04/13 Links Pt2: PLO Continues to Denigrate Trump Peace Plan and Ignore Elections; Does Progressive Judaism have an anti-Zionism problem ~ EoZ

From Ian:

David Singer: PLO Continues to Denigrate Trump Peace Plan and Ignore Elections

The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) has cranked up its propaganda machine to continue denigrating President Trump’s deal of the century – as a joint US-Israel Mapping Committee is finalising those areas in Judea and Samaria on Trump’s map where Jewish sovereignty can be restored after 3000 years.

The PLO rejected Trump’s plan on the day it was published – 28 January 2020 – even though it provided for the creation of a second Arab State in former Palestine – in addition to Jordan – for the first time in recorded history.

WAFA – the Palestinian news and information agency – has attacked Trump’s move to start implementing his plan in an article headlined: “PLO official warns of Israeli plan to annex parts of West Bank” – which headline itself is false and misleading for the following reasons:
- It is not an Israeli plan – but Trump’s plan being applied by Israel in tandem with Trump
- Trump’s plan does not involve annexation by Israel – rather the restoration of Jewish sovereignty after 3000 years in the Jewish people’s ancient and biblical heartland – in areas authorised by the San Remo Conference and Treaty of Sevres in 1920, the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1922 and the United Nations Charter.
- “West Bank” was only coined in 1950 to replace the 3000 years old geographic place name “Judea and Samaria” – after all the Jews living there had been ethnically cleansed by Transjordan during the 1948 War of Independence – and Judea & Samaria was unified with Transjordan to form a new territorial entity – renamed Jordan.

Wafa’s report references a statement by Ahmad Majdalani – member of the PLO Executive Committee and Minister of Social Affairs:
“Uncovered reports that Washington and Tel Aviv are about to agree on the maps of annexation [of parts of the West Bank] – at a time the world is preoccupied with the war on coronavirus – falls within the framework of the US plan to implement the “deal of the century”

Note:
- No uncovered reports are produced
- Repetition of the false and misleading terms annexation and West Bank
- The world might be preoccupied with the war on coronavirus but Governments – including the US and Israeli Governments – have not stopped governing and making decisions – and to suggest they should is arrant nonsense

A disingenuous debate about annexation

The list of signatories to a new letter organized by the Israel Policy Forum protesting the possibility of Israel passing legislation in the upcoming months to annex parts of the West Bank is full of familiar names to those who have followed American Jewish organizational life in the last few decades. Some on the list – like current Reform movement leader Rabbi Rick Jacobs – are still important players in contemporary Jewish life. But many of the big donors and veteran activists mentioned could have been recycled from a host of similar efforts by liberal groups in the distant past.

The letter is a direct response to the latest news about the terms of a still not finalized coalition agreement to form a unity government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his chief rival, Benny Gantz.

But the tone and the language used seem straight out of the early 1990s, when some of the same people were speaking up in favor of the Oslo Accords and its promise of land for peace, or later in the decade when they were disingenuously protesting Netanyahu's policies during his first term as prime minister for being too slow to make concessions to PLO leader Yasser Arafat. Then, too, they were admonishing Israelis not to defend their rights because doing so would alienate the tender sensibilities of Americans.

Indeed, if a Jewish Rip Van Winkle were to have dozed off during the Clinton administration and awakened in the last week, he would feel right at home with the rhetoric admonishing Israelis not to alienate Americans or to sabotage hopes of peace with the Palestinians.

The push to annex parts of the West Bank, where hundreds of thousands of Jews currently live in settlement blocs, as well as the strategic Jordan Valley divides Israelis. Yet the notion that formalizing Israel's control over these lands is an obstacle to peace is as much a relic of the past as some of the IPF letter's signatories.

Don't give in to Jordan's scare tactics

After the Hashemite kingdom let the Jordan Valley go in the 1967 Six-Day War, and 32 years after it announced that it was cutting ties with the "West Bank" and even gave up its claims to sovereignty there, Blue and White is trying to drag Jordan into its own "annexation dispute" with the Likud.

Blue and White leaders Benny Gantz and Gabi Ashkenazi, as part of negotiations to form a government, are claiming that annexation without agreement from Jordan will endanger our special ties with the kingdom, and the long-term quiet on our eastern border in particular.

