12/16 Links: WH ‘cannot envision situation’ where Western Wall is not part of Israel; Mahmoud Abbas’s Karine-A Moment? ~ EoZ

From Ian:

White House ‘cannot envision situation’ where Western Wall is not part of Israel

A senior administration official told reporters on Friday that the White House “envisions” the Western Wall will remain part of Israel under any accord with the Palestinians.

The comments follow US President Donald Trump’s December 6 declaration that recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. They are certain to delight Israeli leaders — the Western Wall is the holiest place where Jews are allowed to pray — and infuriate the Palestinians, who claim East Jerusalem, including the Old City, as the capital of their intended independent state.

“We cannot envision any situation under which the Western Wall would not be part of Israel,” the official said, speaking ahead of US Vice President Mike Pence’s visit to Israel next week.

“But as the president said [in his speech last week on Jerusalem], the specific boundaries of sovereignty of Israel are going to be part of the final status agreement,” the official said.

Furthermore, the official added, “We note that we cannot imagine Israel would sign a peace agreement that didn’t include the Western Wall.”

Furious Palestinians reject White House talk of Western Wall as Israel’s forever

The Palestinian Authority bitterly rejected comments by a senior official in the Trump Administration on Friday that the White House “envisions” the Western Wall will remain part of Israel under any accord with the Palestinians.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a senior adviser to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, declared Saturday that the PA would not accept any changes to what he called the borders of East Jerusalem. Israel captured East Jerusalem, including the Old City with the Temple Mount and Western Wall, from Jordan in the 1967 war.

“We will not accept any changes on the borders of East Jerusalem, which was occupied in 1967,” Abu Rudeineh said. “This statement proves once again that this American administration is outside the peace process,” he added.

“The continuation of this American policy, whether the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, or moving the American embassy, or such statements, by which the United States decides unilaterally on the issues of the final status negotiations, are a violation of international law and strengthen the Israeli occupation,” he said.

“For us, this is unacceptable. We totally reject it. And we totally denounce it.”

Mahmoud Abbas’s Karine-A Moment?

Nearly 16 years ago, in early January 2002, the Israeli navy intercepted the Karine-A, a weapons laden ship, in the Red Sea on its way to the Palestinian Authority from Iran. The capture of the ship and the intelligence gleaned from it by Israel forced the United States to go “from viewing Arafat as an eccentric but necessary peace proponent, to viewing him as the heart of the terror problem.”

At the time, the so-called “Aqsa intifada” – a deadly campaign that claimed hundreds of lives that was planned by the Palestinian leadership after Arafat turned down a peace offer from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in July 2000 – had been going on for about 15 months. There was an international clamor to reduce the violence as Israel attempted to destroy the terror infrastructure that Arafat had overseen in the West Bank.

Yet, when Israel presented the U.S. evidence of Arafat’s involvement in terror, President George W. Bush responded by demanding the Palestinians find a new leader “not compromised by terror.”

After Arafat died in 2004, he was succeeded by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who still serves in that position even though he was elected in 2005 for a four-year term.

Abbas, who objected to the violence of the “Aqsa intifada,” has proven no more ready to make peace with Israel than Arafat, in addition to being corrupt. He rejected a 2008 peace proposal from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and derailed two efforts by the Obama administration to achieve peace with Israel.

This week, in a shocking display of denial, Abbas accused Jews of “faking and counterfeiting history and religion” with their claims to Israel.

Mordehai kedar petite remise en question chez al jazeera (h/t Yenta Press)

Ari Shavit's 'comeback' event on hold following new sexual assault allegations

An event featuring Ari Shavit, the Israeli author and columnist accused last year of sexual assault, has disappeared from the website of the 92nd Street Y, a Jewish community center, after two more women came forward with sexual misconduct allegations.

Shavit was the scheduled keynote speaker at an Israeli Independence Day program in April at the Manhattan Y. It would have been his first major public event in the United States since the assault accusations last year.

The talk, which was first reported by The Jerusalem Post, was advertised as “a timely, thoughtful discussion” on Israel’s challenges and Shavit’s forthcoming book, which was unnamed.

But as of Friday afternoon, notice of the event has been removed from the website and tickets page after two more women told the magazine Jewish Currents of sexual misconduct allegations from 2014 and 2015. At the time, both students were involved with the liberal campus Israel group J Street U.

Amna Farooqi, who served as national student president of J Street U, told Jewish Currents that in 2015, Shavit kissed her at the end of a meeting in a way she described to a friend as “weird” and “inappropriate.” The friend confirms their conversation.

