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Tuesday, March 31, 2020

03/31 Links Pt2: Caroline B. Glick: Israeli sovereignty and Gantz's bad faith; NY Gov. Cuomo renames legislation to honor deceased Monsey stabbing victim

From Ian:
Caroline B. Glick: Israeli sovereignty and Gantz's bad faith
The coalition talks between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White Party leader Benny Gantz are being held behind closed doors. A lot of contradictory information is being leaked about the issues on the table and about the form of the deal for a unity government being hammered out.

But all the leaks are consistent about one aspect of the discussions.

Gantz and his colleagues oppose applying Israeli law to the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria. This state of affairs is both surprising and disturbing.

It is surprising that Gantz opposes applying Israeli law to the areas, which are home to half a million Israelis because just two months ago, Gantz pledged to support the move.

On January 27, the day before US President Donald Trump published the details of his peace plan, he presented them to Gantz at the White House. The plan, which includes US recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and the Israeli cities, towns and villages in Judea and Samaria assumes that Israel will apply its legal code, and through it, its sovereignty to the areas immediately after a new governing coalition is sworn in.

According to a senior official who participated in Gantz's meeting with Trump, "Gantz committed in the Oval Office that if he became prime minister, he would form a government of people that would support the deal."

For President Trump and his team, the implications of Gantz's statement are straightforward. Since both Netanyahu and Gantz, (the two candidates for prime minister), support implementing the deal, the administration expects Israel to apply its laws to the areas immediately after the next government is sworn in.
David Singer: Gantz Trojan Horse threatens Israel as the Jewish National Home
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has paid a high price for the National Unity Government being forged with Benny Gantz - by agreeing to Gantz becoming Israel’s Prime Minister in 18 months’ time without going to an election.

Netanyahu had run out of time to explore other options – having had that decision foisted on him by two extraordinary High Court of Justice cases ordering the Knesset Speaker – Yuli Edelstein – to convene the Knesset contrary to the Knesset’s own rules and procedures. Compliance by Edelstein would have unleashed a train of events that would have caused havoc and instability at a time when unity was sorely needed. Edelstein resigned.

It is indeed a miracle that Netanyahu convinced Gantz to break up Blue & Whtie and rescued Israel from this rapidly escalating political and constitutional crisis at the same time as Israel is coping with the ravages of Covid-19.

Gantz’s courage in dumping his partners in Blue & White – Yair Lapid and Moshe Ya’alon - when any hope of averting the crisis seemed lost and just as the doors of the Knesset were shortly to open - was praised by the Right but condemned by Lapid and Ya’alon in bitter and derogatory terms.

Gantz’s new found short term ally – Yisrael Beyteinu’s Avigdor Liberman - was left high and dry – ruing his stupidity at having missed three opportunities in the last 12 months to be in Government with Netanyahu - making demands he absolutely refused to compromise on during negotiations with Netanyahu. Liberman was relegated to the Opposition benches with his six colleagues – a kingmaker no more.

Forgiven was the havoc caused when Gantz started to flirt with the Joint Arab List – the bloc comprising 15 members from the four Arab political parties - who endorsed Gantz to form the next Government - persuading Israeli President Reuven Rivlin to regrettably give Gantz first try to do so.

Joint List’s objectives include dismantling Israel as the Jewish National Home.



NY Gov. Cuomo renames legislation to honor deceased Monsey stabbing victim
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he is renaming proposed state hate crime legislation in honor of the Monsey stabbing victim who died on Sunday.

“I am deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Josef Neumann, who suffered brutal stab wounds after an attacker invaded the home of Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg on the final night of Hanukkah three months ago,” Cuomo said in a statement Monday.

“This repugnant attack shook us to our core, demonstrating that we are not immune to the hate-fueled violence that we shamefully see elsewhere in the country.”

Neumann had remained in a coma from the time of the Dec. 28 attack to his death. He was 72. Four others were injured in the attack.
Following the attack, Cuomo proposed legislation that equates hate crimes with domestic terrorism. The legislation will be called the Josef Neumann Hate Crimes Domestic Terrorism Act.

Cuomo called on the state legislature to pass the act in the budget due this week.

“We owe it to Mr. Neumann, his family and the entire family of New York to get it done now,” the governor said.


Stephen L. Miller: The best message the State Department could send Beijing and the WHO
Shortly after the video call went viral on Twitter, Aylward’s name was scrubbed from the WHO website. Taiwan’s foreign minister said that the WHO should ‘set politics aside in dealing with a pandemic’.

But the WHO has been nothing but political throughout the COVID-19 outbreak. It has deferred to China almost every step of the way, presumably because China wields considerable power and influence over it.

The Trump administration should put both China and WHO on notice, and with them the parts of American media who refuse to acknowledge China are not being forthcoming with their data of confirmed cases. The real numbers would offer us more accuracy in tracking the virus’s trajectory.

A great way for the Trump administration to do this would be to finally recognize Taiwan’s independence from China. If the WHO is going to attempt to spurn Taiwan, a country dealing with the fallout of Beijing’s cover-up, the official diplomatic backing of the United States would indicate there will be consequences for China inflicting this on the world.

A declaration from the State Department would also signal to the American media that they should not ignore the faulty data and equipment coming out of China. Sections of media that have thus far tacitly covered for China would be forced to choose between the free people of Taiwan or their bottom lines.

Noah Rothman: China’s Century Interrupted
National-security professionals and trade protectionists alike have long warned that the globe’s reliance on Chinese manufacturing is a profound vulnerability. Still, untethering global commercial needs from the Mainland’s ability to meet them entails much economic pain and hardship. This vulnerability has been allowed to fester. Well, the pain that public officials so wanted to avoid imposing on their publics is here today. Amid full-scale trade hostilities, American analysts have long feared that China would play its ultimate ace in the hole: the weaponization of the many hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. treasuries it holds. But China has been steadily unloading these holdings for months, and the increasing issuance of U.S. debt (which has exploded alongside pandemic-related stimulus measures) has diluted the theoretical power of this weapon. If there was ever a time when the pain of recalibrating the West’s commercial relationship with China could be justified and absorbed, it might be now.

China’s geopolitical influence may contract as a result of the present crisis, but that is not to say that this will be an advantageous process for the United States. If protectionism is the order of the day, it will sacrifice trade as a powerful tool for the promotion of liberalism, to say nothing of the human flourishing and geostrategic stability that it promotes. This crisis is sure to accelerate already prevalent trends away from integration in international institutions and toward a more atomized, nationalistic understanding of geopolitics.

China’s fragility was apparent well before this crisis. The precarity of its nationalistic project was evident, and the scant independent reporting now escaping China paints a grim picture of social and political instability. It would seem like an odd time for Beijing to ratchet up military tensions in potential flashpoints like the South China Sea absent some significant domestic political pressures, but that’s precisely what the People’s Republic has done. This is a challenge the U.S. is obliged to meet, but Washington can only deter China by guaranteeing that the risks associated with Beijing’s provocations outweigh the rewards. Under the strain imposed on it by this virus, China may be willing to accept a whole lot more risk.

This is a period of intense flux, and it’s difficult today to forecast the events of next week much less next year. But it is a shallow analysis that suggests China will be the unqualified beneficiary of the crisis it imposed on the world.
StandWithUs: 'Fighting Palestinian Terrorism Through Law' - StandWithUsConnect
Join our StandWithUsConnect webinar with Noah Pollak, entitled 'Fighting Palestinian Terrorism Through Law'.

