10/07 Links Pt2: Antisemitism in Ireland – an exclusive report on anti-Jewish hatred; Glick: Kamala Harris Flunks her “Sister Souljah Moment”; French Senate adopts IHRA definition of antisemitism

From Ian:

David Collier: Antisemitism in Ireland – an exclusive report on anti-Jewish hatred

Today I publish a 202-page report on antisemitism in Ireland. It is the result of several years of intense research that involved 1000s of hours of online swimming in extremist sewers. The examples and findings presented in the report should sicken anyone interested in combatting antisemitism. What makes it even worse is the level of ‘antisemitism denial’ coming from the Irish politicians, academics and activists.

When you see what is in the report you will understand that there is no denying this – nor does it have anything to do with ‘criticism of Israel’. Personally I have been down this road before, with in-depth studies of antisemitism in anti-Israel groups in the UK and of course the Labour Party – but what I saw in Ireland – managed to shake even me.

There are almost 200 pages of evidence, and I cannot even begin to do it justice in a single blog. Perhaps it remains possible to give voice to what is inside the report in a single word – and that word is ‘horrific’. The situation is horrific at the political level, horrific at the academic level and horrific at the street level. It is almost impossible to overstate how toxic the situation in Ireland has become.

The evidence is all in the report which can now be downloaded. For those that want the story of ‘antisemitism in Ireland’ in shorthand, here are just a few nuggets:

Politicians in Ireland
Dozens of Politicians in Ireland were found to contribute towards rising antisemitism, and this occurs in a number of ways. The report covers the issue in full detail.

Here is just one example. Some of Ireland’s politicians love to share the most outrageous fake news about Israel.

This is a post about an attack on the trees of Palestinian farmers that was shared by Sean Crowe, a member of the Dail – (the Irish Parliament). Except it is fake news. The video is actually of a cull of citrus trees in Morocco in 2019, which has been repackaged as anti-Israel propaganda.

Acts such as this, spread hatred on the street. And these politicians do not seem to care about the source of their fake news. The post that Sean Crowe TD shared in order to demonise Israel, was from the FB account of Waleed Al Alami – who is a hard core antisemite and Holocaust denier:

There are lots of examples – and the Crowe shared post is far from the worst. One sitting politician even seems to have liked a post suggesting Hitler ‘may have not been too far wrong‘.

The Irish TD’s don’t hold back – they are at the forefront of the report, and dozens are included. And when it comes to antisemitism – the same old tropes are rolled out over and over again.

This blatant ‘Mossad did it‘ tweet came from Reada Cronin TD. In her world the British electorate didn’t reject Jeremy Corbyn because of his party’s extremism or illegal harrassment of Jews – the British were made to do it by Israeli spies:

The full report with the whole horrible story can be downloaded here.

“Gaza is Palestine”: NGOs and Rep. Tlaib Push BDS

On October 7, 2021, the “Gaza is Palestine” campaign will host a virtual event featuring Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and a number of BDS activists. These include individuals who have celebrated violence against Israelis.

The campaign seeks to halt US military assistance to Israel and is spearheaded by two pro-BDS NGOs: Adalah Justice Project (AJP) and MPower Change. This event exemplifies the deepening relationship between politicized NGOs seeking to advance BDS policy through members of Congress.

This phenomenon was manifest last month (September 2021) in attempts by US lawmakers to block funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system and the sale of $735 million worth of precision-guided Boeing Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) to Israel.

These initiatives were the result of lobbying efforts by pro-BDS NGOs, some with links to terror groups. (For more information on NGO lobbying against American security assistance to Israel, see “The NGO Congressional Campaign Against Funding for Israel’s Iron Dome”.) The Sponsors of the “Gaza is Palestine” Campaign: Adalah Justice Project:
- Originally a project of Haifa-based Adalah, AJP, based in Boston, engages in BDS and other forms of demonization. For example, then AJP Director Nadia Ben Youssef was initially listed as an “author and contributor” of the 2016 “The Movement for Black Lives” platform. The document included BDS calls, labeled Israel an “apartheid state,” argued that US military assistance makes Americans complicit in human rights abuses, and accused Israel of “genocide.”
- AJP collaborates with organizations that have ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) a US and EU-designated terrorist organization. These NGOs include Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P), Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), and Al-Haq.
- AJP is fiscally sponsored by the Tides Center, which also transfers funds to organizations such as Palestine Legal, and Dream Defenders. In June 2018, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund authorized a $160,000 grant to AJP via the Tides Center.

MPower Change:
- Established in 2016, MPower Change co-sponsored a petition demanding that Congress end military aid and sanction Israel, describing it as “apartheid.” The NGO also promoted an event open to everyone besides “cops and Zionists.”
- Executive Director of MPower Change Linda Sarsour is an anti-Israel activist with a history of making antisemitic comments. In 2019, Sarsour stepped down from her leadership role with the Women’s March, after it emerged that she had ties to notorious antisemite Louis Farrakhan.
- According to its website, donations to MPower Change are processed through ActBlue Charities, “a qualified 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization.”

Video Game That Has Users Slaughter Israelis as Palestinian Militant Violates Anti-Terror Laws, Legal Group Says

The game is already generating fierce pushback in Israel, and a leading legal advocacy organization is petitioning Valve, Steam’s parent company, to remove the game from its store, maintaining that distribution of the title violates U.S. anti-terror laws.