But this argument ignores the hidden aspects of Israel's relations with Jordan, especially the fact that there is a wide discrepancy between how Jordan openly conducts itself in regards to Israel – using critical, sometimes inciting, rhetoric aimed at pacifying its Palestinian majority – and how the kingdom acts behind the scenes.

Jordan has swallowed a lot of toads over the years to maintain the informal relationship with Israel that is vital to its own continued existence. Jordan enjoys economic, military, and intelligence cooperation with us that is often critical to its interests. Jordan also holds special status on the Temple Mount, and has in effect become Israel's silent partner in managing affairs there. The way Jordan sees it, that status is of almost existential importance, given the place Al-Aqsa holds in the narrative and consciousness of the Hashemite dynasty and many of the kingdom's residents. Jordan will think twice before putting that at risk.

Israel’s frustrated president threatens new elections – in a bid to avoid them

President Reuven Rivlin is running out of patience.

Blue and White leader Benny Gantz’s 28-day mandate from the president to form the next government expires on Monday at midnight. On Saturday night, he wrote the president asking for a 14-day extension.

Rivlin’s response — or at least the statement the President’s Office released to the press Sunday describing his response — threw the political system into a spin.

The president informed Gantz “that in the present circumstances it will not be possible to extend the period for forming the government,” the statement explained. “The president made the decision after also speaking with Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu, who did not confirm [Gantz’s claim] that the two were close to signing an agreement that would lead to a unity government.”

The initial headlines were emphatic: Rivlin denies Gantz an extension. With talks between Likud and Blue and White stuck after Likud broke off negotiations last Monday, Gantz’s long flirtation with the prime minister’s chair appeared to have come to a decisive end.

Likud supporters celebrated enthusiastically on social media. Some of Gantz’s former supporters in Yesh Atid were also not above a bit of schadenfreude.

Then the political system seemed to collectively read the rest of the statement: “And if the two don’t sign an agreement by tomorrow [Monday] at midnight, and the numbers of recommendations [for each candidate] don’t change, the mandate will revert to the Knesset, and the 21-day period will begin in which the members of Knesset must finalize a majority of recommendations for an agreed-upon candidate. That agreed-upon candidate will have 14 days to assemble a government.”

In other words, if neither Netanyahu nor Gantz obtained a Knesset majority or formed a unity government by the end of Monday, Rivlin would skip over Netanyahu and go straight to the 21-day final lap in which any Knesset member who can assemble a majority can become PM. By law, those 21 days must end in either a government or the dissolution of the Knesset and new elections.

It was an astonishing move for Rivlin. It seemed that after three inconclusive election cycles and endless claims by the two leading candidates that they were committed to a unity government — especially recently amid the economic and social whirlwind of the virus crisis — the president had had enough.

Israel Advocacy Movement: Does Progressive Judaism have an anti-Zionism problem

At a time when a growing number of Progressive Jews actively campaign against Israel and it's government, we ask is there an anti-Zionism problem within the Progressive Jewish movement?

Debating this sensitive subject will be:
Rabbi Danny Rich - Former Chief Executive of Liberal Judaism UK
Rabbi Stuart Altshuler - Belsize Square Synagogue

Yisrael Medad: The McMahon-Hussein Correspondence Promised Arabs a State in Palestine?

One of the mainstays of those claiming that the Zionists did not deserve to be awarded the territory of Palestine, among several, is that the McMahon correspondence of 1915 alloted to Sharif Hussein that same territory as part of the promise of the Arabs to revolt against Turkey. Henry McMahon being the High Commissioner of Egypt at the time.

Many argue over exactly where were the geographical delineation lines. They even ignor this:

Feisal made the first challenge on 20 January I92I in an interview at the Foreign Office with R.C. Lindsay, representing Curzon, the Foreign Secretary. Feisal claimed that 'nothing in the original correspondence stated that Palestine should be excluded from the Arab boundaries'. To this Lindsay pointed out that Palestine had been 'expressly reserved' from these boundaries and the relevant passage from McMahon's letter of 24 October 1915 was read aloud to the Emir in Arabic. After an exchange of views Feisal conceded that it had been the original intention of the British government to exclude Palestine*
*
FO 371/6237, E 986/4/9I, 'Report on Conversation...20 January 1921'. Present: R.C. Lindsay, Major H.W. Young, Col. Cornwallis, Emir Feisal, Brig. Gen. Haddad Pasha, Rustum Haidar; see also FO 37I/6238, E 2I33/4/9I, FO to Herbert Samuel (Jerusalem) 22 February I92I, referring to Lindsay - Feisal conversation; Winston Churchill's statement, Hansard, II July I922, cols. 1032-4.

