02/26 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: We recognize Haman. But where are Mordechai and Esther?; Antisemitic ‘SNL’ Slur Is No Laughing Matter; Oberlin College's 'Professor of Peace’ urged elimination of Jewish state

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: We recognize Haman. But where are Mordechai and Esther?

What we can do is what the Jewish people have always done: bear witness to what's happening, record it and hold its perpetrators to account.

We should target their weak spots: their vanity and narcissism, their inflated claim to intelligence and moral virtue. We should pillory them publicly as too sloppy, stupid and credulous to be worthy of any academic post.

We should call out the anti-Israel churches and "human rights" NGOs as supporters of racism, colonialism and ethnic cleansing, which we can prove by publicizing the Palestinians' Nazi-style tropes and regular exhortations to murder Jews and steal Israeli cities such as Haifa and Jaffa.

Rather than drive Western anti-Semites out of the public square, we should use it ourselves to expose them to what they most fear: public exposure and ridicule as bad, stupid and ludicrous people.

What Jewish people can and must do is protect themselves as best they can. That's why Israel is the safest place for a Jew to be: because "never again" is in its DNA.

The inescapable vulnerability of Diaspora Jews saps their capacity to stand up against their tormentors. At best, it makes them timid, striving only to be left alone by keeping their heads down. At worst, they actively side with the foes of the Jewish people. As in America, where some 70% of the Jewish community vote Democrat, these sign up to the liberal universalist ideology that has the Jews in its cross-hairs and, in their keenness to be an indistinguishable part of the herd, forget that the Jews must always be outside it.

Mordechai and Esther did not forget who they were. They refused to be intimidated, drew upon their reserves of courage and turned the tables on their would-be destroyer.

Israel will defend itself against the present-day Haman in Tehran. The Jews of the Diaspora remain rather more cruelly exposed.

Caroline Glick: 'Facebook and Twitter? Boycott them, there are other sites'

Mark Levin, a Jewish American talk radio host and former Reagan administration official, makes no effort to hide what he thinks. Indeed, what his three-hour radio show's 14 million regular listeners and the millions of more viewers who watch his top-rated show on Fox News every Sunday love most about Levin is that he gives them the unvarnished truth as he sees it. And Levin does so with a combination of intellectual depth and populist passion.

Levin's massive audience insulates him from the growing fear of censors that now plague conservatives in America. At a time when progressive propaganda has become a substitute for news reporting at liberal media organs across the US, fresh from four years of unrelenting media assaults on former president Donald Trump and his supporters, Levin is a leading voice for millions of Americans who feel increasingly marginalized and besieged.

Ahead of the release of the Hebrew edition of his New York Times bestseller Unfreedom of the Press, (Sella Meir Publishers), Levin sat down for a conversation with Israel Hayom. He explained what moved him to research the roots of media bias and why he believes the rising extremism of the US media poses a threat to the future of the most powerful democracy in the world.

Levin sees a direct link between the US media's longstanding hostility towards Israel and its burgeoning anti-Americanism. He also sees parallels between the overwhelmingly leftist Israeli media and the US media. Mark Levin speaks, with President Donald Trump behind him, during a ceremony to present the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former Attorney General Edwin Meese, at the White House, Oct. 8, 2019 (AP/Alex Brandon/File)

Our conversation was broadcast Monday evening to mark the official launch of the Hebrew edition of his book. What follows are excerpts from our discussion.

"As somebody who watches the Israeli media, the Israeli media is a disaster," Levin begins.

"The American media is a disaster. But at least in America, we have conservative talk radio. You have a few outlets in Israel – not many. And we have Fox News where at least we have some conservative opinion shows. You have nothing like that in Israel. You pretty much have a statist media that backs the Left – as small as the Left is now politically, the media remains overwhelmingly leftist in Israel.

David Collier: Elbit – Meet the six Palestine Action thugs charged with criminal damage

Yesterday six thugs from Palestine Action were charged with criminal damage after their violent attack on the Shenstone offices of the Israeli company Elbit on Tuesday. It is time to meet them: Elbit – the three key figures
One of those arrested should be well known to readers of this blog – Kajsa Anckarstrom:

Although she went by the name of Kajsa Anckarstrom in her anti-Israel activism, her real name – and the one on the charge sheet – is Vienna Lstadt. She is one of the key faces of the Islamist group ‘Inminds‘ – which was fronted by the Holocaust denier Sandra Watfa. Like other Palestine Action activists – Lstadt is no stranger to antisemitism herself:

Another of those arrested may not be known to you – but his father probably is. Michael Sackur 23, is from West London:

His father, Stephen Sackur is an award-winning BBC journalist and the regular host of the BBC’s frontline news programme HARDtalk. Stephen Sackur has a very long history of anti-Israel bias in his reporting.