Catriona Stewart, who currently serves as J Street U’s deputy director, told Jewish Currents that when she was a student, Shavit rubbed her lower back inappropriately during a photo shoot. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

UN Watch: U.N.’s Palestine Day posters in Addis Ababa call Israel ‘apartheid’, Israelis ‘fools’

The U.N. office in Addis Ababa put up posters for Palestinian solidarity event that call Israel an “apartheid” state and promote violence against Israelis.

An email was sent to all U.N. country team employees in Ethiopia to “urge [them] to make the extra effort to attend the event as a show of support for the cause of the Palestinian people.” The email confirmed that this was an official U.N. event.

Image 1:
One collage of images on display was labeled “Walls of Shame: Dividing One People”. This label conflicts with the U.N.’s commitment to the two-state solution, which calls for the land to be separated into a Jewish state of Israel and an Arab state of Palestine. The controversy over Israel’s security barrier, from a U.N. perspective, surrounds the unilateral nature of its location. The U.N. recognizes that two people should be divided, so to state that the barrier divides “one people” would be to deny the right of Israel to exist on the other side.

The collage also features one image that says “End Apartheid.”A March U.N. report using the “apartheid” slur was withdrawn by secretary-general Guterres, and resulted in the resignation of UN ECSWA chief Rima Khalaf.

At least two other images include Palestinian rioters throwing stones, which is a promotion of violence.

Image 2:
A banner displayed at the U.N. event features a photo of Yasser Arafat and Fidel Castro. The banner includes a quote, attributed to Castro: “Israelis are fools because they occupied a country where people indefatigable [sic]”.
Although Castro has said many negative things about Israel, there is no record online of this quote existing.

Fatah calls for ‘angry’ protests against US during Pence’s Jerusalem visit

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction on Saturday called for “angry” demonstrations next week to protest against a visit to Jerusalem by US Vice President Mike Pence after Washington said it would recognize the holy city as Israel’s capital.

“We call for angry protests at the entrances to Jerusalem and in its Old City to coincide with the visit on Wednesday of US Vice President Mike Pence and to protest against Trump’s decision,” Fatah said in a statement.

Breaking with decades of US policy, President Donald Trump also said on December 6 that he would move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. And, in a move that further angered the Palestinians, a White House official said Friday that the US could not “envision any situation” under which the Western Wall would not be part of Israel.

The moves were welcomed by Israel but have stirred widespread condemnation and sparked angry protests across Arab and Muslim countries, as well as deadly clashes in the West Bank and Gaza. Trump stressed that the city’s borders should be agreed upon between the sides under a peace deal, and that access to holy sites must not be impeded.

Amid Jerusalem fallout, Trump envoy heads to Israel to try to advance peace bid

Amid violent regional protests over US President Donald Trump’s decision last week to formally recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, his top peace envoy will head to Israel early next week to try to advance efforts to broker an Israeli-Palestinian accord.

The White House said Jason Greenblatt would come to Israel next week and stay throughout the upcoming visit of Vice President Mike Pence. It is not clear if Greenblatt will try to meet with Palestinian officials, who have refused to meet Pence and declared the US no longer has a role to play in the peace process.

“As we have said since the Jerusalem announcement, we anticipated reactions like the ones going on in the region but are going to remain hard at work on our peace plan,” a senior administration official told The Times of Israel on Friday.

The announcement of Greenblatt’s impending visit came as four Palestinians died on Friday afternoon after being shot in clashes with Israeli security forces in the West Bank and Gaza.

Killing of Palestinian amputee activist in Gaza fuels anger at Israel

The death of Ibrahim Abu Thuraya, a disabled Palestinian activist, in Gaza on Friday is becoming the latest symbol in Palestinian anger at Israel.

It is also fueling international reactions on social media to the wave of protests that began with the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel by US President Donald Trump.

Abu Thuraya, a 29-year-old Palestinian who lost his legs and an eye in 2008 during Operation Cast Lead, was reportedly shot and killed during clashes on Friday on Gaza’s border with Israel. His death is being widely shared on social media. A video by Middle East Eye had been viewed more than 1 million times and shared 33,000 times by Saturday morning.

The IDF said that the incident is under investigation.

Video of the disabled activist before his death show him with dozens of Palestinian protesters who set off on Friday toward the Israeli security fence that borders Gaza. He told an interviewer before the clashes that “this land is our land. We are not going to give up. America has to withdraw the declaration it has made.”

The IDF said that hundreds of Palestinians approached the border fence on Friday and threw stones. They were dispersed.

Photos showed Abu Thuraya being pushed on a wheelchair while advancing toward the border with the protesters, some of whom had slingshots and were throwing stones. Tear gas landed around the protesters and at some point he left his wheelchair behind, crawling through the grass. Footage after he was shot shows him being pushed while slumped in his wheelchair and then carried away.

Palestinians said he was shot in the head and a Health Ministry spokesman in Gaza, Ashraf al-Kidra, claimed he was pronounced dead at Shifa hospital as a result of his wounds. Photos showed his body carried on a stretcher through the streets after his death.

