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Monday, August 31, 2020

08/31 Links Pt2: Jonathan Tobin: Why they scrawl ‘Free Palestine’ on synagogues; Melanie Phillips: The free world's craven and hypocritical fifth column

From Ian:
Jonathan Tobin: Why they scrawl ‘Free Palestine’ on synagogues
The impulse to spray paint “Free Palestine” on Jewish sites is an injustice not just because it is vandalism, but also because the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has nothing to with a synagogue—and certainly not one on in the Midwestern United States. Blaming American Jews for the grievances that some may have against Israel, regardless of the merit or lack thereof of such complaints, is also a form of anti-Semitism.

Nevertheless, the connection between the BLM movement and anti-Israel sentiment is an undeniable fact. So it is hardly surprising that when demonstrators began marching through a residential neighborhood in Kenosha chanting and threatening people in the dead of night, one participant would choose to scrawl “Free Palestine” with a can of paint in the driveway of the Beth Hillel Temple.

Should such incidents influence American Jewish attitudes towards the BLM movement or impact black-Jewish relations?

No matter what is done by BLM marchers or said in the platform promulgated by the movement to support intersectional critiques of Israel and backing for BDS, there is nothing that will shake the overall Jewish commitment to the cause of social justice and equal rights. Despite well-founded concerns about the BLM movement itself, sympathy and support for efforts to fight to save black lives and to create a more just society will always have overwhelming Jewish support.

Still, Jewish groups can and must make clear to their African-American counterparts that they will not accept a situation in which anti-Zionist agitation, which is inherently anti-Semitic and often threatening to Jews, is tolerated—let alone encouraged. Where insults and threats happen, violence often follows, as we saw last year in the spate of anti-Semitic attacks on Orthodox Jews in the Greater New York area by African-Americans.

Yet just as concerns about racism do not justify violence or attacks on property, there should also be a clear understanding that acceptance of anti-Semitic lies about Israel or its American supporters cannot be tolerated. Those who allow themselves to be so taken up by the outrage propping up the BLM movement to rationalize or excuse vandalism like “Free Palestine” must realize that this undermines that cause. It also obligates Jews and those who claim to speak for them to stand against their efforts.
Melanie Phillips: The free world's craven and hypocritical fifth column
Even now, the British government is obsessed with meeting the Palestinians' demands; even now, it is perpetuating the falsehood that Israel is not legally entitled to apply its sovereignty to the disputed territories.

The prime minister, Boris Johnson, couched his tepid welcome for the United Arab Emirates' historic decision to normalize relations with Israel as a welcome for Israel's suspension of its sovereignty plan.

Raab reportedly came to Jerusalem to try to persuade Israel to drop this plan altogether. Quite apart from their malice and shamelessness, the Brits simply haven't grasped that the issue for the region is no longer the Palestinians (as if it ever was). It's now Iran.

It is fear of Iran that fueled the UAE deal. The Gulf states understand that they need Israel and the United States to neutralize the threat of Iranian regional hegemony. And they are deeply concerned that if Joe Biden becomes president, he will become Obama mark two, reinstating the JCPOA and again paving the way for an Iranian nuclear bomb with international approval.

Clearly, this concern is shared in Jerusalem, so much so that it's prompting some to wonder whether Israel will attack Iran before November's election.

Trump's resumed sanctions have weakened the regime. The assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the strategic genius of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps' Quds Force, was a blow from which it has not recovered. There also has been a series of unexplained explosions in Iran's sensitive weapons infrastructure.

So there's never been a more promising opportunity to deliver a decisive blow against the regime, preferably by reimposing draconian sanctions. But there's also never been such a dangerous time, with rising tensions and increasing Iran-backed attacks across both the Lebanese and Gaza borders – and with this wounded regime perhaps determined, if it believes it is indeed going down, to take Israel with it.

Such a time demands a unified resolve among those trying to stop this evil. And standing up against it are the United States, Israel, and the Gulf states.

But on the other side stand the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, supporting Russia and China in shoring up a regime that has waged a 40-year war against the West, intends to wipe Israel off the map, and is getting ever closer to possessing the nuclear weapons that it thinks will enable it to do so.

Britain, France, and Germany now risk becoming a shocking fifth column in the defense of the free world.
The End of the UAE Boycott Is a Blow to BDS
The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel suffered a major blow this weekend, when the UAE revoked its 1972 decree to boycott the State of Israel. Abu Dhabi’s crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, effectively tore up the decree as part of the nascent Abraham Accord signed with Israel.

Even though Israel has powered through the Arab boycott — becoming a regional economic superpower — the UAE’s symbolic move is a message in a bottle: we are open to Israel for business. The end of the boycott effectively implies normalization of trade and commerce between the two nations. UAE citizens, in other words, may soon find “Bamba” — an Israeli snack food — in their supermarkets.

This, of course, is an affront to the traditional mandate of most Arab nations since Israel’s inception, if not before. The Khartoum Resolution of 1967 set the stage for a steadfast political and economic boycott of Israel. It was at this summit, following Israel’s shocking victory in the Six-Day War, that the Arab League declared the now infamous “Three Nos”: no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel.

The boycott unified Arab states in the region and at the United Nations. Anti-Israel resolutions intensified and became the norm. But Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt in 1979 and then with Jordan in 1994 weakened the Arab alliance — and with it, its boycott. Still, there was no love lost between Israel and its new “friends.” It was a cold peace, and trade and commerce between them was minimal.

The boycott movement re-intensified with the failure of the Oslo Accords and the onset of Palestinian terrorism against the Jewish state.

Terror failed to bring down Israel. The Palestinian leadership turned to promoting an intensive defamation and boycott campaign in an attempt to criminalize Israel, called BDS. The campaign was linked to labeling Israel an “apartheid state,” and it falsely drew parallels with apartheid-era South Africa. Across the West, students on university campuses lobbied for BDS and tried deceiving the international community by calling Israel a racist state.



An inside job: How a UK engineer helped the Irgun break into Acre prison in 1947
A major pre-state prison break operation by a Zionist militia that freed 250 inmates from a British jail has been exposed as an inside job, according to a report Sunday that cited the family members of the Jewish architect and engineer who built the prison.

According to The Guardian, the Zionist architect, Peres Etkes, handed the entire building plans of the prison in Acre to the Irgun paramilitary group, enabling the legendary 1947 storming, which is seen as a major event that weakened the British Mandate and led to the creation of Israel.

The Irgun operation at the Acre prison, built on the ruins of a 12th century crusader fortress, was well-planned. Fighters seized adjacent Turkish baths and managed to blow a hole in the wall, while others threw a grenade in another part of the prison as a diversion. At least one attacker was disguised as a British engineer.

During the operation, 16 people were killed, including 7 Irgun members. The freed prisoners were both Arab and Jewish, including 27 incarcerated members of the Irgun and the Lehi militias.

Until now, it wasn’t known what brought about the success of the highly sophisticated operation.

Etkes was a Russian-American Jew employed by the British forces, whose real mission, according to the report, was to help establish a future Jewish state.

His niece Aliza Margulis was quoted as saying the architect told her the secret in the 1950s. He told her he had shared the plans “because the prison was like a fortress, and unless they had the map, there was no way to get out.”

It was unclear from the story why the details were only being published now.

Gil Margulis, Aliza’s son and Etkes’s great-nephew, said: “I was reading the history and people keep saying, ‘How did they do it? How did it happen?’ Sometimes you need a little insider information. Well, they had a lot of insider information – they had the exact plans. They actually had the plans of the whole prison from the guy who made it.”

Gil Margulis said he has recently been researching Etkes’s life, 50 years after his death. He said he found his memoir, although it ends before the Acre prison break.
Yisrael Medad: Clarifying Herodotus on "Palestine"
Every Arab and pro-Palestinian will quote Herodotus to "prove" that the "original" name of this country called Eretz-Yisrael was "Palestine".* You can read:

The name “Palestine” first appeared in Herodotus’ 5th century BCE histories to describe the coastal area of the Levant where the Philistines lived

So the name did not start with the Romans and Herod but from a Greek text.

But let's quote Herodotus, I:105:
The Phoenicians and the Syrians of Palestine

and
Thence they went on to invade Egypt; and when they were
in Syria which is called Palestine
(ἐνθεῦτεν δὲ ἤισαν ἐπ᾽ Αἴγυπτον. καὶ ἐπείτε ἐγένοντο ἐν τῇ Παλαιστίνῃ Συρίῃ)

But that continues so:
and as they retreated, when they came to the city of Ascalon in Syria,

Is "Palestine" a separate country or a region and is it in Syria?