There is no intention at all to blame this act of vandalism on the father – we are all only responsible for our own actions – but given his apparent hostility towards Israel, perhaps we should not be so surprised that his son has ended up vandalising buildings of Israeli companies.

Nick Georges was another of those arrested. In the Palestine Action video, whilst Georges is spreading lies about Elbit and Israel, he also tells us he was sent as a ‘witness’ to ‘Palestine’ for three months:

In fact, he was sent as part of the Quaker supported Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme run by the World Council of Churches. This is a hard-core propaganda tour – that as part of their deal – ensures that the ‘witnesses’ upon their return must spread the propaganda by speaking at a certain number of events. On the tour – they ‘witness’ exactly what the propaganda NGOS arrange for them to witness and are fed a diet of hard-core disinformation, sprinkled with thousands of lies. They return as radicalised members of a cult.

Want to feel really sick? This is Nick Georges, the thug who vandalised the Israeli owned business, spreading his propaganda to hundreds of school children at Ashcombe School in Dorking:

No wonder antisemitism is on the rise! Just as with Amnesty International spreading lies at schools, we HAVE TO kick all these thuggish propagandist organisations OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS. They are out to spread lies and demonise Zionism and Israel and they have no business telling their lies to school children.

How Israel won the vaccine wars

Israel’s remarkable vaccination success story might be less interesting if it were only pulling slightly ahead of comparable countries. But the difference is not one of degree. With more than 82 doses delivered per 100 citizens by the end of last week — compared with 26 for the UK, 17 for the US, and a scandalous 5.9 for the EU — Israel is significantly ahead of the pack.

But why is that? No doubt that’s the question governments across the world are currently attempting to answer, in the hope of replicating some of Israel’s success. But the truth is that the country’s vaccination rollout has been a unique victory — one that has emerged from a confluence of factors which, while individually common in other countries, Israel is alone in having.

Some of those factors are structural. Israel’s universal health system, for example, is built on a regulated service provided by four competing non-profit health service organisations, called “sick funds” — a bit like having four versions of the NHS. Every resident must be a member of a fund, which are financed by a small progressive health tax that ranges from 3-5% of a person’s income. In effect, the system combines the benefits of universal coverage with competition, though it is hardly alone in the world in doing so.

Far less common, though, is the extent of digitisation in the Israeli health system. Each fund maintains a fully digitised records and appointments system, integrated with smartphone apps, websites, and automated phone systems. Crucially, these records are directly connected to the Ministry of Health’s universal vaccination database. This meant that when the time came for organising Covid vaccination appointments, there was no new infrastructure to set up. Appointments were organised automatically for the people who most urgently needed them on platforms that were already familiar.

But none of that would have mattered without an adequate vaccine supply. And this is where the Israeli government stepped in. Well before any vaccines were approved, senior officials were already signing deals with Moderna, Pfizer, AstraZeneca and others — as well as funding a domestically produced vaccine, which is still in clinical trials. They also began securing a large supply of syringes and needles, an element of the vaccine strategy which was surprisingly overlooked by other countries, most notably Japan.

Massive Study Finds Encouraging Results But Israel’s Infection Rate Is Rising and Younger Patients Are Dying

First the good news:

A study that was published on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine (BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine in a Nationwide Mass Vaccination Setting) and included 600,000 Israelis who were vaccinated from December 20, 2020, to February 1, 2021, and who were matched to 600,000 unvaccinated Israelis according to demographic and clinical characteristics, estimates high effectiveness of the BNT162b2 (Pfizer) vaccine for preventing symptomatic Covid-19 in a noncontrolled setting, similar to the vaccine efficacy reported in Pfizer’s randomized trial.

According to the study results, about two weeks after the first vaccine dose, there was efficiency of 57% in preventing disease and a 62% reduction in serious illness. After 21-27 days, a 66% reduction in morbidity was observed, a reduction of 80% of serious illnesses, and 84% of mortality.

After full vaccination, one week after the second dose of the vaccine, the incidence of Corona morbidity was decreased by 94% and the rate of severe illness by 92%.

