02/14 Links Pt2: Foreign Ministry places permanent exhibit at UNESCO; A Tale of Two Talks: Free Speech in the U.S. ~ EoZ

From Ian:

Foreign Ministry places permanent exhibit at UNESCO

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has decided to place a permanent exhibit at UNESCO headquarters of a replica of the seven-branched Menorah featured on the Arch of Titus in Rome.
The decision to place the exhibit at UNESCO in Paris is part of the Israeli government struggle against the Palestinian narrative denying any Jewish connection to Jerusalem; a narrative which many in Israel and around the world have accused UNESCO of abetting following the passing of a controversial UN resolution which conspicuously failed to make any mention of Jewish ties to the Temple Mount.
Israel's ambassador to UNESCO, Carmel Shama Hacohen, came to an agreement with UNESCO's Director-general, Irina Bokova, in which the exhibit will be presented in an official ceremony with ambassadors from all over the world.
Following consultation with the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Tender Committee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs approved the project at a cost of NIS 45,000.
Initially, the statue was only meant to illustrate the seven-branched Menorah, but Hacohen decided to add the imagery showing Jewish slaves carrying the Menorah into exile to Rome. The statue will also include a written explanation in English, French, Hebrew and Arabic.

Top employee at EU-, UN-funded Gaza hospital quotes ‘Protocols of Zion‘

The Simon Wiesenthal Center on Monday called for the withdrawal of UN and EU funding from a Gaza Strip hospital whose director of public relations posted quotations from the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion on his private Facebook page.
The Protocols documents as fact an imaginary late-19th-century meeting at which Jewish leaders, the “Elders of Zion,” purportedly plan their takeover of the world.
Yahya Al Nawajha, director of public relations and media at the European Gaza Hospital in the southern Strip, referred on Facebook to Victor Marsden’s English translation of the Tsarist protocols and included a link to download the book.
Shimon Samuels, the Wiesenthal Center’s director for international relations, called for the immediate withdrawal of the hospital’s UN and EU funding until the hospital apologizes, issues a public repudiation of all forms of Jew-hatred, and fires Al Nawajha.
Even if the post appeared on a personal page, the hospital bore full responsibility, he charged.

Douglas Murray: The shameful hypocrisy of Sweden’s ‘first feminist government’

Pipping even Speaker John Bercow to the award are the brave sisters of the Swedish government. Here is a photo from earlier this month of Isabella Lovin (Sweden’s Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for International Development Cooperation and Climate and spokesperson of Sweden’s Green Party). In response to Donald Trump’s male-heavy team, Isabella and the sister-hood (pregnant and non-pregnant) recently posed for this photo to signal that the self-declared ‘first feminist government in the world’ will be taking no lectures from the current US President:
Just signed referral of Swedish #climate law, binding all future governments to net zero emissions by 2045. For a safer and better future. http://pic.twitter.com/OqOO2y8BU6
— Isabella Lövin (@IsabellaLovin) February 3, 2017
Here, by contrast, (courtesy of the excellent UN Watch) is how the Swedish sisterhood behaved when they visited Iran this past weekend:
But who’s to call, hey? On the one hand you have an American President and former Miss Universe competition owner who has done nothing to diminish women’s rights. On the other you have an Iranian President before whom all women must cover, and who presides over a legal system where nine-year old girls can be legally raped and women are regularly hanged from cranes.
The contrasting approaches are emblematic of our stupid, signalling times. To President Trump it’s ‘Hey you, Mr bigot, get off my vagina.’ While to President Rouhani it’s ‘How’s my hijab, Mr President? Do just say if anything else about my body offends you.’ The sisterhood should enjoy it while it lasts.

