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Saturday, September 30, 2017

From Ian:

Israel shuts down for Yom Kippur
Israel shut shut down on Friday for Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement and the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.

All flights in and out of Ben Gurion airport ceased at 1:35 p.m., while public transport gradually halted with buses and trains stopping their routes until after the fast day.

As sundown approached all local radio and television broadcasts gradually fell silent.

Yom Kippur begins Friday at sundown and ends Saturday night.

It is marked with a 25-hour fast and intense prayer by religious Jews, while more secular Israelis often use the day to ride bicycles on the country’s deserted highways.

Security and rescue services, however, remain on high alert.

For the Magen David Adom Rescue service, Yom Kippur is one of the busiest days of the year with hundreds of extra medics, paramedics, ambulances and volunteers deployed across the country.

Most injuries over Yom Kippur come from accidents on the roads as tens of thousands of children and teens take advantage of the deserted streets to ride their bicycles. Other common Yom Kippur injuries are caused by parents leaving children unattended outside synagogues and, of course, dehydration and complications from fasting.

Paramedics treat over 1,500 people over Yom Kippur
Paramedics from the Magen David Adom ambulance service treated over 1,500 people over Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement and the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, which began Friday at sundown and ended Saturday evening.

Like every year, secular Israelis took advantage of the deserted roads and highways, filling the streets in droves over the holiday, which is marked by a 25-hour fast and intense prayer by religious Jews. But, like every year, injuries were not far behind, with MDA treating 1,659 people over 25-hour period, it said in a statement, among them 265 injured while biking, skateboarding and rollerblading.

Another 228 people were treated for dehydration and fainting spells due to the fast, which includes a ban on drinking water; 21 required resuscitation, according to a statement released by the service.

MDA said paramedics were called to treat 134 women in labor and helped seven women deliver at their homes or in ambulances.

For paramedics, Yom Kippur is one of the busiest days of the year with hundreds of extra medics, paramedics, ambulances and volunteers deployed across the country.
In Timely Move, Bereaved Families Launch New Group to Combat Terror in Israel
This past Tuesday, dozens of bereaved families unveiled a new organization to fight and deter terrorism in the Jewish state. Sadly, on the same day, a Palestinian terrorist killed three Israelis in the community of Har Adar near Jerusalem.

This new nonprofit organization, Choosing Life, brings together more than 40 families who have lost relatives in the ongoing Palestinian terror wave, which began in 2015; since that time, 58 people have been killed and nearly 1,000 have been wounded in hundreds of stabbings, shootings and vehicular attacks throughout Israel.

Choosing Life is headed by Dvorah Gonen, whose 25-year-old son Danny was murdered in June 2015 while hiking near the village of Dolev.

“Unfortunately, the voices of the bereaved families are not heard strongly enough,” Gonen said in a statement. “Since Danny was murdered two years and four month ago, there is no light in my life. I am dedicating my life to ensure that this does not happen to any more Israeli citizens.”

Gonen stressed that most Israeli citizens are unaware of the vast array of benefits that terrorists and their families receive from the Palestinian Authority, which provides the perpetrators and their relatives with salaries that rise proportionally due to the number of Israelis that they murder.

“It pays to be a terrorist today. It is absurd, we[‘ve] completely lost our deterrence,” said Gonen.



Mort Klein – There Is No Israeli 'Occupation': It’s Not Arab Land and 98 Percent of Palestinian-Arabs Live Under Arab Rule
The U.S. Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, recently made headlines for using the term “alleged occupation” during an interview with the Jerusalem Post. Palestinian Authority (“PA”) dictator and Holocaust denier Mahmoud Abbas condemned the term “alleged occupation” and then falsely proclaimed that there is an Israeli “occupation of the territory of the state of Palestine” and variations of the same line some 27 times during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly last week. However, an honest examination of the facts and actual international law reveal that Ambassador Friedman’s words were correct: In fact, the presence of Israel and Israeli Jews in Judea/Samaria (“West Bank”) and the old city of Jerusalem is not an “Israeli occupation.”

Occupation means possessing/exercising actual authority over another country’s sovereign territory. A nation who has the sovereign rights to land cannot be an “occupier” of that land. Israel has the lawful sovereign right – as well as the strongest historical, religious, and legal connection — to Israel, including Judea/Samaria and all of Jerusalem.

The Jews are indigenous people of Israel, including Judea/Samaria and Jerusalem. The word “Jew” comes from “Judea” – because this is where the Jewish people lived. (Jordan renamed Judea/Samaria “the West Bank” during Jordan’s 19-year (1948-67) illegal occupation of the area, as explained below). Jewish kings and kingdoms reigned in Jerusalem and Judea/Samaria for hundreds of years (c.920 BCE – 597 BCE). For over 3,000 years, there was always a Jewish presence in Israel, even after conquests and dispersions of the Jewish people.

Moreover, Jerusalem was never the capital of any country except Israel. Jews were also the largest religious group in Jerusalem since at least the first census in the 1840s. Jerusalem is mentioned almost 700 times in Judaism’s holy books. Jerusalem is never mentioned in the Koran. For millennia, Jews pray for Jerusalem and pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray facing Mecca, and have no prayers for Jerusalem. No Arab leader except Jordan’s King Hussein ever visited Jerusalem.
US Jewish Leaders Express Support, Empathy for Kurds in Wake of Independence Vote
Several American Jewish leaders and organizations have expressed their affinity with Kurdish aspirations following Monday’s independence referendum in the Kurdish regions of northern Iraq, in which 93 percent of ballots were cast in favor of an independent state of Kurdistan.

“Obviously, we have great sympathy for the Kurds,” Malcolm Hoenlein — the executive vice chairman and CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (CoP) — told The Algemeiner on Thursday.

The close ties between Israel and the Kurdish national movement, and the role played by many Kurds in assisting Iraqi Jews escaping from the former Ba’athist regime, were all highlighted in the Jewish responses to this week’s vote.

“Israel, over the years, has helped the Kurds in various ways, and so have Jews from America and Europe,” Hoenlein remarked. “And the Kurds openly proclaim their pro-Israel position. You see Israeli flags at their demonstrations, which is great.”

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, compared the Kurdish struggle for independence with that of Israel during its critical early years, noting that like the builders of the Jewish state, the predominantly Muslim Kurds – a nation of more than 25 million currently split between Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria – have been frequently left in the lurch by the international community.

“We know what a great struggle Israel endured, so we empathize with the Kurds,” Rabbi Hier told The Algemeiner. “We had the same game played on us that’s now being played on them.”

Morton Klein — president of the Zionist Organization of America — noted, “The Kurds have been one of the very few positive and rational forces in the Mideast, who have suffered greatly at the hands of radical Muslims.”

“The ZOA supports independence for this deserving and embattled people,” Klein told The Algemeiner.
Erdogan claims Mossad played a role in Iraqi Kurdistan’s independence vote
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday that Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency played a role in Iraqi Kurdistan’s independence vote, proved by the waving of Israeli flags during celebrations of the overwhelming “yes’ vote.

Ankara fiercely opposed the referendum and has threatened sanctions against the region, reflecting its worries about its own sizeable Kurdish minority.

During a televised speech, Erdogan claimed that Turkey had been saddened to see some Iraqi Kurds acclaiming the independence referendum with Israeli flags.

“This shows one thing, that this administration (in northern Iraq) has a history with Mossad, they are hand-in-hand together,” Erdogan said in Erzurum, in eastern Turkey.

Iran and Iraq’s central government in Baghdad have also have expressed alarm over the referendum last Monday, and have refused to recognise its validity.

Israel has been the only country to openly support an independent Kurdish state, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backing “the legitimate efforts of the Kurdish people to attain a state of its own.”

Erdogan has derided the Israeli support.
“Are you aware of what you are doing?” Erdogan said in an appeal to Iraqi Kurdish leaders. “Only Israel supports you.”
Foreigners leave Iraqi Kurdistan before flight ban
Foreigners scrambled to leave Iraqi Kurdistan Friday hours before the start of a flight ban imposed by Baghdad in retaliation for an independence referendum that has sent regional tensions soaring.

Iraq’s central government has ordered a halt to all international flights to and from the autonomous region from 6:00 p.m. (1500 GMT) Friday after Iraqi Kurds overwhelmingly voted for independence.

Washington has said it would be willing to facilitate talks between the Iraqi Kurdish authorities and Baghdad to calm escalating tensions over the 92-percent “yes” vote, as a top Shiite cleric called for solving the crisis in an Iraqi court.

Neighboring Turkey and Iran also strongly opposed the vote, fearing it would inflame the separatist aspirations of their own sizable Kurdish population.
Iraqi Kurds fly Kurdish flags during an event to urge people to vote in the upcoming independence referendum in Irbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, on September 16, 2017. (AFP/Safin Hamed)

Ankara has threatened a series of measures including blocking crucial oil exports from the region via Turkey.

The Kurds have condemned the flight suspension as “collective punishment.”
Crowder Infiltrates Antifa At Shapiro Event, Antifa Offers Weapons
On Thursday, conservative commentator Steven Crowder released an undercover video (below) exposing the violence-embracing leftist movement Antifa. In the video, two undercover reporters are embedded with the "anti-fascist" group for a few weeks and capture on video Antifa members discussing the violent tactics they plan to use as well as weapons they plan to carry — at one point even handing a reporter weapons — in order to disrupt an event featuring Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro.

Crowder begins the exposé by explaining that his team of reporters has been "infiltrating this organization for a long time, hard." The result is evidence that is so damning that the authorities ended up thanking Crowder and his team for their work.

"Are they really an inconsequential group of rabble rousers?" asks Crowder of the group that has been championed by so many on the Left. As the video shows, and as so many around the country have learned over the last year, the answer is a resounding no.

One of the reasons they are so influential, Crowder explains, is their broad support base on the Left. "Antifa is in a PR battle, so what they claim and what they do is very different," says Crowder. But behind the scenes, they are organizing and planning — as his undercover operatives found out firsthand — to enact violence.

Despite some politicians and celebrities on the left publicly distancing themselves after Antifa's egregious acts of violence became too politically toxic to openly endorse, Crowder notes, "Antifa has never operated alone. They've been actively supported by professors and other leftists and student organizations." Crowder provides the example of current Utah State faculty members who "encouraged and emboldened students to disrupt the Ben Shapiro event and create chaos."

One of the self-described "anti-fascists," going by the pseudonym "Clark," explains in an audio recording that his Utah-based group specifically asked the violent Antifa activists to show up in their masks and black clothing to supposedly provide "safety." Antifa is not "one static organization," he says, but more of an "ideology, a movement, a stance." Asked what the difference between Antifa and other leftist organizations is, Clark replies matter-of-factly, "The difference between them and other activists groups is the willingness to respond with violence."