These are exciting results, which are based on testing 1.2 million people and should leave no room for speculation as to whether or not the Pfizer vaccine (and by extension the Moderna vaccine as well, which is based on the same technology) is effective against COVID-19. It is. Indeed, it appears from the study that the vast majority of Israelis who fell victim to the virus since the vaccine had become available were unvaccinated.

But while Israel is spearheading the global effort to vaccinate against Corona, the country is unable to defeat the virus and the overall rate of infections remains high. The trend of an increase in the coefficient of infection continues: according to health ministry data, the coefficient of infection rose to 0.93 on Friday, and the rate of increase continues to be high. Last Sunday, the figure was 0.79 and has taken great leaps in five days to 0.93. It means the decrease in morbidity reached over the last lockdown is being reversed and could cross over the hard-earned coefficient of 1.0.

Health Ministry: In latest milestone, over 50% Israelis vaccinated with 1st dose

Just over half of Israel’s population has had at least a first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, the Health Ministry said Friday in its latest update.

It said that 4.65 million of the country’s 9.29 million population had received a first shot, with 3.27 million of them getting the recommended second dose too.

Over 85 percent of people aged 70 and over have received both doses, the ministry said.

Some 3 million Israelis are currently not eligible for the vaccine, including children under 16 and people who have recovered from COVID-19.

Israel launched its massive inoculation operation on December 19, backed by a deal with Pfizer which mounted an airlift of its vaccine in exchange for biomedical data on its effects.

WATCH: Prime Minister @netanyahu’s Purim video with English subtitles 🤡

Go vaccinate 💉💉 pic.twitter.com/IZvtLSMJhn

— 🇮🇱Avi Hyman🇮🇱 (@AviHyman) February 25, 2021

Antisemitic ‘SNL’ Slur Is No Laughing Matter

Unfortunately, as is often the case where Israel is concerned, the facts are largely ignored because they are inconvenient. For those who push a political agenda aimed at undermining the Jewish state of Israel, facts about how Israel is working for the good of others are counterproductive and dissonant to the false narrative of Israel as the bogeyman and “occupier” of the Middle East.

That narrative has gained popularity within our culture because of lies spread by people like Che, and these lies masquerading as humor are often tolerated because they are falsely believed to be grounded in reality.

What many fail to understand, however — maybe even Che, assuming he isn’t an antisemite — is the real harm to Jews that can result from misinformation disguised as humor.

Because Israel is often treated as a proxy for Jews collectively, comments like Che’s — that Israel is giving vaccines only to its Jewish citizens — directly contribute to growing antisemitism. Such claims fan the flames of classic antisemitic tropes and fuel stereotypes that lead to hatred — from the public square and the university campus, to the halls of government and social media outlets.

It is well past time for those with visible platforms in our culture to begin treating antisemitism with the same level of seriousness — and unapologetic condemnation — that they treat racism and other forms of bigotry. Sadly, “SNL’s” “joke” has already been used to promote antisemitic words and deeds.

Numerous Jewish organizations, as well as over 5,000 people, have joined the StandWithUs letter-writing campaign to Che and “SNL” condemning Che’s “joke.” Regardless of whether those peddling antisemitic rhetoric ever acknowledge their bigotry, we must continue to make our voices heard on this matter and call out anti-Israel and anti-Jewish lies wherever we find them.

Stand With Us: SNL, Space Exploration & More | Israel Weekly

Shalom everyone and welcome to our brand new show ‘Israel Weekly’. We’re coming to you from our studio in Jerusalem to share the important Israel events you might have missed during the week.

This week (20-25th of February 2021) we will talk about the first-ever nanosatellite coming from Tel Aviv University, Iranian judoka champion Saeid Mollae winning a silver medal in Israel, Saturday Night Live's widespread controversy, Israel's worst oil spill in history and "Follow the Lights" project in Jerusalem. This is: Israel Weekly.

UNICEF branch quietly stops publishing list of NGO partners after years of scrutiny

The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) has quietly stopped publishing a list of nongovernmental organizations (NGO) it partners with to carry out its mission in the Palestinian territories, according to Israel-based organization NGO Monitor. NGO Monitor investigates non-governmental organizations that claim to advance human rights and humanitarian agendas.

The revelation comes after NGO Monitor’s explosive 2018 report revealed that UNICEF was working in tandem with NGOs that support and seek to advance the BDS (Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement against Israel.

It was a stunning revelation, analysts told this reporter.