Macina Update on Georges Bensoussan Trial in Paris

A tireless warrior in the cogwar, Menachem Macina, frequent commenter here, left a long comment with an update on the George Bensassoun blasphemy trial in Chambre 17 in Paris. I post it here to give it the attention it deserves.
This is indeed a fascinating case that shows how crazy things have gotten in France. (I put some things together on my facebook page.)
Georges Bensoussan, a French Jewish historian and activist against islamism (with quite some credentials in this field), in a debate on the radio (high-brow France-Culture almost nobody listens to) explains how widespread antisemitism in the French Muslim community makes it vulnerable to the islamists’ attempts to set it up against French society.
He then is accused of incitement to hatred against the Muslim community by professional anti-racism organisations, with the lead being taken by the CCIF (against islamophobia). Other anti-racist organisations join in, among which the venerable old LICRA (against racism and anti-semitism) with its star witness Mohamed Sifaoui, an Algerian journalist in France who is a very outspoken critic of islamism and at the same time very much maligned by the CCIF for being former PM Manuel Valls’s sidekick and by the CCIF’s followers for being a ‘zionist agent’, who explains his testimony against Bensoussan with the wish not to leave the defense of the French Muslims entirely to the CCIF.

Douglas Murray: A Tale of Two Talks: Free Speech in the U.S.

During his talk at Georgetown University, Jonathan A.C. Brown condemned slavery when it took place historically in America and other Western countries, but praised the practise of slavery as it happened in Muslim societies, explained that Muslim slaves lived "a pretty good life", and claimed that it is "not immoral for one human to own another human." Regarding the vexed matter of whether it is right or wrong to have sex with one of your slaves, Brown, who is director of the Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, said that "consent isn't necessary for lawful sex".
No mob of anti-sharia people has gone to Georgetown, torn up telephone poles, set fire to things or smashed up the campus, as mobs did at Berkeley.
Milo Yiannopoulos has never argued that the Western system of slavery was benevolent and worthwhile, and that slaves in America had "a pretty good life". He has never argued against consent being an important principle in sexual relations. If he had, then the riots at Berkeley would doubtless have been far worse than they were and even more media companies and professors would have tried to argue that Yiannopoulos had "brought the violence upon himself" or even organized it himself.

Edgar Davidson: United Nations replaces Valentine's Day with Palestine's Day* (satire)

In a surprise move today the United Nations announced that 14 February is no longer to be known as Valentine's Day, and instead will be renamed as Palestine's Day. The move came in response to the ongoing claims - now accepted as the truth - that 14 February was celebrated as Palestine Independence Day by Muslim Arabs every year for 5000 years until 1948 when the Zionists deviously invented 'Valentine's Day' to divert world opinion away from their suppression of Palestinian Muslims.
The United Nations ruling was unanimously approved by all 59 Muslim nations. The ruling, which is is now enshrined as international law (and so cannot be challenged) contains the following points of explanation:

It is totally unacceptable that there should be a day in the year when people are encouraged to express their love for people other than the Palestinians. Everybody must understand that the Palestinian people must be the focus for everybody's attention for 365 days of the year - not just 364.

Palestine's Day will provide all progressive people in the world with the opportunity and incentive to express their deep love for the Palestinian people by sending cards, tweets and Facebook messages like "Death to Israel and all Zionists", "Destroy the apartheid state of Israel", "Zionism is fascism"

Just as on Valentine's Day - when people not sending cards to their partners are exposed as heartless and unloving - anybody who refuses to send a Palestine's Day card will be exposed as a Zionist fascist to be hounded and ridiculed.

Just as on Valentine's Day Muslims are not obliged to participate, although it is recommended that they donate extra charity on this day to Hamas and Hezbollah.