Comments on social media expressed outrage at his death. He was “murdered” by the IDF, said social media users. He was unarmed, they pointed out, and did not pose a threat.

Palestinians Protesting Jerusalem Decision Burn Effigy of Trump

Palestinians in the West Bank city of Hebron burned Donald Trump in effigy on Friday in response to the president recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Images on Twitter show Palestinians, who are protesting Trump’s announcement to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, set fire to a printed image of Trump's face on a pig's figure. Khaled Abu Toameh of the Jerusalem Post shared the pictures on Friday.

Palestinian opponents of Israel called for "three days of rage" in response to the embassy decision, bringing a great deal of attention to the region. Many members of the American media condemned Trump’s decision as well, despite the Senate having voted unanimously this summer to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas condemned Trump’s decision Wednesday at an Organization of the Islamic Conference summit in Turkey.

"These unilateral steps by President Trump will not give any legitimacy to Israel in Jerusalem," Abbas said. "It is a Palestinian Arab Muslim Christian city, the eternal capital of the state of Palestine. There can be no Palestinian state without the city of Jerusalem as its capital. Moreover, there will be no peace in the region and in the world without it."

He said Israel is guilty of "apartheid" and "colonialist practices," and said recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital crosses a "red line." (h/t Elder of Lobby)

A Palestinian State? What could possibly go wrong?

The nightmare stories of the Likud are well known. After all, they promised rockets from Gaza as well. For a year, Gaza has been largely under the rule of the Palestinian Authority. There has not been a single rocket. Nor will there be any ... – Yitzhak Rabin, Radio interview, July 24, 1995.

In the history of international politics, there have been numerous ideas that proved both myopic and moronic. But few—if any—have proved more so than the ill-conceived idea of foisting statehood on the Palestinian-Arabs. Compounding the folly of this fatal fiasco is the fact that it was not only completely predictable—but persistently predicted.

Particularly puzzling—indeed perverse—is the fact that any prospective Palestinian state is almost certainly likely to embody the very antithesis of the values invoked for its inception by the liberal-Left Establishment.

Corrupt kleptocracy or tyrannical theocracy
After all, there is little reason to believe that any such state would be anything other than a misogynistic, homophobic Muslim majority tyranny and a bastion for Islamist terror groups--whose hallmarks would be gender discrimination against woman/girls; persecution of homosexuals, prosecution of political dissidents, and suppression of non-Muslim faiths. Indeed, its liberal-Left devotees have certainly never provided any remotely compelling argument why it would not be. Neither has the empirical precedent set since the ill-considered 1993 Oslo Accords began the ill-fated process of prodding the unprepared Palestinian-Arabs towards self-government.

After all, since Arafat’s triumphant return to Gaza in July 1994, despite massive financial aid, almost unanimous international endorsement, and a series of Israeli governments, whose pliant leniency towards repeated Palestinian malfeasance exceeded the bounds of reason and common sense, the Palestinian-Arabs have failed to create anything remotely resembling a sustainable, productive society. Indeed, all they have managed to produce is a corrupt keptocracy under Fatah and a tyrannical theocracy under Hamas.

Liberman: Abbas ‘still alive’ because of Israel-PA security coordination

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said Friday that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas wouldn’t be alive if not for security cooperation between Israel and the PA.

“The security coordination between Israel and the Palestinians is in [Abbas’s] interest no less than ours, if not more. He is still alive thanks to the security coordination,” Liberman was quoted as saying by the Ynet news site. Liberman was speaking at an event in Jerusalem.

The defense minister, who has long been a harsh critic of the PA chief, pointed to the killing of figures from Abbas’s Fatah party by Hamas during its violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, implying security cooperation between Israel and the PA was keeping Abbas from meeting a similar fate.

“We saw what happened in Gaza and how they killed all the Fatah activists who didn’t manage to escape after Hamas took over the Strip,” said Liberman. “Therefore we don’t need to always present the security coordination as solely an Israeli interest.”

With this, Liberman said he did not feel “threatened” by Abbas’s repeated threats to end security coordination, which the PA leader reiterated at a Wednesday meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Following the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Abbas threatened the PA would no longer adhere to the Oslo Accords, which established the PA and in turn security cooperation between the sides.

Interfaith Delegation From Bahrain Visits Israel, Draws Criticism in Arab World

An interfaith delegation from Bahrain is visiting Israel during Hanukkah in an unprecedented trip.

On Tuesday night, the group attended a menorah lighting ceremony in the Old City of Jerusalem to mark the first night of the holiday.

The diverse delegation, which arrived in Israel on Sunday, consists of 25 members representing the country’s Sunni Muslim, Shi’a Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu and Sikh communities.