The Taylor Force Act was passed by Congress and signed into law in 2018. It is the first law of its kind—conditioning U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) on the PA's cessation of payments to terrorists and their families. In this StandWithUs webinar, you'll hear from Noah Pollak, a political operative who was intimately involved in the effort to pass this historic bill. He will discuss the new law, the yearlong media and political campaign behind it, and what the pro-Israel community can learn from the success of this initiative.




Density is not destiny: Economist tweet misinforms on Gaza COVID 19 woes
In a recent post on errors in a March 26th Economist article (“Gaza, already under siege, imposes lockdown”, March 26), blaming Israel for Gaza’s coronavirus-related health woes, we neglected to address one other misleading claim:
A [COVID 19] outbreak would be catastrophic. Gaza is one of the world’s most densely populated places.

We decided to address it after we noticed that they actually devoted a tweet to that very claim in order to promote their article:

Our CAMERA colleague Gilead Ini recently addressed this very point, in a post about the anti-Israel group If Not Now:
The Gaza Strip has “one of the highest population densities in the world,” they say. With about 13,000 people per square mile, the Gaza Strip is, without a doubt, very densely populated, and that is cause for concern with a highly contagious disease. But it’s not even the densest area in the region, nor even close. Just a five-hour car ride from the Gaza Strip, for example, is the Cairo metropolitan area, where people are packed about twice as densely into an area larger than the Gaza Strip.

The urban areas of Lagos, Shenzen, Rio de Janeiro, Istanbul, Buenos Aires, Karachi, Kolkata, Guangzhou-Foshan, Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto, Beijing, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Shanghai, Manila, Delhi, Seoul, Jakarta all have at least similar, and often significantly higher, population densities than the Gaza Strip, with the tightly packed sections of most of those megalopolises stretching over vastly larger expanses of territory than the Strip. Dakha, which is about the same size as the Gaza Strip, has nearly 10 times more people.

And Gaza City, the largest and densest city in the Gaza Strip, is less dense than Yaounde, Solapur, Hyderabad, Irbil, Casablanca, Pyongyang, Saharanpur, Patna, Douala, Dakar, Homs, Alexandria, Rajkot, Mbuji-Mayi, Bogota, Kananga, Chittagong, Hama, Aleppo, Siliguri, Vijayawada, Moradabad, Ahmadabad, Kinshasa, Bukavu, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Surat, and Mogadishu, none of which are smaller in area, and many of which are significantly larger, than the Gaza Strip.

Our sister site BBC Watch has also addressed this media myth:
According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the population density in the Gaza Strip was 5,453 persons/km2 in mid 2019. According to the department of planning in New York City…the population density is around 10,424 persons/km2 and in the city of London… the population density is reported to be on average 5,590 persons/km2 with some districts having a population density of 11,200 persons/km2.

Moreover, though it’s true, as our colleague acknowledged, Gaza’s population density is a cause for concern with a highly contagious disease, it’s far from the most important factor in successful prevention.
CBC Host Michael Enright Claims Gaza Is World’s “Biggest Open-Air Prison” in Corona Pandemic Coverage
Just last week we reported that CBC Radio host Carol Off used the Corona virus pandemic as an excuse to tacitly criticize Israel. This week, another CBC host, Michael Enright, did the same on his Sunday Edition radio show.

On March 29, Michael Enright declared that Gaza is the world’s biggest open-air prison in a discussion about the affects that the Corona virus is having on impoverished regions around the world and those at states of war.

As is commonly known, Israel and Egypt’s blockade of the Gaza Strip isn’t pretty, but let’s face it, the genocidal Hamas terror organization runs Gaza and it’s committed to the Jewish state’s destruction, it doesn’t recognize Israel’s existence and commits daily terror attacks targeting Israeli innocents. That’s why Gaza has been effectively hermetically sealed by Egypt and Israel as Hamas and its terror partners continue firing rockets and trying to smuggle weapons into the Strip via land, tunnels or by sea.

Naturally, none of this was acknowledged by Enright in his interview with Paul Rogers (pictured right), a U.K. security expert and peace studies professor on geopolitics during the pandemic. At the 20:11 to 22:45 mark of the interview, the following conversation ensued with CBC Host Enright and Professor Rogers both claiming that Gaza is an “open prison”:
BBC News Channel grossly misleads on Israeli courts
Having told audiences of media censorship, curfews and deployment of the military in Thailand, she went on:

Madera: “While compare that to Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu there saying that…who was…he was set to stand trial on corruption allegations but in fact now he’s shut down the courts. He’s also permitted the tracking of Israeli citizens’ phones and the prime minister says that the move will help track individuals who’ve come into contact those who contract Covid 19 but critics argue that this could lead to a Big Brother-style society.”

Once again the BBC failed to inform its audiences that the surveillance measures are in place for a period of 30 days, that there is a Knesset sub-committee overseeing them and that the High Court has conditioned the measures on legislation. Moreover, while failing to provide that highly relevant information, the BBC once again amplified the therefore context-free claims of “critics”.

As for the claim that the Israeli prime minister – and he alone – “shut down the courts”: it was in fact the Justice Minister who cut back the activity of the courts on March 15th.

“Justice Minister Amir Ohana declared a 24-hour “state of emergency” in Israel’s court system early Sunday morning, “as part of the national effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.”

The decision means that courts can only sit for urgent hearings on arrest and remand orders, administrative detention orders, offenses under legislation “relating to the special emergency” and certain interim relief in civil matters.”

On March 21st the Supreme Court Justice Esther Hayut published a press release in which she clarified that the courts continue to function throughout the country, providing essential services to the public. Her statement emphasized that the courts are not closed and that they would continue to provide services while observing the emergency restrictions issued by the Ministry of Health. She clarified that any current – and, if necessary, future – reduction in the activity of the courts due to the Corona pandemic was in accordance with her decisions as President of the Supreme Court.

In other words, the BBC’s claim that Netanyahu has “shut down the courts” is completely inaccurate and misleading to BBC audiences.

That failure to adhere to BBC editorial guidelines on accuracy would of course be egregious at any time but it is all the more reprehensible at a time when the BBC is promoting itself as the ‘trusted’ antidote to Fake News concerning the Covid 19 pandemic.
Examining BBC reports on Corona-related cell phone tracking
On March 29th listeners to the afternoon edition of the BBC World Service radio programme ‘Newshour’ heard a report (from 37:10 here) by Krassi Twigg of BBC Monitoring about “fears that some countries are seeing new levels of intrusion which could have a damaging effect on societies”.

The report mentioned South Korea, Italy, France and (from 40:57) Israel.

Twigg: “…and Israel has ordered its domestic security agency to track the mobile phone data of suspected Coronavirus cases. The Shin Bet normally uses such surveillance methods on Palestinians suspected of planning attacks on Israelis. Joel Greenberg, BBC Monitoring’s Israel specialist, said the use of these methods against [sic] Israeli citizens has been hugely controversial.”

Greenberg: “Critics of the policy have challenged it in the Supreme Court and they argue that it’s a dangerous invasion of privacy by the government. The government has said that the use of mobile phone tracking will be strictly limited to the battle against the Coronavirus but still the critics say that there may be no going back. Once the Shin Bet has begun tracking the cell phones of ordinary Israelis, the policy may be used again.”

The story is however by no means as simple as those three BBC reports spread over a period of twelve days tell audiences. Only in the written report was it made it clear that “Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the new powers will last for 30 days only”.


US expert: Berlin antisemitism center ignores Israel-related antisemitism
The prominent American historian, Dr. Jeffrey Herf, sharply criticized the Berlin Center for Antisemitism Research for failing to address radical left-wing, communist and Islamic Jew-hatred.

