of the 120-year-old Palestinian narrative. According to him, Amona's evictees should return to Europe, where they came from. To dispel any doubts, he did not mean just those 40 families that lived in Amona.
He, just like the late Jerusalem Grand Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, is working to eliminate the Jewish entity in Israel and return all of us to Europe, where 6 million Jews were annihilated.
Make no mistake, the Israel-hating Palestinians do not only intend to deport right-wingers. Members of leftist organizations, who, using foreign funding, aid the Palestinians to expel Jews from their homes and to harm Israeli soldiers standing guard to defend their country, are also being targeted. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

'Fake Feminist': Islam Critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali SLAMS Women's March Organizer

On Wednesday, Islam critic and human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali called out "fake feminist" and "defender of Sharia" Linda Sarsour, executive director of the Arab American Association of New York and organizer of the January 21 Women's March on Washington.
Ali, who was tragically a victim of female genital mutilation (FGM), was viciously threatened with violence and told she didn't "deserve to be a woman" by Sarsour in a vile resurfaced tweet:

Sarsour, a defender of Sharia Law, was not only a co-chair of the "feminist" march; the Women's March officially backed her after being confronted with the tweet.
Ali finally had an opportunity to respond while speaking with Fox News host Martha MacCallum on Wednesday night, where she slammed Sarsour's "fake" feminism and asked why these women at the march haven't activated to march against "mass rape," attacks on religious minority Yazidi women, mass gendercide in China or for the victims of FGM, which she rightfully categorized as being part of the "real war on women."

Syrian Refugees Are the New Jews. So Who Are the Nazis?

For the last week, protestors have been filling American airports from JFK to LAX, demonstrating against President Donald Trump’s “Muslim Ban”—the executive order that in fact suspends for 90 days the issuance of visas to seven countries that are either major state sponsors of terror, or failed states without functioning governments where terror groups like ISIS, Al-Qaida, and their various off-shoots are flourishing. But the EO also suspends indefinitely the issuance of visas for Syrian refugees. And the opinion of protesters, as well as much of the press, is that Syrian refugees are like the Jews—fleeing genocide in search of safe shores: How can we have forgotten the past so completely that we deny entry to those whose suffering and want must serve as a reminder of our past failures to protect others, like the Jews that America so coldly turned away in the 1930s and 1940s?
In December, my Tablet colleague James Kirchick warned that “invoking the Holocaust for contemporary political debates is an inherently tricky business.” Nonetheless, it’s become the consensus take in the media, as seen with The Washington Post, Politico, Cokie Roberts on “Morning Joe,” and, of course, The New York Times, including a signature Nicholas Kristof column arguing that “Anne Frank Today Is a Syrian Girl.”
Former President Barack Obama may have been among the first to make the comparison. In a December 2015 address to newly minted American citizens, Obama said: “In the Syrian seeking refuge today, we should see the Jewish refugee of World War II.” Obama’s conviction that the suffering of Syrian refugees is directly similar to that of Europe’s Jews is perhaps why he appointed his former top lieutenant Ben Rhodes to the Holocaust Memorial Council, responsible for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Maybe Rhodes will ensure that the Museum commemorates the trials of the Syrian people, a people who suffered, as the Jews suffered at the hands of the Nazis, at the hands of…
Wait, at whose hands did the Syrian people suffer something like genocide? If they are like European Jews fleeing the Nazis, then who are the Nazis? In the various articles, statements, tweets, Facebook posts making explicit comparisons between Syrian refugees and Jewish refugees, no one, it seems, has bothered to identify the agents responsible for the murder, suffering, and dislocation of so many Syrians. So where are the Nazis? Who are they?

German government’s Turkish partner organisation ‘Jews are cannibals, Christmas is blasphemy’

Anti-Semitic and anti-Christian slurs posted on the Facebook pages of a large Turkish Muslim organisation in Germany have caused controversy in the central European country hosting some 3 million Turkish citizens. DITIB, which stands for Turkish Islamic Union for Religious Affairs, is considered a partner of the German government and has close ties to the Turkish Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet).
Among the posts on DITIB Facebook pages were:
“The cannibal Jew pukes death in Palestine, to describe the barbarism of the Jews, you will not be able to find the right words” “”The Christmas Feast – a tradition of Christians stinking of blasphemy” and “friendship and relationships with unbelievers (are) prohibited”
DITIB is connected to about 900 mosque organisations and has nearly 800,000 members, Turkish Minute reports.
Previous shady affairs DITIB
Recently, another controversy surrounded DITIB. The club appeared to function as Ankara’s long arm after its imams were reportedly spying on Germany’s Turks in order to identify people connected to Fethullah Gülen, the Islamic preacher who, according to Turkey, is behind the failed coup of July. This spying was allegedly done on Turkey’s request.
DITIB initially denied the allegations but admitted its role a few weeks back. “We deeply regret this mishap and have spoken to Diyanet about it,” an official from the organisation then commented.

