04/27 Links Pt2: Under lockdown, Israel braces for particularly somber Memorial Day; Yisrael Medad: On the Anti-Zionist Crusades’ Crusade ~ EoZ

From Ian:

Benny Gantz: An Unusually Painful Memorial Day

As of Monday, Israel has a list of 23,816 fallen.

Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism is the most personal of all national days. In tens of thousands of Israeli homes, families spend time with the memories of their loved ones, and Israel Defense Forces soldiers and commanders, past and present, salute their brothers who fell in battle.

I served the State of Israel for 38 years; I lost comrades in arms both at my side and under my command, and what pains me most is that I will never be able to comfort their families.

On Memorial Day, we go back to the foundations of our existence, to the Zionism in the name of which we established the country and for the sake of which many were killed in the War of Independence and after it.

When we remember the nation’s first dead, we realize what would have happened if there hadn’t been a Jewish state — if there hadn’t been a fairly small group of pioneers who fought for our right to be here only a few years after the horrors of the Holocaust.

The State of Israel’s existence is ensured through its strength, and through our willingness to fight. On the battlefield, in the technological and logistics divisions, at the front and the home front, IDF soldiers and the other branches of the security apparatus protect Israel and give their blood so we can have a Jewish, democratic state. If we are not stronger than our enemies, we will not survive.

On Memorial Day, we sanctify the resilience of Israeli society, which continues to send its sons to the front. If we do not look out for one another, or cannot live with each other, we won’t be strong enough to survive. When I decided to enter politics, I called the party I led “Israel Resilience.” Alongside our tanks and aircraft, Memorial Day is a reminder that our internal resilience is measured in our education, our defense of democracy, our tolerance of others, and our love for our homeland.

Under lockdown, Israel braces for particularly somber Memorial Day

Defense Minister Naftali Bennett urged families to respect the curfew despite the additional anguish it inflicted on them, saying that imposing this radical measure on Memorial Day was not a decision made lightly but was nonetheless essential to fight the pandemic.

The police said it would not forcibly prevent bereaved families from visiting the graves of their loved ones. Seeking to spare the families any additional distress the government later decided to order municipalities to shutter all military plots as of 4 p.m. Monday to avoid potential public gatherings.

The traditional military honor guards will be placed outside Israel's 52 military cemeteries and at all major monuments, as is customary.

The state ceremony marking the onset of Memorial Day will be held at the Western Wall Plaza in Jerusalem without an audience. The ceremony, which will begin with a one-minute siren, will be televised on Israel's three news channels and livestreamed on the IDF's social media platforms.

A second, two-minute siren will sound nationwide at 11 a.m. on Tuesday. Immediately after the sire, IAF jets will fly over the National Hall for Israel's Fallen, featuring a special, missing formation.

The flyover will be followed by the state ceremony at the Mount Herzl Military Cemetery, which will also be televised.

The state ceremony honoring victims of terror will be held on Mount Herzl at 1 p.m. Tuesday.

Israel's fallen from 1860 to this week numbers 23,816, data released by the IDF ahead of Memorial Day said.

Forty-two deaths were added to Israel's list of fallen soldiers between 2019's Memorial Day and the current one, with another 33 disabled persons dying as a result of injuries sustained while in services.

Military personnel will light candles for all the fallen at the National Hall.

The lockdown will extend to Independence Day, marked this week between Tuesday evening and Wednesday night.

NGO Monitor: The 2020 Israel “Alternative Memorial Day Service”: NGO Partners and Government Sponsors

On April 27, the Israeli non-governmental organizations (NGOs) Parents Circle Families Forum and Combatants for Peace will host their 15th annual “Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day Ceremony.” The event is marketed as a “joint ceremony” that “seeks to sow the seeds of hope among the two sides, and to bring to an end wars that have taken the lives of our cherished loved ones.” “Partners” of the event include Machsom Watch, Rabbis for Human Rights, Standing Together, Other Voice, and the Hadash political party.

“Co-sponsors” include numerous Israeli and American NGOs, including IfNotNow, Churches for Middle East Peace, New Israel Fund, J Street, Alliance for Middle East Peace, T’ruah, AGIAMONDO (former AGEH, Germany) and Civil Peace Service (ZFD, a consortium of German government-funded NGOs), as well as individual churches and synagogues. No Palestinian NGOs appear to be participating in and/or sponsoring the event.