Herf, one of the world’s leading experts on antisemitism, wrote on Thursday in the German paper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) that, “The Center for Antisemitism Research in Berlin has been noteworthy in recent decades for standing outside this scholarly consensus due to its reluctance to address the Communist/radical leftist, as well as the Islamist strains of antisemitism.“

He added that, "Scholars at the Center for Antisemitism Research, despite being located within a short distance from the key archives of the former DDR [German Democratic Republic], did not write an archivally based history of the East German diplomatic and military assault on the Jewish state. I did. No amount of theoretical gymnastics can avoid the simple truth that those in the Soviet bloc, including the DDR, who used force and falsehoods to attack and defame the state of Israel with the hope of destroying wrote a chapter in the longer history of antisemitism. “

In 2016, Cambridge University published the distinguished historian Herf’s monumental work: Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left, 1967–1989.

The highly acclaimed book was published in German by Wallstein publisher in September 2019.

“Three Faces of Antisemitism: A Response to Stephanie Schüler-Springorum,” was the title of Herf’s FAZ article. Schüler-Springorum is the director of the controversial Berlin Center for Antisemitism Research.

Herf teaches German history at the University of Maryland.

The scandal-plagued Berlin Center for Antisemitism Research has faced intense criticism over the years for employing a researcher who worked for an organization that promoted an Iranian regime-sponsored rally calling for the destruction of the Jewish state.

The Jerusalem Post reported in 2018 that the center, which is part of the Technical University of Berlin, hired Luis Hernandez Aguilar, who was previously listed as a research officer of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, a main organizer of the Iranian regime-sponsored al-Quds Day march.
Germany's antisemitism commissioner: Jewish communities are thriving
Felix Klein, Germany's commissioner on antisemitism, when asked on the state of German Jewish life in an interview with the German Catholic news agency KNA, said that communities throughout the country are thriving.

"There is still a thriving, growing Jewish life in Germany. I think society should take a much closer look at Jewish life today, This is a great development — that Jews trust in our country is something very special after the horror of the Shoah. We should make this diversity even more tangible by holding Jewish cultural days, exhibitions and joint celebrations," Klein said,

Klein also hinted to the possibility of infusing more Jewish life into the public conscience by marking public cultural days, and to mark 1,700 of Jewish life in Germany, special stamps highlighting the upcoming holiday of Passover in April.

When asked how he is able to justify his claim that German Jewish life is thriving, despite reports of a rising number of hate crimes targeting Jews, Klein pointed to a new synagogue that was built in the southern German city of Constance, in addition to another newly-built synagogue in Lübeck, northern Germany. He also noted that many Jews from abroad wish to make Germany their home, including from Israel.

Public discussions on the safety of Jews in Germany has come amid rising numbers in hate crimes perpetrated against the community. Recent surveys indicate that in 2019, 1,839 hate crimes were committed against Jews in Germany. In October 2019, an antisemitic far-right Nazi sympathizer shot and killed two people at a synagogue in Halle while live streaming his actions on Facebook.
“The unresolved crisis of antisemitism nearly cost us our soul”, says Jewish former MP Ruth Smeeth of Labour in stinging rebuke of Jeremy Corbyn
The Jewish former Labour MP, Ruth Smeeth, has declared of her Party that “the unresolved crisis of antisemitism nearly cost us our soul” in a stinging rebuke of the Party’s outgoing leader, Jeremy Corbyn, of whom she said: “his failure on anti-Jewish racism will rightly forever tarnish his reputation – and those around him in both Parliament and the Party.”

Writing in The House magazine, Ms Smeeth wrote of how “I experienced the horror of being a Jewish female Labour MP at a time when it felt that the leadership of my Party thought that Jews were fair game – something I still can’t believe I’m writing.” She went on to describe how “I sat in meetings with Corbyn as he refused to acknowledge that we had a problem or that he should take any responsibility.”

Referencing Mr Corbyn’s numerous failures to deal with antisemitism, Ms Smeeth observed how she was ignored, even abused. “The justification of ‘that’ mural; the ‘Zionists don’t understand irony’ video; his association with known Holocaust deniers; his support for Ken Livingstone, Chris Williamson and those who minimised the scale of the problem, and of course his ‘present but not involved’ laying of a wreath to honour terrorists who murdered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Each time, I and others fought back.

“For three years, nearly every week, we would see yet another antisemitism scandal. Every week I, with others, tried to make Corbyn act to fix it…But we were ignored and dismissed – occasionally shouted at.”


Black metal festival with bands accused of promoting neo-Nazism moved to Edinburgh after Glasgow venue cancels booking
A black metal festival due to include bands accused of promoting neo-Nazism had its booking in Glasgow cancelled after concerns were raised, but it has now been moved to a venue near Edinburgh.

The event, which is tied to the National Socailist Black Metal scene within black metal music, was scheduled to take place in November 2020, but the Classic Grand venue in Glasgow withdrew, saying it would not provide “a platform to any form of hatred” after becoming aware of “certain connections to fascist ideology being associated with the festival.”

The organiser of the event rebuffed the suggestion that some of the bands promoted neo-Nazism, accused critics of a “witchhunt” and announced that the festival would proceed at an undisclosed, “privately-owned space” near Edinburgh.

Last year the event took place in Glasgow, and the organiser implied that the rescheduling of this year’s event, called Darkness Guides Us, was tied to logistical changes arising from the COP26 climate summit and COVID-19.
ADL Issues Advice on Preventing ‘Zoom-Bombing,’ as Extremists Troll Online Video Platforms During Coronavirus Crisis
One of the leading US Jewish civil rights organizations issued advice on Monday on how to deal with “zoom-bombings” — the disruption of virtual meetings by online trolls who upload racist, pornographic and other offensive images.

Named in reference to the videoconferencing platform that has soared in popularity with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, all that is presently required for a user to engage in “zoom-bombing” is the URL of the targeted meeting.

In one of many instances of extremists abusing the platform, an Anti-Defamation League (ADL) briefing on the problem highlighted how a March 24 webinar about antisemitism hosted by a Massachusetts Jewish student group was interrupted by a convicted white supremacist who pulled down his shirt to reveal a swastika tattoo on his chest.

The individual was identified by the ADL as Alan Auernheimer — also known as “weev” — who “has a long history of publicly expressing his antisemitic and racist views and exploiting technology in order to gain attention.”

Auernheimer’s act demonstrated “the potential for extremists to exploit these systems,” the ADL observed.
How Baghdad plague led to Sephardi cultural revival
In these coronavirus days, Point of No Return is moved to reflect on the impact of epidemics through the ages. Quite a few affected the Middle East, and no doubt devastated the local Jewish communities. But the plague of 1743 brought an influx to Baghdad of 50 Sephardi families from Aleppo, led by Rabbi Sadka Hussein, born in 1699. Although he and his sons Nissim and Yacoub were to die in the plague of 1772 -3*, he exerted a significant Sephardi influence on Jewish cultural life in Baghdad.

According to Wikipedia:
In 1743 there was a plague in which many of the Jews of Baghdad, including all the rabbis, died. The remaining Baghdad community asked the community of Aleppo to send them a new Chief Rabbi, leading to the appointment of Rabbi Sadka Bekhor Hussein.

Culturally, it would prove a decisive moment when Chief Rabbi Shmuel Laniyado of Aleppo picked his protegé for Baghdad. It is said he was accompanied by fifty Sephardic families from Aleppo.
Many of them were Rabbis who were to sit on the Beth Din of Baghdad and Basra.