"This game, with its unhinged glorification of violence and incitement to terror, may place Valve in direct violation of United States anti-terror laws and subject to potential civil litigation," the International Legal Forum, a nonprofit advocacy group that combats anti-Semitism and represents more than 3,500 lawyers and civil society activists across the globe, wrote to Valve on Monday, according to a copy of the letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

"In allowing the use of your platform for the glorification and incitement of terror, your company may be in breach of a number of U.S. anti-terrorism laws, including, but not limited to, Section 2339 of the United States Code, which prohibits the providing of ‘material support or resources’ in the ‘preparation for, or in carrying out’ a violation of certain offenses, including terrorism," the group wrote.

Valve has not yet responded to the International Legal Forum’s letter and also did not respond to a Free Beacon request for comment. While video game makers have large artistic leeway in the titles they publish, a game centering around Palestinian terrorism could be seen as a recruitment tool for jihadist militant groups that want to destroy Israel and kill Jewish people.

Arsen Ostrovsky, chairman and CEO of the International Legal Forum, told the Free Beacon that "although for some in the gaming world, this might be mere virtual reality, for Israelis, this is depiction of real life, having sustained decades of Palestinian terror, intifadas, and ongoing sprees of stabbings, vehicular ramming, and shooting attacks."

U.S. citizens, he added, "have also been killed during such attacks. In the event further attacks and loss of life arise out of this display in pure barbarism masquerading as a ‘virtual game,' not only blood, but legal liability, will be on the hands of Valve."

Dominic Green: Why does Kamala Harris refuse to confront anti-Semitism?

Harris didn’t just nod along. She praised the student. ‘I’m glad you said that,’ she said. ‘Your voice, your perspective, your experience, your truth should not be suppressed, and it must be heard.’

There was nothing true in what the student said. Her perspective is poisoned by malignant fictions. The idea that Israel is drawing ‘taxpayers money’ away from domestic needs is upside down. By law, about 80 per cent of all aid to Israel must be spent in the US. In other words, the aid is an indirect subsidy to American workers.

The Iron Dome funding is a case in point: its interceptor rockets are American-made by American taxpayers. This interventionist, protectionist combination of domestic subsidy and Build-Back-Better export policy is enough to warm the heart of the most ardent central planner. It is American socialism, and you’d expect the Democrats in their current mood to be delighted. But it is Israel we’re talking about. It’s the Jews, so something nefarious and financial must be going on.

So nefarious, in fact, that no calumny is too absurd. If the Israelis are committing ‘ethnic genocide’ against the Palestinians, they’re not doing a very good job, are they? The very notion of a distinct Palestinian nation is a historical side-effect of Zionism. Meanwhile, as their supporters keep reminding us as they try to pressure the Israelis to give and jump into the sea, the Palestinian Arab population rises and rises.

This is not how genocide is supposed to work. Ask the Native Americans, whose appalling suffering this nincompoop had the neck to invoke – an insult to America’s most persecuted and impoverished citizens which Harris didn’t even address.

The technical term for gratuitously accusing the victims of the worst genocide in modern history of committing one is ‘Holocaust inversion’. It is one of the big lies about the Jews, long ensconced in the societies the student’s parents come from, that are now blooming in the US. The rise of anti-Semitism on campus has overwhelmingly been the work of some of the Democrats’ most avid supporters, the resentful intellectuals in the academy and left-wing media. The party leadership no longer bothers to disassociate itself.

The Caroline Glick show: Ep21 – Kamala Harris Flunks her “Sister Souljah Moment”

After a two-week hiatus for the High Holy Days Caroline and Gadi devoted their latest show to a discussion of the Democrat Party’s extreme tolerance for fire breathing anti-Semites and what it means for the party, for the American Jewish community and for the future of Israel-US ties. They also discussed what the progressives and the Palestinians mean when they talk about the “two-state solution,” and what is involved when Israel, the US or any other free society legitimizes the Muslim Brotherhood.

PreOccupiedTerritory: Squad Disappointed Its ‘Bomb Jewish Institutions’ Bill Not Yet In Committee (satire)

Several progressive members of the House of Representatives voiced frustration today that legislation they introduced earlier this session to authorize attacks against synagogues, Hebrew schools, and similar targets, has not even reached preliminary stages of the lawmaking process.

Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) expressed impatience and some consternation Thursday following an update from Congressional clerks that as of this week, the House Interior Committee has not taken up their Karing for Koncerned Kommunities (KKK) Act, which aims to allocate funding and personnel to the task of conducting shooting, bombing, burning down or otherwise attacking institutions of Jewish communities in America, part of a larger initiative to make the country safer for progressive, tolerant values.

The Squad, as they have been known since Ocasio-Cortez referred to them as such shortly after her election, made their frustration known via social media and sympathetic journalists. “The leadership has failed yet again, and remains blind to both the needs of the American people and the demands of the voters,” she lamented. “It’s one thing to fawn all over a woman in a ‘Tax the Rich’ gown at an art museum’s main fundraising event; anyone can talk the talk. It’s another thing entirely to put your money where your mouth is and do something concrete for the progressive cause. Our party leadership is just out of touch with the pulse of the people on this.”

Conservatives confirm that inflammatory group calling itself “Conservative Friends of Palestine” is not affiliated to the Party

The Conservatives have reportedly confirmed that the inflammatory group that calls itself “Conservative Friends of Palestine” is not affiliated to the Party.

The so-called Conservative Friends of Palestine, which operates a website and a Twitter handle with a modest following, claims to “seek to promote conservative values and provide new thinking on the Israeli-Palestine conflict that acknowledges the reality on the ground and advances long term solutions based on principles of equality and justice.”