Moreover, the investigative report noted that UNICEF was partnering with organizations with ties to U.S., Canada, and European Union designated terrorist organization the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). At the time, these groups were seeking to blacklist the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as one of the “grave violators of children’s rights” alongside groups like ISIS and Boko Haram.

The European Union, however, is denying its connection and stating that it is “unaware” of such a campaign, according to Israel Hayom, a popular news outlet in Israel.

However, the European Union’s explanation doesn’t match the evidence collected by NGO Monitor, which has been tracking such efforts to target the IDF since 2017, Anne Herzberg, Legal Advisor of NGO Monitor, told The Dark Wire.

“We call on UNICEF to end its funding and project secrecy and to cease all cooperation with NGOs linked to the PFLP and other terror groups,” said Herzberg. “We also demand that the EU and other government donors immediately freeze all UNICEF-OPT funding until this cooperation is ended.”

Wow. What an embarrassment for Amnesty International. Having withdrawn @navalny’s prisoner of conscience status (thanks in part to Kremlin backed lobbying), they’re duped by pranksters while performing damage control.
“It’s really cognizant we may have done more harm than good.” https://t.co/EYQKFZbRuF

— Bianna Golodryga (@biannagolodryga) February 25, 2021

Oberlin College's 'Professor of Peace’ urged elimination of Jewish state

As it works to play down accusations that Oberlin College’s so-called “Professor of Peace,” Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, was involved in crimes against humanity, the liberal arts college is now confronted with new allegations of antisemitism as it continues to provide a platform for an academic who has urged the destruction of Israel.

The Jerusalem Post can reveal that Mahallati, a professor of Islamic Studies at Oberlin, delivered a speech when he was the Iranian regime’s ambassador to the UN in 1988, stating: “The establishment of the Zionist entity was itself in violation of provisions of the United Nations Charter.”

Asaf Romirowsky, the executive director of the over 40,000-member organization Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, told the Post that “Oberlin has a long history of hiring individuals who are propagandists and antisemites as we saw with the now dismissed instructor Joy Karega who claimed that Israel was behind 9/11.”

He added that “The latest employment of Mohammad Jafar Mahallati who openly calls for Israel elimination is emblematic of the growth of propaganda in the academy under the guise of ‘scholarship.’ These scholar activists use and abuse their podium in the worst way possible teaching students platitudes and agitprop rather than critical thinking and looking at factual data. This is another example of how cancel culture materializes through professors who advocate for the eradication of an entire nation showing their true antisemitic colors.”

The Post analyzed the entire UN archived material of Mahallati’s speeches and letters while he was at the UN during the 1980s, particularly while he served as the Islamic Republic’s top envoy to the United Nations from 1987 to 1989.

Massachusetts school board member calls Jew a ‘kike’ on live TV

A school board member in Lowell, Massachusetts, called a former school district leader a “kike” on live television, spurring calls for his resignation.

Bob Hoey should step down from the Lowell School Committee, the mayor of the Boston suburb said.

“We lost the kike, oh, I mean, the Jewish guy,” Hoey said Wednesday morning on “City Life,” a news opinion show, according to video posted by the local Jewish Journal. “I hate to say it, but that’s what people used to say behind his back.”

Hoey, an elected official in the city of 111,000, was referring to Gary Frisch, the former CFO of the Lowell Public Schools.

According to the Lowell Sun, the comment followed a lengthy discussion in which Hoey and the show’s host, George Anthes, complained about or denigrated undocumented immigrants, diversity in the local high school’s student government, the concept of “equity,” Indian-American families and US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive New York Democrat.

Hoey used the slur amid a discussion of school budgets.

2/ FOR THE RECORD:

Professor Noam Chomsky, University of Arizona, Linguistics Professor Judith Butler, UC Berkeley Comparative Literature Mr. John Pilger Journalist, author, film-maker, London

— Zaya Mensch (@zayamensch) February 26, 2021

Lawyer Cites Satire in Defense of Dickinson Student’s Antisemitic Holocaust Video

The lawyer representing a student who attends Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., now under investigation by the school for antisemitic comments he made in a video praising the Holocaust, said the clip was meant to be satirical, the local news station ABC27 reported on Wednesday.

Dressed formally in a suit, junior Shane Shuma lists multiple reasons why the Holocaust was “a good thing” and notes “official SS statistics,” such as “96 percent of Germans said that it made their lives much more positive.”