This led to an assimilation of Iraqi Judaism to the general Sephardic mode of observance. Jewish culture revived, with communal leaders as Solomon Ma’tuk being renown for his work as an astronomer, library and piyyutim.

This brought the leading Jewish families of Baghdad, and with it, their Jewish practice into the network of Sephardic scribes and later printing presses established in Aleppo, Livorno and Salonica. Surviving records of the contents of the library of Solomon Ma’tuk shows a great number of books purchased from Sephardic scribes and some even originally from Spain.

Further driving this process was the high esteem in which Rabbi Sadka Bekhor Hussein was held as a halakhic authority.[27] This saw him accepted as a halakhic authority by the Jews of Persia, Kurdistan and the fledgling Baghdadi trading outposts being established in India.


The Jewish world according to Jackie Mason
AT THE AGE OF 92, Jackie Mason sits down more than he stands, but he won’t keep shtum. Dividing his time between New York and Florida with wife Jyll, the comic who fictionally fathered The Simpsons’ Krusty the Clown is officially retired but, as a former Democrat turned registered Republican, he is controversial and vocal about his allegiance.

Born in Wisconsin and raised in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, every male in Jackie’s family from his father to his great, great-grandfather was a rabbi, so inevitably he followed them to the bimah and, from there, told jokes. The congregation loved him so much he quit to become a comedian, saying: “Somebody in the family had to make a living.”

And he made a very nice living, with a global fan base charmed by his deprecating Jewish wit delivered in an accent stranded between Delancey Street and the shtetls. “I didn’t emphasise my Jewishness because I wanted to. I just happen to have been raised in a family where everybody happened to talk like this. So why would I talk like somebody else?”

Invited to share his ancient wisdom, he wrote 2,500 words and then a few more. You won’t agree with them all, but Jackie has given you something to think about.

Every year the Jewish people gather around their seder tables and have one question,”How long until we eat?”


101-Year-Old Holocaust And Spanish Flu Survivor Just Beat COVID-19
A 101-year-old man, identified as ‘Mr. P’ has been released from isolation after recovering from COVID-19 in the Italian city of Rimini. Mr. P., a WWII and Spanish Flu survivor was admitted last week to a hospital in northeast Italy after he was tested positive for the Coronavirus.

According to Gloria Lisi, Vice-Mayor of Rimini, as the patient began to recover it became “the story everyone talked about” in the hospital.

“Everyone saw hope for the future of all of us in the recovery of a person more than 100 years old,” Lisi said in a televised interview.

“Every day we see the sad stories from these weeks that mechanically tell about a virus that rages and is especially aggressive on the elderly. But he survived. Mr. P. survived.”

According to an article in Forbes, this is the second pandemic the man has survived. Mr. P was born in 1919, in the middle of the Spanish flu, estimated by the Centers for Disease Control to have infected 500 million people, about a third of the world’s population.


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Israel bombs Iranian base in Syria


The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says that Israeli jets targeted the Al-Shayrat airbase in Homs with more than eight missiles.  An explosion was heard believed to be caused by anti-aircraft defenses while intercepting these strikes.

Syria's news agency SANA quoted a military source as saying that "at 20:25, Israeli warplanes over Lebanon launched a group of missiles towards eastern Homs, and the air defense forces immediately confronted the enemy missiles and intercepted a number of them."

Al-Modon said that there were three air strikes  that targeted a cell with Iranian militias are present. There are also warehouses where Iranian militias transferred weapons and ammunition to it during the past days.

Nice intelligence, as always.

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Lakewood NJ Covid-19 case number skyrockets in the past day. And it will not get any better for a while.

On Sunday, after I noted that as of Friday the two New Jersey towns with the highest religious Jewish populations also had the highest number of coronavirus cases, I tweeted that I was very concerned about what would happen in Lakewood this week:


While the vast majority of religious Jews in Lakewood have been taking the social distancing guidelines seriously, there have been reports up through yesterday of some Jews ignoring the rules and continuing to hold gatherings - yesterday for a bat mitzvah on a lawn and a school bus filled with kids caught traveling, and another school caught with 35 people inside.

Teaneck, on the other hand, has been - to all reports - taking the rules very seriously since March 12.

So, sadly, Lakewood has just zoomed past Lakewood and other New Jersey towns with a hundred new cases in just 24 hours.

Here is the chart mapping five communities with significant numbers of Orthodox Jews - Toms River is essentially a suburb of Lakewood and Clifton a suburb of Passaic, with the Jewish community traveling in the same social circles.


Teaneck's curve shows social distancing works.

Lakewood has been more lax and we are seeing the results now - and they will get much worse in the future. The Lakewood incidents are fueling a huge increase in antisemitism online, so much so that the governor of the state has denounced it along with anti-Asian bigotry.

Jews are dying today because too many on their community laughed off the risk since it became apparent that shuls and schools would have to close. 

Within days, it will become common knowledge that the hotbed of coronavirus in NJ is in a town most people never heard of that is filled with religious Jews. The very name Lakewood, instead of being synonymous with Torah learning as it is now, will become associated with the few Jews who decided that they can ignore the government and their own religious leaders, and thereby endanger everyone else.

This minority that think they are above the rules is hurting all religious Jews in the United States. It is a massive chilul Hashem.

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.

03/31 Links Pt1: ‘Science will conquer this’: Inside the race for a coronavirus treatment; Bus driver who was Israel’s first serious virus patient makes full recovery

From Ian:
‘Science will conquer this’: Inside the race for a coronavirus treatment
In a small lab on the Givat Ram campus of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Professor Shy Arkin and his team of three are “throwing chemicals” at some of the proteins that constitute the coronavirus, hoping that one or more of them will stick.

Or at least that’s the kind of non-scientific language Arkin helpfully uses to describe the frantic research that is taking place in his and thousands of other labs around the world, in the battle to counter the pandemic that has gradually brought much of human endeavor and interaction to a near-halt.

In whichever constrained environment this article finds you, therefore, you’ll be pleased to hear that he’s optimistic. The virus, Arkin acknowledges, is particularly devastating among the elderly and other high-risk groups. But social distancing is at least a partially effective interim measure, buying time for the scientific community to come up with a real solution. And that solution, he is confident, will be found.

Arkin is among the scientists who feel they have something of a head start in the race to stop the pandemic, having spent close to two decades studying the components of influenza and SARS 1, the current COVID-19’s “remarkably similar predecessor,” which killed 774 people in 2002-3. And he says that at least some of COVID-19’s two dozen or so components are proteins that are known to be “drug-able” — that scientists have been able to inhibit.

The particular race in which his and all those thousands of other labs are frantically engaged is to test some 6,000 chemicals — drugs that are already approved as non-toxic to humans — against the virus’s constituent compounds: “You throw chemicals at it… If one of the chemicals inhibits a component, and that component is crucial to the virus, the chemical is immediately a potential antivirus drug.”

Sounds simple? Well, yes and no, as this interview attempts to make clear.

It was conducted on Sunday, first in Arkin’s office and then, briefly, in his small lab — one of the very few places on the university campus still working. We kept the obligatory two meters apart as we spoke — a task that became slightly more difficult when we entered the lab, and two members of his team showed me some of the testing process.

The Times of Israel: So, how goes the search for a coronavirus treatment?

Prof. Shy Arkin: We’re working in frantic mode. We’re a small team, and we are serving chemicals against a component of the virus that we identified many years ago.
British-Israeli Project Aims to Identify Anti-Covid-19 Drug
Teams at the Weizmann Institute for Science in Israel and the Diamond Light Source laboratory in Oxfordshire outlined their current findings and research plans in a discussion hosted by Weizmann UK on Thursday. Weizmann Vice President for Public Affairs and Resource Development Roee Ozir said, "We have probably somewhere between 20 and 30 initiatives of talented and creative scientists who are trying to push their research very quickly and look for remedies as soon as possible."