In III:5, we read,
Now by this way only is there a known entrance to Egypt: for from Phenicia to the borders of the city of Cadytis belongs to the Syrians who are called of Palestine, and from Cadytis, which is a city I suppose not much less than Sardis, from this city the trading stations on the sea- coast as far as the city of Ienysos belong to the king of Arabia, and then from Ienysos again the country belongs to the Syrians as far as the Serbonian lake

Obviously, the geography of then is not continguous today. That 464 BCE text filtered down to the Romans.
Harvard to Welcome Chief Palestinian Rejectionist
Erekat: Molder of Young Minds?

How can someone who has repeatedly gone on record with outright lies be trusted by Harvard to teach the truth to the “best and brightest?” Why would Harvard entrust Erekat with shaping the minds of these future leaders?

And finally, while Erekat cloaks himself as a diplomat and is treated by the media as a moderate Palestinian voice — having appeared on the BBC, CNN and even the more conservative Fox News — he is, by contrast, an extremist who said in a 2014 Al Jazeera interview that violence against Israelis is a Palestinian “right” and that he “cannot accept Israel as a Jewish state.”

Perhaps Harvard was influenced by the media’s embrace of Saeb Erekat. Accordingly, news outlets should seriously begin considering the consequences of giving Erekat a platform. At the very least, they should call him out for the litany of lies and anti-Zionism that he has disseminated.

Journalistic integrity hinges on Saeb Erekat no longer being portrayed by the media as a moderate .

Given his history of lies, rejectionism, and extremism, the Kennedy School of Government should either rescind their offer for Erekat to serve as one of its fellows for this year, or at the very least balance his ideology with another fellow representing the pro-Israel camp.

Tomorrow’s leaders should be presented with a true, fair and balanced perspective about conflicts so that they may develop their own opinions.
Associated Press profile on Al Sharpton forgets to mention the times he incited anti-Semitic riots
MSNBC’s Al Sharpton enjoys a position of power and privilege in elite society, which is really something to behold considering he helped incite anti-Semitic riots in New York City in the 1990s.

“Decades later, Sharpton still insists: No justice, no peace,” reads the headline to an especially soft-glow profile published this week by the Associated Press.

It adds, “Sharpton — once dismissed by some as a fraud, a jester — is still standing. He reaches multitudes on television and on radio. The man who helped popularize the 1980s cry, ‘No justice, no peace,’ is putting himself at the center of a new wave of activism, in a new millennium.”

Absent from the Associated Press's love letter to the cable news host is any mention of the fact that “No justice, no peace” was the same slogan that Sharpton chanted in 1991 as he incited anti-Semitic riots in New York City, where violent agitators also chanted, “Kill the Jews!”

You are not going to read about that in the Associated Press's profile.

In July 1991, then-City College of New York professor Leonard Jeffries delivered an address wherein he accused “rich Jews” of financing the slave trade and controlling Hollywood so they could “put together a system of destruction for black people.”

Sharpton, naturally, defended Jeffries’s remarks, telling critics at the time, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.”

Exactly one day after he challenged Jews to come and fight him, a Jewish motorist accidentally struck and killed a 7-year-old black child in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, sparking an anti-Semitic riot in which Jewish rabbinical scholar Yankel Rosenbaum was stabbed to death, as noted by my Washington Examiner colleague Phil Klein.

Sharpton himself led marches in the streets, where demonstrators chanted, “No justice, no peace” and “Kill the Jews!”




German Jews Condemn Far-Right Coronavirus Protest Outside Reichstag in Berlin
Germany’s Jewish community reacted with dismay over the weekend as hundreds of far-right demonstrators attempted to storm the historic building in Berlin that houses the country’s federal parliament.

As nearly 40,000 activists descended on the German capital on Saturday for a protest that decried coronavirus restrictions as a globalist plot, violence broke out at several junctures during the demonstration, with police making over 300 arrests.

Some demonstrators wore yellow Star of David symbols marked with the word “Corona” — a deliberate appropriation of the Nazi persecution of the Jews that has been widely denounced as antisemitic.

Toward the end of the day, hundreds of right-wing extremists charged onto the steps of the Reichstag, where the German parliament, the Bundestag, hold its sessions. Many brandished the discarded red, white and black flag of Imperial Germany — a symbol favored by the far right because of post-war Germany’s ban on the swastika and other Nazi symbols.

“We are dismayed and deeply concerned about yesterday’s images in front of the Reichstag building,” the Central Council of Jews in Germany declared on Twitter, in a post that included the hashtag “#Nazisraus” — “Nazis Out.”
Dozens of NY Jews protest outside UN against China’s persecution of Uighurs
Dozens of Jewish New Yorkers gather outside United Nations Headquarters for a rally in solidarity with the Muslim Uighur community being persecuted in China.

An estimated 1 million Uighurs and members of other Muslim minority groups such as Kazakhs are held in Chinese-run prison-like detention centers — many for indefinite terms — amid reports of harsh treatment and poor living conditions.

Speakers read testimony given by survivors of the Chinese detention camps and lead chants of “never again” that are repeated by the crowd.

“We’re here to say ‘wake up from your sleep,’ Congress [and] pass meaningful legislation…Each of us [must also] wake up from [our sleep], wake up from your sleep [anyone] who loves the oppressed, for we were oppressed in the land of Egypt,” says rabbinical student Hody Nemes over a megaphone.
Guardian op-ed promotes dishonest 'pinkwashing' charge against Israel
A Guardian op-ed by Mark Gevisser accused Richard Grenell, the gay former US ambassador to Germany who’s now the Trump campaign’s senior adviser on LGBT outreach, of “pink-washing“, (“How Trump’s chief pink-washer is setting back LGBT+ equality”, Aug. 28th).

The piece, in an effort to provide international context to the charge against Grennel, turns to Israel in the following paragraph:
Israel uses its pro-LGBTQ+ policies to garner support in the US and western Europe, and to promote itself as a beacon of tolerance in a hostile neighbourhood. By promoting gay rights, activists claim, Israel “pink-washes” its human rights abuse of Palestinians.

However, the pinkwashing accusation against Israel is nothing more than an ad hominem attack disguised as a counter-argument. The reason why ad hominem attacks are considered logical fallacies is because they question the motives of your opponent – which is irrelevant to the argument – in order to deflect attention away from the issue being debated.

Since pro-Palestinian activists can’t possibly refute the argument that Israel’s record on LGBT rights is dramatically more progressive than in ‘Palestine‘, they pivot instead to the putative motives of Israeli and pro-Israeli activists who boast of the country’s tolerance towards sexual minorities.

As pro-Palestinian activists rarely focus their efforts on peace, but, instead, on demonising Israel as a uniquely malevolent force in the world whilst painting Palestinian aspirations as intrinsically progressive, any information which contradicts this moral binary must be obfuscated.

The fact is that the Palestinians are among the most homophobic people in the world. As this graph illustrating a 2014 Pew poll demonstrates, only 1 per cent of Palestinians believe homosexuality is morally acceptable.
BBC reports on Corona in Gaza include context-free portrayal of blockade
None of those reports informed BBC audiences that the restrictions imposed by Israel on the entry of goods and materials to the Gaza Strip are confined to dual-use items: i.e. those which can be used for the purpose of terrorism.

The two written reports also mentioned the healthcare system:

Report 1: “An outbreak in impoverished Gaza has been greatly feared because of its weak health care system.”

Report 2: “The BBC’s Yolande Knell in Jerusalem says the outbreak has caused alarm because of Gaza’s weak healthcare system.”

However – as is more often than not the case in BBC reporting on that topic – audiences were not provided with any information on how infighting between Hamas and Fatah – along with Hamas’ prioritisation of terror over civilian welfare – has affected services such as water, power and healthcare in the Gaza Strip.

When the Covid-19 pandemic began BBC audiences were told in various reports that there were between 50 and 87 ventilators in the Gaza Strip. Yolande Knell’s statement that there are now “about 100 ventilators” in the Gaza Strip probably reflects the fact that the World Health Organisation has in recent months delivered ventilators, testing kits and additional medical equipment to the territory – unreported by BBC News – with Israel’s cooperation.