But there is another aspect: did the Arabs fulfill their side of the bargain?

If you saw the film Lawrence of Arabia or read Seven Pillars of Wisdom, you are of one mind.

Here is another mind in this article:

C.S. Jarvis, formerly Governor of Sinai, expressed himself in less complimentary terms: 'The Syrians as a people did nothing whatsoever towards assisting the Arab cause...beyond hold secret meetings and talk. The inhabitants of Palestine did rather less.' Lloyd George recalled ironically that 'the Arabs of Palestine, who might have been helpful in many ways, were quiescent and cowering. Right through the War and up to the end, there were masses of Arab soldiers from Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine in the Turkish Armies fighting against the liberation of their own rule...the Palestinian Arabs were fighting against us.' Despite much encouragement, when the British troops were already firmly entrenched in Jerusalem, the results of recruiting for the Sherifian forces were disappointing; no more than 150 Arabs were recruited. The verdict of the Palestine Royal Commission was clear: 'It was the Sherif's own people . . who bore the brunt of the actual fighting. The Arabs of Palestine did not rise against the Turks.'

Find better heroes, Linda. pic.twitter.com/aGR8j7Mpva
— (((kweansmom))) (@kweansmom) April 12, 2020

Ilhan Omar Demands Bailout for Out-of-Work Suicide Bombers (satire)

With Congress fighting to keep the economy afloat amid the coronavirus shutdown, Rep. Ilhan Omar has demanded any future package include support for out-of-work suicide bombers and other jihadi terrorists.

Omar noted that restrictions on large gatherings and the closure of popular establishments has made it impossible for terrorists to target crowded locations and cause mass casualties.

“It is the job of these brave heroes in the fight against colonialism and white supremacy to do something,” Omar said. “This shutdown, however, has forced them to do nothing, and it is about time we made it up to them with generous financial assistance.”

The proposal has won surprising bipartisan support, with President Trump expected to sign Omar’s bill into law this week. Trump emphasized that while he does not support suicide bombers or other radical Islamic terrorists, he will support any initiative to spend billions of dollars with no oversight and no funding source.

Labour’s mammoth report detailing anti-Corbyn conspiracy at Party’s HQ is “last ditch attempt to discredit antisemitism allegations” and must be sent to EHRC

Sky News has reported that the Labour Party spent the last month of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership conducting a full-scale review into how the Party handled antisemitism complaints during his tenure.

The report, which is titled ‘The work of the Labour Party’s Governance and Legal Unit in relation to antisemitism, 2014 – 2019’ and has not been made public, says that its “findings prove the scale of the problem, and could help end the denialism amongst some part of the Party membership,” but insists that there was “no evidence” of antisemitism complaints being treated differently to other forms of complaint, or of “antisemitic intent” among current or former staff.

Rather, the report – which is apparently the product of a review of 10,000 separate emails and thousands of private WhatsApp communications between former senior party officials – concludes that there was a lack of “robust processes, systems, training, education and effective line management” and, most controversially, that there is “abundant evidence of a hyper-factional atmosphere prevailing in Party HQ” towards Mr Corbyn which “affected the expeditious and resolute handling of disciplinary complaints.”

The report reserves particular criticism for the former Party officials who turned whistleblowers in last year’s devastating Panorama expose of antisemitism in the Labour Party. Indeed the intent of the report was apparently to give the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) reason to “question the validity of the personal testimonies” provided by the whistleblowers.

The EHRC launched a full statutory investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party on 28th May 2019 following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.

However, Labour’s lawyers have reportedly advised the Party against submitting the document, and the Party, which has a new leader, is now insisting that it was never intended to be submitted.

The claims of factionalism within the Party’s HQ and the suggestion that antisemitism complaints were impeded by staffers’ motivation to undermine Mr Corbyn’s leadership have been denied by the former staffers and whistleblowers, who responded to similar defences by the Party during the Panorama program by suing Labour.