Its website continues: “Besides providing a space for conservatives to come together and challenge the current one-state reality of the conflict that is so damaging, we aim to promote Palestinian voices that so often get left out of the conversation.”

However, in reality the group has constantly courted controversy, for example talking about “false accusations of antisemitism” and complaining about the “weaponising of antisemitism”. The website also has a bookshop offering numerous controversial and inflammatory books, and the group is staunchly opposed to the widespread adoption of the International Definition of Antisemitism, particularly by universities, which is a flagship policy of the Government, which was the first national government in the world to adopt the Definition.

The status of this controversial group in relation to the Conservative Party has been a matter of concern, and we are pleased that the Party has apparently confirmed that the group is not affiliated.

British Jewish Actress Tracy-Ann Oberman Says She Will Continue to Speak Against Antisemitism Despite Online Bullying

British Jewish actress Tracy-Ann Oberman said she won’t be deterred from calling out antisemitism when necessary, even as she continues to face harassment online for being vocal on the issue.

The star of the new BBC One series “Ridley Road,” 55, has been a staunch advocate for the fight against antisemitism since she left the British Labour party in April 2017, after it refused to revoke the membership of former London mayor Ken Livingstone, who was accused of antisemitism. Livingstone left the party in 2018.

During a guest appearance on the British talk show “Lorraine” that aired Wednesday, Oberman talked about being targeted by antisemitic trolls on social media, who have been abusing her online for years.

“It comes from the left and the right, and if you see an injustice I’ve always felt I needed to stand up and talk about it,” Oberman said. “But what’s frightening is a lot of people don’t go on that journey with you — but a lot of people do.”

Talk show host Lorraine Kelly described the bigotry that Oberman has experienced as “frankly vile.” She also said the actress’s new project “Ridley Road,” which is set in post-World War II Britain and focuses on the rise of fascism in London’s East End, will “educate people” about a historic time in Britain’s past.

“I think at a time when Britain is re-looking at its colonial history and its world of slavery, to look at the British draw towards fascism over all of these different periods is really important — in the 30s, 40s and then in 62,” Kelly explained, as reported by Daily Mail.

Leading Jewish Groups Launch Portal for Students to Report Antisemitism Online

A new website where Jewish students can report antisemitism on college campuses and “receive immediate support” from security professionals and law enforcement launched on Wednesday, Hillel International announced in a press release.

ReportCampusHate.org, a project by Hillel International, the Anti-Defamation League and the Secure Community Network, is now live, and will help “ensure proper tracking of antisemitic trends,” Hillel said.

The group cited a recent poll showing that 74 percent of Jewish college students who personally experienced an act of antisemitism did not report it, and that only three percent had reported it to local or campus police. Another 41 percent of students said they did not know how to report an incident at all.

Incidents logged will be reviewed by a trained security professional, who will liaise with law enforcement and the campus Hillel to file them with the university and receive an appropriate response.

Adam Lehman, President and CEO of Hillel International, said the incidents reported to the website will help college administrators “improve the campus climate” for Jewish students.

“It is is essential that Jewish college students and their peers have access to tools and resources to address antisemitism and hate on campus so they can live and study in safe and welcoming environments,” he said Wednesday. “ReportCampusHate.org will empower students to report antisemitic incidents knowing they will get the support they need and the response they deserve.”

UNC and Duke Spread More Anti-Israel Hatred

The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC) has seemingly endorsed the view that Israel is the cause of all violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A slide on UNC’s website states, “Today, the Golan Heights, Gaza, and the West Bank are all areas under Israeli occupation. As a result of the occupation, Israel, and the Palestine National Authority, the official government of Palestine, have been in constant violent conflict since the end of the 1967 war.”

By allowing this material to be posted on its website, UNC is promoting the view that Israel is the sole cause of violence in the conflict.

There is no mention of the thousands of rockets, mortars, and waves of suicide killers launched at Israel by Palestinian terrorist organizations to indiscriminately murder Israeli citizens. There’s no mention that the Palestinian people democratically elected Hamas — a terrorist organization — to power. There is no discussion of the Palestinian leadership’s repeated rejection of statehood and invitations to peace talks.

Another slide on the UNC website continues: “Since Israel and Palestine are currently nations in conflict, and Israel is using water as a tool of domination, water can be described, in this situation, as a weapon, inciting further conflict.”

UNC presents this inflammatory anti-Israel material, written by students, and declares it “a teaching tool in order to spread awareness.”

Apparently, UNC endorses — and UNC students are internalizing — a one-sided demonization of Israel.

Media Omit Antisemitism in Reports About Fired Professor Who Called Jewish Students ‘Pawns’ of Israel, ‘Threat’ to Arabs and Muslims

Until his employment was terminated last week, David Miller had been a professor of political sociology at one of Britain’s most prestigious higher education establishments, the University of Bristol.

The decision to cut ties with Miller, who has a documented history of making virulently anti-Israel statements, came after the university launched an investigation into a number of remarks he made earlier this year. Specifically, he claimed that Israel is a “violent, racist, foreign regime engaged in ethnic cleansing” and suggested students who had previously taken issue with comments he had made were “political pawns” of the Jewish state.

Miller accused the Union of Jewish Students of being “a threat to the safety of Arab and Muslim students.”