One of Crowder's undercover journalists finds himself in the middle of a discussion with Antifa "activists" on Utah State campus prior to Shapiro's speaking event. The discussion with the militant Antifa goes so far in its threat-level — including the members handing the reporter weapons — that the reporter wisely chooses to get out of there.
UNDERCOVER IN ANTIFA: Their Tactics and Media Support Exposed!


#UndercoverANTIFA Fallout: Ben Shapiro Interview (Exclusive)


Israel Attempts to Block Convicted Palestinian Terrorist Hijacker from Speaking in Spain
Leila Khaled, a convicted Palestinian hijacker who has continued to advocate violence against Israelis, is reportedly slated to give two talks in Spain in the next few days despite attempts by Israeli officials to block her.

Khaled, who was invited to Brussels to speak at the European Parliament on Tuesday by lawmakers representing the far-left Izquierda Unida party from Spain, is next scheduled to speak at Madrid University on Saturday and at another venue at the beginning of the week, Channel 2 reported on Thursday.

In her Brussels address, Khaled attacked Israel and said Zionists were worse than Nazis.

“You can’t compare the actions of the Nazis to the actions of the Zionists in Gaza,” she said. “The Nazis were judged in Nuremberg but not a single one of the Zionists has yet been brought to justice,” she added.

Khaled was arrested by Israeli sky marshals in 1970. She was carrying two grenades while attempting to hijack an El Al flight from Amsterdam with a partner, whom the security officers killed. British authorities released her in exchange for hostages from another hijacking a month after her arrest.

She had already hijacked an American passenger plane in 1969, landing it in Damascus, where the two Israeli passengers aboard were held for three months before they were traded for Syrian prisoners of war in Israeli jails.

She is also a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is blacklisted as a terrorist entity by the European Union.

MK Yair Lapid, head of the Yesh Atid party, sent a letter on Thursday to Ildefonso Castro López, Spanish State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, asking that the state block the two events.
Dina Powell Spoke at Gala that Honored Palestinian Extremist, Conspiracy Theorist
Dina Habib Powell, the Trump administration’s Deputy National Security Advisor, was a featured speaker at a gala dinner given by a George Soros-financed group that honored a notoriously anti-Israel Palestinian legislator.

At the dinner, just prior to Powell’s speech, Palestinian extremist Hanan Ashrawi received an award and delivered a 12-minute anti-Israel diatribe in which she blasted U.S.-Israel relations and accused Israel of “apartheid” and stealing “Palestinian land.”

Ashrawi, a political leader of the violent First Palestinian Intifada and longtime member of the PLO Executive Committee, served as deputy to late PLO leader and arch terrorist Yasser Arafat. She is known for espousing anti-Israel conspiracy theories and for attempting to justify Palestinian “resistance” against the Jewish state.

Powell was one of seven personalities featured at the Middle East Institute’s 66th Annual Banquet, which took place November 13, 2012 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Washington DC. Ashrawi, who received the Institute’s Issam M. Fares Award for Excellence, was another speaker and honoree.

Powell spoke for about six minutes and presented an award for distinction in civic leadership to Naguib Sawiris, an Egyptian billionaire businessman and philanthropist.

At the time, Powell was president of the Goldman Sachs Foundation, the nonprofit subsidiary of Goldman Sachs. In that capacity, she was running the Foundation’s 10,000 Women program, which describes itself as “a global initiative that fosters economic growth by providing women entrepreneurs around the world with a business and management education, mentoring and networking, and access to capital.”
Women’s March Organizers Accused of Anti-Semitism to Visit College Campuses Next Month
Women's March co-organizers who have been accused of anti-Semitism are scheduled to appear at two college campuses next month.

Tamika Mallory, Linda Sarsour, Carmen Perez, and Bob Bland will be heading first to Johns Hopkins University, to open the Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium, a 50-year-old celebrated student organization.

The Oct. 2 panel discussion at Johns Hopkins will be followed up by an Oct. 11 appearance, sans Bland, at the University of South Florida.

The topic at USF will be "intersectionality and divestment," according to the announcement from USF Divest, an anti-Israel coalition of students and faculty.

The leaders of the Jewish Student Association at Johns Hopkins, Aaron Pultman and Serena Frechter, co-wrote an open letter expressing their respect for free speech, but noting that "these women hold some views that we … find deeply disturbing."

"[They] have a history of anti-Zionist comments and celebration of self-proclaimed anti-Semites. Some of them deride Zionism as inherently oppressive and declare that one cannot be a Zionist while supporting equality in the U.S., directly excluding many members of our community from their fight for equality," wrote Pultman and Frechter. "Their claims transcend what is considered acceptable discourse. Furthermore, as Jews we are especially troubled by their embrace of leaders such as Louis Farrakhan, an avowed anti-Semite. We believe that praising Hitler and peddling in conspiracy should disqualify someone from being touted as an inspiration."
University of North Carolina: Whitewashing Anti-Israel Terrorism
As revealed in recent congressional testimony, Students for Justice in Palestine is a campus front for Hamas terrorists. SJP’s propaganda activities are orchestrated and funded by a Hamas front group, American Muslims for Palestine, whose chairman is Hatem Bazian and whose principals are former officers of the Holy Land Foundation and other Islamic “charities” previously convicted of funneling money to Hamas. The report and posters are part of a larger Freedom Center campaign titled Stop University Support for Terrorists. Images of the posters that appeared at UNC and other campuses may be viewed at http://ift.tt/2wIiBF1.

University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill:
UNC-Chapel Hill has supported the Hamas inspired and funded BDS movement on its campus in multiple ways, promoting apps that help consumers boycott Israeli products and inviting BDS proponents such as disgraced former University of Illinois Professor Stephen Salaita to campus. During his address, Salaita accused Zionists of making phony claims of anti-Semitism to hide Israel’s purported war crimes. UNC’s SJP chapter has also invited Laila Al-Arian, daughter of infamous University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian, to campus. Sami Al-Arian is the number two leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, responsible for over 99 murders in the Middle East, who pled guilty to charges of terrorism. At a campus event, his daughter promoted the idea that her father was forced into a guilty plea. UNC SJP has celebrated “Israeli Apartheid Week” and has held numerous events to promote Hamas propaganda on campus including a “Vigil for Palestine” which claims to commemorate victims of the “Israeli Occupation” and screenings of films that vilify Israel such as “Occupation 101.”
Report: More than 100 Extremist Speakers Invited to British Universities
British universities hosted 110 events featuring extremist speakers in the last academic year, 2016/17, with the highest proportion taking place in London institutions, a report has found.

The extremist events listed were overwhelmingly organised by Islamic societies and groups and speakers included former Guantanamo Bay detainees and Islamists. Former English Defence League (EDL) leader Tommy Robinson, who was the only “far right” speaker on the list, spoke at two universities.

The report’s authors at The Henry Jackson Society think tank says the findings suggest that despite Prime Minister Theresa May’s claim that “enough is enough”, universities continue to be a vulnerable target for extremists promoting their messages.

The extremists were invited to speak to students at elite institutions including Oxford, Bath, Warwick, and Manchester. In most cases, no effort was made to challenge or balance their views.

London was the region with the highest number of events, where 43 were hosted, and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) was the single institution to host most events at 14.

However, the authors also found that the majority of universities complied with the requirements of the government’s counter-extremism Prevent agenda, including reporting students at risk of radicalisation.
Hundreds of anti-Semites march in Sweden on Yom Kippur; 50 arrested
Police said at least 50 people were detained Saturday during a right-wing demonstration in Sweden’s second-largest city that left one police officer and several others injured.

The rally by the Nordic Resistance Movement in Gothenburg, 400 kilometers (248 miles) southwest of Stockholm, featured an estimated 600 people marching in formation in all-black outfits. Some wore helmets and held shields, while others hoisted the movement’s green-and-white flags.

Police had posted flyers before the event warning people not to act in a way reminiscent of German Nazis demonstrations in the 1930s and 1940s.

NMR, which promotes an openly anti-Semitic doctrine, originally sought to pass near a downtown synagogue during the march, which coincided with Yom Kippur, Judaism’s holiest day of the year. But Swedish courts intervened and shortened the route to less than one kilometer (0.6 mile.) The rally’s ending time also was shortened to avoid clashing with a nearby soccer game.

Counter-demonstrators threw fireworks and attempted several times to break police lines, allegedly to confront NMR members, who also tried to get past riot police. Several were detained on suspicion of rioting, police said.

“Stones, bottles and sticks were also thrown at us,” police spokesman Hans Lippens said.

Police offered to shuttle NMR members away in buses after they were circled by riot police on a Gothenburg square, preventing them from completing their march. Police said the move was meant to keep both sides apart.
Terror trial for Toulouse killer’s brother reopens wounds for French Jews
When Abdelkader Merah goes on trial Monday over an Islamist attack in southern France in 2012, the hearings will bring back haunting memories of the bloodshed for the country’s Jews.

Merah’s trial — for allegedly helping his brother prepare for a nine-day shooting spree — is the first arising from the wave of Islamist attacks that have hit France in recent years.

Abdelkader’s brother Mohammed killed three soldiers before targeting a Jewish school in Toulouse, gunning down a teacher and three children aged three, five and eight.

The self-proclaimed Al-Qaeda militant was shot dead in a police raid two days later.

“The terrible shock of 19 March, 2012 — we still go through it every day, every time we bring the children to school or come to pick them up,” France’s chief rabbi, Haim Korsia, told AFP.
This file photo taken on March 19, 2012 in Toulouse, southwestern France shows policemen marking out the area in front of the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school where jihadist Mohammed Merah killed three children and a teacher. (AFP/ERIC CABANIS)

Some 300 Jewish families have since left Toulouse for Israel or other countries, according to Jewish federation CRIF — adding to the estimated 20,000 who emigrated from 2014-2015, spurred by fears over anti-Semitism.




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Friday, September 29, 2017

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Antisemitism engulfs the British Labor party
The tragic fact is that there’s no disorder quite so pathological as when a Jew turns against his or her own identity. Jews are a unique people; the hatred directed at them is a unique hatred; and when Jews turn on their own people, they behave in a uniquely terrible way.

Israeli Jewish intellectuals are even more afflicted by this pathology. The Israeli novelist Aharon Megged has lamented “a phenomenon which probably has no parallel in history: an emotional and moral identification by the majority of Israel’s intelligentsia with people openly committed to our annihilation.”

In The Jewish Divide Over Israel, which he wrote with Paul Bogdanor, Edward Alexander writes devastatingly: “The disproportionate influence of Jewish accusers depends in large part on the fact that they demonize Israel precisely as Jews; indeed, since religion and tradition count for little in most of them, it is the demonization of Israel that makes them Jews.”

And because people assume wrongly that Jews cannot be antisemites, these anti-Zionist Jews offer themselves as human shields to protect and facilitate those who they hope will destroy the State of Israel through demonization and delegitimization.