Campaign Against Antisemitism believes that the very existence of the report illustrates the lengths to which the Party’s apparatus under Mr Corbyn’s leadership went to try to deflect attention from the antisemitism crisis and exonerate itself, instead of actually addressing the crisis and expelling antisemites from the Party. While the report apparently concedes the scale of Labour antisemitism, nevertheless its effect is to deny the allegations by portraying them as a product of factionalism in the Party or a smear designed to damage the leadership.

Noah Rothman: The Long Road Back from Corbynism

There is no going backward, but it is possible to move on. Britain’s Labour Party is attempting to do just that.

Over the weekend, the opposition party in the U.K. quietly ended Jeremy Corbyn’s four-and-a-half-year tenure as leader. Though the selection process lacked the transparency and fanfare that accompanies a leadership election in a time before social distancing, Labour’s new leader, Keir Starmer, emerged with a convincing 56 percent of the vote on the first ballot. Starmer’s first tasks as his party’s new leader were to unify his fractured coalition and also to leave no doubts about the mistakes they’d made that left Labour in the unenviable position it occupies today.

“Anti-Semitism has been a stain on our party,” Starmer’s statement read. “On behalf of the Labour Party, I am sorry. And I will tear out this poison by its roots and judge success by the return of Jewish members and those who felt that they could no longer support us.” But if anti-Semitism within the party is to be deracinated, observers who believe that can only be accomplished by extirpating Corbynism entirely from Labour’s ranks were surely disappointed. The former leader was feted by his successor as a man who led “our party through some really difficult times, who energized our movement, and who’s a friend as well as a colleague.”

Corbyn’s tenure has cost Labour the trust and patience of millions, including political observers around the world. By rights, it should have been Corbyn’s hidebound socialism and barely concealed tolerance for anti-Semitism that did him in. But what ultimately cost Corbyn the support of his party was electoral defeat. And not just any defeat, but a disastrous one.

British Labourites and voters more broadly knew who Corbyn was well before the summer of 2017. His first shadow cabinet was a mess. His nostalgic Marxism was laid bare in a manifesto that called for the nationalization of infrastructure and industry alike. His fondness for terrorists—from the IRA to Hezbollah and Hamas—was no secret. But the conservative government under Theresa May plodded into the general election with all the grace of a muskox, confirming voters’ fears that the government could not completely manage Brexit and transforming a 20-point margin in the polls into a 13-seat loss for the Tories. Though it was a defeat for Labour, Corbyn’s party managed a halfway decent showing. It was enough to avoid the impression that Labour had suffered a rebuke.

Online backlash against new Labour leader takes aim at the Jews

Members of at least one Facebook group backing losing candidates in Labour’s leadership and deputy leadership primaries have vented their frustration regarding the results towards a traditional scapegoat.

Numerous deeply troubling messages on the group, called “Jeremy Corbyn Group supports Richard Burgon for Deputy Leader”, which has almost 23,000 members, have been uncovered by activist Gillian Lazarus.

The messages include statements that the UK is now a “one party state run by the Jews”; that “there is no antisemitism in Labour”; that Sir Keir Starmer, the new Labour leader, is “just another Israeli lickspittle”; and “when is anyone ever going to stand up to these people?”, in reference to Campaign Against Antisemitism, because it promotes the widespread adoption of the International Definition of Antisemitism.

Members of the group have previously targeted the Chief Rabbi with their ire.

Mr Burgon, an unsuccessful candidate for the deputy leadership of the Party and until recently a Labour frontbencher, does not have any administrative involvement in the Facebook group, although he also has his own very troubling record in his relationship with the Jewish community.

There was a similar backlash against the Jews among some disappointed supporters of Labour’s hard left following the General Election.

Anti-Israel academic claims 'terminating Zionism is only way to permanent peace'

An academic has claimed the "pro-Israel lobby dealt the final blow" to Jeremy Corbyn’s chances of becoming Prime Minister, adding: "Terminating Zionism is the only way to a permanent peace."

Dr Ghada Karmi – who has delivered lectures on 'conflict and peace-making' at the University of Exeter where she is a honorary research fellow – also wrote of her fears new Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer was attempting to pander to the "lobby’’ in an article for Middle East Eye.