Delegitimizing Northern Kibbutz, AFP Calls It “Settlement”
Contrary to basic journalistic standards of impartiality and accuracy, and echoing radical leftist and Islamist calls to treat all Jewish presence in the Jews’ ancestral homeland as “colonialist,” “privileged” and therefore illegitimate, an AFP Arabic report mistranslated the word “kibbutz” into Mustawtana, “settlement.” The Aug. 3 article, “A company seeks to turn grasshoppers into a key means in facing global nutrition challenges,” erred:

The roots of this idea go back to Tamir’s childhood, who remembers stories about locusts completely destroying fields during the 1950s in the settlement where he grew up. [Translation by CAMERA Arabic.]

However, Dror Tamir, CEO of “Hargol,” was born and raised in Kibbutz Ma’anit, internationally recognized as within Israel, inside the ceasefire line of 1949. Moreover, even without information about the Kibbutz’s specific location, the very fact that Tamir’s birthplace was inhabited by Israeli Jews during the 1950s, as the article itself reports, is sufficient to rule it out as a “settlement,” since they were only built after 1967.

Notably, the English version of the same AFP article (entitled “Plague to protein: Israeli firm seeks to put locusts on the menu”) correctly refers to Tamir’s home community as a “kibbutz.”

To this day, the Arabic report remains in its erroneous form, even after CAMERA, and later Tamir himself, urged AFP to correct the mistranslation.
Controversy turns Seth Rogen's 'An American Pickle' sour
The movie was based on a short story by Simon Rich, and, despite its brief 90-minute running time, might have been better if it had been made into a Saturday Night Live skit.

If you watch even a few minutes of the film, which debuted on HBO earlier this month, you’ll quickly get why Rogen doubled down in Maron’s podcast on his regard for the grandparents’ take-no-guff generation – it’s the setup for the film, making Rogen’s jokes basically a bit of not particularly well disguised PR.

By the end, though, there’s simply not that much depth in An American Pickle. The time travel conceit allows Rogen to skip right over sensitive subjects such as the Holocaust, Israel, socialism and, as The New York Times’ A.O. Scott puts it, “the drama of Jewish male selfhood that preoccupied so many in the middle generations – the whole Philip Roth-Woody Allen megillah.”

Rogen has made a career of playing slacker characters, from Freaks and Geeks to Superbad and Knocked Up, so I’m not sure why I expected something more.

Still, the controversy from the podcast worked – it got me to watch Rogen’s movie. Too bad it was not much more than a sour pickle.
Outrage After Online Publication Uses Auschwitz Photo to Illustrate Story About R. Kelly Incarceration
A leading Australian Jewish group voiced outrage over the weekend after the online publication Viral Thread used an image of the Auschwitz concentration camp to illustrate a story about R&B singer R. Kelly being attacked in a Chicago jail.

The Anti-Defamation Commission wrote to Viral Thread demanding that it remove the picture immediately from its August 28th story about the rapper allegedly being assaulted by a fellow inmate at Chicago’s Metropolitan Correctional Center, where the 53-year-old “Ignition” singer is awaiting trial on sex abuse charges. The story has been shared more than 3,500 times.

In a statement, ADC Chairman Dr. Dvir Abramovich called the use of the photo a “trivialization, disrespect and abuse of the Holocaust taken to a new low.”

“This shockingly insensitive incident is a terrible insult to the memory of those who were slaughtered in that horrific killing centre and to the soldiers who gave their lives to defeat Hitler, and a slap in the face to those who survived,” he said.

A screenshot of the Viral Threat story.

“I shouldn’t have to say this, but the Metropolitan Corrections Center in Chicago is not Auschwitz, and it’s impossible to understand how anyone thought it was appropriate to use this image,” he added. “There can never be any justification for using the Holocaust to promote an entertainment story. Clearly, the people at Viral Thread need to be reminded that Auschwitz was the largest mass murder site in history and was the centerpiece of Hitler’s Final Solution where more than 1.1 million people (90 percent of them Jews) were gassed, shot, starved and died painfully during the grotesque experiments carried out by Dr. Josef Mengele.”
Suspects arrested in antisemitic vandalism of Cleveland Jewish buildings
A 20-year-old man, a 23-year-old woman and a 16-year-old from Beachwood, Ohio are facing charges for the painting of swastikas, and antisemitic images and words on several Jewish-owned businesses in University Heights near Cleveland in July, according to local news outlet cleveland.com.

Bo Briele Truitt, 23, was arrested about two weeks ago and charged with ethnic intimidation, inducing panic, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and criminal damaging in Shaker Heights Municipal Court, according to University Heights police.

Gabriel Truitt, 20, was arrested on Thursday and is facing similar charges.

A 16-year-old girl was also charged in the incident earlier this month in Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court, according to police.

"The University Heights Police Department condemns antisemitism and acts of ethnic intimidation, and we will remain diligent in our zero-tolerance efforts to prevent, investigate, and apprehend those who commit such cowardly and hateful acts," said University Heights police earlier this month.

In July, a swastika and other graffiti were spray-painted on several buildings, including a Jewish organization, in a shopping strip in a heavily Jewish Cleveland suburb.
Two haredim lightly injured in Brooklyn hit-and-run
Two Jewish men were targeted by a vehicle in a hit-and-run in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn on Sunday, according to local news sources. The two men suffered minor injuries; Shomrim and the New York Police Department are searching for the vehicle.

Video from the scene shows the black Chevrolet Camaro careening toward the two haredi men and then speeding away from the scene.

"This attempted murder in Williamsburg is a warning sign to authorities around the world. The next murder motivated by antisemitism is around the corner," said Yaakov Hagoel, vice chairman of the World Zionist Organization. "I call on governments around the world to increase the protection of Jewish institutions and the punishment for hate crimes."


Israeli House to establish first Holocaust memorial in Georgia
Pro-Israel NGO Israeli House is positioned to inaugurate the first Holocaust memorial in Georgia this September.

Israeli House announced that they intend to establish the memorial in Oni, Georgia, in cooperation with the Georgian Government and the European Association for the Preservation and Promotion of Jewish Culture and Heritage (AEPJ), who works with the Israeli House under the auspices of the Council of Europe.

Not only will it be the first Holocaust memorial in Georgia, but it will also be the first memorial to be established in a city where there is no Holocaust history. The organization noted, however, that Sergey Metreveli - a Georgian who saved Jews during the Holocaust and was named as one of the Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem - lived in Oni, and although minuscule, was the extent to which the Holocaust was evident in Georgia.

Israeli House works in hasbara - Israeli public diplomacy - educating international audiences on Israel's history and the plights of the Jewish people.
Israel’s Elbit Systems Wins US Army Contract Worth Up to $79 Million
Israeli defense company Elbit Systems said on Monday its US subsidiary won a contract to supply the US Army with gunner hand stations, commander hand stations and circuit cards for the Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle.

The contract, worth up to $79 million, will be carried out over five years. An initial purchase order of $26 million followed by a purchase order of $12 million have been issued the contract.

The gunner hand stations enable crew members to target and fire, and work in collaboration with the commander hand stations that drive the vehicles’ turret. The circuit cards provide processing and power supply to the hand station units.
Reviving old therapy, Israeli doctors unleash lung radiation against COVID-19
Doctors at Sheba Medical Center outside Tel Aviv are set to give lung radiation to coronavirus patients after the Health Ministry approved a 30-person trial, Israel’s first for the experimental therapy.

The coronavirus pandemic has left doctors worldwide struggling with hard-to-treat lung inflammations the likes of which many haven’t seen before.

Sheba doctors believe that targeted radiation on the lungs may slow inflammation there, and prevent or reduce the effects of the pneumonia that causes many coronavirus deaths. Within days, they will start radiation therapy on the first patients.

“Low-dose radiation is extremely effective in reducing the types of inflammatory cells that invade the lungs of coronavirus patients, prevent them from oxygenating the blood, and cause failure of the systems and possibly death, and I’m hopeful that this will save lives,” Zvi Symon, the director of Sheba’s Radiation Oncology Department and the doctor behind the trial, told The Times of Israel.

“These doses won’t kill the virus itself or change the viral replication rate in the body in any way, but we anticipate they will reduce the severe inflammation in the lung that it induces and it’s this inflammation that causes patients to die from inflammatory failure,” he stressed.

“We have already seen that in animal models low-dose radiation has a broad range of anti-inflammatory effects,” Symon added.
Israeli startup to use gene-editing tools to enhance cannabis seeds
CanBreed CEO and co-founder Ido Margalit at the startup's cannabis R&D site in Givat Chen (Courtesy)

Israeli startup CanBreed said it has reached a licensing agreement to use gene editing tools to provide cannabis growers with enhanced seeds for the production of medical grade cannabis.