Although the trip’s organizers stated that the group’s three-day trip to Israel was non-political, the delegation was heavily criticized in Arab countries.

“We have nothing to do with politics,” Betsy Mathieson, president of the “This is Bahrain” interfaith organization, told The Associated Press.

The Bahraini group’s visit comes amid the ongoing emergence of quiet, unofficial ties between Israel and Arab states due to mutual concern over the threats posed by Iran. The delegation was facilitated by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish-run global human rights organization.

Bahrain does not have diplomatic relations with Israel. But in September, Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa condemned the Arab world’s boycott of Israel, saying Bahraini citizens are free to visit the Jewish state. The king’s comments came in a declaration of worldwide religious tolerance that was also facilitated by the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Palestinian billionaire detained in Saudi Arabia in sweeping corruption probe

Palestinian billionaire businessman Sabih al-Masri was reportedly detained in Saudi Arabia for questioning last week during a business trip to Riyadh, amidst a sweeping anti-corruption purge of the Saudi elite.

Masri, who is the founder of Zara Investment Holding and chairman of Jordan’s largest lender, Arab Bank, was held in the Saudi capital over “information related to corruption,” according to Arabic-language news reports.

Friends and family sources confirmed Masri’s detention to Reuters on Saturday.

“He has been answering questions about his business and partners,” a source told the news agency without elaborating.

According to the Rai al-Youm news website, Saudi authorities did not charge the 80-year-old businessman with any crime.

It was not immediately clear when Masri was released. He and Saudi authorities did not respond to media requests for comment.

Masri’s arrest comes in the wake of a sweeping anti-corruption purge of the Saudi elite last month by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Southern (Gaza) Brigade commander tells border town residents the latest round of violence is 'like a snowball we're trying to stop'

Just days after the Israeli army destroyed an attack tunnel leading from the southern Gaza Strip into Israel, a senior army officer told residents of a kibbutz near the border that it likely wasn’t the last such passage.

During a visit to Kibbutz Nirim, Colonel Kobi Heller, the commander of the Israel Defense Force’s Southern (Gaza) Brigade, tried to reassure his audience by saying that the tunnel, blown up over the weekend, did not pose a threat.

But he added,”There are probably more tunnels that we will find and destroy,” according to recordings of his remarks that surfaced on Thursday.

Addressing rising tensions amid a sharp increase in the number of rockets being fired from Gaza, and prompting retaliatory Israeli airstrikes, Heller said, “The dynamic there at the moment is like a snowball we’re trying to stop.”

Terrorists “on the other side” were not “rational like you and me” and were using a situation in which the ruling Hamas terror group was turning a slight blind eye to make things difficult for Israel, he said.

A NIS 2 billion underground barrier that Israel is constructing along its border with the enclave helped the army to find the tunnel destroyed a few days ago, “and we’ll find additional tunnels in the coming months,” he continued.

“[The barrier] will bring good tidings in another two years, and until then, there will be an interim period during which the barrier is going to cut across all the tunnels that exist, if they exist, in the area of the border communities.”

Turkey Deputy PM claims Israel falsely accused local Turkish aid official

Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Hakan Cavusoglu claimed on Thursday that Israel made false allegations against an official of the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA).

According to the Daily Sabah he made the comments at a plenary session of parliament.

“A local TIKA official is under arrest [is Israel] on false accusations. The history will definitely remember who served humanity and who served hostility,” Cavusoglu said.

TIKA is a department of the Prime Minister’s Office in charge of development assistance that describes itself as an “implementing intermediary of Turkish foreign policy.”

In March The Jerusalem Post reported that Gaza resident Muhammad Murtaja had been arrested by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and accused of “financing Hamas’s military wing.”

He was an employee of TIKA and was entering Israel via the Erez crossing from the northern Gaza Strip to receive vocational training when he was arrested.

Palestinian terror group PFLP celebrates 50th anniversary in Berlin

Supporters and a high level official of the international designated terrorist organization the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine celebrated the group's 50th anniversary in Berlin.

A video was posted Monday on YouTube by the German left-wing extremist organization "Youth Resistance Media" showing supporters and likely members of the PFLP at the anniversary event calling for the "Death to Zionism" with the use of "rifles."

Dr. Elvira Grözinger, the head of the German section of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday that the "presently prevailing and growing pogrom atmosphere against the Jews as 'Zionists' and the Israel-related antisemitism in Muslim circles in Germany are only made possible because there are German supporters like these still existing -- Stalinist fanatics and other ignorant contemporaries."

Grözinger, who organized a conference on German antisemitism last week in Berlin, added, "When the democratic state does not immediately start to enforce the existing laws against hate speech and incitement against the Jews living here, these forces calling for terror will remain active. And the Jews, when unprotected, will know the answer -- it will not be a pleasant one for the declining democracy in a once so exemplary country."