David Duke Endorses Keith Ellison For DNC Chair

It doesn’t really matter who the chairman of the Democratic National Committee is, because it’s the Democratic National Committee. They’re pretty much screwed no matter what. With that in mind, why not pick someone who can bring everybody together?
I’m not sure what Ellison supposedly “knows,” but presumably it’s something racist and/or anti-Semitic. Or maybe something about chemtrails? Could be chemtrails.
Throughout the 2016 campaign, the Democrats were very interested in every little thing David Duke had to say. They were eager to hang it around Trump’s neck. So I’m sure they’ll do the same thing for Keith Ellison, now that he’s scored the crucial David Duke endorsement.
LOL! (h/t Cheloviak and Alexi)

PBS Hosts Extremist Miko Peled on Talk Show

On February 2, PBS's Tavis Smiley hosted Miko Peled on his talk show. Peled is a radical anti-Israel activist who has, in the past, falsely described Israel as an apartheid state, referred to Israeli airport security officers as the “Smiling Gestapo,” and defended terrorists.
On Smiley's program, Peled:
called Jewish history a myth,
called Israel an illegitimate state, saying Jews have no right to self-determination there,
called the Haganah a terrorist group, but justified terrorism against Israelis, and
perpetuated falsehoods about Israel, including the ubiquitous water libel.
Yet, his host failed to aggressively challenge his assertions.
When Smiley asked Peled how he responds to allegations that he is antisemitic, Peled responded, in essence, that he can't be antisemitic, first, because he is Jewish, and second, because he is not racist against African Americans or other racial minorities. Peled then claims that opposing the State of Israel – not its policies, but the State itself – is not antisemitic. In fact, the Obama State Department declared that it is. This, too, is ignored by his host.
Neither Smiley nor a second guest, apparently brought on in an attempt at “balance,” unraveled the falsehoods promoted by Peled. Real journalism requires real facts, not narratives spun by advocates. PBS should do better.

UK Labour Party Student Group Launches New Antisemitism Education Program in Effort to Repair Relations With Jewish Community

The UK Labour Party’s national student group is taking “practical steps” to repair its damaged relations with the Jewish community, the organizer of an initiative aimed at educating about antisemitism told The Algemeiner on Monday.
Kate Dearden, the national chair of Labour Students, said the program — which was launched today at Oxford University — follows last month’s controversial decision by the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) to terminate an 11-month probe into the Oxford University Labour Club (OUCL) on charges of rampant antisemitism, without bringing disciplinary action against the implicated students.
Dearden said the workshop’s development was heavily influenced by Baroness Janet Royall’s 11 recommendations for how “Labour tackles antisemitism,” which were released following the NEC’s closing of its investigation.
She told The Algemeiner that the sessions will discuss various definitions of antisemitism and their application to both campus life and the Labour movement, including the relationship between antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
The aim is to “minimize the chance of any repetition of incidents such as those that occurred at OULC,” said Dearden.

WATCH: Pro-Palestinian protesters interrupt Israel envoy's Columbia speech

Dozens of anti-Israel demonstrators protested and interrupted a speech by Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon at Columbia University in New York on Monday night.
Dozens of protesters outside the venue held Palestinian flags and placards bearing the slogans such as "racists not wanted" and "collective punishment is a crime."
"Danny Danon you can't hide, we charge you with genocide," they chanted as waitlisted guests for Danon's event stood in line, several bearing Israeli flags.
In addition, a group of chanting protesters interrupted the student event during which Danon addressed the crowd on Israel.
"We'll be free from the river to the sea, Palestine!" shouted a handful of demonstrators marching up stairs in the lecture hall.

IsraellyCool: Confirmed: Ryerson Student Union President Planned Walkout During Holocaust Education Week Motion

A few months ago, following the infamous mass walkout over the Holocaust Week motion at Ryerson University, I posted a bombshell scoop: Obaid Ullah, the Ryerson Students’ Union President, had himself asked students to walk out and obstruct the vote. This was based on a screenshot I had received.
Following my post, there were those – including among Jewish students at Ryerson – who did not believe the allegation, and suspected the screenshot may have been fabricated. But given my source, I was confident this was no photoshop.
And now I have been vindicated with confirmation Obaid DID plan the walkout.
The Eyeopener has confirmed that Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU) president Obaid Ullah initiated a planned walk-out with the RSU executive team at the RSU Semi-Annual General Meeting (SAGM) on Nov. 29.
The walk-out happened during the presentation of the motion for the RSU to organize a Holocaust education week. Samantha Cooper, a member of Hillel at Ryerson, proposed the motion and made an amendment to have the event be focused solely on the education of the Holocaust, and no other genocides.

