Israel has weaponized "sex mania" against the Arabs and Muslims

From Palestinian Media Watch:

In March this year, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas posed for pictures in his office with the Antisemitic PA TV host Imad Hamato, who Abbas appointed dean of Gaza's Al-Azhar institutes in October 2016. This month, official PA TV rebroadcast one of Hamato's many antisemitic hate lessons from 2015.

 "Our conflict today between us and Israel is the conflict between spirit and body. Israel's global media has expanded, and its war against the Arabs and Muslims is through sex mania which it distributes globally. Israel had to use this sex mania, as we mentioned in a previous lesson, in order to destroy the spirit of Arabs and Muslims. Everything among the Muslims has died, except for their lust. Therefore we see filth and immodesty on many satellite channels, pictures and ads for penis enlargement and for all sorts of things. All of these are contrary to modesty. Why? Because the Jews, as it is said in the Quran, believe only in the body, not in the spirit. The Jews, according to our religion, believe only in the body.

 "What has Israel given to the world in our times, aside from moral corruption and degeneration of values, aside from the use of drugs and pills? I said in a previous lesson that the CIA has a unit called the Unit for Creating the Global Mood. They look at a map: 'What is appropriate for Gaza, or Jordan, or Syria? Tramadol pills (i.e., pain killers)? Mood enhancers? Hallucinatory substances?' They are produced in India, shipped to Israel and distributed in Sinai. Afterwards they are spread in the region, in order to destroy what remains of our children's values."

[Official PA TV, June 12, 2015 and April 14, 2017]

Remember, half of Israel's R&D budget is dedicated to increasing Arab sex drive, and the other half to making them impotent.

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Idiots say Israel is allied with Al Qaeda. And ISIS. And even Iran.

Electronic Intifada, which tacitly supports Syria's bombing and gassing its own citizens, has spent a great deal of energy trying to pretend that Israel is somehow allied with Al Qaeda in Syria, because some of the people it gave medical attention to are apparently members of the Al Nusra Front which is fighting both ISIS and Iranian-backed Syrian and Hezbollah troops.

Other idiots like Richard Silverstein have seized on an offhand comment that Moshe Yaalon made that ISIS had "apologized" for firing on Israeli troops. The Daily Mail explains why:

Under Israeli law, it is technically illegal to communicate with a terrorist group because they are classed as 'enemy agents' - raising questions as to how exactly the apology was delivered.
But a clue might be found in the testimony of Jürgen Todenhöfer, the German man who spent 10 days inside the Islamic State in 2014.
He told the Jewish News the only country IS fighters feared is Israel.
'They told me they know the Israeli army is too strong for them,' he said.
He added: 'They are not scared of the British and the Americans, they are scared of the Israelis and told me the Israeli army is the real danger.'
Mr Ya'alon's comment about the apology was related to his country's strategy in the Syrian Civil War.
Israel has adopted a policy of non-intervention in Syrian Civil War, but has defended its borders when fighting spilled over in the past.
They have remained out of the fight for the most part, but have hit back hard when fighting spills into the Israeli Golan Heights - land Israel took from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War.  

But Silverstein, writing in "Russia Insider," uses his impeccable logic to say that "when you bomb an ally you apologise. When you bomb an enemy – you don’t. What does that make IS to Israel?"

There ya go!

But wait, there's more! Israel is also allied with Iran!

Hisham Najjar writes in a Libyan paper that Israel and Iran have a lot in common. They both occupy land that is not theirs, they both attack Arabs, they both want to expand their empires (Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates,), they both expel opponents, they both extend their influence to Africa, they both are working on or have nuclear weapons, Jews are still grateful for Persians giving them rights in Jerusalem 2500 years ago, and both are religious-based states.

Therefore, he says, don't be fooled by the rhetoric they employ against each other; they are really on the same side.

Just remember - everyone also agrees that Israel is Islamophobic.

What do all of these bizarre opinions have in common?

It shows that for people who hate the idea of Jewish self-determination, Jews are always allied with whomever they consider their enemies at the moment. This is the same thinking that had Communists accuse Jews of being capitalists and American antisemites accusing Jews of being Communists, of Europeans accusing Jews of being Semitic and of Arabs accusing Jews of being European.

In the end, it is all the same hate, dressed up in different clothing. And it would be laughable if it wasn't the same hate that also has been responsible for some of the worst atrocities in history.

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04/30 Links: Collier: Israel to honor another 97 fallen; When Mark Regev went to SOAS

From Ian:

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Memorial Day 2017 Israel to honor another 97 fallen

Over the past year, another 97 soldiers and officers serving in Israel’s security forces, including 37 wounded veterans who succumbed to their wounds, have joined the ranks of Israel’s fallen, according to numbers released by the Defense Ministry ahead of Memorial Day for the Fallen Soldiers of Israel and Victims of Terrorism, which begins Sunday at 8 p.m. with a siren that will be heard throughout the country.
Since the beginning of the modern Jewish movement in the Land of Israel in 1860, a total of 23,544 have died defending the State of Israel, including those fighting with pre-state defense forces, IDF soldiers, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), the Mossad, police officers, and officers of Israel’s Prisons Services.
According to the National Insurance Institute, there are a total of 9,157 bereaved parents in Israel, thousands of bereaved siblings, 4,881 widows and 1,843 orphans under the age of 30. In addition, 3,117 civilians have been killed in hostile acts such as terror attacks since the birth of the the State of Israel, including 122 foreign nationals and 100 Israelis killed in attacks abroad.
In a letter to IDF soldiers and commanders, IDF chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot wrote that "in their death, the fallen have left us with a legacy and a will to be the defenders of the people and to hold the sword for its freedom in its land."
"With the legacy of the fallen, we are charged to preserve the values that they adopted in their lives—courage and mental fortitude, responsibility and dedication, a sense of mission and belief in the righteousness of the way. The values that beat in the hearts of the fallen are the secret to the strength of the Israel Defense Force to this very day. The IDF spirit is the common language shared by those who serve."

'Thanks to the fallen, we rose; thanks to them, we are alive'

Ahead of the official start of Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism on Sunday evening, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Reuven Rivlin, and other state officials took part in a ceremony dedicating a new national memorial edifice on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.
The new memorial hall, which was unveiled last Thursday, features the name of each one of the 23,544 fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism in Israel's history. Each name is inscribed on a separate brick, and the bricks are arranged by the dates of death.
Throughout the year, the names of those whose anniversaries are approaching will be illuminated by electronic candles. In the coming days, the site will be open to bereaved families only. It is later scheduled to open to the general public.
Speaking at the dedication ceremony Sunday, Rivlin said: "'The world is full of remembering and forgetting, like sea and land. Sometimes the memory is the solid, existing land, and sometimes the memory is like the sea that covers everything.' So said my teacher, the poet Yehuda Amichai. Today, as the eve of Memorial Day approaches, here at the memorial hall, memory becomes tangible. It is like the sea that covers everything.
"Memory is not just remembering the past. The secret of the power of the Israeli memory is its continuity. It's a memory that goes from the past to the present to the future."

IDF chief: Remember the fallen, embrace their families

Israel Defense Forces commanders, soldiers, and employees: In these moments, we stand together, bow our heads in respect, and remember our common, unifying purpose -- the shared fate for which our brothers and sisters, the IDF fallen throughout the generations -- gave their lives.
When they were alive, the fallen worked for the same goal: to ensure the security of the state and its residents. From the moment they enlisted in the IDF, they devoted all their energy to fulfilling their obligation to their people. In their deaths, the fallen left us a legacy and a directive: to serve as a shield and wield a sword to ensure the people's freedom in their own nation.
The legacy of the fallen requires us to examine the values they held when they were alive: a path of heroism and courage of spirit; a path of responsibility and devotion; a path of belief in the righteousness of their mission, the justness of their path. The values that beat in the hearts of the fallen are the secret of the Israel Defense Forces' success through today. The spirit of the IDF is that of a common language among those who serve in it.
The legacy of the fallen requires us to work in constant cooperation and be friends to one another, like the Prophet Isaiah said: "They help each other and say to their companions, 'Be strong!'" And also that we join forces, acknowledging that we have a single destiny: we all wear a uniform, we all hold a weapon, and we all work together for the security of the state.

JPost Editorial: The cost of freedom on Israel's 69th birthday

Abraham Lincoln spoke of the purpose of remembering such sacrifice after the Battle of Gettysburg, when the Civil War threatened to destroy the Union.
He called on the country to commit itself to honoring the slain by acknowledging the meaning of their deaths: “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.”
This line has meaning for all Israelis who know that we will always have to pay the cost of our freedom.
There was a time not too long ago when we knew what it meant to be helpless as the world watched as millions of Jews were being murdered. Our memorial day is about the true meaning of Zionism: Jewish self-determination and national liberation. After only seven decades of independence so far, Israelis have come to understand and to mark the integral link between destruction and rebirth, sorrow and gladness.
This is the meaning of our emancipation: that we are able to express our freedom through the miracle of the sovereign state of Israel, now home to nearly half the world’s Jewish population. The Jewish people persevered and created a modern state in its ancient homeland after the first hundred years of Zionism, despite the Holocaust and in defiance of succeeding attempts to destroy it.
We honor the memories of those who died protecting it, which are the blessings we share every day of our national existence.