The problem of antisemitism in Britain, however, goes far beyond the Labour Party.

My Name Is Rachel Corrie is a play first staged in 2005 sanitizing an International Solidarity Movement activist who was killed in Gaza by an Israeli armored bulldozer when she tried to stop demolition work being carried out to eradicate terror tunnels.

Lo and behold, this out-dated piece of meretricious agitprop is being revived by London’s Young Vic theater. Why? Because human-shielded Jew-baiting is now the recreational sport of the British intelligentsia.

So when is the opening night of this revival? Why, Kol Nidrei, the start of Yom Kippur, the most solemn day in the Jewish calendar. Right in the Jews’ faces, eh.

Don’t weep for the wretched Labour Party. Weep for what Britain has become, and for the Jews who have lost their way.
Melanie Phillips: Labour's lanyard of hate
The reverberations from Tuesday’s Jew-baiting hate-fest at the Labour party conference rumble on, as well they might. David Collier’s blog post here on what he experienced at the conference is a must-read.

I found this observation particularly chilling:
“At the Labour Friends of Israel event, there were anti-Israel activists actually taking photos of the MPs who were present. No doubt to add new faces onto existing expulsion ‘lists’… To my knowledge, I had my photo take twice at the conference. Once as I was leaving the ‘Free Speech’ event, an activist Elleane Green spotted me and reached for her camera, whilst the second time was at the Labour Friends of Israel event, where Tapash Abu Shaim was camera ready.”

And this:
“The PSC had brought ‘Palestine Solidarity’ lanyards, and it is clearly the item they want everyone to take from their stall. I also note they have ‘runners’, people walking off with several PSC lanyards in their hands. One was looking for people running other stalls, who were willing to wear them. This badge of identification was eventually seen on many of the visiting crowd.”

What they were hanging from their necks was the lanyard of hate. For as Collier observes, these people think that by supporting the Palestinians they are supporting peace; but in fact supporting Palestinianism leads them inexorably to supporting the extermination of Israel.

“As soon as you place that PSC lanyard around your neck”, writes Collier, “from the moment you believe you support ‘Palestine Solidarity’ as it is represented in the UK Labour Party, then you explicitly align with a maximalist Arab position, that is also heralded by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Assad, Hezbollah and Iran. Don’t believe me? Walk up to your nearest PSC activist and ask them if the organisation supports a two-state solution. Watch them stutter.”

Although these Labour members are shy exterminators, that’s the agenda to which that lanyard signs them up. The vast depth of their ignorance, however, means they have no idea that they are thus making a mockery of the very causes they profess to espouse.
Why do we still have to explain why Holocaust denial is wrong?
The Holocaust is one of the most well documented and researched periods in history. There are clear records of the systematic and industrial scale of the Nazi plan to murder the Jews of Europe. Not only from historians but from the Nazis themselves. Most importantly, we have the testimony of the lucky few who managed to survive whilst their families were shot into pits, deported and sent to gas chambers or simply left to starve to death.

You would therefore think that those who seek to deny or to denigrate this history would be given short shrift.

Which is why it has been all the more shocking to see the Holocaust once again called into question, and the root cause of this tragedy - antisemitism - rearing its head at a mainstream political party conference.

You only have to look at one single day with a series of deeply uncomfortable interventions by those who should know better: we had director Ken Loach suggesting that debate about whether the Holocaust happened is OK, saying “history is for all of us to discuss”; Len McCluskey, General Secretary of the Unite Union labelling concerns about antisemitism as “mood music”; and then Ken Livingstone - never one to hold back on his views on this particular topic - stating that making offensive remarks about Jews is not necessarily antisemitic…err, OK Ken.

When you have central figures making these sorts of insulting and ignorant comments, they embolden those who have only one agenda – to undermine the truth of the past and to whip up hatred against Jews today.

I think of the survivors of the Holocaust, some of whom we are fortunate to still have with us, and feel shame. After everything they suffered, they have to witness this. The pain and hurt this must cause.

How many times do we have to defend basic truths that should be considered sacrosanct? How many times do we need to explain that antisemitism is as much a form of racism as any other?



Welcome to Pallywood! (satire)
The PA sought membership in the United Nations’ World Tourism Organization. Here is the write up we think they should have in travel guides.

Looney Planet has chosen Pallywood as the Top Terror Travel destination 2017. The runner-ups, North Korea, Iran, and Islamic State are finding it hard to deal with the ensuing humiliation.

North Korea’s Rocket Man, also known as Sputnik-Kim, immediately threatened to launch World War III, unless Looney Planet recognize his Stalinist utopia, as the looniest destination on earth. Iran’s leader, known simply as Supreme-Comedy among friends, blamed the loss on “Zionist conspiracies” and threatened to unleash Iran’s fatwa-implementing assassin Salmon Rush-to-Die.

ISIS vowed to connect Londonistan and Parisijad with the capital of the Caliphate by setting up daily Caliphate Airlines flights featuring flight attendants dressed in daringly explosive burkas.

Loony Planet has written an extensive introduction to the mysterious land of Pallywood, which gives first time visitors historical background, as well as tips and advice on what to do and see.

According to legend, “Pallywood has proudly dwelled between the Michael Jordan River and the Club Med Sea for the past 100,000 years.” This makes Pallywood the oldest civilization in the world by far, outclassing both China and India. According to Pallywood stand-up comedian Saeb Erekat, his personal ancestors lived in the caves of Jericho 10,000 years ago. It was recently revealed that Erekat’s ancestors arrived from Saudi Arabia 100 years ago, but let us not be petty and argue over a couple of zeros. (h/t Elder of Lobby)
The Theory That Ashkenazi Jews Are Descended from Khazars Is Junk Science
At some point in the 19th century, a number of scholars tried to trace the lineage of East European Jewry not to German Jews who settled there in the late medieval period but to the survivors of the Khazar empire, which ruled over a large area in what is now eastern Ukraine and southwest Russia in the 8th through 10th centuries CE. This hypothesis, popularized by the Hungarian-British writer Arthur Koestler in the 1970s, claims that the Turkic-speaking Khazars converted to Judaism en masse and, after their empire was destroyed, settled throughout Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus, where their descendants came to constitute the bulk of the Jewish population. From this it allegedly follows that most modern Ashkenazim are unrelated to biblical Israelites, and that the historical Jewish connection to the land of Israel is attenuated if not false. Long discredited, the theory has recently been revived by a handful of academics. But the evidence against it is greater than ever, as the linguist and onomastician Alexander Beider explains:

[A]rchaeological evidence about the widespread existence of Jews in Khazaria is almost nonexistent. While a series of independent sources does testify to the existence in the 10th century of Jews in the kingdom of Khazaria, and while some of these sources also indicate that the ruling elite of Khazaria embraced Judaism, . . . we can be confident that Judaism was not particularly widespread in that kingdom.

The next historical record of Jews [in the region]—in a few cities that today belong to western Ukraine and western Belarus—shows up in the 14th century, when Jews are regularly referred to in numerous documents. And yet, no direct historiographical data are available to connect the Jews who lived in Eastern Europe in the 14th century with their coreligionists from 10th-century Khazaria. . . .

Looking at names, both first names and surnames, gives us a sense of how a community would see itself, its language, and its origins. And in the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe over the past six centuries, not a single Turkic name can be found in documents listing Jewish names. Even documents from the 15th and 16th centuries dealing with Jews who lived in the territories of modern Ukraine and Belarus have no such names.
Alan Dershowitz: On Israel, Many Professors ‘Use the Classroom as a Propaganda Podium’
Retired Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz on Wednesday encouraged university students not to back down from difficult discussions surrounding Israel on campus, urging them to make complex, cogent cases rooted in history when faced with propagandistic attacks.

Dershowitz, an advocate of the two-state solution and critic of Israeli settlements, was invited to speak at Columbia University by the local chapter of Students Supporting Israel on the First Amendment and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While organizers expected his talk to be interrupted by groups including Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, it ultimately proceeded without incident.

Touching on some of the tensions leading up to his appearance, Dershowtiz observed that “the one issue that is very hard to have a serious, nuanced discussion on at a university campus today is Israel.” He contended that too many professors “use the classroom as a propaganda podium,” teaching students not how to think, but what to think.

Dershowitz urged students not to answer this “propagandistic, anti-Israel speech” with “propagandistic, pro-Israel speech.”

“That is an ineffective way of responding to propaganda,” he said. “The appropriate response is calibrated, nuanced, carefully thought through, accurate, historical, and moral statements that acknowledge [Israel’s] faults.”
Senate anti-boycott Israel bill to be reviewed amid criticism
A bill extending bans on Israel boycotts to those initiated by international organizations is under review following criticism from civil libertarians, one of its authors said.

Maryland Democrat Sen. Ben Cardin defended the bill, saying critics — including the American Civil Liberties Union — had it wrong.

“The bill does not affect freedom of speech, it does not impose the jail sentences they were talking about, it does not penalize individuals for their activities,” Cardin, the lead Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a briefing Wednesday for foreign policy reporters. “The criticisms are just wrong.”

Nonetheless, he said, he was meeting with the bill’s co-sponsors to see if the bill could withstand “clarifications” that would address concerns raised by the ACLU and others.

“We can clarify certain additions that do not change the function of the bill, but will give people more comfort,” he said.

Among other criticisms, there were concerns that the bill, which updates a 1970s law targeting the Arab League boycott of Israel, would also replicate its stiff jail sentences, and that simple expressions of support for a boycott of Israel would be criminalized.
Anti-Israel Group SJP Slams ‘Powerful Zionist Lobby’ After University of Illinois Condemns Antisemitism
An anti-Israel group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) is organizing a campaign to protest the school’s recent condemnation of “anti-Semitic attacks hidden under the guise of anti-Zionist rhetoric.”

Chancellor Robert Jones’ denunciation, shared in a mass email on Sunday, came after SJP at UIUC equated Zionism — the movement for Jewish national self-determination — with white supremacy and fascism. The group threatened to use “any means necessary” against supporters of each ideology, including “violent resistance–whether it is a black bloc or full-scale armed conflict.”

“Once again, our University’s administration has chosen to side with the powerful Zionist lobby on campus,” SJP at UIUC said this week in response to Jones’ statement, calling the “equivocation of anti-Zionist work to anti-Semitism … appalling, disappointing, and unsurprising.”

The group — part of a national network that, according to the Anti Defamation League, has “consistently demonized Israel,” including by “comparing Israelis to Nazis” — also claimed that it “spends multiple meetings discussing the evils of anti-Semitism in preemptive efforts to to [sic] ensure our organizing and activist work is truly intersectional and accountable to the various populations it seeks to represent.”
University of Cape Town debates academic and cultural boycotts of Israel
Africa’s top university, the University of Cape Town, is debating a proposed academic and cultural boycott of Israel.