Flyer at Western U: “Jewish terrorists” killed Muslims in Quebec mosque attack

Following the discovery of an anti-Semitic flyer which was circulated on campus at Western University in London, Ontario last week which attacked the Jewish community, the Student Council (SCWU) issued a letter condemning the flyer as “hate speech”.
The flyer, sent by the Canadian National Independence Party (C.N.I.P.), accuses Jews for the murder of 6 Muslim worshippers at a mosque in Quebec in late January, blames “Jewish Zionist terrorists in Israel” for assassination of Muslims in Palestine. It demands that all Zionists in Canada be tried as terrorists and imprisoned.
On the evening of January 29, 2017, Alexandre Bissonnette, a 27-year-old student at Laval University, entered the Centre Culturel Islamique de Quebec and opened fire with a rifle, killing 6 men and wounding 19 others as they prayed.
C.N.I.P. which doesn’t have a website or Facebook page, further calls on the Canadian government to close the Israeli embassy in Ottawa, open a Palestinian Embassy in London, Ontario and end British Colonial rule in Canada.
The Student Council’s letter condemned the “incredibly prejudiced” flyer, which it says promotes violence.

‘Busloads of Ukrainian Settlers’?

There’s plenty of bias and blatant falsehoods to be found in an opinion piece by Sarah Helm in The Guardian. She speaks with Khalil Tufakji, who is described as a “65-year-old Palestinian cartographer.”
Later we find out that Helm first met Tufakji
in 1993 in Orient House, which after the signing of the Oslo accords became the Palestinian political centre in East Jerusalem. For a while Orient House buzzed, as did the Arab streets nearby, as foreign delegations rolled up, often looking at Tufakji’s maps before mulling over the shape of the new Palestinian state.
What Helm fails to disclose is that Tufakji is not simply a cartographer but was the head of the PLO’s Maps and Survey Department, which was based in Orient House. The then PLO headquarters in eastern Jerusalem was shuttered by the Israeli government in 2001 when it was found that PA security forces were operating from there illegally. Tufakji is hardly a Palestinian without an agenda.

The Guardian journalist who drove through a (non-existent) tunnel under Mt. of Olives

In 2012, our colleague Tamar Sternthal analysed a tendentious and astonishingly sloppy article at Newsweek by journalist Sarah Helm, uncovering a myriad of factual errors or distortions. A Feb. 13th Guardian article written by Helm, “Reading the future of the West Bank in its contour” was similarly sloppy and misleading in amplifying the propagandistic musings of a Palestinian “cartographer” named Khalil Tufakji.
Here are the three most egregious errors or distortions:
First, a tunnel under Mt. of Olives?
I’ve been listening to Tufakji since the mid-1990s and everything he foresaw has so far come true. He pointed out where a tunnel would be drilled through the Mount of Olives to connect settlements – it seemed impossible but we are now driving through it.

Globe and Mail Takes Sides by Claiming Settlement Homes are Being Built on “Palestinian land”

In a front page article in the February 7 edition of the Globe and Mail, former Mideast bureau chief Mark Mackinnon erroneously stated the following:
“For decades, U.S. presidents, Democrat and Republican, have made a ritual of issuing condemnations every time Israel built new homes in the occupied West Bank. Mr. Trump said nothing when Israel announced the building of 2,500 new units on Palestinian land during his first week in office. So, a week later, Israel announced the building of 3,000 more.”
In referring to the building of 2,500 housing units in settlement lands as being built on “Palestinian land,” the Globe and Mail used partisan language instead of using objective descriptions by referring to these lands as being inherently disputed. Accordingly, by assigning these lands to one side of the conflict, fundamentally disregards that both parties have signed international agreements which deem that the status of the lands are to be resolved pending negotiations.
In actuality, the Palestinians have never been sovereign rulers of the lands in question. Israel captured the west bank and east Jerusalem from Jordan in 1967. While Palestinian and Israeli advocates may stake claim to these lands, the Globe should report objectively on the dispute and not take sides. Simply put, Mr. Mackinnon should have said “Palestinian claimed land”, just as these reports in the New York Times did (see here and here).