There is no question as to whether his “anti-Zionist” statements are antisemitic. Opposing the Jewish people’s right to self-determination by, for example, claiming that Israel is a racist endeavor falls within the widely-accepted IHRA working definition of antisemitism, which the University of Bristol adopted in December 2019. So, too, does accusing Jews of being more loyal to Israel or acting as agents of the country, as Miller’s “pawns” comment appeared to do.

Yet, a statement posted on the University of Bristol’s website said his actions “did not meet the standards of behaviour we expect from our staff,” while reaffirming the “principle of academic freedom as fundamental.”

There was no mention of the affected Jewish students or any reference to antisemitism or even Israel.

Instead, the statement noted that the university’s administration “recognise[s] that these matters have caused deep concern for people on all sides of the debate, and that members of our community hold very different views from one another.”

Related Reading: Antisemitism Masked as Anti-Israel Bias at Berkeley, America’s ‘Most Prestigious College’

Equally alarming is how Miller’s termination has been reported by the UK press.

Sheridan College Defends Professor Who Engaged in Hate By Dehumanizing Israelis Who Serve(d) in IDF

On September 19, HonestReporting Canada exposed how Sheridan College Professor Andrew Mitrovica had, in our view, engaged in hate by dehumanizing Israelis who serve(d) in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Mitrovica penned a column on Al Jazeera which compared the IDF to the mafia, an international crime syndicate, claiming that Israeli soldiers deliberately murder Palestinian children.

Mitrovica accused the IDF of being a “ruthless crew of gangsters” who “mutilate Palestinian boys and girls” and “slaughter Palestinian children of their humanity.” His hate-laced polemic went on to refers to the IDF as “Israel’s diseased, irredeemable army” made up of “unrepentant thugs” who “deem children to be legitimate targets.” Mitrovica said Israeli soldiers “forfeited the privilege of being called a human being.” In so doing, he engaged in Jew hatred according to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, as he dehumanized the Jewish people of Israel collectively. As we know from history, dehumanization often leads to genocide.

Writing in The Post Millennial, Columnist Barbara Kay observed that:
Mitrovica’s piece fairly trumpets misinformation and hatred of Israel. That’s nothing new in progressive circles, but he goes much further than most Israel haters, who confine their (publicly expressed) hatred to the Israeli government or the IDF as an institution. Mitrovica calls out all Jewish Israeli citizens as evil.”… This is a blood libel. This is the language we associate with pre-Holocaust Germany. The Nazis couched their hatred of the Jews as a hygiene issue. They taught school children that Jews were like vermin, bringing disease into a healthy Aryan environment. Seen in that light, of course they had to be . The smell rising from Mitrovica’s malediction of the IDF is acrid with human ash.”

HRC and scores of our subscribers filed complaints with Sheridan College President Dr. Janet Morrison, as did Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre (FSWC), who condemned Mitrovica for authoring a blood libel, along with Hasbara Fellowships Canada, who sent the College a response from a Jewish student at Sheridan who feels targeted for hate in light of Professor Mitrovica’s remarks.

Anti-Israel Activists Co-Opt Canada’s National Day for Truth & Reconciliation to Demonize Jewish State

Of course, such baseless accusations against Israel are nothing new; in fact, they are the mainstay of anti-Israel rhetoric, but the relentless abuse present on the Israeli Embassy’s Twitter post revealed an ugly habit of the anti-Israel movement, namely, its shameless hijacking of native and indigenous struggles for their own self-interest.

In recent years, anti-Israel detractors have attempted to portray Israel as a colonizer and the Palestinians as the native, indigenous people of the Levant, but despite the utter lack of truth behind these claims, these arguments are deployed in a cynical attempt to erase Israel’s three millennia of Jewish history.

In fact, even in topics unrelated to native issues, condemnation of Israel and the attempt to co-opt the indigenous struggle in Canada to support the anti-Israel cause seems to find its way in.

Recently, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) hired activist Desmond Cole to take part in a discussion on anti-Black racism, but he took the opportunity to veer off course, and instead asserted that “conversations about First Nations reconciliation can’t take place without first addressing Palestinian freedom.”

The shameless hijacking and appropriation of native and indigenous issues to the Palestinian cause has only one purpose – to rob the Jewish people of their ancient history in their historic homeland.

Anti-Zionists often say that before 1948 Jews and Arabs lived together in peace as if the existence of #Israel somehow caused the problem…#History says something different. pic.twitter.com/a3YaHOiRoJ

— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) October 7, 2021

Yale Police Investigate After Building Twice Vandalized With Antisemitic, Racist Graffiti

Yale University police said Tuesday they are investigating after a campus building was found defaced with racist and antisemitic graffiti twice in recent weeks, drawing concern and calls for solidarity from Jewish community leaders.

In a message to the community, Yale University Police Chief Ronnell Riggins described two instances of vandalism discovered at the Kline Biology Tower, which has been closed off due to ongoing construction.

“Around 11:30 p.m. on Saturday, October 2, security cameras recorded several young adults who had scaled the perimeter fencing and broken into the Kline construction,” Higgins said. “They vandalized indoor areas of the building and spray-painted antisemitic and racist language on interior surfaces.”

Racist and antisemitic graffiti were earlier discovered by construction workers at the site on Sept. 20, Higgins said — prompting a criminal investigation and a fortifying of the area with perimeter fencing, access gates, and additional security cameras. Higgins said that the two incidents may be related, and that investigations into both were active.

The building had closed for renovation in 2019 following an electrical fire in the basement that caused extensive damage and destroyed important equipment and biological samples, according to Yale Daily News.