Israel at 69 Poll: Israelis proud of their country - including Israeli Arabs

The overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews take pride in their country and identify with the State of Israel, a new survey released ahead of Independence Day shows.
According to the Peace Index survey conducted jointly by the Israel Democracy Institute’s Guttman Center and Tel Aviv University, while Israelis are critical of certain perceived failings of state policy, the vast majority of Jewish citizens identify with the state and its problems and are optimistic about the future.
In addition, a majority of Arab Israelis also take pride in being part of the State of Israel, identify with the state and its problems, and in many areas are more likely to approve of the state’s policies than their Jewish peers.
While 43.9% of Jewish Israelis rated Israel’s overall situation as good, compared to 39.2% who rated it as okay, and 15.8% who said its bad, nearly two-thirds (66.0%) of Israeli Arabs rated Israel’s situation as good, 19.% said it was okay, and just 12.4% rated it as bad.
Seventy-four percent of Jews and 56.7% of Arabs also said they rated their own personal situation as good, compared to 23.8% of Jews and 31.3% of Arabs who said their own prospects were so-so, and 1.3% of Jews and 7.9% of Arabs who said their situations were not good.
Jews, were more likely to say they were proud of being Israeli, though a majority of Arabs also expressed this sentiment. Among Israeli Jews, 86.1% said they were proud of being a part of Israel, compared to 51.1% of Israeli Arabs. Just 13% of Israeli Jews said they were not proud, compared to 39.9% of Israeli Arabs.

David Collier: The day Israeli Ambassador Mark Regev went to SOAS campus

On 27/4/2017, Mark Regev, the current Israeli Ambassador to London, came to speak at SOAS. Ever since the news of this event became public knowledge, several groups of students on SOAS have been actively trying to have the talk cancelled. SOAS academics also issued a public plea, the student union issued a statement, and eventually, when it became clear it would go ahead, student groups organised a public protest to coincide with the meeting. This event was promoted off campus as well, with external anti-Israel organisations such as the the Palestine Solidarity Campaign calling for support.
A large turn out was expected. Hundreds of people who wanted to silence opposing voices on campus would turn up. People who do not believe in a world where their ideologies and their political positions can be examined. Instead, they seek to close down the argument and silence opposition voices. Working to a drumbeat demanding that all critical thinking on central themes surrounding their own political preferences must be expelled from the university campus. This includes Mark Regev. What kind of university behaviour is that?
But the story of the visit by Mark Regev to SOAS, is far bigger than a few bigoted student activists. The day itself started with a sickening attempt at balance by the BBC.
The BBC gets it all wrong
The main pre-event news story came from the BBC when BBC2’s Victoria Derbyshire show ran a report about BDS on campus. As someone who understands the subject matter well, I would argue the report was deeply uncomfortable to watch. An attempt at balance that went horribly wrong. The report simply failed to identify any of the real problems with BDS. Instead it implied that BDS is a ‘just cause’, and the only real objection is that Jewish student are ‘hurt’ by it (a kind of unwanted side effect). It operates on the assumption that the fight against BDS is a ‘welfare dispute’

Stephen Pollard (2016): The Left's hatred of Jews chills me to the bone

And because Israel is part of the Western imperium, as well as a key target for Islamists, it is also enemy number one for progressives. So an obsessive preoccupation with the Jewish state becomes the default position of the Left. China, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia – pah! The focus must be on Israel and Israel alone. From that springs an entire worldview that encompasses "Zionist" control of the media, of business, of everything. And we can’t be accused of targeting Jews because we don’t use the word. We say Zionist, not Jew.
So deep does this warping of what it means to be Left and progressive now run that it is almost prosaic to assert Zionist control. But now, to cap it, we have a Labour leader whose entire political career has been in this milieu – feeding it, growing it and pushing it.
For months now, week by week, examples have been emerging of cut and dried anti-Semitism – most dressed up, oh so cleverly, as anti-Zionism, but much not even bothering to hide it. And the Labour leader’s response to the criticism that he is soft on anti-Semitism and that it’s his political mindset that has fuelled its rise is not to get hard on anti-Semitism. It’s to get irritated.
This is not some academic exercise or interesting political theory. This is reality – the reality that the Labour Party is now run by a cadre for whom anti-Semitism really is ok, so long as it is dressed up as anti-Zionism. Because Zionism is the enemy of all good people.
Should I admit that I am afraid? Because I am. I don’t go about my life in fear. I wouldn’t be writing this or doing my job if I did. But how, quite rationally, can I not be afraid when Jews are being murdered on the streets of Europe simply for being Jews; when anti-Semitic tropes and discourse is becoming part of the mainstream of political debate; and when one of our main political parties is led by a man who does not merely let this fester, but actually describes representatives of terrorist groups as "friends"?
If this is the level we have reached today, I fear not just for myself but far more for my children. History shows that when anti-Semitism takes hold it does not wither; it grows. Yes, Britain is a wonderful home to Jews, as it is to all minorities. Yes, we have the full backing of the law and the authorities. But yes, I do look over my shoulder. Wouldn’t you?

Hamas thanks N. Korea for its support against ‘Israeli occupation’

Hamas on Sunday thanked North Korea for its support of the Palestinian cause, saying that Israel was “the leader of evil and terrorism in the world.”
Hamas and North Korea came together after Pyongyang launched a scathing attack on Israel and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, after Liberman had insulted North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
“Hamas appreciates North Korea statement in which it supported the Palestinian’s struggle and rejected the continuation of occupation,” the terror group’s spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri wrote on his Twitter page.
“Hamas (rejects) Israeli abuse of North Korea and confirms that Israel is the leader of evil and terrorism in the world.”

UN official who resigned amid Israel ‘apartheid’ furor has no regrets

Labeling Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as “apartheid” is like flinging a burning match into spilled gasoline — so combustible are the passions on both sides.
Rima Khalaf did just that when a report commissioned by her UN agency at the request of 18 Arab member states accused Israel of having established an apartheid regime designed to dominate the Palestinian people as a whole.
In a swift outcry, Israel slammed the 65-page document as anti-Semitic. The US demanded its removal and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres ordered it taken off the agency’s website, saying it did not reflect his views. Rather than comply, Khalaf resigned as head of ESCWA, a Beirut-based agency, one of several UN regional bodies dealing with economic and social issues.
More than a month later, Khalaf has no regrets. The report’s charge of apartheid — a “crime against humanity” in the eyes of the International Criminal Court — deserves serious examination, she said in an interview.

Israeli-German Spat Highlights Europe’s Funding of BDS and Terror

A diplomatic spat between Israel and Germany has provided a prominent platform for research that documents the European Union’s funding of the BDS movement and Palestinian terrorism.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled a meeting with German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel in Jerusalem that was scheduled for April 25, due to Gabriel’s insistence on meeting with nonprofit organizations that campaign against the IDF and falsely accuse Israel of human rights violations.
Netanyahu’s action came after he gave Gabriel an ultimatum — terminate the meetings with representatives from B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence, or lose the meeting with the Israeli prime minister.
“My policy is clear — not to meet with diplomats who visit Israel and engage with organizations that slander Israeli soldiers and seek to have them put on trial as war criminals,” Netanyahu said.
Gerald Steinberg, a professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University and the president of the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, told JNS.org that European funding and — German state funds in particular — enable “fringe groups like Breaking the Silence to travel the world attacking the IDF.”
“In his actions, Prime Minister Netanyahu is seeking to put this irresponsible NGO funding by Europe on the agenda, and to trigger long-overdue changes,” Steinberg said.

Israel blames Germany for EU support of UNESCO anti-Israel resolution

Israel is angry at Germany for the anticipated European support for the resolution attacking Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, which UNESCO’s Executive Board in Paris is scheduled to approve this Tuesday, diplomatic sources told The Jerusalem Post.
The behind-the-scenes conflict preceded the public argument between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel over his meeting with the left-wing group Breaking the Silence during his visit to Israel last week.
Netanyahu canceled his meeting with Gabriel and attacked the foreign minister in an interview with the German newspaper Bild.
Israel believes that Berlin led the charge for an amended resolution — submitted by Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and Sudan — which European Union states are likely to vote “yes” on, or abstain.

Analysis: German FM fishes for antisemitic vote in row with Israel

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel’s ongoing assaults on the legitimacy of the Israeli government may actually be about winning the federal election in September.
In the latest iteration of stoking antisemitic sentiments for electoral results, German journalists and experts have diagnosed a method to Gabriel’s escalating fights with Israel.
“The current government is not Israel, also when it is so often presented,” Gabriel told the Hamburger Abendblatt paper on Saturday. When asked about Gabriel’s comment, a spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry on Saturday told The Jerusalem Post: “We will not comment.”
Gabriel’s latest attack on Israel’s democracy follows his refusal to pull the plug on meetings with two hard-left Israeli NGOs that allegedly undercut Israel’s security and armed forces, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Gabriel rejected Netanyahu’s offer to meet on Tuesday in exchange for canceling his appointments with the NGOs Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem.
A new attitude survey shows Gabriel may very well be amplifying his hostility toward Israel’s government for his personal electoral gain. There is a huge pool of Germans who can be whipped up to vote for his Social Democratic Party because of hatred of Israel.