The US, Israel and EU classify the PFLP as a terrorist organization. Israeli MKs such as Yair Lapid from Yesh Atid and German MPs have urged Germany's interior minister Thomas de Maizière to ban the PFLP in Germany. Two members of the PFLP murdered four rabbis with axes in a November 2014 attack in a synagogue in Jerusalem.

Germany arrests two Palestinian supporters of the Islamic State

The public prosecutor in the city of Celle in the German state of Lower Saxony confirmed on Thursday that authorities had arrested two Palestinians for alleged criminal activity on behalf of the Islamic State terrorist organization.

The two 21-year-olds, Mahmoud Abu S. and Ahmad Abu S., are charged with "support of a foreign terrorist organization, as well as disturbing the peace by threats of criminal acts." The men were arrested on Tuesday.

According to the prosecutor's statement, the accused men are suspected since November 2017 of spreading Islamic State material over the internet to enact crimes.

The material was "spread on Islamic State-affiliated channels in order to create a climate of insecurity and fear," said the prosecutor.

German authorities declined to provide the full last names of criminal defendants to ensure privacy protections.

Egypt opens Gaza border for four days

Egypt opened its largely sealed border with Gaza on Saturday for only the second time since the Palestinian Authority took control of the crossing from the Hamas terror group that rules the Strip.

The Hamas-run interior ministry, which was organizing departures from the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Yunis, said the crossing would stay open for four days but, in the Egypt direction, for humanitarian cases only.

Those cases include people needing medical treatment unavailable in Gaza, as well as students enrolled at Egyptian universities, and Gazans with jobs abroad.

There were tearful scenes at the makeshift departure point as families said their farewells.

Rafah is Gaza’s only border crossing not controlled by Israel.

IDF: Gaza rocket fired at Israel falls short, strikes house in Strip

A rocket fired at Israel Friday evening from the Gaza Strip fell short and struck a house in the Palestinian enclave, the Israel Defense Forces said.

In a post on its Arabic Facebook page, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories — Israel’s military liaison to the Palestinians — said the rocket hit a home belonging to an Egyptian family in the northern Gaza city of Beit Hanoun.

“Once again the terror groups launch rockets at the residents of Gaza,” COGAT said.

It did not say if anyone was injured by the rocket.

A Hadashot news report said the rocket damaged the home of the brother of a senior Hamas official, Mushir al-Masri.

COGAT noted it was the second such incident this week. On Wednesday, a rocket fired at Israel from Gaza also fell inside the Palestinian territory and hit a public school, damaging a classroom, Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, who heads COGAT, said at the time.

Student leader reported to police for anti-Israel hate speech at rally

According to a YouTube video of her remarks, obtained by the Toronto Sun, Nour Alideeb, the current chairperson of the Ontario branch of the Canadian Federation of Students contends that tuition money from the 350,000 university and college students she purports to represent is “going to pay for military resources in Israel to kill children” like her.

The student leader was one of the many guest speakers at a Dec. 9 anti-Israel rally in front of the U.S. Consulate called after U.S. President Donald Trump announced he was prepared to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Similar rallies were held in other Canadian cities and around the world.

Alideeb, introduced by rally organizers as a “sister” who fights for Palestine in her role as student leader, also contends this is not a Jewish vs. Muslim “thing” but it is all about Zionism (clearly not understanding that Zionism is in fact a Jewish “thing” and Israel is the Jewish state).

“This is about Zionism and Zionism is rooted in white supremacy…it is rooted in racism, it is rooted in anti-blackness… this is colonialism and we cannot allow them to divide us,” she told those assembled at the rally.

She did not elaborate on who she meant by “them” but she did say Canada is just as bad as the United States.

Cheryl Davila's BDS litmus test for Berkeley

Through the wonder of Berkeley's "ranked choice" voting Cheryl Davila found herself on the Berkeley city council. In the November 2016 election, incumbent Darryl Moore received just under 40% of the 8,000 votes cast in the first round of the ranked-choice ballot. Nanci Armstrong-Temple and Cheryl Davila split the remaining votes 29% and 31%.

The second round of ranked-choice voters gave Moore an additional 446 votes and Davila 1,236 votes, giving Davila a narrow victory margin of just 168 votes.

Davila's claim to fame in Berkeley previously had been her hijacking the agenda of the Berkeley Human Welfare Commission for months, in an effort to pass a divestment from Israel proposal.

In her quest for election to the city council, the Davila campaign called upon their old friends at UC Berkeley's Students for Justice in Palestine, visiting them, and posting on their Facebook page.

Cheryl has remained active in the anti-Israel camp, appearing at rallies on campus and in front of the local Israeli consulate. She has apparently been attempting to pay back her campaign debts.