Ruthie Blum: UN Watchdog to Congress: Demand UNRWA Donors Hold Relief Agency Accountable for Staff Members’ Social Media Antisemitism, Incitement to Terrorism Against Israelis

The head of a Geneva-based monitoring organization testified before the US Congress on Thursday, presenting an extensive and scathing report on the promotion of terrorism against Israelis by employees of an internationally funded UN body.
Hillel Neuer — director of UN Watch — provided evidence before a joint subcommittee hearing of dozens of new cases of incitement to violence on the social media pages of educators employed by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which receives the bulk of its funding from the United States and Europe. The report covers UNRWA staffers — including teachers and principals — in Lebanon, Jordan, the Gaza Strip and Syria.
The more than 40 incidents highlighted in the current report — which Neuer presented before the House Foreign Affairs Committee Joint Hearing of the Subcommitee on Middle East and North Africa and the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organization — are in addition to the previous year’s antisemitic and pro-terrorist posts revealed by UN Watch at the end of 2015.
Examples include the celebration of the terrorist kidnapping of Israeli teens; the cheering of rocket-fire aimed at Israeli population centers; and the lauding of Hitler.

Daniel Pipes: Fake Scholarship is No Less a Threat than Fake News

This time, it's one Todd H. Green, associate professor of religion at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and author of The Fear of Islam: An Introduction to Islamophobia in the West (Fortress Press, 2015).
The book's title reveals its contents: the usual academic pablum about Islamists as innocent dears while critics of Islamism are greedy and vicious haters.
And the worst of those critics are "professional Islamophobes," being "prominent individuals and organizations that deliberately drown out the diversity of Muslim voices and consciously manufacture and exploit the fear of Islam in a manner unprecedented in mainstream political and media circles." They are "a cadre of conservative politicians, right-wing activists and bloggers, and even disgruntled Muslims or ex-Muslims" who have available "powerful political, media, and publishing platforms" which they exploit "to generate and exacerbate Western anxieties toward the Muslim 'Other'." To top this off, they profit financially from their ugly work. (Sure, all those $20 million checks.)
Professor Green, I regret to report, gives me pride of place in this group, calling me "the figurehead of professional Islamophobia in the United States." He credits me, along with two others, of having "a huge impact on the misinformation about Islam that circulates so freely on the Internet, in the media, and in political circles." (How, I wonder, does a figurehead have a huge impact?)
Misinformation? Our professor friend accuses me of this, yet he does not provide a single specific of where I misinform.
Allow me to turn the tables and point out that he himself purveys great buckets of misinformation. To be precise, focusing on the three pages devoted to me of his 362-page diatribe turns up a profusion of mistakes, small and large.

Anti-Israel UK lawmaker blames Jews for rising anti-Semitism

Reacting on a record high of anti-Semitic incidents in Britain in 2016, a well-known British lawmaker accused pro-Israel Jews of creating the situation by not criticizing the Jewish state.
The remark Thursday came from Jenny Tonge, who had represented the Liberal Democrat party in the upper house of the British Parliament before her suspension from the party in October for her penchant for anti-Israel rhetoric. Some of her critics allege that her rhetoric sometimes veers into anti-Semitism. Tonge has consistently denied these accusations.
On Thursday, Tonge sent an email to the Community Security Trust in reply to their report, sent to all lawmakers, that recorded a record 1,309 anti-Semitic incidents last year in the United Kingdom, constituting a 36-percent rise over 2015, the Jewish News reported.
“Do you NEVER consider that the actions of the Israeli government are contributing towards this rise?” Tonge wrote. “If the Board of Deputies and the CST spoke up against the abuse if (sic) human rights, flagrant disregard of international law and the Geneva Conventions they would do much to improve the situation here.”

Daphne Anson: Tasteless Tonge: Shame on her. Again.