Germany's deal with Palestinians will remove all EU opposition to UNESCO resolution that still singles out Israel https://t.co/H2BO3NWRAG

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) April 30, 2017

Mexican diplomat to be honored for challenging UNESCO on anti-Israel vote

The Mexican diplomat who was fired from his ambassador position for walking out an anti-Israel vote by a United Nations agency will be honored by the American Sephardic Federation.
Andres Roemer, who is Jewish, will be awarded the International Sephardic Leadership Award at a ceremony on May 21 at the Center for Jewish History in New York. The event will honor the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Jerusalem during the Six Day War.
“When confronted by the recent UNESCO resolution that sought to erase Jerusalem, Israel’s Jewish and Christian history, Ambassador Roemer knowingly risked his position to voice and vote his conscience,” read the federation’s announcement.
In October, the Latin American diplomat risked his position by walking out of a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization vote at its headquarters in Paris — leaving his deputy to cast the country’s vote — in a personal protest against the UNESCO resolution denying Jewish ties to Jerusalem.
“While the resolution still passed, Ambassador Roemer did not forget Jerusalem and his moral courage convinced several countries, including his own, to seek to reverse the resolution’s ill-considered position against historical truth and the possibility of peace,” according to the announcement.
For not following the instructions he had received from the Mexican government, he was fired a few days later.

Ben Cohen: What’s at Stake in the Sebastian Gorka Dispute

For much of this year, a bitter debate has raged over the character and opinions of Sebastian Gorka, who was appointed as a deputy adviser to President Donald Trump shortly after the inauguration in January.
I have — until now — resisted the temptation to dip a toe into this dispute. Many of Gorka’s detractors call him an antisemite, citing his documented links with far-right organizations in his native Hungary. His defenders have angrily described the accusation as a smear. And so, inevitably, a cycle of barbs has begun — with the usual ad hominems embedded into political exchanges. It’s undignified, and it reminds me of similarly frustrating arguments about whether certain individuals on the left are trading in antisemitic tropes.
So let me say at the outset: I have never met Gorka, have never spoken with him and can’t say that I’m hugely familiar with his work. That said, there is very little evidence out there justifying the accusation of antisemitism. Gorka does not, so far as I can tell, believe that there is a Jewish conspiracy propelling the world to a global conflict. Nor does he believe that Jews are literally or figuratively “bloodsuckers,” that Jews are congenital liars, that Jews are more loyal to Israel than their own countries, or that the state of Israel is a colonial interloper with no right to a sovereign existence.
These are some of the basic elements of an antisemitic worldview. If Gorka does not buy into any of these, he is not an antisemite. I find it suspicious that a good number of those driving the antisemitism accusations in his direction are, if not outright supporters of the BDS hate campaign (today’s most potent expression of antisemitism), willing to accept its self-image as an anti-racist movement championing civil rights, when what BDS really does is reinvent reactionary tropes about Jews for the social media generation.

Names revealed of Jewish targets of South African twin terror suspects

The names of several alleged Jewish targets were revealed as part of legal proceedings for South African twin terror suspects Brandon-Lee and Tony-Lee Thulsie's, local media reported last week.
The allegedly ISIS-linked identical twins were due to be indicted on 12 counts, according to a 13-page provisional indictment. The brothers appeared on Tuesday in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court‚ where their case was reportedly postponed to May.
According to the state indictment, South African cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro, who works under the pseudonym Zapiro, was one target of the alleged terrorists.
“The said terrorist activities would have been perpetrated using firearms‚ explosives and possibly poisons and would have been directed against: the High Commission of the United Kingdom in Pretoria‚ the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Pretoria‚ the Embassy of the United States of America in Pretoria‚ the First Secretary to the French Mission in South Africa (Pretoria)‚ Mr J-B MP Prouhet [and] Jonathan Shapiro‚ a South African Jewish cartoonist," The Herald Live reported.
The Jewish King David High School in Linksfield, Johannesburg, as well as Roy Topol, a Jewish investment manager, were also mentioned in the indictment as other planned targets.

'Sarah Halimi's murderer is not insane'

Jewish leaders in France demanded that police relate to the murder of Jewish woman Sarah Halimi at the hands of her Arab neighbor as murder - and not as the act of an insane and unstable person.
Halimi, 66, was cruelly murdered at the beginning of April after she was attacked by a terrorist while she was sleeping in her apartment. He stabbed her and then threw her from the third story to her death.
Yoel Margi, who heads “Consistoire,” which provides religious services to Jews in France, emphasized the fact that the suspect had shouted “Allahu Akbar” before pushing Halimi out of the window. “I refuse to accept the easy excuse of insanity for a murderer who tried to make the incident look like a suicide, before eyewitnesses powerless to act,” he said.
Halimi was found lifeless outside her apartment in Paris. Neighbors told police that, at a late hour of the night, the terrorist ascended to the third floor of the apartment complex, yelled “Allahu Akbar” and acted wildly before pushing Halimi to her death.
During the police investigation, the terrorist asserted that the Koran had commanded him to murder her. He was sent for psychiatric evaluations.

Swiss court tells Egyptian energy companies to compensate Israel

A Swiss court has rejected an appeal by Egyptian energy companies against a French court's ruling last year ordering them to pay $2 billion in compensation to the state-owned Israel Electric Corporation, the Israeli utility said.
The IEC issued a statement Friday saying that Egyptian Natural Gas and the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation were liable because they were unable to fulfill their commitment to provide Israel with natural gas for its power stations.
The Egyptian petroleum ministry was not immediately available for comment.
Egypt sold gas to Israel under a 20-year agreement that collapsed in 2012 after months of repeated attacks by insurgents on the pipeline serving Israel in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.
In 2015, an international arbitrator said Egypt should pay nearly $2 billion in compensation because of the halt in the gas supply, leading to tensions between the two neighbors.

Israel announces West Bank, Gaza closure ahead of Independence Day

Israel announced a closure of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip Saturday night ahead of Memorial Day and Independence Day.
The closure, a routine procedure ahead of Israeli and Jewish holidays, will come into effect at midnight between Saturday and Sunday, and will end on Tuesday night.
The closure is intended to prevent attempts at terror attacks in Israel during the holiday period. Exceptions will be made for humanitarian and other outstanding cases.
Also Saturday Israeli security forces arrested four West Bank residents suspected of firing and hurling a small bomb at a military post near Tulkarem. The four were taken in for questioning, and one was found to be in possession of a homemade weapon.

PreOccupiedTerritory: Mini Iron Dome To Be Installed On All Cars To Intercept Rocks, Firebombs (satire)

Continued targeting of Israeli cars by Palestinians on the roads of Judea and Samaria and in parts of Jerusalem with rocks and Molotov cocktails has prompted the Ministries of Defense and Internal Security to mandate the installation of an automated countermeasure system on all Israeli vehicles to shoot down incoming projectiles.
Multiple daily incidents along the arteries connecting Jewish communities in the heartland of the country involving Palestinian youths lobbing firebombs and stones at cars have led Israeli officials to require that all civilian passenger vehicles be equipped with the Trophy system, an anti-projectile device that until now has been reserved for military combat vehicles.
Minister of Defense Avigdor Liberman and Minister of Internal Security Gilad Erdan signed the order this morning, under which all new passenger cars in Israel must come equipped with Trophy, and all cars already on the road will have the system installed. Under the new measure, all civilian passenger vehicles in Israel will have Trophy operational by 2022.
The measure calls for the establishment of installation centers across the country, with technical staff trained by Refael, the weapons development authority. In addition to the dedicated facilities, certified mechanics at existing garages and dealerships will undergo training to conduct installation and repairs at their sites. Priority will be given to residents of communities where rock-throwing and firebombs often threaten travelers.

Abbas meets with King Abdullah ahead of White House visit

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met with Jordan’s King Abdullah II on Sunday in Amman in order to coordinate positions ahead of Abbas’s meeting with US President Donald Trump at the White House this week.
According to the Hebrew-language Ynet news site, Abbas and Abdullah agreed during the meeting that a two-state outcome is the “only solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
They were also said to have discussed ways to reboot peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
The meeting of the two leaders came less than 24 hours after Abbas held similar talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi in Cairo.
Sissi issued a similar statement after that meeting, affirming his country’s commitment to the two-state solution and urging the US to “play an active role in efforts to resume negotiations.”

'We will soon force Israel to release prisoners'

Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal sent messages to Arab security prisoners, promising the prisoners are at the top of the priority list and that the Hamas leadership will do everything to ensure their release.
"It will not be long before the fighting forces will force Israel to pay the price and to release the Palestinian prisoners," Mashaal said, hinting there may be a new swap similar to the 2011 Shalit deal.
In an interview with Al-Quds, Mashaal called for complete unity between the Arab terrorist organizations, both in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza and in other places as well. He also called on the various organizations to work together with liberals around the world in order to support prisoners and "expose" Israel's "acts against them."
In fact, Arab terrorists have said they enjoyed a life of ease in Israeli prisons, with officials admitting that various perks are given to the terrorists in an attempt to prevent rioting.
In 2014, then-Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich was given a freer hand to impose "harsh" conditions on jailed Hamas terrorists in a Security Cabinet decision. Later, it was divulged that those "harsh" conditions meant no more watching the World Cup on TV or shopping at the jail's canteen.