The Givat Chen, Israel-based firm, founded in 2017 by Ido Margalit and Tal Sherman, said it has received a nonexclusive intellectual property licensing agreement to use CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology from Corteva Agriscience and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, which hold the rights to the technology.

CanBreed has developed what it says are “stable” cannabis seeds that will allow farmers to grow cannabis from seeds as opposed to cloning, as it is done now, from branches of the plant that are rooted.

“The cloning of the branches help maintain the uniformity of DNA of the weed,” but as the plant grows, the genes could be expressed differently from those of the mother plant, explained Margalit, who also serves as CEO of the startup.

Since cannabis is a medical plant, standardization and uniformity are required, and “using clones does not serve that purpose,” he said. “The only solution to that is growing cannabis from stable seeds.”
Technion develops mapping system to assist blind in navigating cities
Researchers at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology have designed a new mapping system intended assist blind pedestrians in navigating their way around busy city streets.

As opposed to the normal system already in place, which employs a network of pedestrian signals equipped with tone indicators notifying the visually impaired when the intersection is clear (accelerated tone means its safe to cross, whereas a steady tone means it's not), the Technion examined the possibility of developing software working in conjunction with the OpenStreetMap geo-database - a Wikipedia-like collaborative world map generated through volunteer edits and crowdsourced users, who can insert, edit or analyze areas they are familiar with to create the full world view.

The researchers, led by Asst. Prof. Sagi Dalyot of the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering's Transportation and Geo-Information Engineering division, published their findings in the scientific Sage journal Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science.

"While most of us take way-finding and orientation for granted, instinctively utilizing our visual channels to do so, millions of blind people around the world face challenges and obstacles when attempting to perform the most basic tasks, such as walking to the corner store or using public transportation," the study authors noted in their findings, explaining their work.

"This research aims at developing a way-finding algorithm that relies on the OpenStreetMap mapping catalog for planning accessible and safe routes specifically suited to blind pedestrians," they said.


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.

Anti-Israel meme: "Settlers deliberately running over sheep"

The Hamas-linked Palestinian Information Center "reports":

A Palestinian shepherd survived on Sunday evening when a Jewish settler rammed his car into a herd of sheep in an area near Yatta town in southern al-Khalil, south of the occupied West Bank.

The shepherd, Ayed al-Shawahin, said that a settler from the illegal settlement of Ma’on accelerated his car and tried to run him over along with his own sheep.

He added that two sheep died and at least 10 others suffered injuries in the vehicular attack.
Let's think about this for two seconds. A Jewish "settler" deliberately aiming his car at a bunch of sheep would severely damage the car - but he supposedly hates Palestinians so much that he is willing to pay the thousands of dollars of damage to his vehicle just to run over a few sheep?

It turns out this is this a popular meme that Palestinians have been making up.

The claim was made in May with a similar story of an Israeli "settler" deliberately running over sheep in a field.

I see also a claim from 2016 of a "settler" killing 25 sheep (!) with his car, a 2019 claim of killing 12 sheep and injuring 18 more, and B'Tselem parroted the claims without any verification last year. 

Not one of these claims was accompanied with photos of the dead sheep, which is remarkable since everyone has a camera on their mobile phones. 

There seems to be one exception: earlier this monthth is photo popped up on social media, also seemingly originating from the Palestinian Information Center Facebook account, with the claim that a Jew had deliberately run over these sheep. 


It looks more like a bad traffic accident, and there is no evidence in the photo that this was caused by an Israeli.  Oddly, this story did not seem to make it into any Palestinian media like the official Wafa news agency which parrots all the bizarre claims, which again makes this photo seem to be of an accident that was relabeled as a deliberate attack.


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.

Does the UAE/Israel agreement allow Jewish worship on the Temple Mount?

In Palestine reports:

Normalisation of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) could have significant impacts on the sensitive status of Al-Aqsa Mosque, a report by Israeli NGO Terrestrial Jerusalem has warned.

The report challenged the wording in reference to Al-Aqsa in a joint statement by US President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, on 13 August.

The statement, which has been condemned by Palestinians across the political spectrum, says that “all Muslims who come in peace may visit and pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque, and Jerusalem’s other holy sites should remain open for peaceful worshippers of all faiths”.

After the 1967 war, Israel and Jordan, the custodian of Al-Haram al-Sharif compound, agreed that while Jews are allowed access to the site, they are not allowed to pray there.

That status quo has withstood many challenges since.

However, Terrestrial Jerusalem, an organisation that tracks developments in Jerusalem that could impact political processes or spark violence, argues that the terminology used in the joint statement is an intentional attempt to open up the Temple Mount for Jewish prayer and ultimately change the status quo.

“It is not too late to insist that this wording be removed and that there be a renewed commitment, unambiguous in its clarity, by both Israel and the United States to the traditional interpretation of the status quo, and specifically regarding Jewish prayer on the Mount,” the report said.

Al-Aqsa, the third-holiest site in Islam, is housed in the 14-hectare Al-Haram al-Sharif compound (Noble Sanctuary), known to Jews as the Temple Mount.

The joint statement, the report said, speaks of access to “Al-Aqsa Mosque,” rather than Al-Haram al-Sharif, and while Israel defines Al-Aqsa as the structure of the mosque, Muslims define it as the entire esplanade of Al-Haram al-Sharif.

“Consequently, according to Israel (and apparently to the United States), anything on the Mount that is not the structure of the mosque is defined as ‘one of Jerusalem’s other holy sites’, and open to prayer by all and open to prayer by all – including Jews.”

The NGO might be right - but for different reasons than they say.

The quoted sentence in the joint statement by the US, UAE and Israel is " As set forth in the Vision for Peace, all Muslims who come in peace may visit and pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque, and Jerusalem’s other holy sites should remain open for peaceful worshippers of all faiths."

There is nothing in that statement that says that Muslims cannot visit and pray throughout the entire Temple Mount complex, so there is nothing that the UAE would object to. Every Friday, especially during Ramadan, the entire Temple Mount is filled with over a hundred thousand Muslim worshippers outside the Al Aqsa mosque building. No one is advocating that this should change. 

The reference to the Trump peace plan is what makes this statement interesting, though.

The Trump Vision for Peace seemingly contradicts itself, first saying that the status quo on the Temple Mount should remain but then saying that non-Muslims should be able to pray at the site:

Given this commendable record for more than half a century, as well as the extreme sensitivity regarding some of Jerusalem’s holy sites, we believe that this practice should remain, and that all of Jerusalem’s holy sites should be subject to the same governance regimes that exist today. In particular the status quo at the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif should continue uninterrupted. 

Jerusalem’s holy sites should remain open and available for peaceful worshippers and tourists of all faiths. People of every faith should be permitted to pray on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, in a manner that is fully respectful to their religion, taking into account the times of each religion’s prayers and holidays, as well as other religious factors.


Perhaps the Trump plan was not self-contradictory, because by the time it was written Jews had already been arranging ad-hoc prayers with a quorum for at least a year without incident and that could be considered part of the status quo that the Trump vision is referring to.

Terrestrial Jerusalem is unhappy that Jews are routinely praying on the Temple Mount without incident. That undermines its entire argument that allowing Jewish prayer will result in violence and riots, as well as their immoral position that Muslims threatening violence gives them veto power over Jewish rights.  

Of course, to normal people, the idea of Jews praying on their holiest site while not disrupting the prayers of any Muslims should be considered quite fair and uncontroversial, even desirable. Terrestrial Jerusalem and its founder Daniel Seidemann are saying that Jews should not have basic human rights, rights that are part of international conventions. How sick is that?

Terrestrial Jerusalem's fear-mongering and insisting that Jews should never have the right to worship in their most sacred site - and that the antisemitic Waqf should have control of the entire Mount, meaning that Jews couldn't even visit - is proof that even Jewish groups have no problem with holding antisemitic positions under the mask of "peace." 

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.

08/31 Links Pt1: Kushner: We Don't Seek to Isolate the Palestinians But We Won't Reward Bad Behavior; Netanyahu: Israel Is Holding Many More Secret Talks with Arab States on Normalizing Ties

From Ian:
Netanyahu: We have invited the UAE delegation to Israel
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday evening that Israel invited the United Arab Emirates (UAE) delegation to Israel to be "welcomed on a red carpet, as well," following the arrival of the Israeli and US delegations in Abu Dhabi.