“One of them is, ‘the Holocaust is a good thing because you can’t have racism if you only have one race,’ I mean … the target of the jokes were antisemites,” said Shuma’s lawyer Samantha Harris, who is Jewish, noting that her client said those lines as part of a friend’s film project when he was 16. (The cameraman can be heard laughing in the background.)

“We are now living in a climate where we are all judged based on our worst decisions, our dumbest decisions, our worst moments, sometimes when we are children,” she added.

Harris cited free speech, particularly satire, in defense of her client.

“There is this conflating of speech with violence. You know, the idea that somebody telling a joke or saying something that hurts someone’s feelings is actually tantamount to a threat to their safety,” she explained. “Such that, being in their presence someone—you know, that emotional safety and physical safety are the same thing, and that we are all somehow entitled to emotional safety and comfort at all times.”

New York Times’ Beinart Defends Himself on Hypocrisy Charge

New York Times columnist Peter Beinart is defending himself against the charge that he is a hypocrite for favoring economic sanctions against Israeli Jewish settlers on the West Bank while opposing them against Iranian terrorists and human rights abusers.

A February opinion piece by Beinart in the New York Times called for easing sanctions on Iran, Syria, and North Korea. The Algemeiner published a column pointing out that the article left Beinart “in the awkward position of opposing sanctions on terror-sponsoring Iran but supporting them on Israelis who live in Hebron or suburbs of Jerusalem.”

Beinart replied with two tweets.

The first tried to draw a distinction between what he called “secondary sanctions” and the sanctions he favors against Israeli settlers.

“My NYT oped is about ‘secondary sanctions’ — sanctions on any entity that does business with a besieged country, thus denying its people even basic humanitarian goods. I’ve never suggested anything close to that regarding Israel. Come on guys, do better,” Beinart tweeted.

The second minimized his call for sanctions against Israeli settlers. “1) I’ve never called for ‘secondary sanctions’ on Israel — the topic of my oped. 2) I didn’t write an ‘entire book’ calling for a boycott. It’s a few pages near the end. As an editor you’re supposed to try to get facts right even when it’s inconvenient. Try harder,” he tweeted.

Man who attacked Jew outside synagogue in Germany sent to psychiatric hospital

A German court on Friday ordered a man who attacked a Jewish student in Hamburg in October to be sent to a psychiatric hospital.

The Hamburg district court said the attacker, a 29-year-old German man of Kazakh origin who was not further identified, was mentally ill and suffering from religious delusions and therefore could not be held legally accountable for the attack. He had been charged with attempted manslaughter and dangerous bodily harm.

The man hit the Jewish university student on his head in front of a Hamburg synagogue during the holiday of Sukkot. The student had to be admitted to a hospital with severe injuries but survived the attack.

Judge Birgit Woitas said while it was clear “this was a targeted attack on a Jew,” the attacker was a “mentally ill person who acted on his own,” German news agency dpa reported.

Tulsa Police Search for Two Suspects for Vandalism of Holocaust Memorial Statues at Jewish Museum

olice in Tulsa, Oklahoma are searching for two suspects who destroyed statues dedicated to child victims of the Holocaust at the city’s Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art.

The Tulsa Police Department (TPD) was notified early Wednesday morning that two young male suspects had bent and knocked down the statues after unsuccessfully attempting to steal them, causing over $15,000 in damage.

Each of the five statues are filled with 2,000 rocks bearing the names of children killed in the Holocaust.

“It’s really important that we don’t forget,” said TPD Lt. William White, in a video published on Facebook by the agency on Thursday.

“You come out and your car’s been egged, that’s not great. But when you have statues dedicated to the children that lost their lives in one of the greatest tragedies in the history of humankind — obviously, there’s a different tier there.” White said. “So we’re taking this very seriously, and we really want to catch these people.”

The museum, which opened in 1966, is home to the largest collection of Judaica in the region. Its permanent Holocaust exhibition displays items donated by Oklahoma veterans who helped liberate German concentration camps, and others brought to the state by Jewish refugees.

‘Mein Kampf’ and Other ‘Hate Speech’ Products You Can Still Buy on Amazon

Amazon, the popular online retailer, is under fire after conservative author Ryan T. Anderson announced on Sunday that his 2018 bestseller, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, had been scrubbed from the Amazon website.

The decision to ban the book from its platform came several months after Amazon quietly altered its content guidelines to prohibit the sale of "content that we determine is hate speech … or other material we deem inappropriate or offensive," which includes content that "promotes the abuse or sexual exploitation of children, contains pornography, glorifies rape or pedophilia, [or] advocates terrorism."