The proposal was put forward by the Palestine Solidarity Forum, which has called on UCT to implement an academic boycott of Israeli universities. “This academic boycott would require that UCT reject forming any institutional ties with Israeli universities,” the PSF wrote.

“The rationale for this call is clear – Palestinian human rights are violated by Israel on a daily basis with the direct and indirect support from Israeli universities... By implementing an academic boycott, UCT takes a principled position in the defense of human rights and academic freedom,” The group claimed.

The matter has been raised for discussion at the UCT Academic Freedom Committee. The committee, however, is only able to make recommendations to the university for consideration by the UCT senate and council, it does not have the authority to make binding decisions on behalf of the school.

Klaas Mokgomole, a member of Africans for Peace, said the idea of boycott is taking the focus away from real issues.
Palestinian Terror-Loving Reems Bakery Wishes Jews A Happy New Year
Reems Bakery in Oakland California is clearly going out of its way to show everyone that just because you glorify the murderer of Jews, does not mean you hate Jews.

Note the table set up with challot and wine, as well as the singing. I am guessing Jewish Voice for Peace was behind this – they have a track record in supporting Reems, as evidenced by this video they posted only 6 hours ago as of the time of this post.

This is the tried and tested tactic of the haters: “Some of our best friends are Jewish, so we cannot be antisemitic.” It just so happens these “Jewish friends” hate Israel – thus are completely going against the Jewish faith.

Not that their Jewish faith is so important to them. I mean, they will bandy around catchphrases like “Tikun Olam”, but their ignorance of Judaism tends to be astounding. These Jewish displays are for propaganda purposes only. Rosh Hashana was over a week ago after all, and Yom Kippur (the Jewish day of repentance) is almost upon us.

I suggest JVP and other Jewish enablers of terror supporters and antisemites use Yom Kippur to think long and hard about who they have climbed into bed with. Because when you lie down with dogs, you tend to wake up without your head attached to your body.
CNEWA Changes Graphic on Christians in Israel
The Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA), a Catholic Charity that serves beleaguered Christian populations in the Muslim-dominated Middle East, has corrected a graphic on its website that falsely reported that half the Christians in Israel had left the country in the years since the War of Independence in 1948. The graphic was part of a report about Christians in the Middle East, which CAMERA wrote about here.

After CAMERA publicized problems with the report, CNEWA quietly resolved one of the most egregious problems with the text. It removed a deceptive graphic that proclaimed that Israel's Christians population had declined by 50 percent since the 1940s and that half of the Christians in the country had left the country. In fact, Israel's population of indigenous Christians had increased by 282 percent since 1949, when the number of Arab Christians in the country was approximately 34,000. Today, there are more than 130,000 Christians in the country, making Israel the only country in the Middle East where the actual number of indigenous Christians has increased.
Here are two graphics shown from before and after the change:
Before
After
The new graphic is still somewhat problematic in that it obscures the substantial increase in the number of Christians in Israel, but at least it does not falsely state that half of Israel's Christians left the country since the 1940s, as the original graphic did.
‘Hitler You Were Right’ protester jailed for terrorism offences
A pro-Palestinian protester photographed holding a sign reading ‘Hitler You Were Right’ in 2014 has been jailed for terrorism offences.

Hussain Yousef, 22, became the face of hate in July 2014 as thousands protested Israel’s military action in Gaza, but was sent down for six and a half years at Kingston Crown Court last week for terror-related offences.

Police were alerted to extremist Islamic State material on Yousef’s Facebook accounts in November 2015. He was investigated by the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command (CTC), before being arrested in July 2016.

Restaurant worker Yousef, who lives in Kilburn, was found to have used six social media profiles to post extremist Islamist propaganda and execution videos online.
German TV to air interviews with SS death squad soldiers
A German television channel is broadcasting interviews with two alleged members of World War II Nazi death squads located with help from an Israeli hunter of Nazis.

Efraim Zuroff, Jerusalem-based Nazi hunter for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, went public with the names after German state investigators appeared to be dragging their feet, he said in an interview.

The program by the ARB broadcaster featuring comments from Kurt Gosdek and Herbert Wahler was to air Thursday in ARD’s Kontakt magazine. They are alleged to be members of Einsatzgruppen, or mobile death squads, which historians say were responsible for about two million murders in the Soviet lands under German occupation.

According to Zuroff, who in 2014 had supplied German investigators with a list of 80 names of Einsatzgruppen members born in 1920 or later, said he became frustrated with the lack of response from the Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes in Ludwigsburg. He decided to work with a reputable German broadcaster in the meantime.
Chief Nazi-hunter of the US-based Jewish rights group Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Efraim Zuroff, during an interview with The Times of Israel on Wednesday, August 17, 2017 (Raphael Ahren/Times of Israel)

The prosecution of such perpetrators became easier after the 2011 conviction of John Demjanjuk in Munich, which set a precedent enabling accessories to Nazi genocide to be tried for murder.
Graves at only concentration camp on British soil under threat from energy project
A leaked report suggests that a new energy project through the Channel Islands will do “great damage” to a gravesite where Jewish slave labourers are believed to be buried.

In an archaeological report seen by The Sunday Times, concern is raised that a power line between the UK and France will cut across the island of Alderney, where Hitler’s SS once guarded a concentration camp housing Jewish inmates.

Jews were imprisoned at Lager Sylt, one of four camps, and together with Lager Nordeney, one of two concentration camps built in 1942 and handed over to the SS in March 1943.

Inmates came from Sachsenhausen, a camp near Berlin, and one former inmate later recalled how “the most popular form of killing by the SS in Sylt was strangulation”.

While Nazi commanders burned all evidence and documents before their surrender, locals have since found hundreds of graves, believed to be those of Russian, French and Jewish labourers.

Archaeologists now say these graves could be destroyed by proposed £500 million energy scheme, which will link the British and French energy grids, and which is being funded by the European Union.
The Moral Choice of a Diplomat Who Defied Orders
On October 29, dozens of families will gather at a gala event at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, in New York, to celebrate their rescue 77 years ago at the hands of a single person, and to commemorate him. Those present will represent only a fraction of the thousands who owe their lives to the humanitarian act of this individual – Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the Portuguese consul-general in the southern French city of Bordeaux.

In June 1940, as the German army was sweeping southward in defeated France, Sousa Mendes was faced with an impossible conflict between his conscience and his loyalty to his government. Portugal was then under the rule of the dictator António de Oliveira Salazar, whose wartime decree “Circular 14” forbade the issuance of transit visas to Jews wishing to escape capture by the advancing Germans. As the person in charge of the whole Bordeaux region, stretching into Bayonne, Sousa Mendes had the power to save thousands of Jews, who had fled to Bordeaux from other regions captured by the Germans and found themselves stranded on the streets of the city waiting for a miracle, but he would need to openly defy his government in order to do so.

Rabbi Chaim Kruger, one of those fleeing Jews, pleaded with Sousa Mendes to issue to his brethren Portuguese transit visas, thus making possible their escape by crossing into Spain and proceeding to Lisbon, Portugal, where they hoped to board boats taking them to safe destinations.

After a few days of agonizing soul searching, Sousa Mendes, the father of then 12 living children, decided to issue transit visas, and he did so by the thousands. When Salazar learned of Sousa Mendes’ flagrant disobedience, he ordered him back to Portugal for disciplinary measures. Even then, before leaving France, he managed to lead a group of refugees to a spot on the Franco-Spanish border where their passage was safer than at other transfer points.

Returning to Portugal, he was stripped of his diplomatic rank, fired, and all benefits accrued from a long diplomatic career annulled. When he died in 1954, he had been reduced to poverty, and was occasionally aided by Jewish welfare organizations. Most of his children left Portugal and took up residence in other countries.
Israeli Researchers Develop Firewall to Protect Android Devices from Hardware-Based Hacks
Cybersecurity researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) have developed an innovative firewall program that adds a missing layer of security in the communication between Android smartphone components and the phone’s central processing unit (CPU), reported the university in Israel’s southern city of Beersheva.

The researchers in BGU’s Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering, led by Yossi Oren, earlier this year announced the security vulnerability and alerted Google to help them address the problem.

The researchers’ findings—written by Oren, in collaboration with Omer Shwartz, Amir Cohen and Asaf Shabtai—will be presented at the Workshop on Offensive Technologies (WOOT) in Vancouver, Canada in mid-August.

More than half a dozen cyber experts from Israel will be taking part in the WOOT conference, including Sofia Belikovetsky, Mordechai Guri, Yosef Solewicz, Andrey Daidakulov and Yuval Elovici, all of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; as well as Roee Hay of Aleph Research/HCL Technologies.

“The work of Yossi Oren’s team is only the latest invention coming from BGU’s Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering,” says Zafrir Levi, Senior VP Business Development at BGN Technologies, the BGU commercialization and technology company.

“In the last decade, the department has spearheaded cyber research, spawning many inventions that have been used worldwide through patents sold to international corporations and by establishing companies.”
Genetic manipulation makes strides in war against banana fungus
Israel - Genetic crops design company Evogene Ltd. and biotechnology firm Rahan Meristem Ltd. announced positive results in developing strains resistant to a widespread Banana fungus.

The companies’ second-year field trials with specialized banana strains have shown effectiveness against the Black Sigatoka fungus, the companies announced Tuesday.

The joined trials make use of genome editing technology—targeted modifications in a cell’s DNA—for the purpose of developing a potentially safer and healthier product for both growers and consumers.

The Black Sigatoka fungus imposes substantial costs on global banana producers, surpassing $500 million per year, according to a study published in the Journal PLOS Genetics on August 2016. Chemical fungicides are currently considered the only effective treatment, but are regarded as polluting and their frequent use increases the likelihood of fungicide-resistant strains will evolve.
Israel-Russia trade leaps by 25%
Amid tightening of economic cooperation between Russia and Israel, their trade has grown in 2017 by 25 percent, officials from both countries revealed.

The increase in the first six months of 2017 was over $380 million in trade that exchanged hands between Russia and Israel in the corresponding period the previous year.

Environmental Protection Minister Zeev Elkin (Likud), who also serves as Jerusalem Affairs Minister, announced these figures earlier this week at a conference in Moscow about Russian-Israel relations.

“There is still great potential for increase in trade and there is much work ahead of us,” Elkin said in reference to ongoing talks since 2013 on signing a free trade agreement with Russia.

The increase comes amid tight cooperation between Israel and Russia on security issues connected with Syria, where the Russian government is helping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The Russians helped Assad regain much of the territory lost to forces loyal to him since the outbreak of a bloody and brutal civil war in Syrian in 2011.
Israeli Agriculture Ministry accepts medical marijuana as farming sector
As proposed legislation to decriminalize recreational marijuana use awaits approval from the attorney-general, the Agriculture Ministry recently announced it is classifying medical-grade-cannabis growing as an official farming sector.