Berkeley City Councilperson Cheryl Davila promotes extremist views
Ben Gerhardstein, a former city transportation commissioner believes Cheryl Davila booted him off the Commission in part because he declined to state his opinion regarding divestment from Israel.

CAA launches private prosecution against leader of Al Quds Day march who we allege blamed “Zionists” for Grenfell, after CPS fails British Jews once again

Campaign Against Antisemitism has today laid an information before magistrates to initiate a private prosecution against Nazim Ali, the leader of the “Al Quds Day” march through central London, after the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) declined to prosecute him.

Our information alleges: “On the 18th day of June 2017, between Duchess Street and Grosvenor Square in London, Nazim Hussain Ali used threatening or abusive words or behaviour, within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby.”

We allege that during the march, Mr Ali used a portable public address system to make various statements, including:
“Some of the biggest corporations who are supporting the Conservative Party are Zionists. They are responsible for the murder of the people in Grenfell, in those towers in Grenfell. The Zionist supporters of the Tory Party. Free, Free, Palestine…It is the Zionists who give money to the Tory Party to kill people in high-rise blocks. Free, Free, Palestine. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
“Careful of those Rabbis who belong to the Board of Deputies, who have got blood on their hands, who agree with the killing of British soldiers. Do not allow them in your centres.”

In addition to this private prosecution, we have made a complaint about Mr Ali, who is the managing partner of a pharmacy, to the General Pharmaceutical Council and we have submitted a complaint about the charity that organised the march, the self-proclaimed Islamic Human Rights Commission, to the Charity Commission.

Last year was the worst year for antisemitic crime on record. Crime targeting Jews has surged by rising by 45% since 2014, however of the 14,480 hate crimes prosecuted by the CPS last year, only 20 are known to be cases of antisemitic hate crime.

German State Broadcaster Uses Jerusalem News to Slam Israel

Deutsche Welle, German public news organization responsible for overseas broadcasting, exists in order to convey a positive image of Germany. The federal law governing the broadcaster insists that "programs must enable the public to form independent opinions, and must not one-sidedly support a party or other political association, a religious community, a profession or community of interest."

It's unclear what in the legal mandate justifies the publication of error-ridden, slanted hit pieces targeting the Jewish state. But that is precisely what Deutsche Welle took the opportunity to do in its overview entitled "Jerusalem: Three things to know." The Dec. 7 piece begins with a small but inexplicable misstatement of fact, that "Israel captured all of Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war," and never looks back, quoting only critics of Israel and overtly tilting toward their preferred talking points.

• As noted, the first sentence of the article incorrectly states that "Israel captured all of Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war, then annexed Arab East Jerusalem."

In fact, Israel captured the western sector of Jerusalem in 1948, when Jordan's Arab Legion captured the eastern sector. When Israel forced Jordanian troops back to their territory in 1967, then, it didn't capture "all of Jerusalem," but only the eastern portion that was occupied and annexed by Jordan. Deutsche Welle has refused to correct the misstatement.

The Daily Stormer’s Jew-hating style guide revealed

The style guide of prominent neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer has been leaked to the media, revealing how the website works to disseminate anti-Semitic and racist ideology to the masses.

The 17-page document obtained by the Huffington Post shows that Daily Stormer creator Andrew Anglin employs Hitler’s propaganda strategy in running the website.

“Prime Directive: Always Blame the Jews for Everything,” one section of the guide instructs.

“As Hitler says, people will become confused and disheartened if they feel there are multiple enemies,” Anglin’s guide says. “As such, all enemies should be combined into one enemy, which is the Jews.”

It adds: “This is pretty much objectively true anyway, but we want to leave out any and all nuance.”

Jews “must always be considered purely biologically evil.”

Heinz-Christian Strache, from neo-Nazi youth to Austria’s next vice-chancellor

Heinz-Christian Strache, the head of Austria’s far-right party and the next vice-chancellor, dismisses his youthful dalliance with neo-Nazism as occurring when he was “stupid, naive and young.”

Now, three decades after German police detained him at a torch-lit protest by a group aping the Hitler Youth, Strache is the besuited, statesmanlike head of the Freedom Party, ostensibly rejecting all extremism.

But it remains to be seen how Strache, who in 2016 called German Chancellor Angela Merkel “the most dangerous woman in Europe,” will act, and whether he can keep the party behind him.

When the 35-year old former dental technician, brought up single-handedly by his mother in a lower-middle-class area of Vienna, took over the Freedom Party in 2005, the movement was a mess.

Joerg Haider, its controversial but magnetic leader from 1986-2000, had broken off to form his own party. The movement was torn apart by its last spell in government in the early 2000s.