Guardian cries for Barghouti, ignores his terror victims: Bias by the numbers.

Today, Guardian Jerusalem correspondent Peter Beaumont published an article (appearing in The Observer, sister publication of the Guardian) titled “Wife of jailed Fatah leader tells of her fears of the hunger strikers”. The piece focused on the ongoing hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners, including Marwan Barghouti.
Barghouti is a convicted terrorist who was one of the Palestinian leaders of the 2nd Intifada’s campaign of suicide bombings and shootings in the early 2000s. He was convicted in 2002 on five counts of murder of innocent civilians, but was likely responsible for many more killings. Crimes orchestrated by Barghouti include: The murder of Greek monk Tsibouktsakis Germanus in Jerusalem on June 12, 2001; the murder of Yoela Hen in Jerusalem on January 15, 2002; and the murder of Eli Dahan, Yosef Habi, and Salim Barakat in Tel Aviv on March 5, 2002.
Bereaved families at the opening of the trial of Marwan Barghouti at a Tel Aviv court, 2002. (Photo, GPO)
The bulk of Beaumont’s article, however, focuses on the fears of Barghouti’s wife, Fadwa Barghouti, and the hardship faced by all of the hunger striking prisoners and their families. To garner some insight into the 1300 word article, here’s a brief analysis of the text (a word count) to demonstrate the skewed priorities. (The numbers below represent total number of words used in sentences devoted to the particular topic indicated.)
The number represents total number of words used in sentences devoted to the particular topic indicated.
Also noteworthy in the article is this egregious example of the ubiquitous ‘Some say he’s a terrorist, while others say…’ media narrative on Barghouti:

BBC News parrots inaccurate claim from a politicised UN agency

And yet again, the BBC could not resist promoting the false notion that the chronic shortage of electricity in the Gaza Strip is in part attributable to Israeli counter-terrorism measures.
“Gaza’s electricity supply has been also affected by restrictions on the import of goods imposed by Israel as part of a land, sea and air blockade that is now in its 10th year. Egypt is meanwhile blockading Gaza’s southern border.
Israel and Egypt maintain the blockades as a measure against attacks by Islamist militants based in Gaza.”
Interestingly, an almost identical statement is to be found in a document produced by UN OCHA to which a link is provided in this article’s fifth paragraph:
“Gaza’s longstanding electricity deficit has been also affected by the restrictions on the import of goods imposed by Israel as part of a land, air and sea blockade, now in its 10th year.”
Obviously if BBC journalists conducted their own research rather than blindly parroting claims made by a highly partial and politicised UN body, their reporting would be more likely to meet the BBC’s professed standards of accuracy.

Australia probing video of 8-year-old jihadi making threats

Police in Australia said Sunday they were investigating a report that the 8-year-old son of a notorious Islamic State fighter was filmed wearing a suicide vest and threatening to kill its nationals.
The footage was allegedly of the youngest son of Khaled Sharrouf, who in February became the first Australian to be stripped of his citizenship under anti-terrorism laws.
The young boy was recently filmed holding two guns and a knife and making threats as a voice off-camera asked him, “How do you kill an Australian?” Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph reported.
Sharrouf, who left Australia for Syria in 2013 with his family, made international headlines in 2014 when he posted an image on Twitter of another son holding a severed head.

The real collusion story

In the last few weeks, there has been a counterpunch of sorts from Trump ‎supporters, alleging that former President Barack Obama's officials in the Justice Department and intelligence ‎services launched a surveillance operation during the campaign to potentially ‎derail the Trump campaign, and after the election, to keep the Russian story alive ‎through leaks to eager journalists, to delegitimize his presidential victory and his ‎ability to govern. ‎
At this point, based on what is known as opposed to what is ‎believed or hoped for by partisans, it is highly likely that both themes are probably exaggerated, ‎and maybe even totally false, though the leaks from Obama loyalists still in ‎government seem to provide some support for the charge that there has been an ‎organized campaign to damage his successor.‎
In the meantime, a blockbuster story in Politico provides much new information on how far the Obama ‎team was willing to go to get a nuclear deal with Iran done, and then to please the ‎mullahs in any number of ways after the agreement was reached, to demonstrate ‎U.S. allegiance to their needs and demands. In any case, no journalist sympathetic ‎to the Obama narrative on the Iran deal would dare call it collusion. ‎
The Politico article revealed for the first time the extent of the trade the Obama ‎administration was willing to make with Iran to obtain the release of five American ‎prisoners. The U.S. announced the release of seven Iranians, ‎described by the administration as civilians, none involved with terrorism. In fact, ‎several were regarded by Obama's Justice Department as clear national security ‎threats, involved in weapons procurement. The administration also dropped ‎charges and arrest warrants against 14 other Iranians, all of them fugitives, ‎several of them also involved in weapons procurement for Iran's nuclear program, ‎‎. ‎

Cees Flinterman & @BosgraafRuud @Amnesty back UN putting Saudi Arabia on women's rights body. Any Saudi women agree?https://t.co/9Iwxpb067i

— UN Watch (@UNWatch) April 28, 2017

Battling anti-Semitic image, Le Pen quietly visits Holocaust memorial

French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen placed a wreath on a Marseille monument to French victims of the Holocaust Sunday morning, weeks after she drew sharp criticism by claiming that France had no responsibility for the fate of its Jewish citizens deported to Nazi Germany.
The low-key wreath-laying took place without the media present at a memorial to 30 Jewish women and children who were rounded up by the Gestapo in 1943, to mark France’s Memorial Day for Victims of Deportation.
She was accompanied by a local politician. A picture of the wreath-laying was tweeted by a campaign worker.
Her rival, centrist Emmanuel Macron of the En Marche movement, is due to visit a Holocaust memorial near Paris later Sunday.

Algerian Jewish leader is Russian Christian

Meet Amir Hamoui, the new president of the phantom Jewish community of Algeria. (There is a precedent: the president of the non-existent Kurdish Jewish community is a Muslim). On his blog Hamoui declares himself to be the son of a Russian-Jewish woman, then claims to be also a Christian serving the Pope and appointed by the Vatican (Praise be to Jesus). His Facebook page proclaims that he is not from Algiers, but St Petersburg. Curiouser and curiouser! (With thanks: Boruch)
Amir Hamoui succeeds Roger Said as the President of the Jewish community of Algeria. Said died in 2012.
'My story : Amir Hamoui was born (August 22 / August 1988) is a Russian of Algerian origin, was born in Algiers (Algeria) from a Christian family of a Jewish mother Jacqueline Rebecca Hamoui, professor of Russian, Ukrainian, Hebrew. Hewas born in Algeria (Tlemcen province) where he was appointed by the Russian president in 2015 adviser to the Russian Foreign Ministry. I worked a translator of foreign languages ​​in the federal Moscow embassy in Algeria for HE Ambassador of Russia in Algeria Alexander Zulotov between 2007 and 2014. Then I went to Italy to support the missionary movement through education. Pope Francis himself appointed Amir Hamoui, the spokesman for the Holy See and his interpreter, and I am proud of myself, my family and friends for the support I get from them both at work and outside. I am proud to serve the Pope, the Vatican and the Pope in particular. I was called back to Algeria to be the representative of the Jewish religion in Algeria.'

‘World’s largest’ facility for disabled kids opens in Jerusalem

One of Israel’s largest disability groups inaugurated a new $54 million headquarters on Thursday in Jerusalem meant to serve as a community and sports center for the disabled.
The Shalva National Center “is the largest and most advanced facility for children with disabilities in the world,” Shalva said in a statement ahead of the Thursday morning launch ceremony.
While located in western Jerusalem, “it serves people with disabilities of all ages, religions and ethnicities free of charge.”
The facility includes an accessible semi-Olympic hydrotherapy pool, a fitness room with specialized equipment and a 400-seat auditorium, the group said. It will also be home to “Jerusalem’s first public inclusive playground with disability accessible installations” and municipal preschools geared to serving disabled children.
Shalva, founded in 1990, provides services to people with a wide range of disabilities and advocates for greater inclusion of the disabled in Israeli society.

Sharansky to talk about Russia, faith and freedom at live interview in Jerusalem

When he crossed the Glienicke Bridge in East Berlin in February 1986, Natan Sharansky might have hoped that his long campaign for Jewish freedom was over. Instead, the day that he woke up in a Soviet prison and went to sleep in Jerusalem was just the start of a much longer journey.
After nine years in Soviet labor camps and months of hunger strikes, Sharansky had hardly a moment’s rest to rekindle his fairytale love affair with his wife Avital and celebrate the birth of their two daughters before he was thrust into the whirlpool of public life.
Conscious that his worldwide celebrity would quickly fade, he embarked on a punishing round of global lobbying. Few believed his prophetic insistence that the Soviet Union was destined to collapse, heralding the arrival in Israel of a million new immigrants for which the Jewish state needed to immediately prepare.
But he was right. The Soviet Jewish immigration of the early 1990s transformed Israel’s demography and economy and helped thrust him into politics, where he spearheaded efforts to create housing and jobs to absorb the influx of new citizens.
But Sharansky’s experience — and the lessons learned by Avital in her long campaign — convinced him of the need to secure Israel’s future within the context of the entire Jewish world. That vision led him to the leadership of the Jewish Agency, an aging, sprawling organization of dubious value, which he has spent the past eight years reshaping for the 21st century.