Israel will one day be recognized and make peace with the rest of the Middle East, Netanyahu said. "There are many things I cannot tell you, but I am sure you will find out in time," Netanyahu said, suggesting that Israel is currently in talks with other Arab states.

"I felt an immense pride," Netanyahu said after seeing the Israeli flags waving when the Israeli and US delegations landed in Abu Dhabi on Monday. "This is a new age in our history."

Netanyahu further spoke on the school year, which begins on Tuesday and has been a subject of much debate due to coronavirus regulations, and stated that a final decision on the operation of the school year will be reached by the end of the day.


Israel-UAE flight lands safely in Abu Dhabi, F-35 talks to be held
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu trusts US President Donald Trump not to endanger Israel’s security, White House Special Adviser Jared Kushner said on Monday, aboard the first-ever direct El Al flight from Israel to the United Arab Emirates.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu and the president will discuss that at some point,” Kushner said, when asked about the possible sale of F-35 stealth jets to the UAE, which is controversial in Israel.

Kushner said that Trump can be trusted to maintain Israel’s qualitative military edge, but that the US also has a decades-long defense partnership with the UAE.

“I’m sure Mr. Netanyahu sees the opportunities coming from this relationship,” he added.

As for the first Israeli flight over Saudi Arabia, Kushner said the Saudis are “very gracious,” and that the flight is “a manifestation of what is possible in the Middle East.”

“We can take it as a sign,” Kushner said. “It’s an encouragement for this progress.”

Netanyahu radioed in a message to the plane while it was flying over Saudi Arabia.

Responding to questions as to which Middle Eastern countries may make peace with Israel next, Kushner chuckled, saying: “I know the people in Israel well, and when there’s an accomplishment, they say what’s next. I’m going to ask the Israeli people for just one day...let’s take a moment to celebrate.”
The Historic First Israel-UAE Flight, named the 'Peace Plane', Takes Off


Historic First Flight From Israel to UAE Lands in Abu Dhabi, Kushner Addresses Media


‘Join us’ in peace, Kushner urges region, as El Al flight brings Israelis to UAE
Stepping off the first ever direct Israeli flight to the United Arab Emirates on Monday afternoon, senior White House adviser Jared Kushner hailed the start of peace between Israel and the UAE and urged the rest of the region and the world to “join us.”

Kushner flew on an El Al plane as part of a joint US and Israeli delegation that also included US National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien and the head of Israel’s National Security Council Meir Ben-Shabbat. The flight, which saw the plane travel through Saudi Arabian airspace — another first — came in the wake of a US-brokered normalization of ties between Israel and the UAE, announced on August 13.

On the tarmac Kushner gave a short speech, thanking Mohammed bin Zayed, the UAE’s de facto ruler, as well as Saudi Arabia, for allowing the Israeli plane to fly over its airspace.

“Mohammed bin Zayed is truly leading the new Middle East,” he said. “The Middle East is filled with brilliant, industrious, tolerant and innovative people, and the future belongs to them,” he added. “I ask everyone today to join us in celebrating this peace, and to help us expand it throughout the region and the entire world.”

He quipped that officials onboard wanted the plane to fly faster so they could get to their destination sooner to celebrate the normalized ties. “While this peace is forged by its leaders it is overwhelmingly desired by its people,” he said.

Kushner slammed what he said were the few who oppose the Israel-UAE deal. “They exploit division to maintain power,” he said.

In response to a question from a reporter, Kushner said the US has done a lot to help the Palestinians reach peace, but they are not ready. “We can’t want peace more than they want peace,” he said. “When they are ready, the whole region is very excited to help lift them up and help move them forward. But they can’t be stuck in the past.”



Kushner: We Don't Seek to Isolate the Palestinians But We Won't Reward Bad Behavior
In an interview with Politico’s Playbook on Thursday, White House senior advisor Jared Kushner defended actions by the Trump administration to cut U.S. assistance to the Palestinian Authority and blamed the PA leadership for the crisis.

“Our strategy has not been to isolate the Palestinians. Our strategy has just been to not do stupid things,” Kushner said, explaining why the administration has cut off aid as the PA grapples with ongoing financial crises in the West Bank and Gaza. Kushner said he told representatives of the “Quartet” — a group comprised of the United Nations, the European Union, Russia and the United States — on Wednesday that the Palestinians are complaining about what he called “a self-made financial crisis” because they are unwilling to take the money Israel is ready to transfer from an escrow account.

Kushner also addressed the ongoing conflict between Israel and Gaza. ”The only reason why they have conflict is because they’re shooting rockets on buildings in Israel.”

“In the past, people would rush and try to help them, but we just haven’t rewarded bad behavior,” Kushner stressed. “When they came out, they started criticizing America when we moved the [U.S.] embassy [to Jerusalem], we basically said, OK, we’re not sending you money anymore.’ We’re not going to send American taxpayer money over to a country, to a people who basically insult America and take [us] just for granted. So we’ve just taken a common-sense approach. We’ve tried not to do stupid things again.”

Kushner suggested that by rebuilding trust with Israel and Gulf countries and by showing “he’s not going to be intimidated,” President Donald Trump “could actually be the first person to lead the Palestinian people to a place where they have self-determination, hope and a lot of economic opportunity” if they choose to return to the negotiation table. “They now have a proposal on the table for a Palestinian state from Israel — something they did not have [at the] beginning of this administration — and there is a map that Israel has agreed to negotiate on the basis of that has never been done before in the history of negotiations.”
Kushner visits Western Wall prior to historic flight en route to UAE
A United States delegation, led by Senior Advisor to the US President Jared Kushner, visited the Western Wall on Sunday.

Kushner was accompanied by United States National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, Assistant to the President and Special Representative for International Negotiations Avi Berkowitz, outgoing US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook in addition to other senior diplomats who were also present on the tour.

Kushner is currently leading a high level US delegation on a Middle East tour that started in Israel, and will run this week through the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and possibly Oman and Morocco.

While in Israel, the delegation traveled to the Western Wall to pray preceding their trip to the United Arab Emirates in order to consolidate the US-brokered Israel-UAE deal, and convince other countries to get on board.

The US diplomats were greeted at the Wall by the Director of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation Mordechai (Suli) Eliav. He gave the delegation a rundown on how the holy site has been operating amid the coronavirus pandemic, in addition to how the Wall serves as a representation for "maintaining the routine of prayer and visits while abiding by directives."

Netanyahu: Israel Is Holding Many More Secret Talks with Arab States on Normalizing Ties
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Jerusalem on Sunday with U.S. National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien and Senior Advisor to the President Jared Kushner. Netanyahu said, "We're all thrilled by the swift pace of normalization between Israel and the UAE. Yesterday, the Emirates officially abolished the anachronistic boycott of the Jewish state. This opens the door for what I can only call unbridled trade, tourism, investments, exchanges between the Middle East's two most advanced economies."

"For far too long, the Palestinians have had a veto on peace, not only between the Palestinians and Israel, but between Israel and the broader Arab world....They planned to sue Britain for the Balfour Declaration. So if we have to wait for the Palestinians, we would have to wait forever. Well, no longer."

"Two years ago, I visited Oman. One year ago, I visited Chad. Half a year ago, I met with the leader of Sudan....There are many more unpublicized meetings with Arab and Muslim leaders who recognize that their true interests are to normalize relations with the State of Israel."
Khaleej Times-UAE: A Good Deal for the UAE
By swiftly scrapping the 1972 Israel boycott law, the UAE has now fully formalized its peace deal with Israel. This commercially sensible step paves the way for greater partnerships that will work in the best interests of the people in these two nations. Individuals and companies based in the UAE will be able to collaborate with Israeli firms and openly trade in services and have access to fresh markets. The UAE's position as a gateway to the wider Arab world would be particularly useful to the Israelis.

The deal is monumental, far-thinking, and certain to pay dividends over the years. The UAE's quiet diplomacy sees peace in interfaith harmony and reason in dialogue. It is a nod to voices of reason that believe peace and development logically follow trade and commerce.
Moroccan Criticism of UAE Peace Deal Fades
The Arab world was strangely quiet in the wake of the United Arab Emirates' announcement of peace with Israel. The "Arab street" did not explode. Far from the region, Morocco's Prime Minister Saad Eddine El Othmani criticized the peace deal. What happened next is significant. Days later, he walked back his remarks, saying he was speaking in his personal capacity, not as a government official. This "clarification" is telling.