Dr. Nir London, who is leading the team at Weizmann that is searching for a drug candidate, said they are seeking to develop an anti-viral drug which will target protease, one of the 30 proteins that are essential for the activity of the virus. The Weizmann Institute and its international partners are seeking to conduct multiple stages of its research concurrently and thereby shorten the research cycle.

Weizmann has pioneered a form of research that is "completely open and shared in real time with the entire scientific community." To find the compounds that are able to inhibit protease, "instead of following up on only a few tens of compounds, we aim to follow up on 500 to a 1,000 compounds in parallel and so drastically shorten the timescale," London said.

The team published the data that they had gathered online and issued a "call to arms to medical chemists around the world" inviting them to submit proposals for which compounds might be best placed to bind to the coronavirus. "Within a few days, we got hundreds of proposals from medicinal chemists all around the world....Our premise is that if there is a safe compound which shows efficacy against the virus, humanity needs to know about this fast."
World Health Organization insists coronavirus not an airborne disease as experts raise possibility
The World Health Organization doubled down on its claim that the COVID-19 virus is not transmittable by air even as some experts suggest it is possible and as Western officials recommend that doctors and nurses take precautions.

“FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne,” WHO declared in a Saturday fact-check tweet. "The #coronavirus is mainly transmitted through droplets generated when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or speaks.”

But a study in the United States suggests otherwise. Carried out by more than a dozen health experts working with the National Institute for Health’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories, the study released this month found "aerosol … transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is plausible, since the virus can remain viable and infectious in aerosols for hours.”

One of the authors of the study that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Jamie Lloyd-Smith, a UCLA professor and infectious disease researcher, told the Los Angeles Times that singing may have spread virus through the air at a church in Washington state, where a choir rehearsal in early March was deemed the cause of a fatal coronavirus outbreak.

Polly Dubbel, a county communicable disease manager, told the Los Angeles Times that airborne transmission at the Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church was “all we can think of right now.”

She told the Washington Examiner: “It was a group of approximately 60 people just singing in close proximity to each other for over an hour — they weren’t eating, they weren’t shaking hands, they weren’t engaging in any other high-risk activities — and that’s all we know.”

One early March study in Singapore also suggested "that small virus-laden droplets may be displaced by airflows and deposited on equipment such as vents.” A non-peer-reviewed study out of China stated that the intensive care unit, the cardiac/coronary care unit, and general patient rooms in one Wuhan hospital and the patient hall inside another “had undetectable or low airborne SARS-CoV-2 concentration.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent disinfection guidelines state “based on what is currently known about the virus … spread from person-to-person happens most frequently among close contacts (within about 6 feet).” The guidance adds that “this type of transmission occurs via respiratory droplets, but disease transmission via infectious aerosols is currently uncertain.
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Bus driver who was Israel’s first serious virus patient makes full recovery
A bus driver from East Jerusalem who was hospitalized on March 5, and attached to a respirator after he contracted the coronavirus, on Monday was released from hospital, after recovering.

“It’s been a very difficult month, the hardest month of my life,” the man, who has been identified only as Johnny said on his discharge from the Baruch Padeh Medical Center in Tiberias. “Initially, I was connected to oxygen. I couldn’t even get out of bed.” Johnny was the first patient in Israel to be designated in serious condition with the virus. Sixteen Israelis have since died.

At one stage during the driver’s treatment, the hospital said Johnny was treated with Remdesivir, which was originally developed for Ebola and is made by US biotech company Gilead Sciences. It is considered to be one of the most promising of treatments for coronavirus. No further details have been given regarding other therapies used in the man’s treatment.

Johnny, 38, headed home Monday evening, to be reunited with his wife and three children, aged 10, 2, and 7 months.

“I haven’t seen baby Alex in over a month, it’s so difficult,” he said. “The first thing I want to do now is to go home to see my kids. I really miss the family — they are now also in isolation, and are not leaving the house.”

Johnny was hospitalized after he late last month chauffeured a group of 23 Greek tourists, who were later confirmed to be infected. At least one of the tourists subsequently died from the virus.


U.S.: Israeli-Palestinian Coordination on Corona Shows Way to Peace
U.S. Amb. Cherith Norman Chalet, Acting Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, told the Security Council on Monday:

- "In recent days, we have seen close coordination between Israeli and Palestinian authorities as they seek to prevent widespread harm from the presence of Covid-19 among their peoples."

- "Both the Israeli and Palestinian ministries of health have been coordinating regularly to mitigate the spread and impact of the coronavirus. They have been meeting regularly for conversations about recent developments. And they have been sharing best practices with one another to help those in their care stay safe and healthy."

- "This kind of dialogue, though just one example, is a model of collaboration and cooperation. It is a tangible demonstration of the good that comes - and the human lives that can literally be saved - when leaders come to the table just to talk with one another - to recognize one another's dignity, and to do the hard work of laying out a path to a safer, healthier, more prosperous future."

- "So, when this disease passes...each member of this Council will be able to point to the cooperation we're seeing now and say that dialogue between the Israelis and Palestinians is possible. We will be able to say that achieving mutually beneficial solutions is possible."

- "I want everyone to take note of what we've seen in recent days, and to remember it. Because when Covid-19 has passed, the need for dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians will be just as great as it was before."

- "The Council will have an important role to play in reminding both sides that in a time of trial, it was dialogue that saw them through to the other side. We continue to believe that a comprehensive and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians is in reach."
Danon: UN must condemn Palestinian charge that IDF is spreading COVID-19
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh is making false charges that soldiers are spreading coronavirus in the West Bank, and the United Nations must condemn this incitement, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said Monday.

“At this time, despite Israel’s aid to the Palestinian Authority, we hear inciting comments coming from the Palestinian prime minister, who accuses IDF soldiers of spreading coronavirus to the PA,” he said. “There is no place for such senseless statements by the leadership of the PA. The UN must condemn these remarks.”

Danon issued a statement on the matter to the media after the UN Security Council held its meeting on the Middle East peace process by video conference.

At the meeting, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov spoke out against both Palestinian and Israeli incitement but did not mention Shtayyeh.

“Palestinian leaders continued to make inciteful and provocative statements,” he said. “Fatah’s official social-media pages glorified perpetrators of previous terror attacks against Israelis and displayed content encouraging children to carry out violence against Jews.”

“PA officials also delivered speeches praising perpetrators of attacks, denying Israel’s existence and denying the Jewish historic connection to Jerusalem,” Mladenov said. “Hamas officials encouraged attacks against Israelis in the West Bank and the launching of explosive devices using balloons from Gaza.”


UN Watch on BBC's Outside Source
Quoting UN Watch on the U.N. Human Rights Council's failure to act in defense of protesters killed in Sudan. BBC 'Outside Source', June 5, 2019, 21:05 GMT.


Obama, Kerry Urge Negotiations with COVID-19 (satire)
Insisting that the coronavirus is not violent but simply misunderstood, former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State John Kerry are calling for a negotiated settlement to the COVID-19 crisis.

“For months, our refusal to treat this virus as a legitimate and equal party has allowed it to spread unchecked,” said Kerry. “Only by entering negotiations and making a series of significant concessions can we control the further spread of COVID-19.