IsraellyCool: Israeli F-35I To Fly For First Time In 2017 Yom Ha’atzmaut Independence Day IAF Flypast

Every year on Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israeli Independence Day) the Israeli Air Force puts on a flypast of a few different types of aircraft and in certain locations, an aerobatics display. And every year I struggle to find out the exact time.
The IAF have put the schedule out in two graphics rendering them impervious to Google Translate. I’ll provide the best key I can for the flypast (in order):
King Air B-200 “Tzofit” (Sunbird) – צופית
C-130 “Karnaf” (Rhino) – קרנף
C-130J “Samson” – שמשון
Gulfstream G550 AEW&C “Eitam” (Eagle) – עיטם
Gulfstream G550 SigInt “Shavit” (Comet) – שביט
F-15I “Ra’am” (Thunder) – ראם
F-16C/D “Barak” (Lightning) – ברק
F-15C/D “Baz” (Falcon) – בז
F-35I “Adir” (Mighty) – אדיר
This is the first public exhibition of our brand new F-35I “Adir” stealth fighters.

The West Wing's Leo McGarry on Israel's Memorial Day

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Numbers on IDF Memorial Day (Forest Rain)

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Look at the beautiful house of a terrorist family, thanks to your tax dollars

Samer al-Mahrum, a member of the PFLP terror group, was sentenced to life in prison for the 1986 murder of yeshiva student Eliyahu Amadi in the Old City of Jerusalem in 1986. He was released in the Shalit deal after 25 years of his sentence, but was re-arrested in 2014.

He managed to smuggle out his semen and his wife gave birth to a child last December.

Al Mahrum is now celebrated as one of the more prominent hunger strikers in prison.

Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Facebook page highlighted a news story from the official Palestinian news agency WAFA  about how awful his family situation is because of his imprisonment and how difficult life is for his wife and mother.

Here is a screenshot from the video showing his mother holding a poster. His new baby can be seen here as well.

His house, decorated with images of "resistance," is gorgeous!

How can a family whose patriarch was in prison for 27 of the past 31 years afford such a beautiful home?

It is because the terrorists who murder Jews get paid a handsome salary from the Palestinian Authority, which gets its budget from the West.

Yes, your tax dollars paid for the home of Samer al-Mahrum.

You can be sure that 99% of the "pro-Palestinian" protesters who say how awful Israel treats the Palestinians do not live in homes this nice. In fact, 99% of the entire world population does not live in homes that are this spacious and well decorated. Most of the people living in Egypt or Jordan would kill to live so well as this poor, deprived family who openly show their allegiance to terror groups.

It pays to be a Palestinian terrorist.

Here is a photo of Eliyahu Amadi, his victim.

(Incidentally, one of the others who was convicted in Amadi's murder was Omar Zayed. He went on on his own hunger strike and escaped from the hospital in 1990, managing to get to Bulgaria where he married and had a nice life until Israel requested his extradition. He fled to the Palestinian embassy in Bulgaria where he was not very welcome and then was found dead under mysterious circumstances.)

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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Is Ma'an ignorant or knowingly lying about fuel to Gaza?

Ma'an News, as one of the few independent news agencies in the territories and perhaps the only one that has a full English news desk, is relied upon by many lazy Western reporters to get their stories

On Friday, Ma'an wrote:

Israeli authorities opened the Karam Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing between Israel and the besieged Gaza Strip on Friday to allow limited amounts of fuel into the coastal enclave.
The Gaza Petroleum Committee said that some 500,000 liters of diesel, 100,000 liters of fuel and 120 tons of cooking gas are expected to enter.
The Karam Abu Salem crossing has been opened intermittently since the beginning of the year, affecting the small Palestinian territory’s access to fuel to power the enclave’s sole electricity plant.

The link from "opened intermittently" went to a story from March, that said:

 Israeli authorities decided on Thursday to open the Karam Abu Salam (Kerem Shalom) crossing on Friday between Israel and the Gaza Strip to allow fuel into the besieged coastal enclave.
Kerem Shalom was opened earlier this month, and twice last month to allow diesel into the small coastal territory.

 The links to the two other stories were similar.

However, Kerem Shalom is open every day from Sunday through Thursday, and it pumps fuel every one of those weekdays.

Ma'an is making it sound like it is hardly ever open.

What's going on?

Here's what appears to be happening: Israel sometimes opens Kerem Shalom on Fridays when there is reason to believe that Gaza needs extra fuel. So whenever Israel decides to open the crossing on a Friday there are some press releases in the Arab press letting people know the situation.

The Ma'an English editors appear to not understand these stories, and assume that when the Arabic media reports that Kerem Shalom is opening on a exceptional basis on a friday, that means it is not open the other days of the week.

Every story in the link chain from Ma'an is for a Friday opening.

Are the current Ma'an English editors simply ignorant of the basic fact that Israel opens Kerem Shalom every day except holidays? (The reason it was opened on Friday is almost certainly because it will be closed this coming week for Yom Ha'Atzmaut.)

Or are they interested in putting a false picture of Israel to the world?

Either way, Western reporters should take any Ma'an report with a large grain of salt.

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Jews dancing upsets Arabs. (Evergreen headline)

Shourouk News and Asrar and Al Ghad TV and Arab48 and AlArab News and Qatar News Agency all reported that "Jewish settlers" were performing "provocative Talmudic rituals" in the courtyard of "Bab al-Amud," which is Damascus Gate, "under heavy police protection."

Further reading shows that some Jewish kids were dancing ahead of Yom Ha'Atzmaut at the entrance to the Old City.

That'a it.

This isn't even in "occupied territory." 

So the next time someone tries to tell you that there would be peace f only Israel withdraws from the territories, ask them exactly why so many Arab news sites try to incite their readers into a frenzy with antisemitic overtones over Jews dancing on the west side of the Green Line.

(It is also entirely possible that the Arab world is trying to lay the groundwork for a campaign against Jews in any part of Jerusalem, as the upcoming UNESCO vote will deny any Israeli sovereignty over any part of the city.)

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04/29 Links: N. Korea threatens Israel; Trump proclaims May Jewish American Heritage Month

From Ian:

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N. Korea threatens Israel after Liberman calls Kim a madman

North Korea threatened to punish Israel and accused Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Saturday of “rash and malicious” statements that insulted its leadership, after he criticized the Asian nation and called its leadership “extremist and insane.”
In an official foreign ministry statement, Pyongyang said Liberman has challenged North Korea by making “rash and malicious” comments against the nation.
“Our consistent message is to mercilessly punish those who offend the dignity of our leadership,” the statement said.
“We warn Israel to think twice about the implications of its defamation campaign against us.”
The statement further condemned Israel for its nuclear policy, and accused the Jewish state of abusing the rights of Arabs across the Middle East.
“Israel is the only illegal possessor of nuclear weapons that enjoys the support of the United States, but Israel is attacking North Korea for possessing nuclear weapons,” the statement read, going on to claim this was a cynical move intended to distract from Israeli “occupation” and “crimes against humanity.”
On Thursday Liberman said Pyongyang “seems to have crossed the red line with its recent nuclear tests,” adding that its nuclear weapons program posed more of a threat to world order than Iran or any terrorist group.

At UN Security Council, Tillerson Presses for Economic Sanctions on North Korea

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson took the escalating threat of a nuclear North Korea to the United Nations Security Council Friday, urging member countries to financially cut ties with Pyongyang and freeze access to funds that could be used to build up that nation’s nuclear arsenal.
Tillerson called on the international community to fully implement U.N. sanctions and to suspend or downgrade diplomatic ties as well with North Korea.
“With each successive detonation and missile test, North Korea pushes northeast Asia and the world closer to instability and broader conflict," Tillerson said. "The threat of a North Korean attack on Seoul or Tokyo is real."
Tillerson added that it was “only a matter of time” before Pyongyang takes aim at the United States and said the international community must take concrete steps now in order to prevent North Korea from making good on threats.
“Business as usual is not an option,” Tillerson told 15 top diplomats at the U.N. meeting.
The secretary of state’s comments capped off an intense week in Washington that included closed-door briefings between the Trump administration and U.S. lawmakers over the escalating threat.