Contrary to the image presented by the organizers, the event represents a narrow, one-sided part of Israeli civil society, and promotes a Palestinian narrative that draws an immoral equivalence between terror victims and terrorists. Many bereaved families in Israel have spoken out against the NGO sponsors and their focus on exclusive Israeli “guilt,” rejection of the legitimacy of Israeli narratives, and the political messages that are transmitted, explicitly and implicitly. While the sponsors claim to be advancing peace, there is no evidence for their claim.

This year, in contrast to previous ceremonies, there has been no public acknowledgement of foreign government funding for the event, including from Germany (see below). Despite having more than 30 “co-sponsors,” many of which are funded by European governments (see below), Parents Circle launched a crowdfunding campaign that has raised more than NIS 140,000 (as of April 26). It is unclear why these funds are needed given the online format of this year’s event.

As a friend of @URJorg, I am saddened you don’t promote the official Yom HaZikaron ceremony with the President of Israel in our commonly cherished Kotel instead of sponsoring an alternative event with political overtones the same time. This is time for unity, not sectarianism. https://t.co/kDjRzVFzxO
— Dani Dayan (@AmbDaniDayan) April 26, 2020

On Its 72nd Birthday, Israel Is Home to Nine Million People, Almost Seven Million Jews

Israel’s population is now more than nine million people, with almost seven million of them Jews, Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics revealed on Sunday.

The CBS’s raft of statistics, which it annually publishes just before Israel’s Independence Day, showed that Israel at 72 is home to 9,190,000 people.

Of these, 6,806,000 are Jews (74%), 1,930,000 (21%) are Arabs and Druze, and the reminder belong to other communities and religions.

Since last Independence Day, Israel’s population has increased by 171,000 (1.9%). 180,000 babies were born and 32,000 people immigrated to the country. 44,000 Israelis died over the past year.

The statistics showed that Israel is home to 45% of the world’s Jews. 78% of Israeli Jews are native-born.

From a historical perspective, Israel’s population has skyrocketed: In 1948, the country was home to 806,000 people. Since then, 3.3 million people have immigrated to the Jewish state – 44% since 1990.

The CBS also issued projections for the future: By 2030, the Israeli population will be 11.1 million and 13.2 million by 2040.

On Israel’s 100th birthday in 2048, there will be 15.2 million people living in the country.

Video saluting Israel’s Arab medical professionals during crisis goes viral

A video lauding Arab doctors and nurses as heroes of the coronavirus crisis has gone viral in Israel, and its creators are hoping it will help bring about some change in the country’s politics.

More 1.5 million Israelis — representing a sixth of the population — have watched the 55-second video that shows Arabs from around the country at work, in scrubs. “Now they’re called heroes and we’re all applauding them,” says the text.

But the creators of the video set out to challenge the nation as well as express its gratitude. “We wanted to say that if you trust an Arab person with your life in the hospital, you should be prepared to trust them to be part of your government,” Shir Nosatzki, the activist behind the clip, told The Times of Israel.

She said that the COVID-19 pandemic has provided a “once in a lifetime opportunity” to get Jewish Israelis to open up to the idea of Arabs as political partners. “There was never a situation when so many Jewish lives were in the hands of Arabs,” she commented, noting that Arabs are disproportionately represented in medical professions.

The video ends by telling viewers: “Tens of thousands of Arab citizens of Israel are full partners in the war against the coronavirus. They are also an inseparable part of the State of Israel.”

The closing slogan is: “Partners in fate; partners in government.”

Marking the 70th anniversary of UK–Israeli diplomatic relations

Anniversaries are a good time to reflect, to look back on how events have shaped us and dwell on happy memories. They are also a time to look to the future, set goals and make plans for the future. It is with that sense of optimism, this week, that we mark the 70th anniversary of the UK opening its embassy in Tel Aviv, beginning the UK’s diplomatic relations with Israel.