Writing after Mr Corbyn left office on April 4, she says: "While much has been made of the capitalist establishment’s role in Corbyn’s downfall due to his socialist economics, it was the pro-Israel lobby that dealt the final blow.

"The idea that a British prime minister would one day promote the Palestinian cause to the world must have seemed the stuff of nightmares.

"Persistent campaigning by this lobby since 2016 - largely mediated by the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement, the pro-Israel Board of Deputies of British Jews and Labour Friends of Israel, and likely coordinated by the Israeli embassy - achieved its aim."

Dr Karmi – who has been a Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies and Senior Visiting Fellow at the Department of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies at Leeds University – compares Israel to Apartheid South Africa, claiming: "It was not possible to support apartheid and also black rights, and the conflict only ended with apartheid’s abolition."

She adds: "The same holds true for Zionism in Palestine. Terminating Zionism is the only way to a permanent peace."

Dr Karmi then claims Sir Keir has attempted to "win over the lobby" with his immediate apologies for Labour’s failure over antisemitism on becoming leader of the party.

New Labour boss is no Corbyn, but unlikely to reverse party’s anti-Israel stance

Keir Starmer, the new head of the British Labour Party, is expected to establish a much warmer relationship not only with local Jews but also with the Jewish state. As opposed to his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, who was viciously critical of Israel, Her Majesty’s incoming leader of the opposition is said to be generally well-disposed toward the country.

However, Starmer, 57, is unlikely to undo the anti-Israel policies his party adopted during the Corbyn era, several Jewish community sources familiar with Labour politics told The Times of Israel this week.

In September, the Labour conference overwhelmingly endorsed calls for the immediate recognition of Palestinian statehood and a freeze of UK arms sales to Israel. One resolution passed urged the party to “adhere to an ethical policy on all UK’s trade with Israel, in particular by applying international law on settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories,” which some interpreted as a tacit call for a boycott of products made in West Bank settlements.

As opposed to Corbyn, Starmer, whose wife Victoria Alexander is Jewish and has family members in Tel Aviv, has no history of public statements on the Middle East conflict. He is not expected to spend much energy on this area, people familiar with his career estimated, and exceedingly unlikely to get into fights with his political base over efforts to remove calls for Palestinian statehood or arms embargoes from Labour’s agenda.

“He supports a two-state solution, and like almost all politicians from the center-left he has a soft spot for the underdog, which in the context of the Middle East conflict often means the Palestinians,” one source said. “There is no doubt that he is more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than to the Israeli position.”

Like all Jewish communal sources interviewed for this article, he was speaking on condition of anonymity because he was hoping to forge a positive relationship with Starmer in the weeks ahead.

US Census poses dilemma for Jews — are you white and what are your ‘origins’?

It’s the ninth question on the census, and for many Jewish respondents, it’s a surprising — and sometimes unwelcome — invitation to consider who exactly they are.

For the first time, the US Census question on race is asking white and African-American respondents to dig deeper and fill in more detailed origins.

“Mark one or more boxes AND print origins,” the printed form says. For white, it adds, “Print, for example, German, Irish, English, Italian, Lebanese, Egyptian, etc.”

The request for “origins” has existed for decades for Native American, Hispanic and Asian/Pacific Islander respondents. But whites and blacks were previously asked to simply check a box.

The question has launched countless Jewish conversations: “What did you list?” “What should I?”

The answers reveal a community grappling with what it means to announce one’s Jewishness in the 21st century, and to consider the myriad paths that have brought American Jews to the present day.

“I didn’t see a box for ‘stateless people being abused and kicked out of one Eastern European region after another,’ so this seemingly straight-forward question turned out to be quite a head-scratcher,” said Jonathan Kopp, a communications strategist who lives in Brooklyn.

Kopp, 53, abandoned the form for a while before returning and checking “white.” He entered “Eastern European Ashkenazi Jew” in the origins box.

Jeff Weintraub, 72, an academic who lives in the Philadelphia area, said he thought the race/ethnicity/national-origin questions on the census form “were a little bizarre.”

“I checked ‘White’ and then, for elaboration, wrote something along the following lines in the box: ‘Jewish — grandparents from the former Russian Empire & the former Austro-Hungarian Empire,’” he said.