Early Wednesday, organizations representing Jewish life at Yale, including the Slifka Center, Yale Hillel, and Kehillah, called the graffiti a “grotesque visual display of hatred.”

HELP NEEDED - Yale University and New Haven police are looking for the individuals captured on video responsible for an antisemitic vandalism incident that took place on the school's campus Saturday October 2nd.

Those with any details are being asked to call (203)432-4400 pic.twitter.com/TphKZqi3DT

— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) October 6, 2021

CAA writes to Netflix over provocateur Dave Chappelle’s antisemitic comments in ‘comedy’ special

Campaign Against Antisemitism is writing to the streaming giant Netflix over provocateur Dave Chappelle’s new ‘comedy’ special over antisemitic comments he makes during the programme.

In “The Closer”, released on Tuesday, Mr Chappelle makes off-colour comments about numerous minority groups. Regarding Jewish people, he says: “In my movie idea, we find out that these aliens are originally from earth — that they’re from an ancient civilization that achieved interstellar travel and left the earth thousands of years ago. Some other planet they go to, and things go terrible for them on the other planet, so they come back to earth, [and] decide that they want to claim the earth for their very own. It’s a pretty good plotline, huh? I call it ‘Space Jews’.”

The implication is that the inhuman Jews left their ancient homeland and other countries of their dispersion of their own volition. After causing destruction elsewhere they have now returned to reclaim what they had willingly abandoned, even at the expense of misery of others. As an analogy it shows breathtaking ignorance of Jewish and world history, not to mention current affairs, and plays into antisemitic tropes about Jewish otherness, world domination, insularity, parasitism and evil.

The incoherent ‘joke’ receives little applause, with Mr Chappelle reacting by saying: “All right, it’s gonna get worse than that, hang in there.”

Mr Chappelle later makes another comment referencing how Jews subject others to the atrocities that they suffered in the Holocaust. “How can a person perpetuate the same evil on a person that looks just like him?” he asks. “It’s mind blowing. And shockingly, they’re making a movie about him. Ironically, it’s called “Space Jews’.”

According to the International Definition of Antisemitism, “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.” The claim is a form both of Holocaust inversion and also Holocaust denial, as the analogy minimises the scope of the genocide of the Jewish people by making baseless equations.

Lyons’ blatant twisting of an email demonstrates the shallowness and unprofessionalism of his latest monograph

Sometimes the veracity of a piece of writing can be easily assessed from the way one source document is used, or misused. This is certainly the case with John Lyons’ latest publication, Dateline Jerusalem: Journalism’s toughest assignment.

Lyons produced this work to try to demonstrate that the “Israel lobby” in Australia is so powerful that it prevents the Australian media reporting the truth about what is allegedly happening in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.

In the monograph (pp. 18-22), Lyons selectively quotes, and then misrepresents, an email from AIJAC Executive Director Dr Colin Rubenstein to substantiate his claim that Rubenstein is so powerful that he could tell two editors of the Australian newspaper what they could and could not print, and they would apparently cravenly comply. In fact, the Rubenstein email made no such attempt at censorship.

In February 2017, then Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu visited Australia. As part of the visit, the Israeli Embassy organised a private, off-the-record briefing with editors and senior journalists from Australian media outlets. (Netanyahu held a separate on-the-record media conference at Kirribilli House with then Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull on February 21).

Prior to the private briefing, the invitees were well aware, and had agreed, that the contents of the background briefing were not to be reported, a condition set by the Embassy, presumably at the Netanyahu delegation’s request. Colin Rubenstein also attended that briefing.

Subsequent to the briefing, Rubenstein sent the two editors from the Australian who attended an email providing a factsheet on one of the subjects Netanyahu had addressed that they could use if they wished to cover the issue more generally, given the agreed ground rules that the actual private meeting was off the record.

21 years of BBC disinformation on the cause of the second Intifada

Last week marked twenty-one years since the start of the second Intifada in September 2000. It also marked twenty-one years of dogged BBC promotion of a myth concerning the cause of that terror war.

The BBC’s ‘On This Day’ website includes an entry for September 28th 2000 which is titled “‘Provocative’ mosque visit sparks riots”.
“Palestinians and Israeli police have clashed in the worst violence for several years at Jerusalem’s holiest site, the compound around Al-Aqsa mosque.

The violence began after a highly controversial tour of the mosque compound early this morning by hardline Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon. […]

BBC correspondent Hilary Andersson said the visit was clearly intended to underline the Jewish claim to the city of Jerusalem and its holy sites.”

Of course Ariel Sharon did not visit a mosque as claimed in that headline. Rather he visited Temple Mount which the item describes as follows, omitting any explanation of why it is the holiest site for Jews: “The site of the Al Aqsa mosque and its compound, known as Temple Mount to Jews and Haram al Sharif to Muslims, is sacred to both religions.”

The ‘context’ accompanying that item tells readers that:
“It was the beginning of a wave of rioting which escalated into what is now known as the second Palestinian intifada (uprising), or sometimes the Al Aqsa intifada.[…]

Critics say Mr Sharon knew the visit would trigger the ensuing violence and gambled on the Israeli public turning to a tough leader like him who would know how to handle it firmly.”

As we have documented here in the past, the BBC continued in the years that followed to promote the myth that the 34-minute visit to Temple Mount which was coordinated in advance with the Palestinian Authority’s security forces was the cause of the second Intifada.