Over those 70 years we have seen engagements between Her Majesty the Queen and Israeli Presidents Haim Herzog, Ezer Weizman and Shimon Peres. In 2018, HRH Prince William visited Israel and met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Reuven Rivlin, Holocaust survivors, activists and even carved out some time to meet Israeli Eurovision sensation Netta.
The Prime Minister was pleased to host Netanyahu at Downing Street last year, while earlier this year, HRH The Prince of Wales visited Israel to speak at a Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial ceremony and joined world leaders in Jerusalem to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

I know what an amazing place Israel is to visit, having had the chance to do so shortly after becoming an MP in 2015. A country with antiquity and modernity side by side, things that seem familiar to my British eyes and things which are fascinating and unique. A country proud of its modern science and technology sectors and also home to some of the most holy places in the world.

I had hoped that my work as minister responsible for the Middle East and North Africa might give me the chance to go back to a fantastic fish restaurant on the waterfront at Jaffa, listen to the call to evening prayer from the mosque while watching the sun set over the Mediterranean Sea. Unfortunately COVID-19 means that I, like people in Tel Aviv, will have to wait before dining there again.

But even in these challenging times, this anniversary week gives us both cause for optimism. The UK and Israel are working side by side in the fight against coronavirus, with our top health and scientific advisers sharing information and exchanging valuable insights into how to manage and ultimately beat the pandemic. Our respective world-class hospitals and laboratories are working together to support the development of antibody treatments for patients and discussing ground-breaking innovations, from tracing apps to potential vaccines.

Yisrael Medad: On the Anti-Zionist Crusades’ Crusade

Reading Emma Kellman’s 2014 paper, Politicized Historiography and the Zionist- Crusader Analogy, one may assume, mistakenly, that the attempt of Arab propagandists and their Jewish supporters to apply an anology, that Zionism is like the Crusades and will be ended as a foreign colonialist phenomenon, are from the post-1967 period and relate only to the territories Israel assumed administration over as a result of the Six Days War.

It is not that she doesn’t provide evidence otherwise but you might miss the brief mentions.

So here are three.

In his book, The Origins of Israeli Mythology: Neither Canaanites Nor Crusaders, David Ohana notes two pre-state sources for the Arab comparison of Zionism with the fate of the Crusaders.

The first is from the introduction of Said Ali el-Hariri`s Arabic “El-Ahbar el-Sniyeh Pi el-Harub el-Tzliviyeh” (The Cautionary Tale of the Crusader Wars), Cairo 1899, p. 6 when he observes that the aggressiveness of the European rulers toward the Ottoman rulers

“bears an amazing resemblance to the actions of the crusaders in the past.”

A second is just prior to the 1948 War of Independence, in a book published in Damascus, Vadia Talhok, “Al-Tslivia al-Jedira Pi Falestin” (The New Crusaders in Palestine), Damascus 1948 which contains a comparison of the Christian colonialism of the Middle Ages with the Anglo-French and Zionist colonialism. His conclusion is that

“we shall cleanse Palestine of the star of David just as we cleansed it of the crusades.”

Eli Kavon notes a third instance:
In September 1947, Jewish officials pleaded with the leaders of the Arab League to make peace with the emerging State of Israel. The League rebuffed the offer, claiming the Arabs would eject the Jews of Palestine as the Muslims had thrown the Crusaders out of the Middle East centuries before.

JCPA: Stopping the Viral Epidemic of Anti-Semitism in the United States

Sign the Covenant of Tolerance

Before the National Democratic and Republican Conventions, which could be discordant and divisive, a document should be drafted by party leaders and circulated among all national, state, and local candidates pledging anew that Jewish Americans must be able to live their lives free of fear, threats, and discrimination. President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden should be the first to sign.

Jews must not fear attacks for wearing identifiable headgear or jewelry in public. College students must be able to express their Jewish identity or pro-Israel opinions without harassment. Never again should Jewish congregations smuggle and hide away their Torah scrolls for fear of firebombs, as was done in Charlottesville. Anti-Semitic actions must be punished to the full extent of the law.

The drafters of such a Covenant of Tolerance should rely on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s “Working Definition of Anti-Semitism,” which has been adopted by international organizations, member countries, and the U.S. State Department.12 The IHRA is the “only intergovernmental organization mandated to focus solely on Holocaust-related issues, so with evidence that the scourge of anti-Semitism is once again on the rise, we resolved to take a leading role in combatting it.”