One complicating factor: The online census form makes it appear as if the “origins” question is not optional — but it is.

Update on fake news about Israeli health minister’s coronavirus comments

On April 7, the UK-based Pink News published a story claiming that Israel’s health minister Yaakov Litzman, who tested positive for COVID-19, previously said coronavirus was divine punishment for homosexuality.

However, though Litzman had indeed made homophobic remarks in the past, he never made such comments about coronavirus. In early March, another Israeli, Rabbi Meir Mazuz, did utter these remarks.

So, Pink News may have conflated comments by the two rabbis, or, more likely, based their report on a piece (“Israel Health Minister Gets Coronavirus After Rabbi Terms Virus ‘Divine Punishment’”) published earlier at a Pakistani site which is the first outlet to circulate this fake news.

The Pakistani outlet, called Naya Daur, describes itself as “a bi-lingual progressive digital media platform aiming to inform and educate Pakistanis at home and abroad”.

We were among the first few on Twitter who contacted the editor of Pink News to alert him of the error. To his credit, Pink News editor Ryan John Butcher – following communication from another pro-Israel site – said the piece would be corrected, which it was, with the following addendum added.

An earlier version of this article referenced two inaccurate reports regarding Yaakov Litzman blaming the coronavirus pandemic on homosexuality. This has since been corrected.

The US left-wing activist site Daily Kos, which had posted the original Pink News story, followed suit and corrected their piece.

However, as our CAMERA colleague Tamar Sternthal noted in a subsequent tweet to Pink News, the article still had two additional errors.

Also I can promise you that the Israeli Health Minister, a devout Jew, did NOT refer to Easter as "the time of our redemption"
— Tamar Sternthal (@TamarSternthal) April 7, 2020

Regarding the second point, Sternthal provided a source showing that Litzman had of course referred to Passover (not Easter!) as “the time of our redemption”. The Pink News editor thanked her and corrected these two items.

When @Reuters and @AFP report on life in Gaza and the West Bank during the pandemic, they have a duty to make clear that blockades and area closures aren't simply punitive measures, but acts taken in order to prevent terrorism and a lethal virus from spreading.#DemandTheTruth pic.twitter.com/I0847JQFzN
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) April 12, 2020

Edgar Davidson: Obsession with virtue-signalling to enemies of the Jewish people was the main factor in the demise of the Jewish Chronicle

So the Jewish Chronicle - and the Jewish News with which it was merging - are to be liquidated. Obviously, the coronavirus is being blamed as the reason for its demise, but this simply speeded the inevitable. I feel extremely sorry for those members of staff losing jobs who were not responsible for the increasingly leftist and ambivalent stance to Israel that both newspapers had taken in the last 15 years. Unfortunately, the goons who took over management and editorial control are ultimately the ones to blame for this outcome and the loss of jobs.

If the JC hadn’t started supporting the unelected PLO over the elected Israeli government, or pimping for terrorists committed to Israel’s destruction at the very time they were targeting Israeli cities with hundreds of rockets a day, then perhaps British Jews would not have stopped buying it. Or maybe they would have retained more readers had they not continually given advertising and editorial space to deadly enemies of the Jewish State - under the pretext of 'the need for balance'** - while at the same time viciously attacking pro-Israel Jews and especially pro-Israel non-Jews without giving them any right to reply. But most of all, it seems that the continual and obsessive virtue-signalling with 'Islamophobia' and 'interfaith relations' were not of particularly compelling interest for British Jews; especially when the exact same leftist nonsense can be read for free in the Guardian and BBC online. The elitists in editorial control (and the same goes for those who lead the Board of Deputies, CST and other mainstream Jewish organisations) are delusional in thinking that the bubble in which they operate is any any way representative of the bulk of British Jewry and they lost sight of the fact that their purpose was to serve the British Jewish community and not the British Muslim community. Did they really think that getting approval from creeps like Fiyaz Mughal, Baroness Warsi and Sadiq Khan was going to lead to British Muslims buying the JC?