The move thereby entitles between 15 and 20 marijuana farmers to government aid, grants, water quotas and training in crop growing.

The ministry noted that the most recent branch to be classified as a farming sector was a decade ago, when the horse sector was recognized.

Calculations by the ministry show that it costs NIS 1.5 million to set up a 0.1 hectare (a quarter of an acre) cannabis farm, and costs 0.85% of this amount to double the farm’s size to 0.2 hectares, and 0.75% of the amount to increase it to 0.3 hectares.

If the cannabis is sold for NIS 10 per gram, cannabis growing is profitable only when a farmer has at least 0.4 hectares, with the return on such a farm being NIS 380,000 per each tenth of a hectare.

According to projections by the ministry’s experts, the medical cannabis market for Israeli exports will amount to roughly NIS 1 billion-NIS 4b. a year.
Former boy band Take That brings world tour to Tel Aviv
English pop group Take That is headed to Israel this fall, performing at Tel Aviv’s Menora Mivtachim Arena on November 27, nearly three weeks after fellow Brit Boy George and his Culture Club headline at the same venue.

Three of Take That’s original members, Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Mark Owen, will perform the band’s greatest hits, as well as songs from their new studio album “Wonderland,” which came out in March.

The five-member UK boy band, originally modeled on the US pop group New Kids on the Block, was a huge hit in the early 1990s, singing and dancing its way to 28 Top 40 singles in the UK, and dozens of number one albums. Early hits included “It Only Takes a Minute,” “I Found Heaven,” and “A Million Love Songs,” as well as a cover of Barry Manilow’s “Could It Be Magic.”

The original lineup included a young Robbie Williams, who was just 16 when he joined the band. Williams left the band in 1995 because of his drug abuse, and the band split up soon after, reuniting in 2006 and achieving renewed success as a four-piece band in the UK and Europe.
Jerusalem Biennale displays works of 200 global artists
If you’re in Jerusalem between October 1 and November 16, don’t miss the third Jerusalem Biennale, encompassing 17 group and eight solo exhibitions interpreting the theme “Watershed” through the lens of contemporary Jewish art.

The show includes photography, video, installation and performance art created by 200 artists hailing from diverse locales: New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, London, Paris, St. Petersburg, Budapest, Buenos Aires, New Delhi, Singapore and of course Israel.

“We’ve really become international,” Jerusalem Biennale founder and director Ram Ozeri says with pride. “This fulfils the vision we had from the beginning, to create a meeting point in Jerusalem for all those interested in the intersection between contemporary art and the Jewish world of content.
City of Jerusalem Seeks Technology Ties With India
An initiative sponsored by the Embassy of Israel in India seeks to connect Jerusalem’s startup ecosystem with India’s technology scene. Contrary to the popular perception, Jerusalem is fast catching up with Tel Aviv as a leading technology center in the world. In 2015, TIME magazine named Jerusalem as one of the world’s fastest growing hi-tech hubs.

The annual startup competition “Start JLM”, supported by Indian government and local private sector players, is being held in the country for the first time. This year’s winner, Bangalore-based Mimyk startup will be taking part in an technology boost camp in Jerusalem. Four other finalists will be getting access to startup incubators.

Jerusalem has lot to offer to a promising Indian medical technology startup like Mimyk. The Biblical city has established itself as a hub for cutting edge innovation in healthcare and life sciences. As Israeli technology magazine Israel21c commented this week, “Tel Aviv may be Israel’s high-tech capital, but the heart of life-sciences innovation lies in Jerusalem.”

“Mimyk and the other top 4 startups are not the only winners today, the relations between India and Israel have won a big prize as well,” Israel’s envoy, Ambassador Daniel Carmon, noted while congratulating today’s winners. “The India-Israel growing partnership is advancing in every field thanks to the promotion of innovation in India and in Israel, as well as the meeting of minds between our two ecosystems.”
IsraAID sends emergency response team to Puerto Rico
On September 19, Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico and other islands in the Caribbean. The hurricane destroyed much of the island’s key infrastructure, buildings and homes.

An emergency response team from Israeli NGO IsraAID, including professionals from its established team in Haiti, arrived in Puerto Rico earlier this week.

Based on its assessment of immediate needs, the team’s first priority was distributing and setting up water filters in the most affected places, and training local people how to use them effectively.

In addition, the Israeli team is distributing food and hygiene kits to the lowest-income neighborhoods.

Natalie Revesz, head of IsraAID’s mission in Puerto Rico, describes the scene: “The island is in complete ruin. There are wrecked cars all over the streets, boats washed onto land, many trees destroyed and felled, and electricity pylons upended, with cables scattered everywhere. The lack of electricity has also hugely impacted Puerto Rico’s clean water supply, and many areas now have no or very limited access. People in the streets are worried and shocked; there is a tremendous feeling of confusion and uncertainty.”
Israel’s top tennis player quits mid-match for Yom Kippur
Dudi Sela, Israel’s top-ranked men’s singles tennis player, quit mid-game at the Wuhan Open in China on Friday due to the imminent start of Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.

Sela, ranked 77 in the world, was down 1-0 in the third set of his quarter-final game with Alexandr Dolgopolov of Ukraine. The first two sets were one each, 6-3 and 4-6.

Sela had asked for the match to be brought forward due to the fast that starts at sundown on Friday, but his request was reportedly denied and there was not enough time to complete the game before the advent of the fast day. He therefore withdrew and was knocked out of the tournament.

Sela forfeited $34,000 in prize money and the chance to win 90 ranking points.
In first, Denmark deploys troops to guard synagogue, Israeli embassy
The Danish military deployed troops in Copenhagen on Friday to guard the city’s synagogue and the Israeli embassy, hours ahead of the Yom Kippur Jewish holiday.

The deployment was the first by troops in the Danish capital since WWII.

The synagogue and the Israeli embassy have been under police protection since two deadly attacks in 2015.

An AFP correspondent at the scene saw armed soldiers standing outside Copenhagen’s main synagogue, with the narrow medieval street where it is located sealed off on both ends, hours before the start of Yom Kippur on Friday evening.

“This is the first time they are used in this type of situation, so it’s unique,” Copenhagen police spokesman Rasmus Bernt Skovsgaard said.
Danish soldiers guard the Jewish Synagogue in Copenhagen, Denmark, on September 29, 2017. Danish soldiers took to the streets of Copenhagen for the first time on Friday, September 29, 2017, replacing the police to protect the synagogue and the Israeli embassy which have been guarded ever since two deadly 2015 attacks. (AFP PHOTO / SCANPIX DENMARK / Mads Claus Rasmussen)

Danish police have protected Jewish institutions in the country since Omar El-Hussein, a Danish citizen of Palestinian origin who swore allegiance to the Islamic State group, opened fire outside the synagogue, killing one Jewish man and wounding two police officers in 2015.
A Yom Kippur tradition in Amsterdam dates back to the invention of electricity
As one of Europe’s oldest and most impressive Jewish buildings, this city’s Portuguese Synagogue is known far and wide for its majestic beauty.

Built in 1675 for the descendants of Jews who fled religious persecution on the Iberian Peninsula, the Portuguese Synagogue today sees some 200,000 tourists annually. Inside its vast sanctuary, a massive Torah ark made of Brazilian Jacaranda wood towers over 17th-century furniture and a multitude of low-hanging golden chandeliers hang among 12 stone pillars.

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Its architect is said to have drawn inspiration from Solomon’s Temple, and the synagogue would be Europe’s largest and most ornate, according to historians. While the Portuguese Synagogue was later eclipsed by even larger and more magnificent shuls — like the one on Dohany Street in Budapest — the Amsterdam building remains a spectacular sight on any day of the year.

Yet most of the synagogue’s visitors are not around on the day when its beauty shines brightest: Yom Kippur. On the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, the hall is packed to capacity as worshipers pray by the warm light of hundreds of candles — a tradition that dates back to the invention of electricity — accompanied by unique cantorial melodies that resemble operas.



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From Ian:

Reversal of fortune: How the IDF turned the Yom Kippur War around
Egypt was controlling the battlefield. The Israelis had not attempted to advance since Gen. Ariel Sharon’s unauthorized attacks on Tuesday while the Egyptians were making small-scale pushes eastward every day, with some success, as the Israelis sought to avoid escalation. SAM batteries were being sent across the bridges at night to extend the missile umbrella toward the passes.

With every day, Arab strength was increasing as the Soviet arms airlift hit its stride and the Arab world dispatched reinforcements to Syria and Egypt. Contingents, some of them sizeable, had arrived from Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Palestine Liberation Organization, Jordan, and Iraq. Even Pakistan sent pilots, and North Korean pilots were patrolling the skies over Egypt’s hinterland.

Israel was receiving no military supplies from abroad except for what the small El Al fleet could carry (the American airlift would begin only the next day); the only reinforcements it was receiving were Israeli reservists returning for the war from studies or travel abroad. (Those in combat units were flown home free.) To Sadat, Israel’s acquiescence to a cease-fire was a clear signal of weakness.

Israel’s assessment of the situation was not far from Sadat’s. The day before, the Mossad station chief in Washington, Ephraim Halevy, met in the morning with Kissinger and found him agitated. A message from Prime Minister Meir—sent Friday afternoon, Israel time—had just arrived saying that Israel was prepared to accept a cease-fire in place. Kissinger had been stalling Moscow’s efforts to lock in Arab gains with a speedy cease-fire. Now Israel was expressing readiness to accept a cease-fire without even attempting to condition it on Egypt pulling back across the canal.

“Kissinger almost tore his hair out,” Halevy, a future head of the Mossad, would recall years later. “He said, ‘You’re declaring that you lost the war. Don’t you understand that?” The difference between requesting a cease-fire and not objecting to one was a subtlety that did not cloak Israel’s dire view of its situation. However, Dayan believed that with the crossing of their armored divisions, the Egyptians would soon be receiving a bloody nose that would take the onus off Israel’s readiness for a cease-fire.

Elazar himself had begun thinking anew. The looming setpiece tank battle held out for the first time since the war began the tangible prospect of a reversal of fortune, perhaps on a major scale. The battle might significantly erode Egyptian strength. If that happened, the Israeli crossing could turn out to be more than a desperate lunge aimed at persuading Sadat to stop the war. It could be the key to winning the war.

This possibility was not yet being articulated by Elazar but was beginning to work its way into his thinking, as imperceptibly but inexorably as a tide turning.
The 'victory' that changed the Middle East
From the very outset of the Oslo process, Arafat and other senior Palestinian leaders viewed the agreements as an implementation of this strategy, not as its abandonment.

Arafat said just that as early as September 13, 1993, when he addressed the Palestinians in a pre-recorded Arabic-language message broadcast by Jordanian television, even as he shook Yitzhak Rabin’s hand on the White House lawn. He informed the Palestinians that the Oslo Accords was merely the implementation of the PLO’s “phased plan.”