Kerry volunteered to lead the negotiations, and by Monday morning the former diplomat said he had reached a tentative deal. The US would end all efforts to contain the virus including social distancing, and in exchange the virus promised not to kill the popular comedic actor David Spade until May at the earliest. COVID-19 will also be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

The deal was met with bipartisan opposition, as lawmakers in both parties felt the concessions made were too steep and that the US got too little in return. Obama, however, came to Kerry’s defense, arguing that those criticizing the deal were making common cause with the virus.

“Either you support this deal,” Obama said. “Or you support the virus.”
Netanyahu Unveils Israel's $22.4 Billion Coronavirus Stimulus Package
We'll do everything we can to bring our economy back to growth", Israel's caretaker Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday, unveiling the billions-worth plan on bolstering the Israeli economy in the face of the COVID-19 coronavirus.

Half of the money will come in cash, the other -- in loans with lax conditions, the PM said during a joint presser with Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, stressing the cost of the plan amounted to some six percent of the Israeli GDP.

The three-month plan, worth some 80 billion shekels -- or over $22.4 billion -- has been in the making for the past few days.

"We will do our best to stabilize the economy," Kahlon said, hinting that more resources could be deployed if necessary. He said he expected a gradual reopening of the economy in mid-April, following the Passover holidays.


IDF Tank Assembly Line Converted to Making Medical Equipment
The Defense Ministry's Rehabilitation and Maintenance Center outside Tel Aviv produces Merkava tanks, builds command and control centers, and upgrades vehicles and communications systems for the army.

In recent days, however, the center's assembly lines have been converted to help fight the war against the coronavirus.

The center's commander, Col. Udi Amira, said the assembly line for manufacturing tank seats was repurposed to make protective goggles for medical crews and is now producing 1,400 protective goggles per day.

At an IDF vehicle factory in Haifa, one assembly line is refitting ambulances to protect their crews against the virus.

One of the factories is gearing up to manufacture ventilators made from medical equipment.
Former Advisor to Pres. Trump Jason Greenblatt Discusses the COVID-19 Crisis


Workers in Hazmat Suits Collect Prayers From ‘God’s Mailbox’ in Jerusalem
Twice a year, cleaning teams using long sticks gouge out tens of thousands of written prayers that visitors traditionally cram into the crevices of Judaism’s Western Wall in Jerusalem.

It was spring cleaning again at the wall on Tuesday. But this time, the rite was held with precautions against coronavirus infection in place.

Workers in hazmat suits and gas masks sprayed sanitizer on the wall’s ancient stones while others held onto their sticks with gloves as they extracted the paper notes left in “God’s mailbox.”

Religious authorities also operate a service in which people can email their prayers for placement between the stones.

One would-be worshiper, who stepped up to the wall and kissed it, was removed by police, a day after Israel tightened public prayer restrictions.

The rabbi of the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinowitz, who oversees the collection of the notes to ensure there’s always room for more, offered a prayer for salvation “from this difficult virus that has attacked the world.”
Israeli-created movement harnesses tech brains worldwide to fight coronavirus
An Israeli-created worldwide movement that harnesses technology and innovation to design affordable solutions for the disadvantaged is turning its hand to help hospitals, treatment centers and households obtain products that can help fight COVID-19.

Tikkun Olam Makers (tikkun olam means “healing the world” in Hebrew), or TOM, has created a platform called Rapid Response Makers (RRM) where engineers, designers, medical professionals and developers all over the world can be “on call” to design and build health and medical infrastructure, products, and software to help fight the pandemic.

The organization is seeking to provide a global database and forum to spread and share ideas that can be useful in the battle against the virus at different locales.

On the forum are prototypes and products for fighting coronavirus (not necessarily designed specifically for TOM) including face masks and shields, ventilators and personal hygiene products.
A member of the Tikkun Olam Movement works on parts for protective gear against coronavirus. (Courtesy TOM – TOM – Tikkun Olam Makers)

Some TOM communities are readying 3D printers to be able to print once a product design is finalized, others are working on testing and improving current designs, and still more are forming support networks for their communities’ high risk populations.

Tikkun Olam Makers, established by Israeli entrepreneur Gideon Grinstein in 2014, is made up of local communities all over the world. Each community brings together “makers” — engineers, designers, developers, and “need-knowers” — individuals with a personal understanding of a neglected challenge for which there is no government solution and an affordable market is unlikely.
By voice or location, Israeli apps can determine your risk of coronavirus
One app tells you if you’ve been in the vicinity of a coronavirus carrier and another aims to assess whether you have COVID-19 based on the sound of your voice.

In Israel, sometimes dubbed the “startup nation” with nearly 10 percent of workers employed in high-tech, the coronavirus pandemic has seen a flurry of new technologies designed to contain transmission.

The not-for-profit Start-Up Nation Central has compiled a directory of some 70 Israeli technology companies developing responses to the new virus, which has infected more than 4,000 people in the country.

One app that stands out is Hamagen, Hebrew for “the shield,” launched earlier this month by the Health Ministry. It is available for Android phones on Google Play, and iPhone at the App Store.

Using geolocation technology, the app informs users about any points of contact with known COVID-19 cases.

Available in five languages, Hamagen has been downloaded by more than a million users.

The fortunate ones receive messages saying “no points of intersection have been found with coronavirus patients.”

“We’ll let you know if there is anything new,” it adds.

“The application is a technological means intended to give each and every one of us the ability to accurately and immediately know if we were in contact with a person who was infected with the coronavirus,” the Health Ministry said in a statement when the app was released, explaining that it was intended to streamline what was previously a cumbersome and inefficient process.
Daily Freier’s Top Ten Corona Fears (satire)
1. What if we run out of Biltong?
2. Are they going to close Trump Yeshiva?
3. Do you think someone is Quarantined with Ariel Gold?
4. If everyone’s in Lockdown, who gets to pee in Kikar Atarim?
5. Will this delay next months Elections?
6. What if Kerem House turns all of this into some kind of weird-ass online event?
7. The people still lost in Dizengoff Center: are they maintaining 2 meters distance from one another?
8. Will the Corona Crisis distract Health Minister Litzman from the important work of blocking the extradition of an accused sex offender to Australia?
9. What if Sarah Tuttle-Singer is using this time to write another book?
10. Has anyone told the American Oleh trapped in Ulpan Gordon for 7 years?


Attorney sues Cuomo over NY ban on large gatherings, says it hurts Jewish faith
A Brooklyn attorney has filed a lawsuit accusing New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo of violating his right to free speech and ability to observe his Jewish faith because of the state’s ban on large gatherings due to the coronavirus.

Lee Nigen also alleges that telling state residents to limit travel, Cuomo has violated his right to meet with clients, friends, family and “like-minded people,” the New York Post reported.

Cuomo signed an executive order requiring an indefinite ban on large gatherings on March 23. He has yet to impose a travel ban.

The suit filed Friday in Brooklyn federal court named Cuomo and the state government.

“Mr. Cuomo’s threat that his directives will be enforced by law enforcement cause Mr. Nigen to fear arrest if he attempts to travel for any other purpose other than getting medical attention or obtaining groceries, thus impermissibly chilling his exercise of his constitutional rights to travel,” the suit says, according to the Post.

Nigen has been strongly criticized on his Facebook page.

“Your rights stop when the purpose is to protect the greater good,” read one comment. “During a horrific time for the country, you feel the need to file a lawsuit? As a Jew, I’m ashamed you use our religion for this nonsense. And then you wonder why people hate us? Go ahead- ignore the warnings, spread the virus in your community and let’s see how many Jews are dead thereafter you schmuck.”


Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: Despite Coronavirus, Jihad Against Israel Continues
The rocket attacks against Israel appear aimed at distracting attention from the failure of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) to provide their hospitals with medical equipment and medicines to curb the spread of the disease. In the past decade, the two groups have invested millions of dollars in amassing weapons and building tunnels to infiltrate Israel and kill or kidnap Jews.

These leaders [of Hamas and PIJ] would rather see Palestinians die of the disease than join forces with Israel -- which has doing its utmost to help the Palestinians by providing them with tests kits, protective gear and training sessions for medical professionals....

The good news is that a majority of Palestinians disagrees with PIJ. A public opinion poll published last week by a Palestinian center found that 68% of respondents support the medical cooperation with Israel.

A statement issued by Hamas on March 30 said that "the only way to liberate the land is through resistance." The only "resistance" Hamas knows is the one that includes launching rockets and missiles at Israel or carrying out suicide bombings against Israelis.

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are again paying the price of failed leaders who care more about fighting Israel than saving the lives of patients and medical teams.
PA intelligence secures 10,000 virus testing kits from China
Palestinian Authority General Intelligence Services has brought 10,000 kits to test for coronavirus to the PA Health Ministry, a Palestinian official said on Monday.

The intelligence apparatus led by Majed Faraj, a close confidante of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, arranged for the kits to arrive from China, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.

“Before these test kits arrived, we only had hundreds left,” the official told The Times of Israel. “Now, we have a significant amount.”

As of Sunday, Palestinian health authorities have only carried out 5,869 tests on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, according to the PA Health Ministry.

As of Monday, 115 people in the West Bank and Gaza have tested positive for COVID-19, including 18 who recovered and one who died, Palestinian officials said.

Since the outbreak of the virus around the globe, demand for test kits has skyrocketed as countries make efforts to contain the spread of the contagion in their territories.

Health authorities in some parts of Europe reported late last week that test kits received from China by their respective countries were faulty.

PA Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said Sunday that China would imminently deliver test kits and several respirators to the Palestinians, without elaborating on quantities.
PMW: PA Libel: Israel causing Corona "holocaust" in prisons - op-ed in official PA daily
The above cartoon is yet another example of the PA’s demonization of Israel by comparing it to the Coronavirus, as Palestinian Media Watch has documented:
Text on cartoon: “The Palestinian prisoners”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 23, 2020]

The cartoon shows an Israeli jailor wearing a uniform and helmet covered in protrusions resembling the peplomers on the Coronavirus viral envelope. The jailor is holding an assault rifle and leading a Palestinian prisoner on a rope.

This cartoon follows repeated false accusations by the PA that Israel is putting prisoners at risk of being infected by the Coronavirus. Therefore, the PA has demanded Israel free all Palestinian terrorists.

In fact, Israel has been taking measures to prevent the virus from reaching all Israeli prisons and to date there are no known Coronavirus infections there.

Ignoring the facts, an op-ed in the official PA daily went as far as accusing Israel of putting the prisoners at risk so that they are “on the brink of a holocaust,” alleging that the prisons have not taken the necessary steps to stop the virus from spreading within the prisons:
“[The spread of coronavirus in Israel] has caused the Palestinian prisoners in the occupation’s detention camps to protest and return the food portions, because the occupation authorities have not taken the necessary steps to prevent the spread of the virus, and added insult to injury when they withheld disinfectant and cleaning materials from the prisoners – as if we are on the brink of a holocaust against the Palestinian prisoners, but not through ovens but rather through an invisible virus that still has no cure!”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 25, 2020]




JCPA: How Hizbullah Is Dealing with the Coronavirus
The coronavirus in Lebanon has put Hizbullah in a complex and sensitive position. Immediately after the first infected individuals were identified, Hizbullah was accused of conveying the disease to the country from Iran. Air traffic from Tehran to Beirut had continued without letup as Lebanese students and their families fled the universities in Iran, particularly the madrasas of Qom where thousands of Lebanese students learn, and returned to Lebanon without being checked or put in quarantine, thereby spreading the disease from Iran to Lebanon.

These accusations sparked fear as well as intense anger at Hizbullah, which claimed that the virus had broken out in the Jesuit monasteries of Beirut and Bikfaya in Lebanon. Hizbullah thereby sought to place the blame at the heart of the Maronite Christian community.

Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, who has given several speeches over the last few weeks, stated unequivocally that the responsibility for handling the virus in Lebanon belongs to the Lebanese state and the Lebanese government. That means all residents of Lebanon, including Hizbullah members and their families, must comply with the decisions of the Lebanese Health Ministry, which is headed by a Hizbullah-affiliated minister.

Meanwhile Hizbullah declared a state of emergency in its ranks and came up with an emergency plan to assist the Lebanese government that includes:
How an Iranian Airline Tied to Terrorism Likely Spread the Virus (and Lied About It)
There are many reasons why Iran has become the Middle East’s flaming epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. They include the government trying to hide the outbreak; insufficient testing capacity; refusal to cordon off cities and Shiite shrines; superstition, politicization, and propaganda blaming Iran’s usual enemies; and the lack of seriousness in dealing with the crisis.

All these factors undoubtedly play a role, but there is another, far less public suspect for bringing the disease to Iran and worsening its spread among the population: a private Iranian airline tied to the regime’s ideological army and sanctioned by the United States, which continued uninterrupted flights to and from China, including Wuhan, many weeks after the epidemic had already broken out. Bahram Parsaei, a member of Iran’s parliament, recently singled out Mahan Air and Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization as the prime suspects behind the country’s devastating outbreak.

What has made the suspicions worse are contradictory statements and misinformation coming from officials and airline executives. On Jan. 31, the Iranian government announced the suspension of all flights to and from China. But arrival and departure information furnished by Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport, as well as by Chinese airports, showed that flights by Mahan Air between both countries continued for another full week—including one direct evacuation flight from Wuhan, ground zero for the virus. Other data showed flights continuing into March.

The airline, while privately owned, has links to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its Quds Force, an intelligence and special operations unit that has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States and other governments. Mahan Air has been sanctioned by Washington for helping the IRGC ferry arms and personnel in support of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria’s brutal civil war. In a tweet on Feb. 2, China’s ambassador to Iran, Chang Hua, noted that Mahan Air CEO Hamid Arabnejad said he wished to continue cooperating with China. Two days later, the semiofficial Iranian Students’ News Agency criticized these ongoing flights and not for the first time. In a press release, Mahan Air claimed it ended all emergency repatriation flights from Wuhan and elsewhere by Feb. 5.

Yet even after this date, Mahan Air continued to ply the routes between Tehran and four major Chinese cities—Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen—at least 55 times by Feb. 23, according to a tally by the U.S.-sponsored Radio Farda based on Flightradar24 data. Even on March 4, two weeks after the government announced Iran’s first two official deaths from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, Mahan Air was still flying to Beijing and Shanghai and had just resumed direct flights to Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
Amid Coronavirus, Mullahs Speeding Up Nuclear Activities
The Iranian regime now has enough enriched uranium to refine and build a nuclear bomb if it desires to do so. Approximately 1000 kg of uranium enriched at just 5% can be refined to create one nuclear bomb.... Moreover, "the agency identified a number of questions related to possible undeclared nuclear material and nuclear-related activities at three locations in Iran," according to a recently published second report by the IAEA.

It is important to point out that the three undeclared nuclear locations to which the IAEA is referring are in addition to another, fourth, clandestine nuclear site in Iran that was first revealed by Israel.

The Director General of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, admitted , as reported on March 3, 2020, "The fact that we found traces (of uranium) is very important. That means there is the possibility of nuclear activities and material that are not under international supervision and about which we know not the origin or the intent. That worries me." ... Iran is also breaching several UN resolutions by not allowing the IAEA to inspect its nuclear sites.