According to the IHRA definition, “Manifestations [of anti-Semitism] might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic.”

IHRA presents a list of actions it considers anti-Semitic, including “accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.”

The return of populist anti-Semitism

The Internet has also provided an unprecedented opportunity to spread anti-Semitic beliefs among children and teenagers. TikTok, a video-sharing platform owned by a Chinese Internet company with the full approval of the ruling Communist Party, has become a swamp of anti-Semitic content. Much of the hatred takes the form of humor – jokes about the Holocaust, cartoons featuring Jews with crudely lengthened noses, memes like "Sneaky Jew" and "Mega Jew."

What is most concerning is the above is available on a platform described by Vox magazine as the "defining social media app of Generation Z, not only in the US but around the world in places like India and Europe." Unlike Zoom, which is an American concern, TikTok –whose ties to China's national security establishment are currently being investigated by the US Congress – has far less of an incentive to prevent racists, anti-Semites, and sundry other bigots from using its platform to promote hatred not in totalitarian China, but in democratic societies.

The challenge going forward is daunting. Countering populist anti-Semitism is not just a matter of education, it also touches on internet regulation, global restrictions on hate speech, national security measures, and the prospect of tougher legal sanctions against both individual extremists and the platforms that host them. While those issues are debated in all their complexity, the stream of propaganda will continue, finding new arteries when old ones are suddenly cut off.

In that regard, the Tel Aviv University report on anti-Semitism in 2019 made the important observation that there is a "growing discrepancy between on-the-ground reality and governmental efforts." As anti-Semitism has escalated during the last 20 years, a correspondingly modest governmental infrastructure has evolved in tandem. For example, both the US State Department and the European Union have appointed senior officials to deal with anti-Semitism, while the German government has appointed a commissioner at the federal level, as well as local commissioners in nearly all of the German states. All these appointments are welcome and have made a real difference when it comes to more accurate reporting of anti-Semitic incidents, in addition to the provision of anti-Semitism awareness-training.

But even then, as the Tel Aviv University report remarks, anti-Semitic incidents are still underreported, while their perpetrators go unidentified in many, if not most, cases. On the Internet and off, we have a new, arguably more formidable, mountain to climb.

Canadian Islamic Magazine Accused of Antisemitsm Speculates that “Zionist” Drone Spread Coronavirus

As reported by Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi on April 25, the Crescent International, a monthly news magazine from Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT) led by Canadian Muslim Imam Zafar Bangash, published an article about the possible origin of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) which speculated that Zionist drones carried out “germ warfare” to spread the virus. The commentary also included the antisemitic trope and conspiracy theory that U.S. President Donald Trump is “Zionist controlled.”

In a commentary written under the pen name “Abu Dharr,” the following was written:
The whole world is abuzz with news and analyses about the Corona virus (Covid-19). The mainstream media talking-heads are stuffing our heads and plugging our ears with all sorts of scenarios about how dangerous this vicious virus is – potentially devastating the lives of millions of people around the world. All of this is reminiscent of the hullabaloo that accompanied September 11, 2001 with all its panic panorama and scare tactics…

Far away from the carefully crafted replica reporting on this Corona virus, the Islamic Republic of Iran stands out for having an excessive and disproportionate number of officials contaminated by this virus…

Would it be challenging common sense to speculate that a very small drone, flying under the radar, and remotely controlled by technicians in Zionist, American, or Arabian [Saudi Arabia] military bases, hovers over the residence or parliament or any other meeting place of officials of the Islamic Republic, and then releases a type of Corona virus that trickles down into the target area where the individual(s) is and he then unknowingly becomes a victim of the virus? The drone then flies back or self-destructs and no one has proof of anything. Is this type of germ warfare disallowed by Mossad [Israel’s intelligence agency], the CIA [US’s intelligence agency], or MI6 [UK’s intelligence agency]? Of course not. This is their line of work…

Verily, he [al-shaytan] [Satan] and his corresponding personas are lying in wait for you where you cannot perceive them. [Quran, Chapter] Al-An‘am, [verse] 27″

The article also stated that: “The majority of US military personnel, be they enlistees or officers, are sick and tired of indulging in senseless violence, idiotic wars, and crazy crusades around the world. The Zionist controlled president in the White House and his advisers know this very well.”