Here's Baroness Tonge being interviewed on Iran's propaganda satellite channel recently, along with Massoud Shadjareh of the UK Islam Human Rights Council about Donald Trump and Israel.
Her Ladyship makes her debut around 4:30. The interview is interrupted by a cross to footage of a Neturei Karta nutjob who went to Paris for the 15 January "peace conference," after which it resumes.
The Neturei Karta representative, who of course represents a minute fraction of Jewish opinion in the world today, made the NK's mantra-like distinction between Judaism and Zionism, and back in the studio Her Ladyship exclaims "It is very very wicked indeed to conflate the two [Jews and Zionists]"
She nods her head to Massoud Shadjareh's assertion that "What we need to have eventually is one state" and observes that "Trump and Netanyahu together could make the abscess explode" - as Shadjareh put it, "the beginning of the end" of the USA's "authority in the world" and downfall of Christian Zionism and the victory of the Palestinians.
When asked by the interviewer for her views on Trump's appointment of his son-in-law Jared Kushner as White House adviser, Tonge denounces the appointment as "medieval".
What's truly medieval is the treatment of women, virgins awaiting execution, homosexuals, religious apostates and political dissidents at the hands of the Iranian regime whose propaganda channel this avowed feminist has no qualms whatever about appearing on.

Antisemitic Incidents Report 2016

CST's Mark Gardner on BBC News, January 2017

Groups seek to fight Israel’s delegitimization with a bigger ‘big tent’

Oppose the settlements? You’re one of us. Believe Israel should control the West Bank indefinitely? Come right in. Criticize Israel’s Chief Rabbinate? Welcome home. Think Israel should privilege Orthodox Judaism? Sure, why not?
That’s the approach advocated in a new strategic plan, released Thursday, to combat Israel’s delegitimization: Get more people to like Israel by embracing ideological diversity among both its cheering section and its critics.
Composed by the Anti-Defamation League, a group that fights anti-Semitism and bigotry, and the Reut Institute, an Israeli think tank, the report aims not only to change people’s opinions on Israel but to legitimize a larger set of views.
“It is very important to narrow the definition of what is delegitimization,” said Gidi Grinstein, Reut’s founder. “The delegitimization of Israel needs to be narrowly defined as the singular negation of the right of Israel to exist and of the right of the Jewish people to self-determination. If you stick to that definition, it allows you to build a broad coalition.”
There’s nothing new in calling for a “big tent” in the pro-Israel movement; Israel advocates on the right and left have been endorsing one for years. But beyond getting bickering Jews to get along, the document aims to draw in the general public to its pro-Israel cause by driving a wedge between people critical of Israeli policy and those opposed to its very existence.

IsraellyCool: HRW’s Ken Roth Completely Humiliated On Twitter

Ken Roth, the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, has proven himself to be rather sloppy with the facts when it comes to Israel. And as a recent tweet of his shows, he is rather sloppy when it comes to other facts as well.
Roth tweeted this about 4 hours ago as of the time of this post.

The article Roth links to in his tweet reports that the woman is unnamed “because she was a covert agent at the time.”
Which begs the question: How can Roth have a photo of her?
Simple answer: it is not a photo of her at all. It’s a photo of BBC journalist and newsreader Emily Maitlis, who was quite mortified by Roth’s tweet. (h/t Yenta Press)

'Know Your Rights' Workshop Aims to Provide Jewish Students With 'Tangible Tools' to Confront Antisemitism, BDS on Campus

An upcoming workshop for Jewish college students in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut aims to provide them with “tangible tools and skills” to combat antisemitism and the delegitimization of Israel on campus.
Titled “Know Your Rights,” the February 16 event – sponsored jointly by the World Jewish Congress and the Consulate General of Israel in New York – was initiated to come to the aid of students who find themselves ill-equipped to respond to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions efforts and other forms of hostility at their schools.
WJC CEO Robert Singer told The Algemeiner that Jewish students today “are fighting a battle of close-mindedness in institutions of higher learning, which are meant to be a beacon of open-mindedness and acceptance. We want to help to do whatever it takes to win this battle. The students are on the front lines of this every day.”
Singer said that while many are “motivated to stand up not only for themselves, but for the state of Israel and the Jewish people,” others are hesitant, because they are “just beginning to hone their professional skills and do not always feel comfortable standing up or voicing their opinion when they find themselves under attack.”