Othmani does not speak for Morocco on foreign policy. Under Morocco's constitution, foreign policy, diplomacy and national security are the exclusive province of the king. Many Arabs, myself included, are hoping for the day when Arabs and Israelis can peacefully prosper together through tolerance, trade, tourism and cultural exchange.


No substitute for peace with the Palestinians
The United Arab Emirates made a brave, important decision when it opted to normalize relations with Israel without waiting for us to make peace with the Palestinians. The Emirati decision this past weekend to end its boycott of Israel, which was made by acting leader of the UAE Sheikh Mohammed Ben Zayed, is especially important, and we can hope that other Arab states will do the same, whether they establish diplomatic ties with or wait.

The fact that the Arab world didn't attack the Emirates and responded with a mix of support and silence is encouraging. Apparently, they learned from bitter experience after the boycott of Egypt after Cairo signed a peace treaty with Israel 40 years ago. The two Muslim states that criticized the UAE most harshly were non-Arab countries: Iran and Turkey (which does have diplomatic relations with us).

The El Al flight that takes off today for Abu Dhabi is not some minor event, and even it's true that Israel and the Emirates have maintained business and defense ties for decades, secret relations cannot be compared to open diplomatic relations. It's day and night.

In 1994-95, after the Oslo Accords, we went to the Gulf States and North Africa and opened diplomatic missions in several countries, where Israeli representatives filled the role of ambassador. Back then, we hoped that as a result of the annual economic conferences in which Israel took part, and as negotiations with the Palestinians progressed, that soon the missions would become official embassies and we would be able to normalize with pragmatic Arab states. But that window of opportunity closed when Israel changed its policy on the Palestinian issue at the start of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's first term. What the prime minister is doing today, with help from the Trump administration, rectifies what he ended 25 years ago, and this is a good thing.

But we have to remember that the UAE deal is no substitute for peace with the Palestinians. If we don't hurry up and draw a border between Israel and a future Palestinian state, the current situation – regardless of the welcome normalization with some of the Arab world – will turn into a one-state reality in which a minority will rule over the majority and that, heaven forbid, would be the end of the Zionist dream.
Former U.S. Envoy Greenblatt: The Door to the White House Has Remained Open to the Palestinians
Former U.S. Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt told The Media Line, "Unless and until the Palestinian leadership gets its house in order, particularly between Hamas and the PA, and unless and until they are willing to negotiate realistically and in good faith, directly with Israel, and not resort to trying to get other countries and organizations such as the UN to circumvent direct negotiations with Israel, little can be done on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

"But that is a choice that the Palestinian leadership has made in the past with other peace efforts as well, to the significant detriment of the Palestinians. What the UAE-Israel deal does show is that the Arab-Israeli conflict can actually be resolved, even if only on a piecemeal basis, without resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

"The door to the White House has remained open since the Palestinians cut ties back in December 2017....If the Palestinians come back in good faith, they will be welcomed....The only entry fee is a willingness by the Palestinians to negotiate realistically and in good faith."
WAPO: Palestinians Are Not Ready to Restore Ties with Israel
When Palestinians cut off long-standing security, financial and civil ties with their Israeli counterparts in May, they pledged not to resume them until Israel gave up its plans to extend Israeli law to Jewish communities in the West Bank. But when these plans were halted as part of a diplomatic breakthrough between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Palestinian leaders condemned the UAE for normalizing relations with Israel. Weeks later, they still will not restart cooperation, rebuffing European and Arab allies that pushed them to end a policy that seemed to be hurting everyday Palestinians more than Israel.

Public coffers are being drained and civil servants are on half pay because the Palestinian Authority refuses to accept tax and customs payments from Israel. More than 25,000 babies born in the West Bank have not been registered by Israeli civil authorities, making them ineligible for passports.

The response in the Arab world was far from what Palestinian leaders wanted. Bahrain, Egypt and Oman expressed support for the UAE deal. Kuwait and other Arab states in the Persian Gulf declined to condemn it. Palestinian requests for an emergency response from the Arab League have so far produced little.
Hungary Defends Israel at EU Foreign Ministers' Summit
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto stood up for Israel at an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers on Thursday.

He wrote in a Facebook post, "The European Union must...discontinue its anti-Israeli policies. Instead of criticism based on unilateral and biased opinions, it is time to stress partnership."

"As a first and perhaps most important step, the European Union should immediately cease the financial support of NGOs that threaten the internal security of Israel, conduct anti-Israeli policies, and interfere in the internal affairs of the country."

PMW: Time for Arabs states to reconsider the Arab Peace Initiative
Since the announcement that Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are to normalize relations, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party have denounced the move. One of their central claims is that the move violates the Arab unity and support for the “Arab Peace Initiative” (API).

PLO Executive Committee Secretary, Saeb Erekat, made the point:
“The Palestinian leadership demands that the Arab League General Secretariat and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) do all that is required of them and defend the decisions of the Arab and Islamic summit conferences, and especially the Arab Peace Initiative, and not deviate from the international institutions’ resolutions regarding the Palestinian cause…”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Aug. 19, 2020]

The API was adopted by the Arab League in 2002. Sponsored by Saudi Arabia, the API was launched just one day after the Passover meal massacre in the Park Hotel in Netanya, in which 30 Israelis were murdered by a Palestinian suicide bomber.

From the outset, it was clear that the API did not truly lay out a vision for peace. Rather, it was merely a restatement of the same positions held by the Arab countries since 1948, disguised with the bait of Arab recognition for the existence of the State of Israel.

In a nutshell, the API demanded that Israel:
- Consent to unilaterally withdraw from all the remaining territories gained in the 1967 Six Day War, including the entire Gaza Strip, all of the West Bank, the Golan Heights and also withdraw from Lebanese territory allegedly still held by Israel;
- Consent to the creation of a Palestinian State with East Jerusalem as its capital;
- Agree to flood itself with millions of so-called Palestinian refugees, which the Arab states committed to not absorbing.

In return for Israel fulfilling the demands, the API suggests that the Arab countries would enter into an agreement and normalize relations with Israel.
Palestinians outraged by Israeli delegation's visit to UAE
Palestinians from across the political spectrum on Monday reacted with fury to the first official visit of an Israeli delegation to the United Arab Emirates and again accused the Gulf state of “stabbing the Palestinian people in the back.”

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said the Palestinians were “deeply pained” to see an Israeli aircraft land in the UAE.

Shtayyeh noted that the aircraft carried the name of the “colony of Kiryat Gat, which was built on the lands of the village of Faluja, where Gamal Abdel Nasser was besieged.”

Shtayyeh was apparently referring to the military confrontation between the IDF and the Egyptian army during the 1948 War of Independence. Palestinians say that Kiryat Gat was built on lands which once belonged to the villages of Faluja and Iraq al-Manshiya in southern Israel.

The Egyptian army occupied the area in May 1948, but was later defeated by the IDF in a counter-offensive operation. The Egyptian troops included a young officer, Gamal Abdel Nasser, who later became president of Egypt.

Shtayyeh said that the arrival of the Israeli aircraft in the UAE was a “clear and blatant violation of the Arab position regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict.”

The Palestinians, he said, “were hoping to see an Emirati aircraft land in the liberated city of Jerusalem, but we are living in the difficult Arab era.”

He praised some Arab states for refusing to follow suit with the UAE and normalize their relations with Israel.

“On this occasion, we salute the Arab positions rejecting free normalization with Israel,” Shtayyeh added. “The Arabs foiled the recent trip of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, despite the pressure exerted on some Arab countries.”

Shtayyeh revealed that since the beginning of this year, the Palestinian Authority did not receive any financial aid from the Arab countries. “All the American financial aid to us and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has stopped,” he said. “In addition, Israel is trying to blackmail us regarding the tax revenue funds. We will have to take a $350 million loan from the banks in order to pay half of the salaries to our employees.”
Police treating attack on Yehuda Glick as nationalistic crime
The police are treating the June 4 attack on former Likud MK Yehudah Glick when he visited the east Jerusalem house of mourning for Iyad Halak as a nationalistic crime.

Legal aid organization Honenu provided The Jerusalem Post on Monday with an Israel Police document that indicated the police believe they have reasonable grounds to treat the incident as battery with aggravating circumstances of being tied to hostility to the State of Israel.

The recognition for Glick as being a victim of a nationalistic crime can grant him financial and health compensation from the state.
In addition, one of the attackers involved has already cut a plea deal to serve five months in prison and pay NIS 4,000 in compensation to Glick, Honenu said.