The JC and Jewish News failed the British Jewish community in so many ways. In addition to all of the above, they could have campaigned to stop British taxpayer funding going to Palestinian terrorists - it would have been popular and effective - but they never did. They could have been at the forefront in confronting the anti-Zionist lies that have driven almost all antisemitism in the UK in the last 15 years. But they refused to do so, pandering instead to the very community which was most prominent in pushing those lies, and even playing into this antisemitsm with their continual message of "Israel does bad things but it's not the fault of British Jews...".

BBC R4’s Today omits context to revisited story

Failing to clarify that the baptismal site at Qasr al Yahud was made accessible by Israel in 2011, Husain went on:

Husain: “And the significance of these churches is that they’re all built around the site where Christ was believed to have been baptised.”

Cowan: “Yes exactly and it’s extraordinary that one of the great sites of Christendom actually, and also for the Jewish faith as well, ehm…should be treated in this way.” […]

Had audiences been told that the reason the site had to be mined was to protect Israeli civilians from terrorism, they may have been able to put that remark from James Cowan – and his subsequent one – into the appropriate context.

Cowan: “There’s a huge amount of restoration work. You can imagine after 53 years of being abandoned the churches need a lot of work doing to them. But I think that at a time of Covid, as you mentioned, it’s really nice to have a story like this in which there’s actually a bit of hope and in a place like the West Bank where these three faiths have competed with each other for millennia it’s nice to see them actually cooperating.”

And so this ‘feel good’ Easter story was once again presented to BBC audiences in a manner that completely erased the Jordan-based Palestinian terrorism which necessitated the laying of mines that have now been cleared.

Nazi death camp Buchenwald marks 75 years since liberation amid coronavirus

In the wake of the coronavirus lockdown still in force throughout Germany, authorities in the state of Thuringia cancelled commemoration events marking the the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Buchenwald death camp. Only employees of the camp's museum were allowed to commemorate the liberation by laying wreaths at the memorial on Saturday.

In addition to the marking of the liberation, authorities in the state also published its "Thuringian Declaration" condemning the rise of far-right nationalism and neo-Nazism in the country.

"We know and seriously appreciate that Germany did not free itself from National Socialism by dint of its own efforts; that a large number of crimes went unpunished; and that too many perpetrators and criminals could continue their lives after 1945 as though nothing had happened," the declaration states.

The declaration was signed by top officials in Thuringia, such as Thuringian State Premier Bodo Ramelow, Buchenwald memorial site head Volkhard Knigge, and Buchenwald survivors Ivan Ivanji, Eva Fahidi-Pusztei and Naftali Fürst.

Due to the rise of far-right extremism, the signatories of the document say that "right-wing radicalism and authoritarianism is on the rise, as is a form of populism emboldened by a racially-motivated superiority complex, nationalism."

Florida Mosque Promotes Books Calling for Violence Against Jews

Masjid Jamaat Al-Mu'mineen (MJAM) is a radical mosque, located in Margate, Florida, infamous for having an imam that was charged by the FBI with helping to finance the Taliban. Surfing the mosque’s website, one is able to access a web library of downloadable Islamic texts. The amount of bigotry and violence found in the books is alarming, especially in their attacks against members of the Jewish and Christian faiths.

This past decade, MJAM has been working hard to expand construction beyond the mosque to include a children’s school, a conference center and more. As Phase II of MJAM’s Islamic Center expansion project was underway, the mosque’s imam, Izhar Khan, was behind bars. In May 2011, Khan was arrested and spent the next 20 months in a Miami federal detention center for his alleged participation in a terror financing scheme to ship $50 thousand to the Pakistani Taliban for the specific goal of murdering American troops overseas.

As stated in the US Justice Department indictment against him and his family, “Izhar is a Pakistani Taliban sympathizer who worked with [his father Hafiz] and others to collect and deliver money for the Pakistani Taliban… Izhar… provided and attempted to provide material support and resources… knowing and intending that they be used in preparation for and in carrying out… a conspiracy to murder, kidnap, and maim persons in a foreign country.”

At the mosque ‘Ground-Breaking’ was Shafayat Mohamed, the imam of the Darul Uloom Institute, located in Pembroke Pines, Florida. Darul Uloom has been a haven for terror-related individuals and activity. “Dirty Bomber” Jose Padilla was a student of Shafayat Mohamed’s at Darul Uloom; now-deceased al-Qaeda commander Adnan el-Shukrijumah was a prayer leader at Darul Uloom; and Darul Uloom Arabic teacher Imran Mandhai, along with two others, hatched a plot at the mosque to blow up different South Florida structures. Shafayat Mohamed, himself, was thrown off a number of community boards for his public vitriol against homosexuals.