According to B’nai Brith Canada: “Crescent International: Newsmagazine of the Islamic Movement has carried articles falsely blaming “Zionists” for the March 2019 massacre at two mosques in New Zealand, alleging that the 6-million figure of Jewish Holocaust victims is “exaggerated,” and predicting that “Muslims will deal the deathblow to Yahud,” the Arabic term for Jews.”

This is who you relied on for your story, @IrishTimes https://t.co/zlOPYevSVQ cc: @HonestReporting
— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) April 27, 2020

Haaretz’s Gideon Levy Offers Life Support to Expired Tantura ‘Massacre’ Fallacy

In advance of Israel’s Memorial Day, which starts tonight and continues tomorrow, Haaretz yesterday published an Op-Ed by Gideon Levy about combat soldier Gideon Bachrach, the son of family friends who fell in battle at an Arab fishing village called Tantura during the 1948 war (“Why Didn’t You Tell Us About the Palestinian Village in Tantura?”). Levy, who is named after the fallen Gideon Bachrach, wrote:

According to historian Benny Morris in his book on the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem in 1947-49, the [pre-state paramilitary organization] Haganah decided in advance to expel the inhabitants of Tantura. According to one contentious version there was a massacre there.

The prevaricating language, “contentious version,” lends a hand of legitimacy to the claim in which the Haganah allegedly engaged in a war crime: the massacre of hundreds of unarmed Arabs, not involved in hostilities, who were lined up against a wall and shot to death. (The Hebrew article refers to a “controversial version.”)

But the Tantura “massacre” allegation, which originated in a University of Haifa Master’s thesis submitted by student Teddy Katz, is not merely “contentious.” Rather, it was thoroughly debunked after veterans of the Alexandroni Brigade who took part in the battle, completely denied the allegations and sued Katz for slander, prompting a thorough examination of the chain of lies, fabrications and distortions of testimonies orchestrated to smear the soldiers as war criminals.

CAMERA’s Ricki Hollander previously wrote, the soldiers
maintained that the battle for Tantura was a strategic one, an attempt to stop the maritime smuggling of arms and food and to prevent the Haifa-Tel Aviv road from being cut off; and that throughout the fight for survival in a bloody war launched by the Arabs, they had maintained the strictest ethical standards. While the battle for Tantura was difficult – 14 members of the IDF battalion and about 40 Arabs were killed in street fighting – the veterans insisted Katz had lied about a massacre.

BBC News illustrates a report about Israel with an irrelevant image

On April 23rd a report by BBC Technology was published on the BBC News website’s ‘Middle East’ page under the headline “Coronavirus: Israel halts police phone tracking over privacy concerns”.

Readers find a reasonable account of the story:
“The use by Israel’s police of mobile-phone location data to enforce quarantine has been halted because of privacy concerns.

The government had approved the use of such data for a limited time, to make sure those ordered to self-isolate were doing so.

But now an oversight group in Israel’s parliament blocked an attempt to extend the emergency measures past this week.”

However the image chosen to illustrate the article has nothing whatsoever to do with the Foreign Affairs and Defence committee’s decision not to move forward with the proposed legislation.

Captioned “Security forces detain Palestinian workers allegedly breaking the lockdown rules”, the image is credited to EPA. The photograph appears on the EPA website along with several others taken at the same scene.

However the original caption reveals that the photo was taken in Hebron and the security forces are Palestinian.

How can @guardian possibly claim @netanyahu, by virtue of being "authoritarian," is one of the worst coronavirus crisis leaders? The results and low mortality rate in Israel would suggest otherwise whether one likes the Israeli PM or not. Bizarre. https://t.co/mEkzIfr0rz pic.twitter.com/nOkVbqZYmU
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) April 27, 2020

NBC Corrects Inflated Figure For Suspected Infections in Bnei Brak

CAMERA’s BBC Watch prompted followingcorrection April 9 after the BBC reported that a senior health official said nearly 40 percent of Bnei Brak’s population was infected:

Correction 9 April 2020: This article has been amended to include an assertion that the claim by the Maccabi health service official about the likely infection rate in Bnei Brak was based on an erroneous calculation.