“We will act to ensure that justice is done to those who caused harm,” said attorney Hayim Bleicher, who works for Honenu and is assisting Glick.

Glick said: “The most important thing is the obligation of the Israeli police to create effective deterrence so that a Jew will not be fearful of walking down the street anywhere in Israel and even more so in Jerusalem.”

Glick was severely beaten in early June when he visited the bereaved family of Halak, an unarmed autistic Palestinian man who was mistakenly shot and killed by a Border Police officer in late May.
Shin Bet confirms last week’s fatal Petah Tikva stabbing was terror attack
The Shin Bet security service on Monday confirmed that the deadly stabbing in Petah Tikva last week was a terror attack, as was initially suspected.

“In a joint investigation by the Shin Bet and Israel Police it was determined that the assailant acquired a knife and carried out the attack out of nationalist motives,” the security service said.

According to Israeli authorities, last Wednesday afternoon the suspected terrorist — Khalil Abd al-Khaliq Dweikat, 46, from the village of Rujeeb in the northern West Bank — stabbed to death Rabbi Shai Ohayon near the Segula Junction on the outskirts of the Tel Aviv suburb of Petah Tikva. Dweikat could be seen on traffic camera footage walking away from the scene on foot after the attack, and he was captured a short distance away.

Upon his arrest, officers searched the suspect and found a bloodstained knife that was apparently used in the attack, police said.

Ohayon, a 39-year-old father of four, was a member of Petah Tikva’s ultra-Orthodox community and studied full time at a religious institution known as a kollel in the nearby town of Kfar Saba, according to Haredi news outlets.

In its statement, the Shin Bet accused Dweikat of violating his work permit at the time of the attack by remaining in Israel for several days in a row when he was required to return home each night.
Israel-Gaza border resident: 'The resilience of myself and people is breaking.'


'Only Sephardi Jews have the right to live in Palestine'
Speaking with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad-affiliated Al-Quds Al-Yaum on Aug. 19, Palestinian Islamic scholar Omar Fora warned that Israel "does not endanger the Palestinian people alone."

Israel, he said, refused to open its embassy east of the Nile River because it considers all the land from the eastern bank of the Nile to the Euphrates River to be part of the biblical land of Israel.

"Therefore," said Fora, "it established its embassy west of the Nile, because it considers the land west of the Nile to be outside its territory." Fora continued by saying that "The Jewish state aspires to establish a "Greater Israel" stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates, and will eventually demand lands in Medina and other regions of the Arabian peninsula."

"Israel is not about to achieve these Zionist or biblical ambitions now," said Fora, "but Israel wants to establish 'Greater Israel.'"

"By Allah," he went on to say, "the day will come when Israel demands lands in Medina, the lands of [the Jewish tribes of] Qurayza, Nadhir, and Banu Qaynuda, as well as the lands of Khaybar."

This, he said, was the true goal of the Zionist movement.

Fora emphasized that he had no issue with Judaism, only with Zionism, but said that not all Jews would have the right to live in a Palestinian state.

"The only Jews that have a right to live with us in Palestine, under our patronage and our authority, are those who have been living in Palestine," he said. "But the Ashkenazi Jews, who came from overseas, from Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Poland, and settled in this land – they should go back to where they came from."




Lebanon on Brink of Civil War, Macron Says Ahead of Post-Blast Beirut Visit








MEMRI: Assad Regime Forced To Admit: Number Of COVID-19 Cases In Syria Higher Than Official Health Ministry Figures
In the recent weeks, Syria has seen a surge of COVID-19 cases in areas under the control of the Assad regime. According to data released by the Syrian Health Ministry, cases began to spike in July, with 478 new infections confirmed, more than the total of cases confirmed from the outbreak of the virus in the country until the beginning of that month.[1] In August the spread of the virus accelerated, and by August 25 the number of cases reached 2,365, and the number of deaths stood at 95. [2]

However, Syrian opposition elements have been claiming for months that the true number of cases in Syria is much higher, and that the regime is hiding the real figures and even arresting healthcare professionals who disclose accurate information about the spread of the disease.[3] Recently, in an unusual step, pro-regime elements also agreed that the figures released by the regime do not reflect the reality on the ground, due to insufficient testing for COVID-19. This claim was voiced by doctors and healthcare officials in regime-controlled areas, as well as by pro-regime journalists and media outlets. They warned that the real number of cases and deaths is several times higher than the official figure, and called on the regime to stop publishing inaccurate data. In addition, the Syrian government daily Teshreen and the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, known for supporting the Assad regime, criticized the regime's handling of the coronavirus crisis, accusing the government and its ministries of negligence and incompetence that only exacerbates the spread of the disease. The criticism eventually prompted the regime to admit that the official figures were inaccurate.

This report reviews the claims by pro-regime elements in Syria regarding the inaccuracy of the coronavirus statistics reported by the regime, and the criticism against the regime's handling of the crisis.
'Erdogan is concealing Turkey's true corona figures'
The reopening of skies and doors to foreign tourists has given many economies across the globe a much-needed shot in the arm, but one country is lagging far behind despite its seemingly reasonable morbidity rates – Turkey. According to the country's official figures, 1,491-1,549 people have contracted the coronavirus over the past three days and between 26-39 people have died. In a country with 83 million citizens, these are relatively good numbers; the rest of the world, however, doubts their veracity.

Turkey remains a "red" country from the perspective of the Israeli Health Ministry and most Western countries, primarily because of the view that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's and his health minister, Dr. Fahrettin Koca, have artificially suppressed the true figures. Now Erdogan, who has seen his popularity plummet over the past two years, is being assailed not only by his political opponents but by his old ally, former prime minister and foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu.

"The most egregious thing taking place in Turkey today is the concealment of the morbidity rates," Davutoğlu has repeatedly told members of his "Gelecek Partisi" (the Future Party).

This criticism is extremely significant because although Davutoğlu is not the first to criticize Erdogan for his handling of the corona pandemic, it is the first time such criticism has "come from home." Yes, Davutoğlu is no longer a member of Erdogan's Justice and Development party, having created a party of his own, but he is a political leader who espouses Neo-Ottomanism, similar to and even more extreme than Erdogan on this matter.

Moreover, Davutoğlu's status as an academic in Turkey, as a professor of political science and international relations, is also renowned. In this context, the experienced politician is capitalizing on his status. "Many professors, academics, and medical experts complain they have no access to information sources," he lambasted his former partner, Erdogan. "The members of the scientific committee are three-five ministers, the president's relatives and health ministry officials who are under no external oversight."
Iran and Turkey sing from the same sheet of music against Israel-UAE rapprochement
Seen in this light, the peace agreement reads as a failure of Iran’s intimidation policy. Nevertheless, the regime is doubling down. Its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has warned of “a dangerous future for… the residents of the glass palace,” alluding to Emirati security as fragile, while a hardline clerical association cautioned that the UAE would bear the “cost” of this move. Tehran has not been afraid to back these words with deeds, and recently detained a UAE vessel.

For Ankara’s part, their foreign ministry issued a statement condemning the deal, using a tone reminiscent of the Islamic Republic. Ankara accused the UAE of attempting “to present its betrayal to the Palestinian cause as an act of altruism” and vowed, “The history and the conscience of the people in the region will never forget or forgive this hypocritical act.” Three days later Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced his intention of “suspending diplomatic ties with the Abu Dhabi leadership or pulling back our ambassador.”

Although the Palestinian cause was central to the Turkish government’s rhetoric, Ankara’s reaction to the UAE has more to do with Erdogan’s deepening rivalry with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MBZ), who has emerged as the leader of the anti-Muslim Brotherhood camp in the region. A columnist in Turkey’s pro-government Daily Sabah claimed that Abu Dhabi’s “decision to normalize relations with Israel is not directed at Iran” but stems from the UAE’s desire “to build a concrete axis against Turkey and Qatar.”

Indeed, Erdogan, who acts as the leading patron of the Muslim Brotherhood globally, sees MBZ as the key culprit for the Brotherhood’s reversal of fortunes across the Arab world. Turkey’s Islamists believe that an MBZ-led alliance in the Gulf has been behind all calamities befalling Turkey from the failed coup attempt in 2016 and the devaluation of the Turkish currency to the armed insurgency of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Analysts have often pointed a finger to political Islam as a culprit for the lack of relations between Israel and majority Muslim states. Ironically, the respective Islamist ambitions of majority-Sunni Turkey and majority-Shiite Iran, and their growing ability to act in unison to simultaneously challenge the U.S.-led world order, traditional Arab monarchies, and Israel, has complicated that analysis.