But “HC,” his striking blue eyes matching the party colors, restored its fortunes, and in elections in October the Freedom Party won 26 percent — more than double Alternative for Germany’s score a month earlier.

Head of Hungary’s Jobbik renounces party’s anti-Semitic ways

Hungary’s nationalist Jobbik party will not return to its far-right origins, including frequent anti-Semitic and racist remarks by its politicians, party chairman Gabor Vona said Friday.

Jobbik is the strongest opposition group but far behind Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party in the polls ahead of April’s election.

Vona told The Associated Press in an interview that he has pushed Jobbik in a more centrist direction to become a “people’s party” and attract more voters.

“I decided in 2013 that this is how I will lead the party or I won’t lead it at all,” Vona said. “The kind of anti-Semitic expressions which took place in Jobbik earlier are impossible to imagine. Or if they did, they would naturally draw the most severe sanctions.”

“The process of becoming a peoples’ party is not a political tactic … but a process experienced internally. So there is no way back from here.”

Still, on some fronts Vona’s efforts have achieved only measured success.

Envoy to Berlin urges Germany to outlaw burning of Israeli flag

Ambassador to Germany Jeremy Issacharoff on Friday called for a change of the law in the Federal Republic to prohibit the burning of the Israeli flag.

“It is anti-democratic and in the case of Israel it can even be very antisemitic,” said Issacharoff.

“That is something that I do not wish to see [Israeli flags burned] in Europe and in no way in Berlin,” said the 62-year-old envoy, who took up his post three months ago.

He said that he had up until now only seen the burning of Israeli flags in places such as Tehran, “where there is no tolerance.”

Issacharoff seeks a general ban of the torching of all foreign flags in Germany. The Federal Republic currently bars the burning of only the German flag.

Massive anti-Israel protests unfolded in Berlin after the US government on December 6 recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The protests were largely attended by German Muslims who burned Israeli flags and yelled antisemitic slogans, including “Death to the Jews.”

Issacharoff stressed that Israeli flags engulfed in flames were the worst for him at the demonstrations in Berlin. “It is not about whether one agrees with Israel’s position in any question. It is about the fact that Israel’s existence is negated here. These things should be stopped today in Germany because Germany has become a very democratic and tolerant society,” said the envoy.

LA hotel owners refuse to fire manager for wearing Nazi shirt

A petition against a Los Angeles hotel manager who has been seen wearing a Nazi T-shirt has been rejected by the hotel’s owners.

The petition was started earlier this month by two residents of the Soto Hotel, Jeff and Dan, under the hashtag #justiceforjeffanddan.

The tenants complained that manager Antonio Ortega has worn a shirt in hallways and the entrance of the hotel depicting Hitler saluting a swastika.

The two roommates, one of whom identified himself as Jewish and the other as gay, also accused Ortega of threatening to use a gun and of shining a flashlight in a resident’s face.

“There’s no place for hate symbols in Los Angeles or California or the USA in 2017 nearly 2018,” reads their petition. “It’s time the owners of Soto Hotel to fire him and evict him from the building with a restraining order.”

Thus far their petition has garnered 125 signatures but their request to dismiss the manager was rejected, Dan told The Jerusalem Post last week.

Iranian-American Jews call for boycott of Persian singer over 'antisemitic' lyrics

The Jewish Iranian community in Los Angeles called for a peaceful protest against Iranian singer Moshen Yeganeh's Saturday night concert in the city due to ''anti-Israel'' and ''antisemitic'' lyrics in his music.

The protest is schedules to take place at the end of Shabbat, around 6:30 p.m. local time, outside the Microsoft Theater in LA, where Yeganeh is scheduled to perform.

The lyrics in question are from the song "Flock of Vultures,'' which they say makes a metaphor of Jews as “vultures” and refers to two triangles - the Star of David - that symbolize ''fear and prison'' and are the ''enemies of smiling children.''

The song is also said to be a call to action to get “him back”, with ''him'' being the city of Jerusalem.

An online petition calling for the Microsoft Theater to cancel Yeganeh's event had garnered just under 5,000 signatures by Saturday morning LA time, falling short of its intended 50,000.

7 Israeli companies make the coveted AI 100 list for 2017

Seven Israeli companies appear on this year’s AI 100 list compiled by San Francisco-based CB Insights, joining 92 other private artificial intelligence technology companies from nine countries, chosen from more than 1,000 candidates.

Israeli companies are Applitools (app validation), Cybereason (computer cybersecurity), Dynamic Yield (marketing technology) OrCam (wearable artificial vision device), Prospera (computer vision for plant health), Twiggle (ecommerce search engine), and Workey (automated career networking).

The full list was revealed by CB Insights CEO Anand Sanwal during the A-ha! conference in San Francisco, December 12-13. Among the speakers was Noam Bardin, cofounder of Waze, the Israeli navigation app used across the globe. Senior innovation executives and journalists from around the world were in attendance.