Canadian Press Ignores Report Detailing UNRWA Teacher’s Incitement to Terrorism & Antisemitism

As Canada is the 7th largest funder of UNRWA with its $25-million annual allocation, this news is particularly alarming. On November 16, the Canadian Press broke the news that the Liberal government agreed to provide $25-million dollars in aid to UNRWA, a UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees that was cut off by the previous Conservative government for alleged ties to Hamas. CP’s article was published in the following publications to list just a few: Globe and Mail, CBC.ca, Huffington Post, IPolitics, CityNews, Global News, Chronicle Herald, Toronto Star, Macleans and CTV News.
CP reported at the time that: “The government says the money will be accompanied by ‘enhanced due diligence,’ including a ‘very robust oversight and reporting framework’ that includes regular site visits and anti-terrorism provisions.”
The article detailed concerns that funds designated to UNRWA have been used for “military efforts against Israel,” and that there are concerns about UNRWA’s lack of accountability, neutrality, and the need for proper oversight.

IsraellyCool: Success! Israel Is Back On The Google Maps App On iPhone

And we’re back! Following my video from two days ago, Google has changed something.
I’m not sure how long the missing Israel “glitch” was there for, but it’s gone and Israel now appears on every browser and every app I can try on my iPhone. For those who left comments, thank you. I did test this with google.com and google.co.uk. The earlier behaviour of the name Israel being missing was common to both. That behaviour has definitely changed at some point since my first video.

Russian lawmaker implies Jews ‘boiled Christians in cauldrons’

A pro-Kremlin Russian lawmaker came under fire Monday after saying the ancestors of local Jewish opposition figures in Saint-Petersburg “boiled Christians in cauldrons,” sparking indignation from Russia’s Jewish community.
Vitaly Milonov, a Duma deputy known for his anti-gay initiatives, lashed out at the weekend at two local lawmakers leading a protest against handing over St. Isaac’s basilica, a top landmark in Russia’s second largest city, to the Russian Orthodox Church.
“Christians survived despite the fact that the ancestors of Boris Vishnevsky and Maksim Reznik boiled us in cauldrons and fed us to animals,” ultra-conservative Milonov said at a rally Sunday to support the controversial handover.
The statement triggered a storm of criticism, with another local lawmaker Alexei Kovalev petitioning for a criminal probe into possible incitement of hatred while prominent Jewish figures said it was shameful and could spark religious tensions.
“For a State Duma deputy, it is unacceptable to make such irresponsible statements,” said the spokesman of Russia’s Federation of Jewish Communities (FEOR) Borukh Gorin.

Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic books are being sold on Amazon

Amazon has come in for criticism after it emerged that the retail giant is selling self-published books promoting Holocaust denial and far-right propaganda.
Several books with titles such as The Myth of Extermination of the Jews and Holocaust: The Greatest Lie Ever Told are available to buy on the online retailer, with some receiving four star reviews.
Several editions are available, in paperback and on Kindle, of the notorious 1974 pamphlet Did Six Million Really Die? by a member of the British National Front.
And another book, The Six Million: Fact or Fiction? by Peter Winter, was available for sale via Amazon Germany, where Holocaust denial is a crime.
The titles were also available for sale in Italy and France, where penalties are imposed for denying the genocide that killed more than six million Jewish people during the Second World War.