Cambridge University Student Newspaper Slammed by Jewish Groups for Publishing ‘Antisemitic’ Profile of Jared Kushner

Jewish groups have sharply rebuked Cambridge University’s independent student newspaper for publishing an opinion piece about Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s Jewish son-in-law and senior adviser, which “explicitly contains antisemitic rhetoric,” UK news website The Tab reported.
Alex Szlezinger, president of the university’s Jewish Society, told The Tab that his group had “deep concern” about Varsity‘s publication of an article titled, “Jared Kushner: the most powerful man you’ve never heard of.”
In the article, Kushner is identified as “an Orthodox Jew with strong ties to Israel,” whose “conflicts of interest” include “nepotism, financial matters and religion.” His Jewish observance, his supposed support for settlement-building and his “strong financial ties to Israel” are all suggested as reasons that Kushner would be resistant to or incapable of bringing peace in the Middle East.
The piece also described Kushner as buying his position and power throughout his life, as well as having a “social network” that is “contaminating the White House.”
In the comments section, the author was criticized for conclusions that “verge on the antisemitic.”

Fordham University Facing Backlash for Rejecting SJP on Campus

The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) recently condemned Fordham University for banning the radical group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) from campus.
The NLG claims that Fordham’s decision continued a “legacy of Anti-Palestinian discrimination, known as the ‘Palestinian Exception’ to Free Speech…”
In a December 22 email, Fordham Dean of Students Keith Eldredge outlined the university’s reasons for preventing SJP from forming a chapter.
“While students are encouraged to promote diverse political points of view, and we encourage conversation and debate on all topics, I cannot support an organization whose sole purpose is advocating political goals of a specific group, and against a specific country (Israel)…”
Eldredge correctly pointed out that SJP’s inherently divisive mandate is a cause for concern.
SJP’s purpose “as stated in the proposed club constitution points toward that polarization. Specifically, the call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of Israel presents a barrier to open dialogue and mutual learning and understanding,” he said.

‘Bloodied’ Israeli Flag Prominently Featured at U of Illinois Anti-Trump Rally

A “blood-soaked” Israeli flag featured prominently at a recent anti-Trump campus event, The Algemeiner has learned.
Footage posted on social media from the “Muslim Immigration and Refugee Ban Solidarity March” at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) on Monday shows students holding up the flag, which is covered in red hand prints, simulating blood.
A female student wearing a hijab is seen yelling into a megaphone against past and current US administrations for being “complacent” against “state violence” and for “not listening” to the concerns of minorities. Students are also seen holding an American flag upside down.
The demonstration was co-sponsored by a number of UIUC groups, including the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Muslim Student Association (MSA), in protest against US President Donald Trump’s controversial executive order travel ban.
The introduction of the “bloodied” flag at a gathering staged to demonstrate against a policy of the new Trump administration was the latest example of students co-opting an event to express hostility to the Jewish state. Earlier this week, a similar rally at the University of California, Irvine engaged in a similar practice.

Mass. teacher suspended for disclosing student’s swastika slur

A Massachusetts high school teacher who rescinded a college recommendation letter of a student who slurred Jews and taped a swastika on a wall of the school has been suspended.
The Stoughton High teacher began serving her 20-day suspension last week. The teacher was disciplined not for rescinding the recommendation but for telling the college why, The Enterprise newspaper reported Thursday, citing the teachers union.
Two other teachers there — one who spoke about the incident in her classroom and another who spoke to her colleagues and an individual student about the incident — were reprimanded, the local media reported.
The town of Stoughton is located about 17 miles from Boston.
In late November, a male student made a swastika out of tape on the wall while decorating the halls after school. A Jewish student who witnessed him making the swastika told him it was offensive and asked him to take it down. The student responded with an offensive remark about the Jews and Hitler, the Boston Globe reported.

Jewish student at Wisconsin college receives note: ‘You should be gassed’

A Jewish student at Beloit College in Wisconsin was targeted twice with anti-Semitic messages, including a threatening note.
Last Friday, an anti-Semitic note was found under the door of the student’s dorm room, and earlier this month, a swastika was painted on a dry-erase board on her door, Rabbi Chesky Rothman, who runs a Jewish student center at the small liberal arts college with his wife, confirmed to JTA.
“K**e, You should be gassed for what you say & do on this campus. Be worried c**t,” the note read, according to an op-ed published by The Beloit College Round Table.
In a separate incident, a Beloit student reported Monday that anti-Muslim graffiti and a swastika had been spray-painted next to and on his door. However, the Beloit Police Department said Wednesday that the student in question, Michael Kee, had been arrested after confessing that he had perpetrated the vandalism.