In addition, Times of Israel also amended itsarticlewhich had initially only reported Saar’s initial statement without any qualification that his colleagues who actually came up with the number then retracted it. Moreover, ToI then published afollow up articlein which a senior Maccabi official maintained that Saar had been misquoted and that the HMO has “no idea” what percentage of Bnei Brak is infected.
Whether Saar was misquoted or the HMO miscalculated, it’s clear that Maccabi, the purported source for the claim that one-third of the city’s total population was believed to carry the infection, has entirely disavowed the figure.
In response to communication from CAMERA, NBC promptly and commendably amended the article, which currently states that health experts feared that “thousands” of people may be infected in Bnei Brak. Moreover, the following correction is appended to the bottom of the article:

CORRECTION (April 26, 2020, 2 p.m. ET): An earlier version of this article included an out-of-date estimate from health officials on the proportion of Bnei Brak residents infected with the coronavirus. Health officials originally said that as much as a third of the population was probably infected; by the time of the article’s publication, that estimate had been lowered to one-tenth of that amount. The earlier estimate has been removed from the article.

Other media outlets, including The Los Angeles Times and The Jerusalem Post, have yet to correct the identical error.

US hate group place antisemitic fliers on homes and cars in Montana

Two fliers with the antisemitic slogans were found placed in front of homes and on cars last week in the city of Livingston, Montana, according to a report from the Jewish Journal.

One of the fliers found in the city had written on it the slogan "With Jews You Lose", followed by a declining line graph that represents the "value of a $1 federal reserve note in 1913 dollars," according to the report.

The same flier also lists the website of The Brother Nathanael Foundation run by Nathanael Kapner, a notorious antisemitic propagandist who also runs the “RealJewNews” website.

Another flier features a photo late John F. Kennedy, and includes an antisemitic quote falsely attributed to him and which references Israel, the Federal Reserve and kicking Zionists out of the US.

The report also notes that at least one of the residents who saw the flier was Jewish. Livingston has a population of approximately 7,000, with a few dozen Jewish residents.

The fliers were left despite restrictions and lockdown orders in Montana due to the coronavirus pandemic.

MEMRI: French-Tunisian Liberal Imam Hassen Chalghoumi On Holocaust Remembrance Day: “We Remember”

For several years, French-Tunisian cleric Hassan Chalghoumi, a mosque imam in the town of Drancy near Paris,[1] has attended memorials on Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day, as well as events promoting friendship with the Jewish community and interfaith dialogue.[2] This year, since public Holocaust Day events have been cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic, Chalghoumi marked Holocaust Day with a message on his Facebook account, accompanied by several images. One of them shows him holding up a handwritten sign reading "We remember" in English and Arabic. Another picture shows him at the entrance of the Auschwitz extermination camp.

Chalghoumi's Facebook page, from April 21, 2020, said:[3] "The whole world remembers the six million who were killed in the Holocaust just because they were Jews. This crime against humanity must never be forgotten. On behalf of the Conference of Imams in France,[4] I pray that the souls of these men, women and children who were killed, burned and gassed by the Nazi regime may rest in peace." The message was followed by the hashtags #Neverforget and #weremember.

The picture of Imam Chalghoumi holding the sign in English and Arabic was taken in 2018, when he attended a Holocaust commemoration ceremony at the European parliament as part of the World Jewish Congress' "We Remember" campaign. After this event he posted on Facebook "I am joining the #weremember campaign to honor the memory of the 6 million Jews [killed] in the Holocaust. I, Imam Chalghoumi, president of the France's Conference of Imams, was honored to take part in the Holocaust remembrance ceremony today at the European Parliament. This day reminds us how far human bullshit [sic] in the name of an ideology of hate and extremism can go. It also reminds us of our role and struggle against religious hatred and intolerance. [Let's] all [stand] together against the antisemitism. #Neveragain." [5]

StandWithUs: The Jewish Judge Who Stood Up to the Third Reich | Cary Lerman, Partner, Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP

The webinar discusses a little-known case from 1935, when a low-level magistrate judge in New York, an immigrant from Russia, dared to confront the Nazi regime in Germany. Six members of a politically active seamen’s union stole aboard a luxury German cruise ship, the SS Bremen, and tore down a swastika flag. They were arrested. Judge Louis Brodsky presided over the defendants’ preliminary hearing, and his judgment and opinion sparked a diplomatic crisis between the United States and the Third Reich. Despite apologies by the U.S. State Department and German efforts to get him reprimanded, Judge Brodsky would not back down, affirming to the world that every person in our nation has a right to speak out for freedom and truth. The courage of this first-generation American is a reminder for all of us of the power of the individual to stand against tyranny and the essential role the First Amendment plays in sustaining our liberty.