John Bolton: If North Korea Gets Nuclear Missiles, ‘Iran Could Have That Capability the Next Day by Writing a Check’

Breitbart News National Security Editor Frances Martel joined the conversation to ask Bolton about the deep relationship between the nuclear issues in Iran and North Korea, which are generally treated as entirely separate matters in media coverage.
“The media don’t get the connection, and that in part is because the national security bureaucracy doesn’t get, or doesn’t want to talk about, the connection,” Bolton replied, portraying it as “a classic bureaucratic example of what they call silos.”
“You’ve got the people dealing with Iran there in one silo, you’ve got the people dealing with North Korea in another silo. They might as well be on different planets,” he explained.
“But the fact is, again, from publicly available information going back 30 years, we know that the North Koreans and the Iranians have been in close cooperation on the development of ballistic missiles for that entire period. North Korea sold Iran the first SCUD missiles that were the basis for the Iranian missile program. They’ve cooperated in multiple ways since then. It makes perfectly good sense for that to happen. They’re both using the same Soviet-era SCUD missile technology for their missile programs, so they’ve got a common scientific and engineering base. Their objectives for the missile programs are exactly the same. It’s to deliver nuclear weapons, not launch communications or weather satellites. On that score, it’s just absolutely clear,” Bolton said.
“It is less clear in terms of publicly available evidence on the nuclear side, but I think there is substantial reason to believe there’s close cooperation there as well,” he continued. “The reactor that Israel destroyed in Syria in September of 2007 was being built by North Koreans. It was a clone of the North Korean Yongbyon reactor. Most people don’t think Syria had the financial wherewithal to pay for building that kind of reactor, and the North Koreans don’t do anything for free, so where did the money come from? I think it probably came from Iran.”
“I think there are a lot of other connections that have been noted, the Iranian scientists in North Korea and vice versa. Forget the Iran nuclear deal for a minute – it’s entirely foreseeable that the day North Korea gets the capability to drop a nuclear warhead on the United States via ballistic missile, Iran could have that capability the next day by writing a check in the right amount of money, so this relationship is extremely important,” he warned.

Leading Jewish Group Warns of Negative Ramifications for Israel if Qatari Diplomat Becomes Next UNESCO Chief

A leading Jewish human rights group is warning that condemnation of Israel at UNESCO will only intensify should a Qatari official assume the director-general’s post at the international cultural agency in November.
Dr. Shimon Samuels — a permanent observer on the UNESCO Executive Board from the US-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Algemeiner that Hamad Bin Abdulaziz Al-Kawari emerged as a front-runner during a meeting in Paris last week. UNESCO is selecting a successor for Irina Bokova, its current leader.
Out of nine candidate countries, Samuels said, France, China and Qatar emerged as serious contenders. However, France and China face an obstacle in the fact that both European and Asian officials have recently led the organization. Paris is also the host of UNESCO’s headquarters.
“The former Qatari culture minister, Al-Kawari, has been a diplomat, politician and businessman,” Samuels said. “In a sophisticated presentation, he did not hide his ability to provide the funds to resolve UNESCO’s cash crisis, since the United States ended its funding due to Palestinian entry into UNESCO in 2011. The American unpaid debt now stands at $400 million and counting.”

At the ABC, Fact Phobia Strikes Again

Race hatred is soaring in the US and Donald Trump is to blame -- that was the gist of a 7.30 report which went to air on March 14, two weeks after the perpetrator of one such attack was arrested. No Trump fan, he was a black, left-wing Muslim journalist. The ABC has not bothered to correct the record
On March 14, 7.30 ran a fake-news piece whose intent was to stitch up President Donald Trump for inciting a wave of anti-Semitic bomb threats and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries in the US. Compere Leigh Sales intoned: “Some people blame Donald Trump’s incendiary rhetoric for unleashing people’s worst impulses, something Trump backers of course dispute.” You can view the report here.
The show’s US correspondent Conor Duffy then interviewed a conga-line of Democrat activists to ramp up the 7.30 narrative which amounted to ‘the disgusting Trump incites cemetery vandalism, race hate and bomb threats’.
On the ABC news website the same day, under the nakedly-propaganda banner “Trump’s America”, Duffy’s story included pictures of desecrated Jewish headstones and the header, “Shootings, bombings, desecrated cemeteries and racist graffiti — minority groups in the United States say the number of race hate crimes are spiking in President Donald Trump’s America.”
On the evening’s 7.30 report, Sales and Duffy proffered no evidence whatsoever connecting Trump to the anti-Semitic upsurge. As professional journalists, Sales and Duffy must already have been aware that black, Muslim anti-Trumper Juan M. Thompson, 31, had been arrested at least 10 days earlier and charged with making multiple bomb threats against synagogues. His motive was not anti-Semitism but to frame a white ex-girlfriend for the calls, as revenge because she’d ditched him. If neither knew by that stage about Thompson’s arrest, they are incompetent. If they did know, they are liars by omission. You can read the FBI charge sheet hre, and do notice the date — March 1, almost two weeks before 7.30‘s beatup.

The American Rabbi Who Hunted Nazis

While a rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary in the 1960s, Barry Dov Schwartz learned of the work of Simon Wiesenthal and offered him his services. On Wiesenthal’s behalf, and alongside his career as a congregational rabbi, Schwartz interviewed numerous survivors and even suspected perpetrators—and, occasionally, went to still greater lengths, as Jordan Hiller writes:
In the spring of 1965, about 30 members of the 500-person-strong American Nazi party discreetly met in a cramped apartment on 114th Street and Broadway in New York City. It had been two decades since the liberation of death camps; . . . Nazis, their conspirators, sympathizers, and passive supporters were alive and well, either in hiding and trying to avoid punishment, or—more often than not—slithering seamlessly back into society.
While a handful of authentic former Nazis were gathered at the New York meeting along with like-minded individuals, so was a Jew. In fact, it was a rabbinical student . . . who moved inconspicuously among them. Naturally, Barry Dov Schwartz had delivered a false name at the door while dressed in the detective’s trench coat he had purchased expressly for the occasion. To avoid eating the sandwiches and drinks he was offered, Schwartz feigned a stomach ailment; [he then] lingered in the back and waited for his moment.

French Jewish leader demands police probe death of Jewish woman as murder

A French Jewish leader demanded police investigate the death of a Jewish woman earlier this month as a murder, and not as an act of insanity.
Joel Mergui, president of the Consistoire organization that provides religious services to French Jews, cited reports that the suspect shouted “Allahu Akbar,” Arabic for God is great, before pushing his victim out of the window on Vaucouleurs Street in the crime-ridden 11th district of the French capital.
“I refuse to accept the convenient pretext of madness for a murderer who tried to make the victim look like a suicide case in front of witnesses who were powerless to act,” Megui wrote in a statement Thursday.
His demand marks the first open dispute between French authorities and Jewish leaders over the death of Sarah Halimi, 66, on April 4 in Paris. The suspect is her 27-year-old neighbor.
Relatives of Halimi said that she had previously experienced anti-Semitic harassment by a relative of the man under arrest.

Suspected London terrorist was part of Gaza flotilla

A man arrested on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack in London on Thursday was on the Mavi Marmara ship, which was raided by Israeli soldiers in 2010 while trying to violate Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza, sources familiar with the investigation told Reuters on Friday.
The 27-year-old man was arrested with knives near Prime Minister Theresa May's office by armed counter-terrorism officers during a stop-and-search as part of an ongoing security operation, British police said.
No one was injured in the incident and police said knives had been recovered from the man, who was being monitored by British intelligence agents and counter-terrorism officers.
He remains in custody on suspicion of terrorism offences and possession of an offensive weapon, according to Reuters.
Sources who spoke to the news agency on Friday identified the suspect as Khalid Omar Ali from London.
Ali was on board the Mavi Marmara, the sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said.

Last message left by Westminster attacker Khalid Masood uncovered by security agencies

The last message left by the killer Khalid Masood on the WhatsApp messaging service, revealing his motivation for the lethal attack in Westminster, has been uncovered by the security agencies, The Independent has learnt.
In the message, sent just minutes before he began the rampage in which five people died and 50 were injured, the 52-year-old Muslim convert had declared that he was waging jihad in revenge against Western military action in Muslim countries in the Middle East.
The person who received the message has been extensively questioned, but freed after the police and MI5 concluded that he was not part of a plot and had no prior knowledge of what was unfolding on 22 March.
Eleven others detained following the attack were freed and have been cleared from inquiries.

Three charged with supplying arms to terrorists in 2015 Paris attacks

Three people have been charged with supplying arms to jihadists who staged deadly attacks in 2015 on a kosher supermarket in Paris and the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly, a judicial source said.
Those charged this week include Samir L., believed to be linked to the sale of weapons to the supermarket attacker, as well as Miguel M. and Abdelaziz A., who are thought to have been involved in trafficking arms between Belgium and France.
Seven people have already been charged over the assaults. The attackers had a wide array of weapons including guns that came from Slovakia.
Investigators are trying to piece together how France-based jihadist Amedy Coulibaly obtained the weapons used in the January 9, 2015 attack on the supermarket.

US approves possible $440 million arms sale to Israel

The US State Department approved a “Possible Foreign Military Sale” to Israel, according to a Defense Security Cooperation Agency press release published on Friday.
The agency said that the Israeli government requested to purchase 13 76-mm. naval guns, as well as a variety of naval maintenance materials and tools, technical, logistics and support services, operations and maintenance training and other related supplies and services. The estimated cost of such a deal is $440 million.
“The United States is committed to the security of Israel,” said the press release. “And it is vital to US national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability... This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a strategic regional partner that has been, and continues to be, an important force for political stability and economic progress in the Middle East.”
In terms of specifics, the agency said the equipment “will improve Israel’s capability to meet current and future threats in the defense of its borders and territorial waters. The naval guns will be installed on Israeli Navy Sa’ar 4.5 and Sa’ar 6 missile patrol boats. One gun will be located at an Israeli naval training center to be used for training maintenance personnel.”