‘It’s About More Than Hummus,’ Says UC Riverside Rabbi Leading Fight Against Sabra Boycott

A proposed student resolution to ban Sabra company products from the dining hall of a California university “is about more than hummus,” the campus rabbi leading the opposition to the boycott told The Algemeiner.
“People ask what the big deal is, because even if the motion does pass the University of California Riverside Student Senate, it’s up to administrators to decide what is served at the school,” said Chabad on Campus director Rabbi Matisyahu Devlin, ahead of Wednesday’s vote. “But Jewish students are afraid; they are disturbed. If the motion passes, the message is clear: We don’t want you here, even your hummus.”
Devlin said that some students are telling him they may stop openly identifying as Jewish on campus if the motion passes.
“Even though Sabra is an American-based brand, people associate it with Israel and Jews,” he added. “This vote is about banning a Jewish product, Jewish business.”
The rabbi told The Algemeiner that the effort to block the motion has been a joint project of Chabad, Hillel, the AEPi fraternity and advocacy groups Stand With Us and Israel on Campus Coalition.

DNC Contender Ellison Holds Press Event With CAIR Radical

The leading candidate to become the chairman of the Democratic Party shared his Capitol Hill press conference with a leading advocate for Islamic radicals, Nihad Awad, who is the director of the jihad-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR.
Candidate Rep. Keith Ellison’s decision to share the microphone with CAIR director on Wednesday afternoon highlights the willingness of party activists to deepen their alliance with the small number of radical Muslim voters living in the United States, despite the huge ideological conflicts between the party’s liberal base and the Muslim groups’ toxic Islamic ideology and aggressive Arab politics.
Ellison is a leading candidate to become chairman of the Democratic National Committee, who will be chosen by a party vote in late February. He has public support from the Democrats’ leader in the Senate. Sen. Chuck Schumer, but faces growing opposition from former labor secretary Tom Perez.

Globe Contributor Michael Bell Says Israeli Settlements are a “Cancerous Obstacle”

Not one to mince his words, in an interview with the United Church Observer in its February 2017 edition, Michael Bell, a contributor to the Globe and Mail, resorted to hyperbole and inflammatory rhetoric by saying that Israeli settlements “with over half a million nationalist Israelis in them — are a growing and cancerous obstacle.”

Would Mr. Bell prefer to remove what he sees as a growing and cancerous tumour, namely all of Israel’s settlements and ethnically cleanse over half a million Israelis who reside in areas of east Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria (west bank)?
Michael Bell (pictured) is the Paul Martin Senior Scholar in International Relations, and a director of the Jerusalem Old City Initiative in Windsor’s Department of Political Science. Bell is a former Canadian Ambassador to Jordan, Egypt and Israel. In 2014, Bell was appointed as one of 14 international affairs advisors who were part of a key foreign policy team to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Bell’s pejoratively describing Israeli settlements, and ultimately the 500,000 Israeli “settlers” who reside within them as “cancerous obstacle(s)” was inflammatory and beyond the pale.

Graves of Holocaust victims looted, desecrated across Ukraine

The remains of Jews murdered during the Holocaust have become the target of grave robbers across the Ukraine, say local Jews, who claim the phenomenon has become common in recent years.
Mass graves, where the bodies of Jews slaughtered by the Nazis and their allies were buried, are increasingly being desecrated by looters hoping to find gold teeth or jewelry among the skeletons of Holocaust victims.
Remains of Holocaust victims desecrated by grave robbers Press release
“Unfortunately, in the Ukraine there are many mass graves which are not sufficiently protected, where thousands of Jews were executed during the Holocaust," said Michael Yehudanin, President of the European Forum of Russian-speaking Jews.
Yehudanim says that while efforts are being made to protect the remains of Holocaust victims, the struggle against grave robbers is an uphill battle.
"Seventy years after these terrible murders, their graves are being desecrated and looted. These crimes are absolutely inhuman. We are trying to strengthen the graves, to bring order, and clearly mark the mass graves so their significance is known and understood. Unfortunately there is only so much we can do and there are many graves, as well as many grave-robbers. "