If the Iranian government is advancing its nuclear program for peaceful purposes, why has Tehran repeatedly failed to report its nuclear facilities, including those at Natanz and Arak, to the IAEA? Also, why does the Iranian government keep refusing to answer the IAEA's questions regarding its secret nuclear facilities?

The United Nations needs to break its silence and, before it is too late, take seriously Iran's latest rapid nuclear escalation.


Iran Says Natgas Exports to Turkey Halted After Attack by ‘Terrorists’
Iran said on Tuesday its natural gas exports to Turkey have stopped after an attack on a pipeline inside the neighboring country, an Iranian official told state TV.

“This morning, terrorists attacked a natural gas pipeline inside Turkey near Iran’s Bazargan border with Turkey …Flow of gas has been halted,” said Mehdi Jamshidi-Dana, director of National Iranian Gas Co.

“The pipeline has exploded several times in the past. It is also likely that the PKK group has carried out the blast,” he told Iran’s state news agency IRNA, referring to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party.

Turkey’s state broadcaster TRT Haber said the cause of the explosion was unknown.

“The gas flow on the natural gas pipeline was cut and the fire that had started was extinguished by fire squads. Security forces are investigating the cause for the incident that caused damage on the pipeline,” TYRT Haber reported.

The pipeline, which carries around 10 billion cubic meters of Iranian gas to Turkey annually, frequently came under attack by Kurdish militants during the 1990s and up until 2013, when a ceasefire was established.


MEMRI: Visions Of The Post-Coronavirus World – Editor Of AKP Mouthpiece: West's Political, Economic, Security Systems Have Collapsed; Turkey 'Is One Of The World's New Superpowers,' Will Rise In Post-Coronavirus Era
In his March 27, 2020 column, titled "Time Has Stopped, History Is Being Reset... West's Political System, Financial System, Security Theories Have All Collapsed. New Political Orders Will Be Established. New Superpowers Will Emerge. Nations Controlling The World May Collapse. East May Become West, West May Become East. New Nations May Take To The Stage. We're Starting Everything From Scratch..." in Turkey's Yeni Safak daily, which is a mouthpiece of Turkey's ruling AKP,[1] the paper's editor-in-chief Ibrahim Karagül described what he saw as the collapse of the West and the rise of countries, including Turkey, after the global spread of the Coronavirus.

On the West, Karagül wrote: "It seems that everything produced and imposed to the world by the West in the form of a global discourse and order is coming to an end. The West has already lost its 'central' power... The West's financial system is collapsing. Its political system and discourse are collapsing. Its security theories are collapsing. Its social theories are collapsing. Humanity no longer has any expectation of them." Regarding the rise of Turkey, he wrote: "Turkey is one of the world's new superpowers... If there are going to be any countries to rise post-corona – and there will be – Turkey is going to be one of them."

Following are excerpts from Yeni Safak's translation of Karagül's column. To facilitate readability, the excerpts are not in the order in which they originally appeared:

"Time Has Stopped, History Has Been Reset – We Are Going To Start Everything From Scratch"

"We are going to look toward the future. We are going to establish the future. We are going to start over.

"Of course, we are going to learn from the past, from human history, but we are going to look toward the future. We are going to walk towards the future. We are going to predict societies, state perception, production and consumption models, needs, beliefs and values, life models, personal tendencies and interests of the future. We are going to prepare accordingly and build the future.

"Those who do this, those who emerge stronger following the breaking point, those who open the doors of the future are going to take to the stage as superpowers. The others will be left out in the cold. Yes, time has stopped, history has been reset. We are going to start everything from scratch..."

"Turkey Is One Of The World's New Superpowers... If There Are Going To Be Any Countries To Rise Post-Corona – And There Will Be – Turkey Is Going To Be One Of Them"

"Turkey is one of the world's new superpowers.

"We must note that as of now, Turkey is conducting more successful coordination, a more effective fight than most of the world's central powers. The state, central power, leadership, institutions, public formations, and citizens are handling matters in great harmony. If there are going to be any countries to rise post-corona – and there will be – Turkey is going to be one of them.

"The coronavirus epidemic will be overcome. Even if new epidemics follow, they too will be overcome. However, the establishment of a new world cannot be postponed..."


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The silence of the feminists: Here is the list of laws that hurt women in the West Bank and Gaza that NO ONE talks about



I just found this 2018 report from the UN that describes the laws that discriminate against and hurt women under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

I do not remember a single news article about this report when it was released. The taboo against saying anything bad about Palestinian rule is very deep - there are more international journalists in Israel and the territories per capita than anywhere else on Earth and yet they hardly ever report anything that puts Palestinians in a bad light.

Here are the Palestinian laws that the UN found problematic for women:

Domestic violence: Palestine has no domestic violence legislation.

Marital rape: Marital rape is not criminalized.

Abortion for rape survivors: Abortion is prohibited in the West Bank by the Jordan Penal Code (Articles 321–325) and in Gaza by the Criminal Code of 1936 (Articles 175–177).

Sexual harassment in the workplace: Sexual harassment is not criminalized by the Labour Code.

Honour crimes: Mitigation of penalty Laws allowing mitigation of penalties for ‘honour’ crimes were repealed in 2011 and 2018 in the West Bank. However, the government in Gaza has not applied the reforms.

Adultery: Adultery is an offence in Gaza and the West Bank. In the West Bank, Article 282 of the Penal Code criminalizes adultery

Human trafficking: Palestine does not have comprehensive anti-trafficking legislation. Some provisions of the Penal Code of Jordan apply to trafficking in the West Bank.

Sex work and anti-prostitution laws: Prostitution is prohibited by Articles 309–318 of the Penal Code in the West Bank and Articles 161–166 of the Criminal Code of 1936 in Gaza.

Sexual orientation: Homosexual conduct between consenting adults is criminalized by the Criminal Code of 1936 in Gaza, with a penalty of up to ten years of imprisonment. The Penal Code 1960 in the West Bank has no similar prohibition.

Marriage and divorce: The personal status laws for Muslims require the husband to maintain the wife. A wife owes obedience to her husband. A husband can divorce by repudiation (talaq). A wife has the right to divorce on specified grounds. She can also apply for a khul’a divorce without grounds if she forgoes financial rights.

Male guardianship over women: Muslim women require consent of a wali (male guardian) to marry. There are some weak legal protections for women under guardianship. Women can seek permission from the court to marry if the guardian withholds consent without a legitimate reason.

Minimum age of marriage: The Muslim personal status laws set the minimum legal age of marriage as 15 years for girls and 16 years for boys in the West Bank, and 17 years for girls and 18 for boys in the Gaza Strip. The ages can be lower if a judge allows it (with a guardian’s approval in the case of the girl).

Guardianship of children: Fathers are the sole guardians of children.

Custody of children: After divorce the mother has custody up to a certain age, but automatically loses custody of her children if she remarries. Inheritance Sharia rules of inheritance apply to Muslims. Women have a right to inheritance, but in many cases receive less than men. Daughters receive half the share that sons receive.

Polygamy: Polygamy is permitted.

Legal restrictions on women’s work: Some legal restrictions exist on women’s employment in certain industries that do not apply to men, such as mining.

This list is even worse once you realize that "Palestine" signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) with no intent to actually implement any of its rules, and part of the Palestinian government in Ramallah denounced the idea of equal rights for women.

And yet we never hear a word from today's feminists - most of whom are against Israel and support a Palestinian state that would continue its official discrimination against women.






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