Telegraph suggests Israel's nation state law contributes to Arab crime wave

Left unexplored is the question of how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can conceivably influence crime among Arab citizens of Israel that typically involves Arab gangs, personal feuds and “disputes over protection rackets and drug trafficking in a growing underworld”.

Later in the article, Rothwell suggests another contributing factor:
Another source of tension is Israel’s nation state law, which declares that only Jews have the right to self-determination in Israel. The law, passed in 2018, has deepened a perception in Arab communities in Israel that they are treated like second class citizens. Israel insists all of its citizens benefit from the same legal rights.

Though the wording is vague, stating merely that the (symbolic) nation state law is a source of “tension”, Rothwell certainty seems to suggest that the spike in crime within Arab communities since 2018 is somehow related to the legislation. Though he doesn’t elaborate on his hypothesis, there are actually figures which undermine such a causation.

For instance, polls by the left-wing IDI (Institute for Democracy in Israel) in 2017 and 2019 on trust in Israeli state institutions shows that Arab Israelis’ trust in the police actually increased a little in the year after the Nation State law was passed. That same poll showed that their trust in other Israeli institutions (such as the Supreme Court, the IDF, etc), whilst lower of those in the Jewish community, didn’t decrease during that period.

BBC acknowledges inaccuracy three and a half months on but fails to correct

Three and a half months ago we noted that listeners to the June 15th edition of the BBC Radio 4 programme ‘The World Tonight’ had been told no fewer than three times that Israel had annexed parts of Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967.

BBC RADIO 4 INVENTS INACCURATE DEFINITION OF JERUSALEM DAY

CAMERA UK submitted a complaint on that issue which we were informed on June 30th would take more time to address. On July 21st we were told that the time limit for handling the complaint had expired.

On October 1st we received the following communication:
“Thank you for contacting us about the terminology we used when reporting on Jerusalem Day on The World Tonight on 15 June. We apologise for our delayed response.

We have discussed your concerns with the team at The World Tonight. Though East Jerusalem has been occupied by Israel since 1967, Israel annexed East Jerusalem with the law that you cite in 1980, so the programme team acknowledge that the presenter should have used the word “occupation” rather than “annexation” in reference to Israel’s actions in East Jerusalem since 1967.”

Despite that acknowledgement, the programme remains online in its original form and according to the blurb, will be available “for over a year” to come.

Nazis Had Their Sights Set on Palestine

Israeli historians Benjamin Z. Kedar and Daniel Uziel reported in the Hebrew-language Israeli history journal Cathedra that the German Luftwaffe flew numerous missions over Mandatory Palestine from 1941 until September 1944, analyzing 286 aerial photographs made by the Luftwaffe which Kedar uncovered in the U.S. National Archive.

Palestine only became accessible to the German Luftwaffe after the Wehrmacht's Balkan and Greek campaign in April 1941. Crete was captured by the Germans in May and could be used as a base along with Italian-occupied Rhodes. The first German long-range reconnaissance aircraft reached Haifa in June. On June 10, the Germans dispatched 50 bombers in the direction of Haifa.

Three aerial photographs taken on May 28 were accompanied by information sheets marking air bases, the port and industrial area, oil storage facilities, Haifa's railway station and power plant, which was the main target hit by most of the bombs in the first German air raid. Two subsequent German bombing missions took place - the first targeting Haifa and the second bombing Tel Aviv, where one bomb killed ten people in an apartment building.

Herzog at Babi Yar: Let us make no mistake, Holocaust denial still alive and kicking

President Isaac Herzog addressed the international gathering on Wednesday marking 80 years since the Babi Yar massacre in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Sept. 29-30, 1941 – one of the most infamous Nazi mass slaughters of the Holocaust.

Speaking alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and other leaders, Herzog took part in inaugurating the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center.

The BYHMC is being established to commemorate the stories of the 2.5 million Jews of Eastern Europe, including 1.5 million from Ukraine alone, who were murdered and buried in mass graves near their homes by the Nazis and their Ukrainian collaborators.

Nearly 34,000 Jews were killed within 48 hours in Babi Yar, a ravine in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, when the city was under Nazi occupation in 1941. SS troops carried out the massacre with local collaborators.

In his speech, Herzog recited the Yizkor, the Jewish memorial prayer for the dead: "There is an ancient Jewish prayer called Yizkor. In the Jewish calendar, we usually recite Yizkor – the prayer to elevate the souls of the departed – be they relatives, or people whose deaths had national significance – on the most sacred dates and festivals for our people."

"This past month, we marked several of these occasions. With your permission, as President of the State of Israel, the state of the Jewish People, I would like to recite the Yizkor prayer, for the elevation of the souls of our brothers and sisters. Babies, children, women, men, and the elderly. Shot, massacred, and murdered in cold blood here, a place that became the biggest mass grave on European soil, in the valley of death of Babi Yar. In the most terrible tragedy to befall the Jewish People and the family of humanity, at mankind's darkest hour: the Holocaust. There was nobody to recite the Yizkor prayer for them.

"May God remember the souls of our brethren, Children of Israel, victims of the Holocaust and its heroes, the souls of the six million of Israel who were killed, murdered, suffocated, and buried alive and the holy communities destroyed for the sanctification of the Name. May God remember their binding, with the binding of all of Israel's other martyrs and heroes since time immemorial, and may he bind their souls up in the bond of life. Those gentle and beloved in their lives; in their deaths, not separated. May they rest in peace, and may we say Amen."