“Do not forget that our Palestine National Council accepted the decision in 1974,” Arafat said. “It called for the establishment of a national authority on any part of Palestinian land that is liberated or from which the Israelis withdrew.

This is the fruit of your struggle, your sacrifices, and your jihad.”

While the Israelis celebrated a long-hoped-for peace, many among the Palestinian leadership understood that the path that they chartered almost 20 years previously was coming to fruition.

Plenty of Palestinian leaders, including current President Mahmoud Abbas, have stated that any peace accord or agreement can only become a stepping zone, another phase to Israel’s ultimate defeat.

This is why Abbas could walk away from Ehud Olmert’s overly generous offer in 2008 when he ostensibly gave the Palestinians everything that they publicly demanded.

Abbas could not and would not sign the requisite end of claims and end of conflict clauses that were demanded by Israel and the international community.

By constantly offering more and more concessions to the Palestinians upfront, without their acknowledging the end of their maximalist and rejectionist ambitions, and recognizing Israel’s legitimacy as the national homeland of the Jewish people, and agreeing to a conclusion of claims and conflict, Israeli leaders have allowed Palestinian hopes to remain.

For the conflict to finally end, only one side can claim victory. An Israeli victory means the abandonment of the Palestinian dream of destroying or dismantling the Jewish state. It must be unequivocal, clear and decisive. That is the lesson of the Yom Kippur War.
The mega-weapons ship capture that turned the tide on US-Palestinian ties
The evidence had three central prongs.

It showed that Akawi had been personally selected by Arafat to take charge of the ship and the operation due to its importance in providing major new arms to inflame the ongoing Second Intifada.

Further, it demonstrated that Fuad Shobaki, Arafat’s primary money man who did not act alone and directed financing for much of Arafat’s involvement in the Second Intifada, including the Karine A, was “neck deep” in planning and financing the operation.

It showed that Arafat had personally approved joint operations with Iran, starting from April 2000 with a series of meetings between his personal representatives and Iran in Moscow, Oman and the UAE. It also proved that Arafat had in principle approved the stationing of Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps personnel in PA territory.

All of this evidence would be heavily supplemented during Operation Defensive Shield in March 2002 when the IDF entered Arafat’s Muqata complex and collected a treasure trove of documents showing Arafat’s personal involvement in directing the Second Intifada.

When Sharon visited Bush in Washington DC in May 2002 and he raised the issue of the Karine A, Bush responded that he already understood “that Arafat is the problem. It has started to become clear that as long as he is there, the terror will continue.”

On June 24, 2002, Bush publicly called on the Palestinians to choose a new leader “who is not involved in terror.”

Using intelligence from the Karine A Affair, Mofaz and Israeli intelligence had convinced the US that Arafat was a liar and had chosen the side of Iran and terror even after September 11, 2001. For the US, Feith said that this meant, “Arafat was on the wrong side of the war on terror.”



Clifford D. May: The new Persian Empire
Eleven years ago, Henry Kissinger famously said that Iran's rulers must "decide whether they are representing a cause or a nation." If the latter, Iranian and American interests would be "compatible." As for the former: "If Tehran insists on combining the Persian imperial tradition with contemporary Islamic fervor, then a collision with America is unavoidable."

Since then, Iran's rulers have left no room for doubt. They've been aggressively spreading their Islamic Revolution and constructing what can only be called a new Persian Empire. That will surprise no one who has seriously studied the ideology of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic republic. What might: Their project has received significant support from the United States.

I'm not suggesting that was the intention of American policymakers. But it's certainly been the result. The toppling of Saddam Hussein by President George W. Bush in 2003 eliminated Iran's archenemy and rival. That might not have been a serious dilemma had Iraq subsequently been transformed into a reliable American ally.

But you know what came next: an insurgency, waged by al-Qaida in Iraq reinforced by Saddam loyalists. Iranian-backed Shia militias also went to war against American troops in Iraq. Eventually, Bush ordered the "surge." American troops under the leadership of Gen. David Petraeus fought alongside Sunni tribes brutalized by al-Qaida and fearful of Iran. In the end, this alliance decimated jihadi forces in Iraq – Sunni and Shia alike.

By 2011, Iraq was, as then-President Barack Obama declared, "sovereign" and "stable." He also called it "self-reliant," which was incorrect. The U.S. military, in coordination with U.S. diplomats, had been balancing powers and brokering interests among Iraq's Shia, Sunni and Kurdish communities. Once Obama withdrew American troops, the erosion of Iraq's stability and sovereignty was inevitable.
Why Can’t We Talk About Muslim Supremacism?
With Islamist terror attacks becoming commonplace in Europe and authorities across the continent doing very little to prevent them, it’s clear that the Trump administration’s tough approach to handling the threat of Islamist terror attacks is necessary.

It’s time Americans call these terror attacks what they really are — actions in support of an ideology that holds Islam and sharia above all else. In other words Muslim supremacy.

The mainstream media is currently on a mission to paint anyone on the right as a white supremacist. Most recently, popular comedian Chelsea Handler has even gone so far as to label Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, and actress Stacey Dash as “black white supremacists.”

The left and media are celebrating Handler’s disrespectful and downright bizarre label she cast on people of color who have nothing do with white supremacy at all, yet myself and other conservative writers and activists catch heat when we are critical of Islamist culture.

Why is it acceptable to throw the “white supremacist” label around but it is unacceptable to discuss issues related to Muslim supremacy and Islamist ideologies?
CAIR Chief Eulogizes Muslim Brotherhood Leader
A number of US-based Muslim leaders who vehemently reject evidence connecting them to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, have made a point of publicly mourning the group’s former spiritual guide, who died in prison on Friday.

Mohamed Akef, the Brotherhood leader, was praised as the “Sheikh of the Mujahidin” and received prayers that Allah place him “in the higher paradise with the prophets, the pious, and the martyrs.”

“What kind of tyrannical regime would imprison a sick 90 years old man?” Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) co-founder and Executive Director Nihad Awad wrote after Akef’s death. “Who resisted the colonizer, and raised generations on righteousness and the love of their country? #Mahdi_Akef, consider not Allah to be oblivious.” His Twitter post was in Arabic, so many of Awad’s US followers may not have appreciated its significance.

Esam Omeish, a past Muslim American Society president — who serves on the board of Northern Virginia’s Dar Al-Hijrah mosque — is among the religious leaders and political activists who publicly eulogized the Brotherhood’s leader.

In addition to running an organization that ultimately seeks a global Islamic government, Akef left a long history of extreme rhetoric that his mourners didn’t mention.
JPost Editorial: Sabotaging peace
In the schoolbooks, which are based on curricula provided by the PA, Jews are depicted as having no rights whatsoever in the region, only greedy ambitions; the Jews have no holy places in “Palestine” (the word Israel does not appear in the textbooks); the Western Wall, the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem are presented as Muslim sites with no Jewish connection but claimed by Jews; a Molotov-cocktail attack on an Israeli civilian bus is described as a “barbecue party”; a Palestinian female terrorist is glorified for the killing of more than 30 civilians in an attack on another Israeli bus; Israeli cities such as Tel Aviv often do not appear on maps in the textbooks.

The research, authored by Arab textbooks expert Dr. Aaron Groiss, examined some 150 textbooks of various school subjects, taught in grades one through 12. Seventy- five of the books checked were published in the years 2016 and 2017, as part of a project initiated by the PA, which provides its curriculum to UNRWA schools.

In one textbook published in 2016, a future Palestinian liberation is envisioned and the fate of the six million Jews living in “Palestine” is described as “expulsion from the land, the extermination of its defeated and scattered remnants.”

While it is true that UNRWA, a UN institution that is supposed to promote peace and coexistence, is betraying its mandate by not intervening to stop the incitement of young schoolchildren, the real culprit is the PA. It is unclear what is motivating Palestinians leaders – President Mahmoud Abbas first and foremost – to sabotage chances for a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Is Palestinian identity built exclusively on the rejection and deconstruction of Jewish identity? Can there be no positive Palestinian national vision that is devoid of incessant and rabid attacks on Jews, Zionism and Israel? The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians need not be a zero-sum game. A compromise is conceivable, but not as long as Palestinian children are taught from the earliest age that the murder of Jewish civilians is laudable, that the Jewish people has no roots in the Land of Israel and that the State of Israel will soon cease to exist.

The Palestinian campaign for international recognition, while understandable within the context of internal Palestinian politics, will do little to advance the Palestinian cause for statehood. Incitement in schools, however, is more insidious because it undermines any hope of a peaceful and negotiated resolution to the conflict.
Palestinian membership in Interpol could mark latest arrest for the peace process
In the absence of peace negotiations, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has sought unilateral recognition of statehood from different entities in recent years. Marking the latest diplomatic setback for Israel on that front, the police agency Interpol—the world’s second-largest international organization after the United Nations—this week voted to accept Palestinian membership.

Israel had campaigned against the move, arguing the PA’s support for terrorism would undermine Interpol’s efforts. The U.S. also opposed Palestinian membership in Interpol and assisted Israel with challenging Ramallah’s bid.

PA Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki hailed the vote as a “victory” for Palestinians.

“The State of Palestine considers this membership and the responsibilities that it entails as an integral part of its responsibility towards the Palestinian people and a moral commitment to the citizens of the world,” he said.

Israel has expressed concern that the Palestinians might abuse their membership and use Interpol as a platform for undermining the Jewish state, including demanding the extradition of Israeli officials or pursuing other legal action against them, based on the Palestinian claim that Israel’s settlement enterprise is a “crime.”

Prof. Eugene Kontorovich, head of the international law department at the Kohelet Policy Forum in Jerusalem, said Palestinian acceptance into Interpol will weaken prospects for future peace negotiations with Israel.

“Palestinian membership will only solidify their goal of seeking the trappings of statehood without negotiations and concessions,” he told JNS.org. “It will strengthen their conviction that they can violate agreements like [the] Oslo [Accords] with impunity.”
Five Ways Trump’s Israel Ambassador David Friedman Trolled the Palestinian Authority with the Truth In His Latest Interview
U.S. Envoy to Israel David Friedman has once again stoked Palestinian Authority anger by shining the light of accuracy on key Israeli-Palestinian issues, ignoring Palestinian misinformation and declaring that so-called Israeli settlements are “a part of Israel.”

Friedman further dared to say out loud what everybody living in reality in the region quietly recognizes – that the so-called two-state solution “is not a helpful term” and “has largely lost its meaning.”

Here are some key points made by Friedman in his interview with Israel’s Walla news website, together with facts assembled by this reporter documenting Friedman’s charges.

1 – So-called settlements are “part of Israel.”
“I think the settlements are part of Israel,” Friedman explained. “I think that was always the expectation.”