It is true that the promise of win-win relations in business, technology, intelligence, and security continues to pull Israel and Arab states towards one another. But the push factor from Islamists in Ankara and Tehran appear to have been the magic touch with the UAE — and possibly others waiting to happen.




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Of Course Anti-Zionism is Antisemitic (American Zionism)

 

Once the exclusive domain of the far-right and far-left, the expression “anti-Zionism is not antisemitic” has crept into the mainstream. We hear it all the time on social media from athletes to politicians, from journalists to “influencers.” Most surprising is that the expression has even made its way into the vernacular of liberal, progressive Jews, going so far as to claim that not only is anti-Zionism not antisemitic, but “conflating Zionism and Judaism” is what’s really antisemitic, disregarding that Zionism is a core belief for the vast majority of Jews around the world. So, is anti-Zionism antisemitic, or isn’t it? Before we can answer that question, we need to define what antisemitic means and what anti-Zionism means, two concepts that are far more complex than they appear.

If you ask most people what antisemitic means, they would answer that it is the hatred of Jews, and they would be correct...if you were talking about a person doing the hating. A person can hate Jews. But when you are talking about an idea, hatred of Jews doesn’t make much sense. Ideas don’t hate, people hate. For example, if there was a law that Jews could not attend school, the law does not hate Jews. The law discriminates against Jews. So, when we talk about ideas, and anti-Zionism is an idea, antisemitic means “discriminatory against Jews.”

Antisemitic – Discriminatory against Jews.

The terms Zionism and anti-Zionism are much more difficult to define. Many people who claim to be anti-Zionist struggle just to explain what Zionism is. You will hear definitions that are all over the place. Nearly all of them are wrong, and many of them are downright offensive. To understand Zionism, let’s consider the Israeli national anthem, Hatikvah or The Hope, which was inspired by a Jewish poem from the 19th century titled Tikvatenu by Naftali Herz Imber and revised by Dr. Yehuda Leib Matmon-Cohen. Hatikvah proclaims that that the two-thousand-year hope of the Jewish people is “to be a free nation in our home,” with home meaning the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people, the Land of Israel. That is the essence of Zionism. To put it more simply, it means the Jewish nation is afforded the same rights as any other similar nation of people, which includes a right to a home, just like Indians have a home, and Poles have a home and Arabs have many homes. Anti-Zionism denies that right to the Jewish nation and only the Jewish nation – to live as a free people in their nation state. Since the state of Israel already exists, it also means seeking the destruction of the nation state of the Jewish people while not seeking the destruction of any other nation state of any other people. When is the last time you heard a large section of the population lobby for the destruction of a country other than Israel – not a government but an entire country?

Anti-Zionism - denying the Jewish nation the same rights as any other similar nation of people

Even with those definitions, it can still be hard for some people to wrap their heads around how anti-Zionism is antisemitic. To better understand, let’s look at another instance where a group of people are denied a right not denied to a similar group of people – gay marriage. For a long time, the homosexual community was denied the right to marry (and in many places they still are) - a right granted to the heterosexual community. A person may oppose same sex marriage for any number of reasons, religion being the most common. The person may not hate gay people, but the idea is surely anti-gay. It’s hard to argue that not allowing gay people to marry when straight people are allowed to marry isn’t discriminatory against homosexuals. Ironically, the very same people that will argue anti-Zionism isn’t antisemitic will be the ones who shout loudest that denying same sex couples the right to marry for any reason is anti-gay.

You may be saying to yourself, “Wait a second, I hear liberal Jews all the time identify as anti-Zionist and say that anti-Zionism is not antisemitic. Gay people never opposed gay marriage.” That’s not true, actually. During the height of the gay marriage debate in the early 2010s, you could hear or read many stories of gay people who opposed gay marriage for one reason or another. Here are two examples: The Gay People against Gay Marriage and I’m Gay and I Oppose Same-Sex Marriage. It’s important to note that those in the gay community who oppose gay marriage don’t necessarily hate homosexuals (although they might), but there can be no doubt that their position on gay marriage discriminates against homosexuals and that opposition is anti-gay. In the same way, Jews who oppose Zionism and want to see the dissolution of the state of Israel don’t necessarily hate Jews (although they might), but there can be no doubt that opposing the right for Jews to have a state like all other similar nations of people is discriminatory against Jews and that position is antisemitic. The same rationale applies to all people who are anti-Zionist. The person may not hate Jews, but the idea is discriminatory against Jews and thus antisemitic (a large portion of people who identify as anti-Zionist also happen to be anti-Semites or at least hold antisemitic views which drives their anti-Zionism).

What about the argument that “conflating Zionism and Judaism” is antisemitic? First, let’s define Judaism. Judaism put simply is the religion of the Jewish people. It is not the religion of every single Jew, some Jews do not practice Judaism while others may be atheists, but rather the religion of the nation of Jews. It can also be called an ethnoreligion.

Judaism – the religion of the Jewish people.

Considering the definition of Zionism – the longing to be a free nation in the Jewish home – and Judaism – the religion of the Jewish people – it is hard to see how longing to be a free nation in the Jewish home in anyway discriminates against the religion of the Jews. It seems to be quite the opposite. In order for the Jewish people to be a free nation in their home it would imply that part of that freedom would include the ability to practice their religion openly and safely, something that has not been the case throughout Jewish history in nearly every land where they lived as a minority. Even when replacing Judaism for a Jew, an idea for a person, it is still hard to see how Jews longing to be a free nation in the Jewish home is hateful to any Jews or discriminatory against that Jew. No one is forcing them to live in that home. Is it because the home founded by Jews, made up of a majority of Jews, and who are able to live free of religious & ethnic persecution as Jews, uses the word “Jewish,” as in Jewish state, that they think discriminates against them? Is the website Christian Mingle anti-Christian? Because some Christians do not want to date other Christians does that mean the site is discriminating against them because the site uses the word Christian? Since they don’t see a need for Christian Mingle, and they themselves are Christian, does it mean the site has no right to exist? The answer to all those questions is clearly no. But would trying to shut down Christian Mingle for any of those reasons, while having no problem with JDate or BlackCupid or Muslima, be anti-Christian? Sure. So why is okay for so many people when they apply the same exact logic to Jews and Israel?

The argument that “by conflating Zionism and Jews you are causing antisemitism” really tells more about the people that “become” antisemitic than the relationship between Zionism and Jews. Notwithstanding the fact that the people who make that statement have to jump through many hoops and unquestioningly accept many far-fetched stories to feel that the policies of the state of Israel are irredeemable, even if they were true it would still be wrong to hate people that have nothing to do with those actions, other than sharing an ethnic background and feeling a connection to that land. And that response is not applied to any other people on the planet. It is exclusively reserved for Jews. People do not say “by conflating Iran and Iranian-Americans you are causing anti-Persian racism.” Have you heard of anti-Persian racism in America based on the actions of the Iranian government? Have you heard of anti-Persian racism in America at all? For a person to hate an Iranian because something the Iranian government did thousands of miles away, they would have had to hated Iranians before those actions. The actions become an excuse to justify their hatred. You don’t see that with Iranians, or any other people. You only see that with Jews. Has there ever been an anti-Israel protest that did not include antisemitism? Let’s look at an example were the actions of a distant government were the catalyst for creating hate for an ethnic group. Consider America during World War 2. After Pearl Harbor, discrimination against Japanese Americans increased, including against many people who were born in America and had no direct connection with Japan. Was conflating Japan and Japanese Americans what caused the racism? Of course not. Was the racism any more legitimate because of the actions of the Japanese government? Would anyone say that Japanese Americans caused the racism or brought it upon themselves by being proud of their Japanese heritage or even having a Japanese flag? Racism caused racism, nothing else. Conflating Zionism and Jews does not cause antisemitism. Antisemitism causes antisemitism.

So, is a person who is an anti-Zionist necessarily an anti-Semite? No, but they most likely are. Their anti-Zionism, however, of course is antisemitic.

Hatikvah (The Hope)

As long as in the heart within,

The Jewish soul yearns,

And toward the eastern edges, onward,

An eye gazes toward Zion.

Our hope is not yet lost,

The hope that is two thousand years old,

To be a free nation in our land,

The Land of Zion, Jerusalem.

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