Israeli President Herzog in Ukraine Marking 80th Anniversary of the Babi Yar Massacre

Blinken Talks of How Stepfather Took on Soviet Denial of Babi Yar Massacre

In a video statement posted to the Twitter page of the US Embassy in Kyiv, the top US diplomat said that the Soviets for decades attempted to cover up the crimes of the Nazis and denied that Jews were the primary victims.

“For much of the last eight decades, the world did not remember what happened at Babi Yar. That was by design. The Nazis were not alone in trying to bury what had happened. For decades, Soviet history omitted that the 33,771 victims of those first two days – and tens of thousands more executed later – were Jews. And that they were killed because they were Jews,” Blinken said.

He then went on to tell the story of how his Jewish stepfather Samuel Pisar, who survived the Shoah, took part in an American delegation that participated in an off-the-record dialogue with Soviet leaders in 1971 at a conference in Kyiv.

The Soviet delegation displayed hostility and made antisemitic remarks, which prompted Pisar to begin a dialogue on the dangers of antisemitism and ethnic and racial hatred and invited the Soviets to visit Babi Yar.

Blinken described how on the same day the American delegation decided to pay a visit to Babi Yar.

“Then another bus arrived. The Soviet delegation descended and quietly joined the visit,” Blinken said. “After that visit, my stepfather said, the tone of the dialogue softened considerably.”

Pisar, a prominent lawyer who was the co-founder of Yad Vashem-France, died in 2015 at the age of 86.

Last member of Babyn Yar SS murder squad ‘must be put on trial’

The last living veteran of the SS death squad behind the Babyn Yar massacre is quietly living out his final years in a picturesque German town — as the Simon Wiesenthal Centre branded the failure to put him on a trial a “disgrace”.

This week — as the 80th anniversary of the massacre was marked with memorial services in Babyn Yar — the JC tracked Herbert Wahler down to his unassuming home on a residential street, where he is known locally for his remarkable sporting prowess.

Wahler was a member of Einsatzgruppe C, which systematically shot dead tens of thousands of defenceless Jewish children, women and men in the atrocity in Ukraine, which has been called the “Holocaust of bullets”.

He has never been tried and at the age of 99 has made his home in the affluent historical town of Melsungen in south-west Germany. He has admitted to having been present at the massacre but denies taking part in the killings, saying he was serving as a medic.

In 2014, the Simon Wiesenthal Center sent the German government documents that listed Herbert Wahler as a member of the SS murder squad which slaughtered Jews across Ukraine from 1941 to 1942. The public prosecution office in the German city of Kassel opened an investigation into Wahler in September 2017 but closed it in April 2020, claiming there was not enough evidence to bring charges against him.

Nearly 34,000 Jewish men, women and children were killed over 48 hours in 1941 around the site of the Babyn Yar ravine near the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. In the evening, SS troops were served hot soup and schnaps.

Ex-Nazi camp guard, 100, refuses to discuss atrocities at trial in Germany

A 100-year-old former concentration camp guard who became the oldest person to be tried for Nazi-era crimes in Germany will not speak about his time at the site, his lawyer said at the trial opening on Thursday.

Josef Schuetz is accused of “knowingly and willingly” assisting in the murder of 3,518 prisoners at the Sachsenhausen camp in Oranienburg, north of Berlin, between 1942 and 1945.

Allegations include aiding and abetting the “execution by firing squad of Soviet prisoners of war in 1942” and the murder of prisoners “using the poisonous gas Zyklon B.”

However, Schuetz “will not speak, but will only provide information about his personal situation” at the trial, his lawyer Stefan Waterkamp, told the court.

Antoine Grumbach, 79, whose father was killed at the camp, said he wanted the accused to acknowledge “the possibility of guilt.”

Thomas Walther, a lawyer representing several camp survivors and victims’ relatives, said he hoped Schuetz would change his mind.

HBO picks up film about boxer who escaped Auschwitz death march

HBO has bought the rights to “The Survivor,” a film by acclaimed Jewish director Barry Levinson based on the true story of a boxer who escaped an Auschwitz death march after being forced to fight with his fellow prisoners.

Jewish actor Ben Foster stars as Harry Haft, a Polish Jew who was imprisoned at the concentration camp at 16 but escaped as the Nazis evacuated the camps ahead of the advancing Red Army. He eventually moved to New York City. There he embarked on a fighting career that found him matched up against the likes of legendary heavyweight Rocky Marciano.

The movie, which premiered at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, is based on “Harry Haft: Survivor of Auschwitz, Challenger of Rocky Marciano,” a 2006 book written by Haft’s son Alan. HBO Films has not set a release date.

Also involved in the production was a team from the University of Southern California’s Shoah Foundation, an archive of Holocaust survivor testimonies started by Steven Spielberg. The USC team “provided detailed historical consulting in addition to access to a testimony of Haft, filmed in 2007,” according to Deadline.

French Senate adopts IHRA working definition of antisemitism

The French Senate has largely approved a government-backed motion for a resolution from its right-wing majority that adopts the definition of anti-Semitism proposed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).

Recalling that the National Assembly, the lower house of the parliament, voted in 2019 for a similar resolution initiated by the governing LREM group, French Minister for Citizenship Marlène Schiappa said she was “happy that the Senate is taking this same approach.”

“This is a resolution, it has no binding legal value, it does not change our law (…) but it can serve as a basis for the application of the law as well as serve as a basis for public policies,” she said, stressing that it will allow for better identification, better characterization of anti-Semitism.

The IHRA definition was adopted by the European Parliament and about 20 countries and supported by French president Emmanuel Macron in 2019 in an address to the annual dinner of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (Crif). However, it does not have a consensus, with critics believing that it can prohibit criticism of Israel.