Friedman said that he sees “important security… nationalistic, historical and religious significance to those settlements; and I think the settlers view themselves as Israelis, and Israel views the settlers as Israelis.”

Settlements refer to Israeli communities in the West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem. The West Bank houses ancient Jewish cities like Hebron — home to the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, Judaism’s second holiest site — Beit El, Shiloh, and other areas. Eastern Jerusalem includes the Jewish Quarter in the Old City as well as the Western Wall and Temple Mount, the holiest sites in Judaism.

To deny that “settlements” are a part of Israel is to refuse Israeli sovereignty over the Western Wall, Temple Mount, and important Jewish cities and holy sites.

2 – The international community intended for Israel to retain some settlements.
“When Resolution 242 was adopted in 1967, it was, and remains today, the only substantive resolution that was agreed to by everybody…, the idea was that Israel would be entitled to secure borders… The 1967 borders were viewed by everybody as not secure,” Friedman explained.

“So Israel would retain a meaningful portion of the West Bank, and it would return that which it didn’t need for peace and security,” Friedman said. “There was always supposed to be some notion of expansion into the West Bank, but not necessarily expansion into the entire West Bank; and I think that’s exactly what Israel has done.”

3 – Friedman claimed that Israel is “only occupying 2% of the West Bank.”
Here, Friedman should not have used the term “occupying.” Israel considers the West Bank to be “disputed” and not “occupied” territory, with the status of the territories to be determined in future negotiations with the PA.

Regardless, news media outlets are calling Friedman out, claiming that Israel is “occupying” more than two percent.

4 – Friedman would not say whether some settlements should be dismantled.
“Wait and see,” was Friedman’s response when asked if some settlements should be required to “go down” under a final status agreement with the Palestinians.

Friedman’s sentiments are in keeping with a Bush administration commitment to allow some existing Jewish settlements to remain under a future Israeli-Palestinian deal.

In 2004, just prior to the Gaza evacuation, President Bush issued a declarative letter stating that it is unrealistic to expect that Israel will not retain some Jewish settlements in a final-status deal with the Palestinians.

5 – The so-called two-state solution is losing relevance.
Friedman told the Israeli news outlet that the concept “has largely lost its meaning, or at least has a different meaning to different people.”

The two-state solution refers to the creation of a Palestinian state, purportedly to live in peace alongside the Jewish state.

Such a state would be governed by the PA, which routinely incites violence against Israel and uses its official educational and media arms to deny the existence of the Jewish state. The PA is currently engaged in advanced, Egypt-brokered reconciliation talks with Hamas with the aim of creating a unity government with Gaza’s terrorist rulers.
Settlers hail US ambassador for saying settlements part of Israel
His use of “two percent” particularly angered Palestinians, who released statements blasting Friedman’s comments just hours later.

“It is not the first time that Mr. David Friedman has exploited his position as US ambassador to advocate and validate the Israeli government’s policies of occupation and annexation,” said senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, who is currently in the US awaiting a lung transplant.

“His latest statement about Israel ‘occupying only 2% of the West Bank’… is not only false and misleading but contradict[s] international law, United Nations resolutions and also the historical US position,” Erekat said, adding that “Israel is internationally recognized as the occupying power over 100% of Palestine.”

But Revivi, who is vying to be the next chairman of the Yesha Council, reinforced Friedman’s comments. “All of the Israeli towns and cities plus all infrastructure, including roads, adds up to less than two percent of what is described as the West Bank,” he said.

“For decades the international community has been eating up Palestinian propaganda without checking the reality on the ground,” Revivi continued.
Washington rebuffs own envoy for saying ‘settlements are part of Israel’
For the second time since David Friedman assumed his post as US ambassador to Israel, the US State Department has publicly rejected remarks he made pertaining to Israel’s presence in the West Bank as not reflecting the administration’s stance.

On Thursday afternoon, spokesperson Heather Nauert told reporters that Friedman’s comments in an interview with the Israeli Walla news website that he considers West Bank “settlements are part of Israel” should “not be read as a shift in US policy.”

“I just want to be clear that our policy has not changed​,” she added, with emphasis. ​”I want to be crystal clear​.”​

Far from considering settlements to be part of Israel, American foreign policy has traditionally held that Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is an obstacle to peace. Israel, which annexed East Jerusalem after the 1967 Six Day War and does not regard construction there as part of the settlement enterprise, has never claimed sovereignty in the West Bank.

In the Walla interview, Friedman cited UN Security Council Resolution 242, which passed in November 1967, that said a Middle East peace deal should include a withdrawal of “Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.”
Erekat: Israel occupies 100% of Palestine
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) secretary general Saeb Erekat on Friday blasted David Friedman, the U.S. ambassador in Israel, for saying in an interview that he believes Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are part of Israel.

"Israel is internationally recognized as the occupying power over 100 percent of Palestine, including in and around occupied east Jerusalem," Erekat said, according to AFP.

He said that Friedman's comment was "not only false and misleading but contradicts international law, United Nations resolutions and also the historical U.S. position".

"It is not the first time that Mr. David Friedman has exploited his position as U.S. ambassador to advocate and validate the Israeli government's policies of occupation and annexation," Erekat charged.
Quiet on settlement activity, Mideast Quartet calls for PA control of Gaza
The Middle East Quartet, a working group on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict comprised of Russia, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations, issued a statement on Thursday addressing the growing humanitarian crisis plaguing Gaza following conversations between envoys from the four players.

Notably, the statement omitted any reference to Israeli settlement activity – a rarity for the Quartet, which in its last report on the conflict offered detailed and scathing criticism of the government's construction efforts.

An official familiar with its drafting told The Jerusalem Post that Thursday's statement naturally focused on Gaza following recent meetings in New York between Egypt's President Fattah el-Sisi and Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Those meetings centralized on Palestinian Authority efforts to reclaim control of the coastal strip from Hamas.

The Quartet encouraged efforts from Egypt and other regional powers "to create the conditions for the Palestinian Authority to assume its responsibilities in Gaza," it said in a joint statement. "They urge the parties to take concrete steps to reunite Gaza and the West Bank under the legitimate Palestinian Authority."

Reunification of the Palestinian territories under PA control "will facilitate lifting the closures of the crossings, while addressing Israel’s legitimate security concerns, and unlock international support for Gaza’s growth, stability, and prosperity, which is critical for efforts to reach lasting peace," they continue, calling on "the international community to act accordingly" in response to the "grave" humanitarian challenge facing Gazans.

The statement echoes a speech delivered by the US special representative for international negotiations, Jason Greenblatt, to a UN committee earlier this month, in which he squarely blamed Hamas for the crisis.
U.S. Legislators, AIPAC Push anti-BDS Bill After UN Letter Blackmails Companies Operating in Settlements
"Legislators in the U.S. Congress and pro-Israeli organizations said on Thursday that the letter sent by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to companies doing business in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, underscores the importance of passing the 'Israel Anti-Boycott Act,' a proposed piece of legislation that would make it illegal for U.S. Companies to participate in boycotts against Israel organized by international bodies, such as the United Nations.

The letter, first reported by Haaretz on Wednesday, was sent by the UN's Human Rights Commissioner two weeks ago to 150 companies in Israel and around the world, warning them that they are about to be added to a database of companies doing business in Israeli settlements in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, senior Israeli officials and Western diplomats involved in the matter said...

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, told Haaretz that 'the UN has an appalling track record of not treating Israel in a fair way, and this is another sad example. I am strongly opposed to the BDS movement and I support the 'Israel Anti-Boycott Act' because foreign entities and international organizations, like the UN, should not be able to coerce or bully American companies into boycotting Israel, an American ally.'

Rep. Ted Deutch, a Democrat from Florida and a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Haaretz that he is 'outraged and appalled by this blatantly biased action by the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner.' He added that 'The Israel Anti-Boycott Act, which I have proudly cosponsored, would make it a policy of the U.S. to oppose the Human Rights Council resolution that led to the creation of this 'blacklist.' It would also block American companies from participating in an Israeli boycott by the UN or other international governmental organization.'
Israel wants US to shut Palestinians’ DC office — report
Israel is working on a plan to get the American administration to shut the Palestinians’ diplomatic offices in the US, according to a Hebrew media report.

The plan was hatched together with US lawmakers, Israel’s Kan state TV reported Thursday, and is meant to punish the Palestinians for their recent diplomatic advances, including their successful bid to join Interpol, the world’s largest police organization, and their ongoing efforts to have Israeli leaders tried at the International Criminal Court.

Hours after Interpol’s General Assembly voted Wednesday to make the “State of Palestine” a full-fledged member, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened that the move would have consequences, though he did not specify what they would be.

During a meeting with Jason Greenblatt, US President Donald Trump’s envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Netanyahu raised the Palestinians’ actions at the ICC and their accession to Interpol, a step he said “violates signed agreements with Israel.”

Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki last week met ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda in New York. Since joining the Hague-based court in 2015, Palestinian officials have continually provided its investigators with supposedly incriminating information about ostensible Israeli “war crimes.”
Bolton: U.S. Should Support Independence for Kurds, ‘State of Iraq as We Have Known It Doesn’t Exist Anymore’
Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton joined SiriusXM host Raheem Kassam and co-host Steve Bannon on Thursday’s Breitbart News Daily to talk about Kurdish independence and the future of Iraq.

“The Kurds are one of the largest ethnic groups in the world that has never had a nation in contemporary times,” Bolton explained. “Just two days ago, they held a referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan and voted well over 90 percent for independence. I think the United States should support independence for the Kurds. They’ve been friends of ours in the struggle against Saddam Hussein and the struggle against international terrorism. I think they’d be an important buffer against Iran.”

“And let’s face it: the state of Iraq as we have known it doesn’t exist anymore, and it’s not coming back together,” he added. “The Baghdad government is controlled by the ayatollahs from Tehran. The American strategy to defeat ISIS, which has relied so heavily on the Baghdad government, I think has been a mistake.”

“I think it’s a mistake for the State Department now, as it did before the referendum, to tell the Kurds ‘don’t hold it,’ and opposing now the inevitable consequences. They’re now going to be de jure independent,” said Bolton.

Bolton agreed with Bannon’s salute of the Kurds as a reliable U.S. ally over the past three decades.

“They asked, in early days, ‘please just give us weapons.’ Of course, the Obama administration didn’t want to do that for the longest time. Now we are, and I think that’s right,” he said.

“This referendum has created a new reality. I just don’t see the State Department at this point acknowledging that, even though it benefits the United States,” he lamented.
Hamas says it okayed new Egyptian proposal for prisoner swap with Israel
Hamas has accepted an Egyptian proposal for a prisoner swap with Israel and is awaiting Jerusalem’s response to the offer, the terror group’s leader in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, said Thursday night, according to Channel 2 news.