Trump proclaims May annual Jewish American Heritage Month

US President Donald Trump on Friday proclaimed May 2017 Jewish American Heritage Month, marked annually since 2006 across the United States and preceded each year with an announcement by the sitting president.
In a statement late Friday, Trump said he will mark the month with a celebration together with his family, “including my daughter, Ivanka, my son-in-law, Jared, my grandchildren, and our extended family [of] the deep spiritual connection that binds, and will always bind, the Jewish people to the United States and its founding principles.”
“In every aspect of the country’s cultural, spiritual, economic, and civic life, American Jews have stood at the forefront of the struggles for human freedom, equality, and dignity, helping to shine a light of hope to people around the globe,” the statement read.
The Jewish people, said Trump, “have left an indelible mark on American culture,” adding that “today, it is manifested in the towering success Jewish people have achieved in America through a unique synthesis of respect for heritage and love of country.”

US lawmakers introduce bill to commission Elie Wiesel bust in Capitol

Two Congress members introduced a bipartisan bill to commission a bust of Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, who died last year.
Reps. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., introduced the bill in the House of Representatives on Friday.
Wiesel, an activist against racism who was well-known internationally for his many books, essays and educational projects about the Holocaust, died in July at 87.
Cohen, who is Jewish, and Ros-Lehtinen, an Episcopalian with Jewish heritage, praised Wiesel’s accomplishments in a statement Friday noting that they were introducing the bill during the week of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“Elie Wiesel was one of the greatest moral forces in the world,” Cohen said. “He is a member of that rare group of people who have had a major individual impact on our world, such as Nelson Mandela, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi.”

Trump I want to see peace with Israel and the Palestinians

President Donald Trump complained on Thursday that US ally Saudi Arabia was not treating the United States fairly and Washington was losing a “tremendous amount of money” defending the kingdom.
In an interview with Reuters, Trump confirmed his administration was in talks about possible visits to Saudi Arabia and Israel in the second half of May. He is due to make his first trip abroad as president for a May 25 NATO summit in Brussels and could add other stops.
"Frankly, Saudi Arabia has not treated us fairly, because we are losing a tremendous amount of money in defending Saudi Arabia,” he said.
Trump’s criticism of Riyadh, the world’s top oil exporter, was a return to his 2016 election campaign rhetoric when he accused the kingdom of not pulling its weight in paying for the US security umbrella.
"Nobody’s going to mess with Saudi Arabia because we’re watching them," Trump told a campaign rally in Wisconsin a year ago. “They’re not paying us a fair price. We’re losing our shirt.”

Shaked: Failure to secure US Embassy move a ‘great missed opportunity’

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said Saturday she believed the failure to secure the US Embassy’s move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem during US President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office was a great missed opportunity.
“I think there was a great historic opportunity here that was missed…it’s a great loss,” Shaked said during an interview with Channel 2’s Meet the Press.
Though Shaked noted that such a move — promised by Trump during his campaign — could still take place, she said Trump may have succumbed to heavy pressure not to move the embassy.
The minister, of the nationalist Jewish Home party, lamented what she implied to be an Israeli failure to take advantage of the Trump administration’s early openness to a different approach to the conflict — an attitude she seemed to believe no longer prevailed in the White House.
“When he entered office he and his administration were open to many different possibilities. They were not fixed in their ways by spending years in the State Department,” she said. “Either this was not taken advantage of, or someone over there influenced them…it’s a great loss.

Jared Kushner Has an Israeli Investor and the New York Times Is on the Case

The New York Times devotes a top-of-the-front page headline and a full page inside the newspaper — accompanied by a map, a chart, and five photographs — to a breathless expose of the not-really-that interesting fact that an Israeli individual named Raz Steinmetz has invested in some real estate deals with President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Why is this even newsworthy at all, let alone newsworthy to the point that the Times article includes reporting credits from seven different Times newshounds? For all the Times reportorial muscle involved, the paper doesn’t tell readers how much money Raz Steinmetz invested with Kushner, either as an absolute sum or relative to Kushner’s other investors or lenders or to the overall value of Kushner’s properties.
If it’s foreign influence on American politics that the Times is concerned about, it’s totally hypocritical from a publication whose largest financial owner is Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.
Much of the article is devoted to a discussion of Raz Steinmetz’s uncle Beny Steinmetz against whom the American billionaire and left-leaning political activist George Soros has been mounting a campaign. But the Times doesn’t demonstrate that Raz Steinmetz’s uncle’s activities have anything to do with Raz Steinmetz, let alone with Mr. Kushner or Mr. Trump.
As if to illustrate the confusing-to-nonexistent rationale for the story, the headline on it changed.
The print headline is “Mogul in Israel Helped Finance Kushners’ Rise.” That headline isn’t even accurate: Kushner had “risen” well before the initial investments by Raz Steinmetz that the Times describes.

No one is assigned to Jewish outreach at the DNC. Who ya gonna call?

You’re a Jewish donor or macher and you need to talk to someone at the Democratic National Committee, stat. Who’s most likely to return your call?
Tom Perez, the party chairman, according to Jewish and Democratic insiders.
Perez is also pretty much it – no one else is handling Jewish issues right now.
Business Insider posted the DNC’s assigned roles for its officers on April 19. Liaisons were included for blacks, women, Latinos, Asians, LGBT, farmers and various regions – but not the Jewish community.
For a party that prides itself on cultivating an array of constituencies, the absence of a dedicated Jewish staffer seems anomalous to many Jewish Democrats, especially considering that DNC liaisons are available to a range of other minority groups.
“It’s of the utmost importance to have a DNC staffer handling this vital DNC constituency,” said one Jewish Democratic activist, who like many others asked to speak on background because of the sensitivity of criticizing a party seen as under siege since the devastating November elections.

Dutch critic of Israel defends election of Saudis to UN women’s rights forum

A Dutch ethics adviser who urged a large pension group to divest from Israel defended the election of Saudi Arabia as a member of the UN Commission on the Status of Women.
­­­Cees Flinterman, who according to the Dutch Jewish community’s main pro-Israel group had a key role in the 2014 divestment of the PGGM pensions group from Israeli banks over alleged human rights violations in the Jewish state, advocated during a television interview in the Netherlands for Saudi Arabia’s controversial election on April 22.
The election, which was condemned by watchdog groups citing Saudi Arabia’s dismal record on women’s rights, “is used by women and women’s organizations and by the Human Rights Commission to slowly improve women’s situation,” the NOS public broadcaster quoted Flinterman, a retired law professor, as saying.
Esther Voet, the editor-in-chief of the Nieuw Israëlietisch Weekblad Jewish weekly, called Flinterman’s defense of the move “the height of hypocrisy.” Whereas criticism of Israel is not uncommon in the Netherlands, “defense by serious human rights activists for the absurdity of Saudi Arabia’s election is highly unusual and, in Flinterman’s case, a glaring case of double standards on Israel,” she told JTA.

Abbas will continue to pay Palestinian prisoners, PA minister says

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas “outright rejects” Israeli demands to halt payments to prisoners held by Israel, Palestinian Authority Prisoner Affairs Minister Issa Qaraqe said Saturday, according to Channel 2 news.
As a hunger strike by hundreds of Palestinian security prisoners reached its thirteenth day, Qaraqe called on the international community to intervene, saying “the lives of some of the prisoners are in danger.”
Qaraqe said Abbas was fully supportive of the strikers and their demands, which range from improved medical care to greater access to telephone calls. He warned that more prisoners could join the strike if demands were not met.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the salaries paid to imprisoned terrorists by the PA constitute a major obstacle to peace.
Palestinian officials say some 1,500 prisoners are participating in the hunger strike that began on April 17, with detainees ingesting only water and salt. Israeli authorities have put the number at around 1,200.
Police on Saturday dispersed dozens of protesters in Jerusalem’s Old City who demonstrated in support of the striking prisoners. The protesters held pictures of prisoners and attempted to march to the Damascus Gate, but were blocked by Israeli authorities.

EXCLUSIVE – Source: Hamas Waiting For Egyptian Action Before Announcing New Platform

Egypt has yet to respond to a request from Hamas to allow Ismail Haniyeh (pictured), deputy to politburo chief Khaled Meshal, to leave the Gaza Strip for Qatar in order to announce the group’s new political platform and the results of internal secret elections, a senior source in the group told Breitbart Jerusalem.
Citing a Hamas source, Breitbart Jerusalem reported in February that Hamas adopted a new political platform supporting the theoretical establishment of a Palestinian state along the so-called 1967 border lines. This distances Hamas from alliances that have harmed Hamas’ status in the international community, especially with groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opponents to the Egyptian regime. Hamas seeks to forge closer relations with the regime in an effort to ease the blockade of the Gaza Strip.
One month later, the news media reported on the revisions to the Hamas charter, including the changes first noted by these reporters.
Within Hamas, it was understood that the reason for Egypt’s silence on Meshal’s request is technical and logistic and has nothing to do with the political differences between the two sides, the Hamas source said.
The source in Hamas did say, however, that it is not impossible that Egypt is sending a signal to Hamas that the group should reconsider their ties with Qatar, a country considered to be the greatest political patron of the Muslim Brotherhood and which runs the Arabic-language Al Jazeera station that maintains an editorial line hostile to the regime of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi.