Where 500 children ‘disappeared’ from Nazi clutches, a new Dutch Shoah museum emerges

A former teachers’ college where more than 500 Jewish children were saved during the Holocaust is being transformed into the Netherlands’ first full-fledged Shoah museum.
Already operating since last May without a website or much publicity, the emerging National Holocaust Museum will fill a three-story brick building in Amsterdam’s former Jewish neighborhood, close to other sites tied to the Shoah. For now, only parts of the ground-level are open, including a small auditorium and reading room. According to plans, the museum will be completed by 2020 at a cost of $24 million.
“We aim to forge connections between people from different backgrounds by presenting our collective history as a pillar of today’s democratic society and our sense of justice,” according to a statement posted inside the entrance.
More than 102,000 Dutch Jews were killed by the Nazis, with 30,000 Jews living in the Netherlands today. The ease with which Dutch Jews were isolated and deported during the war continues to haunt witnesses, and the Dutch lost a larger percentage of their Jewish population than any country apart from Poland.

Israel, Japan Sign Bilateral Investment Treaty

Israel and Japan signed a bilateral investment treaty Wednesday, in the latest move to strengthen diplomatic and trade ties between the countries.
Israeli Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon and Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida signed the deal, negotiated between Jerusalem and Tokyo since May 2015 and finalized at the end of last year.
“This treaty symbolizes the growing economic ties between Israel and Japan, and it is a significant milestone in the liberalization of foreign investments in Israel,” Kahlon said at a ceremony at the Finance Ministry in Jerusalem.
A bilateral investment treaty establishes the terms and conditions for private investment by nationals and companies of one state in the other. Formed as part of or through trade pacts, bilateral investment treaties allow both countries to provide protections for each other’s foreign investments, including the assurance of fair and equitable treatment; protection from expropriation; the free transfer of means; and setting up alternative dispute resolution mechanisms.

How the Queen of England got involved in a secret Jewish wedding

Ninety years ago, JTA published a short article detailing the elopement of the son of a British Jewish baron and his new wife, who — gasp! — was the daughter of a shoemaker.
The wedding was so scandalous, it turns out, that even the Queen of England sent her condolences to the groom’s mother. The JTA article, published on Feb. 23, 1927, begins this way:
Swaythling’s Son Elopes with Cobbler’s Daughter
London is agog at the elopement of Ivor Montague [sic], aged 22, the youngest son of Lord Swaythling. The young son of Lord Swaythling was married secretly yesterday at the Registry Office to Miss Eileen Hellstern. Miss Hellstern is a typist and the daughter of a shoemaker.
What was all the outrage about?
Ivor Montagu was born in 1904 into a powerful Jewish banking dynasty that was one of the wealthiest families in the country and were members of the British nobility.

Colombian Teachers Visit Israel, Learn How to Develop Sustainable-Development Curricula

A delegation of school principals and teachers from Paipa municipality in Colombia came to Israel last month to learn educational strategies that will strengthen local schools back home.
The South American educators took part in a tailor-made professional program on Education towards Sustainable Development (ESD) conducted by MASHAV, Israel’s international aid organization, in cooperation with the Israeli Embassy in Colombia and the municipality of Paipa.
Paipa mayor Yamit Noe Hurtado Neira took part in a MASHAV course in Israel in 2015. Upon returning home, Neira introduced the concept of ESD in his city’s schools. Neira returned this year with a new batch of educators.
The Colombian educators visited schools around Israel to learn about different ESD models.

Classic song takes metal singer back to yeshiva roots

Before David Draiman became famous as the singer of the heavy metal band Disturbed, he trained to be a cantor.
That didn’t go so well. Growing up in Chicago, he was expelled from three different yeshivas, and after a rowdy night of Purim drinking as a teenager, he blew up his high school rabbi’s van.
While that may have made him notorious among local kids back in the day, seven Disturbed albums and millions of record sales later, Draiman is now best known for his guttural vocal yells — not his Jewish school antics.
This year, Disturbed is nominated for a Grammy for a cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s song “The Sound of Silence” — something that brought Draiman, 43, back a bit closer to his cantor-in-training days.
Instead of churning out a loud, heavy-metal version of the song, the group decided to keep their recording soft and acoustic. Draiman got to showcase his smoother, classically-trained voice — which reminded him of the days when he thought he might one day lead a Jewish congregation in song.

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