A report earlier this month in the Palestinian daily Al Quds quoted sources in Cairo as saying the Egyptian offer would see Israel first hand over the bodies of 39 Palestinians killed in the 2014 Gaza war, 19 of whom are Hamas members, in exchange for Hamas acknowledging the fate of IDF soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul. The IDF says the two were killed in the Gaza Strip during the 2014 war. Hamas has hinted that it is holding the two soldiers and has also implied that they could still be alive.

The terror group is also believed to be holding three Israeli civilians — Avraham Abera Mengistu, Hisham al-Sayed and Juma Ibrahim Abu Ghanima — who are all believed to have entered the Gaza Strip of their own accord.

In the second stage of the Egyptian plan, Israel will reportedly release the so-called “Shalit captives” — 58 Palestinians who were rearrested in the summer of 2014 after being set free in the 2011 swap for IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. Hamas will then enter into genuine prisoner exchange talks with the Jewish state, the report said. The talks would reportedly be mediated by Egyptian intelligence services.
Radical leftists called slain officer 'a disgrace' before attack
Anti-IDF left-wing radicals confronted one of the three security personnel who was murdered in the terror shooting this Tuesday in Har Adar, calling him “a disgrace” for his anti-terror activities just moments before the attack.

Sgt. Solomon Gavrya, a 22-year-old Border Police officer from Beer Yaakov in central Israel, was one of three security personnel murdered by a 37-year-old Palestinian Authority Arab in a terror shooting at the rear entrance to the town of Har Adar Tuesday morning.

The terrorist, a resident of nearby Beit Surik who had been issued an Israeli work permit, opened fire on the security personnel while attempting to enter Har Adar with a concealed firearm.

Just moments before the shooting, however, radical anti-IDF activists confronted Gavrya while he was helping to secure the entrance to Har Adar as Palestinian Authority laborers entered the town.
Greenblatt visits families of Har Adar victims
Jason Greenblatt, U.S. President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace negotiator, on Thursday paid a condolence visit to the families of the three Israelis who were murdered in the terror attack near Har Adar this week.

“It has been a very difficult & sad evening. I visited with the loved ones of THREE families whose sons were murdered by a terrorist at Har Adar. Despicable. Please pray for them,” he tweeted.

On the day of the attack, Greenblatt condemned it and criticized Hamas for praising it.

"My family & I are horrified by the attack in Har Adar. Shame on Hamas & others who praised the attack. All must stand against terror!" Greenblatt tweeted.

"We pray for the victims of today's attack at Har Adar, and their loved ones as well," he added.
Spokesman: Abbas condemns all violence including Har Adar attack
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s spokesman on Thursday said that his boss condemns all acts of violence including the shooting attack that took place outside the Har Adar settlement on Tuesday morning.

“The president’s permanent position is to condemn all acts of violence including this operation,” Nabil Abu Rudeinah told official PA radio in response to a question about Abbas’s position on the Har Adar attack.

On Tuesday, 37-year-old Nimer al-Jamal shot dead three Israeli security personnel and seriously injured a civilian outside the Har Adar settlement. Jamal, a father of four, had previously worked in Har Adar as a cleaner.

During a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Abbas to condemn the Har Adar attack and accused the PA of incitement to violence.

Abbas infrequently condemns specific attacks against Israelis. When the PA president has previously condemned attacks, he has faced major popular backlash.
'I wanted to show the terrorist how strong the Jews are'
Nearly two months ago, 42-year-old Niv Nehemia was fighting for his life after an Arab terrorist stabbed him repeatedly at the Yavneh supermarket where he worked as deputy manager.

After making a remarkable recovery, Nehemia confronted his would-be murderer Thursday in court, an appearance Nehemia said was important to show the terrorist that neither he nor the Jewish people would be cowed by acts of terror.

At the court hearing in the central Israeli town of Lod, Nehemia stared down his attacker, who looked away to avoid looking into his victim’s eyes.

“I came here to show him that we’re strong,” Nehemia told Channel 10.

“It was important for me to show him that I’m still standing, and that he failed to do what had planned, and to show him how strong the Jewish people are.”

“I was ready to fight him again,” continued Nehemia, “but this time he shouldn’t act like a coward and sneak up on me from behind; [this time] it’ll be face to face. I could really show him that the Jewish people is stronger than he thinks.”
Plan for 14,000 Palestinian homes suspended 'until further notice'
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told cabinet ministers this week that he has decided to freeze "until further notice" a plan to build 14,000 new housing units for Palestinians west of the West Bank city of Qalqilya.

The project, known as the Qalqilya plan, was approved by the Diplomatic-Security Cabinet in October 2016, after being pushed by Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman under the IDF's carrot-and-stick approach. The approach involves offering benefits to Palestinians in areas that do not encourage terror and clashes with security forces. The sticks are punitive measures in areas where the population actively encourages violence against Israelis.

In retrospect, many of the ministers objected to the construction plan and some never participated in the discussions. One minister who did attend the meetings claimed that the broad scope of construction had not been accurately presented.

Some three months ago, Netanyahu decided to convene another meeting on the issue, this time with the entire government, and announced the plan would be re-examined. Since then, however, the matter was not been revisited, largely due to bitter disagreement between Lieberman, who insists on implementing the plan, and a number of ministers who strongly oppose it.

This week, Netanyahu asked ministers to approve two goodwill gestures toward the Palestinians: an access road to Rawabi, a new Palestinian city near Ramallah; and the completion of the industrial zone in Tulkarem. The prime minister stressed that both gestures had been requested by the Americans, and they were subsequently approved. After the approval process, ministers inquired whether the Qalqilya plan would also be submitted for approval, to which the prime minister responded that it was suspended until further notice.
"Bad Blood" Hovers over Latest Attempt at Palestinian Reconciliation
Since violently seizing control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 from the PA, Hamas and Fatah have been locked in a Palestinian version of a cold war. The PA—with the quiet support of Israel, the U.S. and other allies—has worked to root out any attempts by Hamas to undermine or overthrow its control in the disputed territories.

At the same time, Hamas, which has survived a maritime blockade, international isolation, multiple wars with Israel and pressure from other Islamic terror groups in Gaza, has continued to see itself as the sole leader of the Palestinian cause with the goal of destroying Israel.

Despite the deadlock between the Palestinian factions, there have been numerous attempts at reconciliation, most notably in 2014, when they formed a brief unity government that ultimately unraveled amid ongoing disputes over governance.

This latest move towards reconciliation comes after months of economic and political pressure by the PA to squeeze Hamas. This included the PA’s decision to significantly cut its subsidization of Gaza’s electricity bill, which led to severe power shortages, as well as the PA’s decision to stop paying salaries of government workers and former prisoners in Gaza and cutting down on medical border crossings for Gazans.

Rumley believes that while the PA’s pressure on Hamas likely played a role in the latest unity deal, it is not a recipe for long-term coexistence.

“Abbas’s sanctions were viewed by many in Gaza as cruel, depriving them of electricity and medical supplies in a long summer,” Rumley said. “Hamas’s leaders were desperate for any reprieve and outside funding, and to that end were willing to cut a deal with anyone who could get money and fuel into Gaza.”
Not So Fast on Fatah-Hamas Unity
At first glance, the statement marked an unexpected gesture of flexibility by the Islamic militant group to reconcile the decade-long rift in Palestinian politics between Hamas and Abbas’ Fatah Party, which rules Palestinian areas of the West Bank.

The announcement included an invitation for Abbas’ West Bank-based government to assume responsibility for the Gaza Strip and begin preparations to hold long-overdue elections for a Palestinian president and a parliament.

But after numerous failed attempts at unity, is it time for Palestinians to crack open the champagne that the feud, which has paralyzed their politics for a decade, is finally over? And should Israel be worried that Abbas, who has allowed his security forces to work with the Israeli military on counterterrorism in the West Bank, is about to join forces with a group considered a terror outfit by Jerusalem and Washington?

The consensus among Israeli, foreign and Palestinian analysts is a resounding “no.” Hamas and Fatah are still far from resolving their most fundamental disagreements blocking a unity deal.

In some respects, the Hamas-Fatah rift resembles the hostile dynamics of the Israel-Palestinian conflict: both sides view the dispute as a zero-sum game and are loath to give any ground.

“It’s very dangerous for either side to be relenting to the other,” said Hillel Frisch, a political science professor and an expert on Palestinian politics at Bar-Ilan University.
American UN Envoy Nikki Haley Says Russia Shielding Iran From IAEA, Warns Nuclear Deal Without Inspections Is an ‘Empty Promise’
US Ambassador to UN Nikki Haley. Photo: US Mission to UN.

American UN Ambassador Nikki Haley took sharp aim on Thursday at Russia’s insistence that the International Atomic Energy Agency had no mandate to inspect Iranian nuclear activities that could include the design and production of a detonation device.

“If the Iran nuclear deal is to have any meaning, the parties must have a common understanding of its terms,” Haley said. “Iranian officials have already said they will refuse to allow inspections at military sites, even though the IAEA‎ says there must be no distinction between military and non-military sites.”

In a reference to the Russian position, Haley added: “Now it appears that some countries are attempting to shield Iran from even more inspections. Without inspections, the Iran deal is an empty promise.”

Haley’s comments are the latest indication of the Trump administration’s impatience with the JCPOA — the nuclear deal agreed to by the Tehran regime and the US and five other world powers in July 2015. Under US law, the president is obliged to confirm every 90 days that Iran is “transparently, verifiably, and fully implementing the agreement.” While President Donald Trump has recertified the deal twice during his time in office, the gaps in the deal’s monitoring regime revealed by the current row with Russia could lead to a different outcome when he announces his assessment on October 15.

The present doubts over the deal’s survival center on “Section T” of the JCPOA, which forbids Iran from engaging in a range of listed activities “which could contribute to the development of a nuclear explosive device.” Prohibited activities include work on detonation systems and the use of computer models to simulate nuclear explosive devices.
Nobel Committee Considering John Kerry, Iran’s Zarif For Peace Prize (not satire)
The Norwegian Nobel Committee is considering the former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, and the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to acknowledge their role in reaching the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal, Reuter news agency reports.

The framework deal on Iran's nuclear program, or as President Donald Trump likes to call it: “the worst deal ever,” gave Iran access to an estimated $150 billion of previously frozen assets in foreign bank accounts in return for Islamic Republic’s wage promises to halt its nuclear weapons program. And in a brilliant masterstroke of Obama-Kerry diplomacy, the Iranian Islamic regime could self-inspect its nuclear facilities to ensure they weren’t making any nuclear weapons.

If this trio manages to win the Nobel Peace Prize it would be joining a very exclusive club that includes luminaries such as former U.S. presidents Jimmy Carter and Barak Obama, and the Arab terrorist-turned-kleptocrat Yasser Arafat.

According to Reuters, these top architects of the Iran Deal were running as “favorites” for the prestigious prize in recognition for their efforts:



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