J Street Embraces an Israeli Settlement

Last week, J Street’s campus division, J Street U, mobilized 575 Jewish students to write a letter to Taglit-Birthright Israel, demanding that it refuse to cooperate with Israeli law. The letter demands that Birthright refrain from any screening of applicants for its trips to Israel to determine if they are BDS activists. Or, to put it another way, J Street wants BDS promoters to be able to exploit Birthright and gain access to Israel under its cloak, so they can avoid being caught by the Israeli border authorities.
Then, this gets really interesting.
The 575 signatories described themselves as having already taken part in Birthright trips, or are planning to participate in them in the near future. And the letter mentioned what it called Birthright’s policy of not traveling to “the West Bank,” and thus supposedly recognizing “a distinction” between pre-1967 Israel and Jewish settlements beyond the 1967 lines. But when the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on the letter of the 575, it attached to its report a photo of Birthright participants (maybe even including some of the 575 signatories) posing and smiling in front of the best-known Jewish “settlement” beyond the 1967 lines.
Oops!
That’s right, in the photo we see smiling young Jewish men and women visiting a site beyond the 1967 lines — a “settlement,” in “occupied territory.” It’s on the itinerary of every single Birthright trip. Every J Street U student who has gone on Birthright must have visited it. It’s called the Western Wall.
That’s right. The Palestinian Authority considers the Western Wall “occupied Arab territory.” So does every single Arab country, and most other countries, for that matter. In their eyes, the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter surrounding it are both “illegal settlements.”
It’s a safe bet that many Birthright trips visit other parts of Jerusalem that the Arabs likewise consider “settlements” — French Hill, Ramot, Gilo, Talpiot Mizrach and more.

New Jersey university rejects BDS motion

The student government at Montclair State University in New Jersey reportedly voted down a resolution calling on the school to boycott Israel, JTA reported on Friday.
According to the report, the measure was defeated Wednesday by a vote of 11-1, with six abstentions.
An earlier survey aimed at gauging student support for the measure found that 64 percent of students were opposed.
The defeat of the resolution, which was initiated by the New Jersey school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, was commended by the pro-Israel group Stand With Us.
Several colleges and universities have passed resolutions calling for a boycott of Israel in recent years.
Earlier this month, the Tufts University student senate passed a resolution calling on the university to divest from four companies that do business with Israel.

Dozens of Pro-Israel Groups Call on Tufts President to Take Action After BDS Vote on Passover Eve ‘Deliberately Excluded’ Jews

Forty-five pro-Israel organizations signed a letter that was sent on Thursday to the president of Tufts University demanding that action be taken against the schhool’s student government for voting in favor of a boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) resolution on the eve of Passover.
The letter — organized by the AMCHA Initiative campus watchdog group — charges the Tufts Community Union (TCU) senate with having “deliberately excluded many Jewish students, depriving them of their freedom of expression and the right to full participation in campus life.”
It called the scheduling of a vote on a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)-backed motion so close to a major Jewish holiday a “malevolent manipulation of student government procedure in order to eliminate pro-Israel voices from debates about BDS.”
The letter urged President Anthony Monaco and the university’s board of trustees to uphold their “ethical obligations” and ensure all students have the ability to voice their views.

"My Name is Rachel Corrie" at San Francisco's Magic Theater

The one-woman show "My name is Rachel Corrie" is playing at San Francisco's Magic Theater in Fort Mason on a 2 week run. The play includes excerpts from the diary of Rachel Corrie, an International Solidarity Movement (ISM) member who was accidentally killed while guarding smuggling tunnels in Gaza
Even with the deep discounts offered to Jewish Voice for Peace members, there are plenty of tickets still available.
Writing in the Northern California Jewish Weekly, Johanna Meckel, Northern California director of StandwithUs addresses the deification of Rachel Corrie:
The play “My Name Is Rachel Corrie,” currently running in San Francisco, omits all context, portraying that period of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict only through Corrie’s eyes.

DAVID WARD TO WRITE 15,000 WORD THESIS ON “ISRAEL LOBBY”

David “The Jews” Ward has some time on his hands since his sacking from the LibDems. Ward says he is going to spend it completing a Masters degree in the Peace Department at University of Bradford. He has to write a 15,000 word thesis and says it will be on “the influence of the Israeli lobby on the British political system”. It’s all a conspiracy, eh David…

CAMERA Featured Letter-Writer

When the New York Times recently printed an Op-Ed by convicted murderer Marwan Barghouti, Letter-Writer Elinor Weiss sent them the following:
The New York Times recently ran a guest editorial by Marwan Barghouti that rationalized his hunger strike in an Israeli prison. Some of Barghouti’s demands include more television channels and cell phone availability.
The Times described Barghouti as a “Palestinian leader and parliamentarian,” while Barghouti described himself as a “victim.” Left out of the editorial is the fact that Marwan Barghouti is a terrorist who has organized suicide bombings of innocent people as they went about their daily lives. To many in the civilized world, those that died at the hands of Barghouti are the real victims.
The editorial only justifies the mistrust that many have in the New York Times. By withholding pertinent information and glorifying a murderer’s credentials the Grey Lady has badly tarnished its own reputation. The Times has taken journalism to a new low.
Eventually, after contact from the Public Editor, Opinion Editors were persuaded to append an Editors’ Note to the article, which explained that the piece had "neglected to provide sufficient context" about the offenses of which Barghouti was convicted.

Le Pen says she abhors Holocaust denial after party successor quits

Far-right French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen said she “abhors” Holocaust denial and that nobody in the leadership of her National Front party advanced such “unfounded” theses.
She spoke out on Friday, hours after her interim successor as party chief stepped down amid a storm over an interview he gave in 2000 in which he cast doubt on the Nazi gassing of Jews during the Holocaust.
“I abhor this thesis [of Holocaust denial],” Le Pen said in a French television interview. “These are completely unfounded theories. I have always rejected these theories. My position on this is completely clear.”
She added that “there is nobody in the National Front leadership who defends such theories.”
Le Pen was speaking after the resignation of Jean-François Jalkh, who took her place this week as National Front president on an interim basis while she campaigns for president ahead of the runoff vote May 7.

Le Pen’s PM pick blasted Israel during Gaza war, equated Netanyahu with Hamas

Far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen’s pick for prime minister, should she win France’s May 7 runoff, has in the past sharply criticized Israel over its actions towards the Palestinians.
Nicolas Dupont-Aignan also supported a French parliamentary vote to recognize a Palestinian state in 2014, over Israeli objections, appearing to equate the “hardline” policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with those of the Palestinian terror group Hamas.
Le Pen on Saturday named euroskeptic Dupont-Aignan — who came in sixth during the election’s first round with 4.7 percent of the vote — as her choice for prime minister. Dupont-Aignan, 56, heads the Debout la France (France Stand Up) movement.
During 2014’s war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Dupont-Aignan issued a strongly worded statement in which he censured Israel’s “disproportionate” actions throughout the operation.
Dupont-Aignan called the collateral damage to innocent civilians during Operation Protective Edge “unacceptable” and criticized the Israeli ground operations as an “invasion” of Gaza. He also slammed France’s “scandalous inertia” in failing to help rein in the Jewish state. He claimed failure to do so would “import” the conflict into France.

First-class soldier From WWII vet to Israeli special forces trailblazer

HOW MANY people in Israel know that the Israel Defense Force’s first long-range reconnaissance unit was made up of about 40 foreign volunteers ‒ not all of them Jews ‒ and that when they carried out their first operations behind Syrian lines in the 1948-1949 War of Independence, the only “real” Israelis among them were two liaison officers sent by army headquarters? Frenchman Norbert Beyrard, a key actor in of this largely forgotten episode, passed away on February 13 at the age of 91, in Divonne-les-Bains, an elegant spa town near the banks of Lake Geneva, on the border between France and Switzerland.
Beyrard, originally Norbert Benchemoul, was born in the once populous, but now extinct Jewish community of then-French Algeria, on June 16, 1925.
At the age of 23, Beyrard helped create, and then commanded, the “Yehidat Siyur” (Reconnaissance Unit), the predecessor of the now world-renowned “sayarot” (recon) units of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
The best known of these is “Sayeret Matcal” (General Staff Reconnaissance), whose exploits included spearheading the 1976 Entebbe raid to rescue hostages in Uganda.
The unit’s then-commander, Lt.-Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, brother of Israel’s current prime minister, was killed in that raid.
Despite his youth, Beyrard already had considerable military experience before he came to Israel in 1948. In 1941, at age 16, and while still in high school, he was arrested by the French Vichy police in Algeria as a member of the French Resistance.

50 years later, 3 soldiers reenact, remember their iconic Six-Day war photo

The David Rubinger photograph of three paratroopers standing in silent awe in front of the recaptured Western Wall after the battle for Jerusalem in 1967 has become the defining image of one of the most significant moments in Israel’s history.
With the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War approaching, Zion Karasenti, Haim Oshri, and Dr. Itizik Yifat returned to the Old City this week to remember the moment.
Karasenti, Oshri, and Yifat described to Channel 2 News how they, as 20-something reserve duty soldiers, inadvertently became the symbol of a nation fulfilling a 2,000 year dream.
“There were snipers everywhere, especially from overhead. They could have thrown a grenade on us and finished us,” Karasenti recalled of the battle for the Jerusalem holy site.
Since none of them had ever been to the Western Wall, which had been under Jordanian rule since 1948, they admitted that, at first, nobody was really sure they had even captured the “real thing.”

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