MJAM’s website sports a book section that includes 44 downloadable religious texts, all but one containing writings in English. The books deal with such controversial subjects as: female circumcision, partaking in jihad (holy war), punishing homosexuals with death, chopping off hands, stoning women accused by their husbands of adultery, and vilifying Hindus. The vast majority of the texts, though, curse Jews and Christians, Jews being the main target and, on numerous occasions, targeted with violence. One of the texts, Tafsir Ibn Kathir, mentions Jews nearly 800 times.

Nazi swastika and Chinese flags with the word 'COVID-19' written on one of them are planted on top of a phone tower in an apparent racist attack

Chinese and Nazi swastika flags have been flown from a communications tower as part of an alleged racial attack.

The flags were seen on the Telstra phone tower on Bradley Street in Kyabram, north of Melbourne, on Sunday.

The words #COVID-19 had been written on one of the Chinese flags.

It is believed the flags were planted on the tower some time between 12am and 6am on Sunday.

The flags have since been removed. Police are investigating the incident.

Anti-Defamation Commission chairman Dr Dvir Abramovich said the act was 'disgusting'.

'It is chilling to think that in Australia in 2020 there are individuals with dangerous hatred in their hearts, walking our streets, who openly celebrate Hitler's satanic ideology,' he said.

'Anyone who loves this country and its core values will be outraged by this evil and warped act.

'There is no perfect cure to this disease of racism, but a good step is to send the unmistakable message that Nazism has no place in Australia.'

The Tunisian official helping to rescue Jewish homes

“This has taken me years.” the assistant to the Chief Rabbi of Tunisia says, pushing a bundle of documents across his cluttered desk. “But finally the family has legal ownership of what is rightfully theirs.”

Moché Uzan has just established property rights for a family of Tunisian Jews who abandoned their home when they fled the country in the mid-1960s. This is his most recent case from a personal project to restore the property of Jews who hurriedly left Tunisia at various difficult times over the last century. Many left with nothing to start their lives again.

Alongside his main role as assistant to Rabbi Haim Bittan, this project has been taking up more and more of Mr Uzan’s spare time. The work can be laborious, painstaking, and sometimes fruitless.

“I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone as a career path,” he smiles wryly. He earns a small fee for his time but only if he successfully manages to prove ownership for the families abroad.

“One case can mean years of effort — with sometimes nothing to show for it at the end.”

But when all his research and evidence-gathering comes to fruition, it can be very rewarding.

Israel Sells Record $25 Billion in Bonds as Investors Show Confidence in Economy

To cover the rising costs of the coronavirus pandemic, and a near total economic shutdown, Israel’s treasury sold a whopping $25 billion in long-term bonds. The sales, which took place as the world grapples with economic uncertainty, represent an indication of confidence by investors in the nation’s economy and future, experts said.

Israel priced the three-part dollar transaction with maturities of 10, 30 and 100 years, which was the first time the country offered 100-year or century bonds. Additionally, while the Israeli government initially only aimed to sell $5 billion in bonds, it instead attracted more than $25 billion with 400 investors from 40 different countries taking part in the offering.

Israel’s Accountant General Rony Hizkiyahu, the man responsible for the offering, said “the largest-ever bond issue in the history of the state demonstrated the confidence among large and quality investors worldwide in the strength of Israel’s economy, especially as the country copes with the coronavirus crisis.”

The reason for this sale was due to Israel’s need to fund a substantial stimulus package announced last week by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He said that his government plans to assist individuals and small businesses with a NIS 80 billion ($22 billion) package to help the economy weather the global pandemic.

During a video conference arranged by the Israel Democracy Institute, former governor of the Central Bank of Israel Karnit Flug commended the bonds offer, and told JNS that as the world is entering into recession “it was a very important move to go ahead, not wait and issue bonds.”

“We saw a very successful issuance of bonds by the Ministry of Finance,” she said. “The issuance of 100-year bonds is also a statement of confidence in the Israeli economy.”

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