Hollywood Meet Holy-wood: Israel's big screen potential

Anyone who’s been to Dubrovnik in Croatia in recent years can see how the HBO series Game of Thrones, part of which was filmed there, has impacted the city.

Dubrovnik’s Old City, its central tourist attraction, is filled with themed souvenir shops, and has a thriving cottage industry of Game of Thrones tours, where visitors can follow along with Cersei’s walk of shame, or sit on the balcony of the castle where Joffrey’s wedding was filmed, or see the site of the fight between The Mountain and Oberyn Martell. Tourism has gone up so much in Dubrovnik that the city has decided to cap the number of people who can enter each day.

Now imagine if the Game of Thrones effect came to Jerusalem, or if James Bond or Ethan Hunt of Mission: Impossible were filmed dashing from rooftop to rooftop in Acre.

That is the vision Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Michael Oren has had in mind in recent months, while working on creating the conditions necessary to attract major Hollywood and Bollywood studios to what he is calling “Holy-wood.”

Oren posited that the plan will have a massive, positive impact on Israel’s public diplomacy, which will “break BDS and other attempts to delegitimize and isolate us.

Israel’s first Arab Rhodes scholar loves her country and is trying to change it

Lian Najami, Israel’s first Arab Rhodes scholar, is the kind of person who can be optimistic about just about anything — including having a needle stuck in her spine.

As she waited in a Haifa hospital Wednesday morning for a lumbar puncture, Najami expressed hope that the procedure would finally put a name to her degenerative neurological disorder. After that, she said, anything was possible.

“Once we know what it is, we should be able to treat the symptoms better, and maybe one day we will find a cure,” she said in a telephone interview. “I’m really excited to see where the world is going to take me next.

“As an Israeli, I guess I have that chutzpah,” she added. “I always have in mind: What can I do from here?”

When Najami, 23, won the prestigious Rhodes scholarship last month, it was the latest of many affirmations of her relentlessly forward-looking worldview. The honor, which provides a free education at Oxford University, was also an opportunity to advance her advocacy work to make Israel a more inclusive place for people like her: a disabled Arab Muslim woman.

Jonathan Elkhoury, a Christian- Israeli speaks out (h/t Elder of Lobby)

How three men on a New York floor helped Israel win the Six Day War

READ IT again. Rub your eyes. Read it a third time. How in heaven’s name could three men lying on a floor in New York help win the Six Day War? These were not three ordinary men. Two were quite extraordinary: one was the head of a major US public relations firm, a Jewish American; the other was a highly renowned graphic designer, a Japanese American. The third was my humble self.

The floor also needs introduction. It was the carpeted floor in the office of the consul-general of Israel in New York, the best air-conditioned room in the old four-story brownstone on East 69th Street. It was a hot night, June 6, 1967, the second day of the Six Day War. We continued meeting into the early hours of June 7.

In order to understand why we were there, we must go back a decade, to 1956: Egyptian dictator Gama Abdel Nasser had blockaded the narrow bottleneck entrance to the Red Sea and to Eilat, the port of entry for oil for the country’s power stations. Nasser was defying the West as well by nationalizing the Suez Canal.

Israeli forces swept through the Sinai Peninsula. In 100 hours, Israel had pushed Egyptian troops out of Sinai and opened the Straits of Tiran.

The American public was not aware of Israel’s situation until the campaign broke out. The American government had not been involved beforehand and the State Department was led by pro-Arab professionals under secretary of state John Foster Dulles. Israel had won a war but lost US public opinion.

Under American pressure, the IDF withdrew from the peninsula in March 1957. The Sinai campaign of 1956 had wrung two guarantees from the US and the UN. First, that the Sinai Peninsula would be patrolled by a United Nations Emergency Force; second, that the Straits of Tiran leading to Eilat would remain open.

Ten years later, in May 1967, Nasser had packed the Sinai with Egyptian soldiers and Soviet-supplied tanks, and again blockaded Eilat. The UN folded its tents and ran. The US and UN guarantees proved worthless, and American President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was unable to get any other nation to help open the Straits, tacitly withdrew his opposition to an Israeli first strike.

It took three weeks, from May 15 until June 5, for then-prime minister Levi Eshkol to make sure that the US would not oppose Israel’s action against Egypt and its Syrian partner. This waiting period saw mass graveyards consecrated by the IDF rabbinate, and trenches dug in Israeli cities. Fear was palpable of an Egyptian first-strike that would use Soviet-supplied tanks and planes.

The Israeli missions in Washington, DC, and New York, and consulates-general in other key locations began working overtime to win the war of public opinion. Israel did not want to have a repeat of 1956.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.