Disney dumps YouTube star PewDiePie over anti-Semitic videos

Disney has cut ties with YouTube’s most watched blogger PewDiePie for posting several videos containing anti-Semitic remarks and Nazi references, the Wall Street Journal said Tuesday.
The 27-year-old Swede, whose real name is Felix Kjellberg, is known for posting humorous clips to his more than 53 million followers on YouTube.
PewDiePie, who had editorial independence under the terms of the arrangement with Disney, reportedly paid two Indian men five dollars to hold a banner reading “Death to all Jews” while they laugh and dance in a January 11 video.
“Although Felix has created a following by being provocative and irreverent, he clearly went too far in this case and the resulting videos are inappropriate,” a spokeswoman for Maker Studios, the Disney division that had partnered with PewDiePie, told the Journal.
The Journal said PewDiePie had posted nine videos that display anti-Semitic jokes and Nazi references since August.
One of them shows a man dressed as Jesus Christ, saying “Hitler did absolutely nothing wrong.”

5 reasons Israel is dominating the cannabis industry

Legal cannabis sales across the world totaled $150 billion last year, and sales in the United States alone are expected to reach $21.8 billion by 2020.
Israel is at the center of this huge growth because of its well-developed ecosystem of cannabis researchers, farmers, entrepreneurs, pharma and government policies.
“You can’t put cannabis into a category. It’s not just pharma and it’s not just agro-tech. It’s not just lifestyle or recreational,” Saul Kaye, a pharmacist and the chief executive of iCAN: Israel-Cannabis venture fund, tells ISRAEL21c.
Kaye says Israel is up to 10 years ahead of other countries in innovation in the cannabis industry.
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem has a multidisciplinary center on cannabinoid research and Ariel University offers a course on the use of medical cannabis. The Volcani Agricultural Research Organization is building a national institute for medical marijuana research.

102 of Bnei Menashe tribe to immigrate to Israel from India

One hundred and two members of India's Bnei Menashe Jewish community, which claims descent from one of Israel's 10 lost tribes, are scheduled to arrive in Israel this week with the help of Shavei Israel, a Jerusalem-based nonprofit organization that aims to strengthen ties between the Jewish people and descendants of Jews worldwide.
Bnei Menashe believe they are the descendants of Jews banished from ancient Israel to India in the eighth century B.C.E. In 2005, then-Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar officially recognized them as a lost tribe. Some 3,000 Bnei Menashe have made aliyah so far, making their home in the northern Israeli city of Nazareth Illit.
According to the Jewish Business News, the latest Bnei Menashe immigrants come from the northeastern Indian state of Mizoram, which borders Myanmar and Bangladesh, and is home to the second-largest concentration of Bnei Menashe in India after the state of Manipur. They will be the first members of their community to make aliyah since January 2014.
Some 7,000 Bnei Menashe remain in India waiting to immigrate to Israel, the report said.

Auschwitz survivor, 92, and the Scottish soldier, 96, who saved her as she was being marched to her DEATH celebrate their 71st Valentine's Day together

A Hungarian Jew who survived Auschwitz and the Scottish soldier who helped save her will mark their 71st Valentine's Day together tomorrow.
John Mackay, 96, was in the ranks of a commando team that liberated a number of Jewish prisoners from their Nazi guards in Poland.
The prisoners, who were held in Auschwitz at the time when 'Angel of Death' Josef Mengele was conducting his evil experiments, were being marched to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany to face summary execution in the death throes of the Third Reich.
Hidden in the mass of prisoners was 20-year-old Hungarian Jew Edith Steiner, alongside her mother – the only two members of their family not sent to the gas chambers.
After they were saved Edith – known to friends as Eci – caught 23-year-old Mr Mackay's eye at a village hall dance to celebrate their liberation.
Mr Mackay, whose own wartime exploits in the London Scottish 1st Battalion included escaping from an Italian POW camp dressed as an enemy soldier, spotted Miss Steiner at the dance but was too shy to approach her.

Dr. Einat Wilf on Zionism - Full Interview

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