As recently as August 2020, Amazon's content guidelines for books were significantly vaguer, asserting the company's right to prohibit the sale of "certain content, such as pornography or other inappropriate content." Amazon has yet to offer a sufficient explanation of the updated guidelines.

In the meantime, Amazon continues to permit the sale of numerous books that most casual observers might reasonably classify as "hate speech" or are otherwise incompatible with its updated content guidelines. The company also continues to sell other products that would appear to run afoul of contemporary standards of wokeness, as outlined in its prohibition on selling items (excluding books) that "promote, incite, or glorify hatred."

“The time has come for a Reich [empire] with Muslims and Jews exterminated”, reads graffiti on Welsh war memorial

A war memorial has been daubed with swastikas and disturbing antisemitic hate messages.

The vile messages, which refer to the murder of Jews and gassing of soldiers, was found on the memorial in Rhyl, Wales.

The graffiti also continued the line, in German, that “the time has come for a Reich [empire] with Muslims and Jews exterminated.”

Richard Kendrick, Rhyl’s Poppy Appeal organiser for the Royal British Legion, said: “Someone has put graffiti on two of the stones and plaques. These stones are dedicated to the men and women from Rhyl who have given their lives for us over the past 125 years. I can’t understand who would do such an awful thing.”

Mr Kendrick went on to urge anyone with information to call police before adding: “Sad day when someone would do such an awful act.”

Councillor Brian Jones said: “It is a total disrespect to the people that fought for the freedom of the country.”

55 years after execution in Syria, Israeli spy Eli Cohen makes headlines

Russian news giant RT recently released a video it says shows Eli Cohen, the famous Israeli spy, walking in a Damascus street. The video, unclear and no more than a few seconds in length, has generated headlines throughout the region, both in Arabic and in Hebrew. Experts attribute the interest to Cohen’s legendary status and recent Russian efforts to try and facilitate a normalization agreement between the two enemy countries.

This story is one that could easily have found its way to the pages of a thriller novel. An Israeli agent, born and raised in Egypt, infiltrates the highest strata of Syrian political and military leadership at the height of animosity between the countries. Using his connections, he visits military bases and outposts, gathering information that former Israeli prime minister Levi Eshkol later said “saved Israel many brigades” during the 1967 war, and brought victory to the small country.

While it may seem beyond the limits of imagination, this is exactly the story of Eli Cohen, an Israeli intelligence agent who was later caught, tried and hanged in a Damascus square. And despite the decades that have passed, his memory continues to be strongly present in the region. RT recently released a documentary, titled “Spyfall,” about Cohen that includes the video clip, shot by a former Soviet military official, that purports to show the Israeli agent. And while the video is just seconds long, and one cannot even be sure that it is, indeed, Cohen who saunters through the frame, Arab and Israeli media have generated dozens of articles about those few seconds.

Oraib al-Rantawi, founder and director general of the Al-Quds Center for Political Studies in Amman, points to current events as a major contributor to the great interest in the video. The video was released while in the background there are “serious actions by the Russians and by the Syrian government” to find the remains of Cohen and Israeli soldiers killed in Syria long ago, he told The Media Line.

“I hear news from my colleagues in Damascus,” he said. “Russian experts, everyday almost, digging in the Yarmouk cemetery, where it is expected his body may be buried.” The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Tuesday that Russian forces have been digging for more than three weeks in the cemetery at the Yarmouk refugee camp south of Damascus in search of the remains of the Israeli agent as well as Israeli soldiers.

#ThrowbackThursday Me at gun display in Palestine in 1948 when I was a member of the Haganah, the underground, and when I learned to be a sniper. pic.twitter.com/vyEYwuwUvL

— Dr. Ruth Westheimer (@AskDrRuth) February 25, 2021

~356 BCE: Jews are persecuted in the biblical city of Shushan (in modern-day Iran)

2021: Jews celebrate Purim in Israel despite threats from the Iranian regime

It's written in our history—we always persevere. pic.twitter.com/uj0u8EAtuM

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) February 26, 2021

Hannah Szenes in a #Purim costume in Hungary before the war

Hannah Szenes returned to Hungary as a parachutist with the British Army. She was caught by the Hungarian police and was executed by firing squad on 7 November 1944.

Learn more: https://t.co/wHpqReReJo pic.twitter.com/1XDPo4lLXY

— Yad Vashem (@yadvashem) February 25, 2021

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