Nvidia completes acquisition of Israel’s Mellanox for $7 billion

US gaming and computer graphics giant Nvidia Corp. on Monday announced the completion of its acquisition of Israel’s Mellanox Technologies, Ltd. for a total of $7 billion.

The acquisition, initially announced on March 11, 2019, “unites two of the world’s leading companies in high performance and data center computing. Combining NVIDIA’s leading computing expertise with Mellanox’s high-performance networking technology,” Nvidia said in a statement. The move will enable customers to achieve higher performance, greater utilization of computing resources and lower operating costs.

“The expanding use of AI and data science is reshaping computing and data center architectures,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, in the statement. “With Mellanox, the new Nvidia has end-to-end technologies from AI computing to networking, full-stack offerings from processors to software, and significant scale to advance next-generation data centers. Our combined expertise, supported by a rich ecosystem of partners, will meet the challenge of surging global demand for consumer internet services, and the application of AI and accelerated data science from cloud to edge to robotics.”

Mellanox, with headquarters in Yokne’am and Sunnyvale, California, is a maker of high-speed servers and storage switching solutions that allow massive amounts of data to move within and between computers. The products developed by the firm, a pioneer in InfiniBand and Ethernet technologies, are used in supercomputers globally. The firm will continue to operate as a separate entity within Nvidia, Huang said in March last year.

Eyal Waldman, founder and CEO of Mellanox, said in the statement released on Monday that “this is a powerful, complementary combination of cultures, technology and ambitions.”

“As Mellanox steps into the next exciting phase of its journey, we will continue to offer cutting-edge solutions and innovative products to our customers and partners,” he added.

Israel’s Elbit Systems Gets $103 Million Electronic Warfare Contract

Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems said on Sunday it won a contract worth about $103 million to supply electronic warfare (EW) suites for an air force of an Asian country.

The contract will be carried out over three years and includes long-term integrated logistic support. Elbit did not name the Asian country.

Under the contract, Elbit Systems will fit the customer’s helicopters with complete EW suites, including countermeasure systems.

“Demand for combat-proven EW systems is getting stronger as the electromagnetic spectrum becomes increasingly contested and the threat to aircraft gets more acute,” said Edgar Maimon, general manager of Elbit Systems EW.

Israel is aggressively upgrading highways and rail lines during the crisis, as people are isolated at home. For example, a subway extension in Tel Aviv requires a 10 day street closure instead of 5 weeks. https://t.co/rSkA0WcSPC pic.twitter.com/YzAw2l76Vs
— Avi Kaner (@AviKaner) April 25, 2020

So sad! #HenriKichka, one of #Belgium's last Holocaust survivors, has passed away, aged 94.

He survived Auschwitz & Buchenwald, but the dreaded #Coronavirus took him!

At least Henri outlived the Nazis & created a beautiful, large, Jewish family (incl. 14 great-grandchildren)! pic.twitter.com/eQYjRdUTCi
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) April 26, 2020

What a deeply moving and powerful image of @IDF soldiers gathered at #Israel's Mt. Herzl national cemetery, on eve of #YomHazikaron, saluting all those who made the ultimate sacrifice for the Jewish state. 🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱

[Photo captured by @israelphoto for @Jerusalem_Post] pic.twitter.com/dJ71LUQ2Tf
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) April 27, 2020

'Memories of Those We Lost.'

I'm not crying. You're crying! 😢

Incredibly beautiful and powerful video from @IDF, on occasion of #YomHazikaron (Israel's 'Memorial Day') today. pic.twitter.com/YQ4wxyQfwy
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) May 7, 2019

JOIN IDF’S VIRTUAL INDEPENDENCE DAY

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.