“The resolution specifies that the definition of anti-Semitism that we recommend is not contradictory with the freedom to criticize the policies carried out by the Israeli government,” said the minister.

‘’This can only be a positive element in the fight against anti-Semitism in France, while anti-Semitism is unfortunately only increasing,’’ said Crif after the vote in the Senate.

Lurid Antisemitic Propaganda Spotted on Sale at Saudi Flagship Book Fair in Riyadh

More than two dozen openly antisemitic books have been spotted for sale at the 2021 international book fair in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh, which opened this week under the patronage of King Salman bin Abdulaziz.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported that the books on sale at the fair featured “a broad array of anti-Jewish tropes, including the blood libel, Holocaust denial, Jewish-Masonic conspiracy theories, and portrayals of Jews as evil puppet masters and the killers of divine prophets.” The book fair in Riyadh is reputedly the largest such event in the region, with over 1,000 publishing houses in attendance.

David Weinberg, the ADL’s Washington, DC director for international affairs, noted in a blog post that “many of the objectionable books at this year’s event were previously flagged by ADL to Saudi officials after the country’s second-largest book fair took place in Jeddah during December of 2019.”

Weinberg continued: “In most cases, the same publishing houses that promoted those problematic books during 2019 are now exhibiting the same antisemitic titles at the current book fair this year in Riyadh.”

Lurid antisemitic titles on sale included “Blood for the Matzah of Zion,” “Ten Heads of Evil: Engineers of the American-Zionist Plot to Fracture our Arab World and Ignite Revolutions” and “The Jewish Lie of the Holocaust.” More well-known antisemitic texts were also on sale, including “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” fabricated by the Russian Tsarist secret police in 1903, and Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.”

Weinberg observed that the presence of antisemitic books at a prestigious event seemed “at odds with some more positive Saudi trends.”

For example, textbooks in Saudi schools had expunged references to the “Protocols” and local media had carried a feature explaining its murky history, Weinberg wrote.

Microsoft to open 5 new sites in Israel, double R&D workforce

Microsoft plans to open five additional sites in Israel and more than double its R&D workforce in the country over the next four years, the tech giant announced on Wednesday.

Microsoft currently operates development centers in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Nazareth, and opened a 46,000-square-meter campus in Herzliya late last year. As of the end of 2020, Microsoft employed an estimated 2,300 people in Israel — 2,000 of them in R&D, working on projects including cybersecurity, AI technologies, big data and healthcare. Some 300 people work in sales and marketing.

Microsoft also operates a VC fund and “Microsoft for Startups” programs, whose staff work from the Herzliya offices.

The company opened a local branch in Israel in 1989, and established its first R&D center in Israel, its first outside the US, in 1991.

The company said it has seen substantial growth over the past 18 months across its development centers and hopes to add more than 2,500 engineers and other roles in the coming years to make up a local workforce of over 4,500 people.

The five planned sites include a second location in Tel Aviv that will house over 1,000 employees on 25,000-square-meter grounds, an additional space of about 17,000 square meters adjacent to the Herzliya site for 1,000 more employees, and two new development sites set to open next year in Beersheba and Jerusalem to tap into the talents of “under-represented sectors, such as ultra-orthodox Jews and Israeli Arabs,” the company said. The location of the fifth site is still under consideration and will take into account key factors such as workforce diversity, commute, and work-life balance concerns.

Estonian Military to Receive IAI-Made Blue Spear Anti-Ship Missiles

Estonian naval forces are set to receive Israel Aerospace Industries-made Blue Spear anti-ship missiles, the Estonian Centre for Defence Investment (ECDI) announced on Wednesday.

It signed a contract with Proteus Advanced Systems, a joint venture company of IAI, and ST Engineering Land Systems to acquire the missiles.

According to a statement by the ECDI, the missiles are part of an agreement to develop “Estonian coastal defense capabilities and arming the defense forces with the Blue Spear land-to-sea missile system.”

The system is an advanced precision weapon that can operate in all weather conditions, day and night, and enables strike capabilities beyond the line of sight, against mobile and stationary targets at sea.

A member of IAI’s Gabriel system, the missile’s maximum range is 290 kilometers. It flies at a high subsonic speed and is immune to GPS disruptions, said the statement.

“The project, with tight timescales and encompassing a complex set of requirements, is one of the biggest in Estonian defense procurement and definitely the most complex,” it added. “Hand-in-hand with the new capability development in the maritime domain, the contract provides opportunities for the Estonian defense industry.”

Commander of the Estonian naval forces Jüri Saska said “the chosen weapon system will form the cornerstone of Estonian naval defense for decades to come. Estonian Navy will be able to contribute significantly both to national, regional and collective defense effort.”

Chelsea Film Festival Spotlights TV Series and Films by Israeli, Jewish Directors

The internationally-focused Chelsea Film Festival (CFF) will feature a range of works directed by Israeli and Jewish directors this month, among the 141 films from 21 countries presented.

The Yiddish-language short film “His Death,” from director Avishai Sivan, is about a secular Jew named Noah who gathers with his Haredi siblings in Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim for the first time in years, to hear the written will of the family’s recently deceased patriarch.

Another showing is the documentary “The United States of Fashion: Designer Elie Tahari,” by Moroccan-Jewish director and producer David Serero. It explores the life of the Jewish designer and mogul, and how he built a billion-dollar fashion empire.

The documentary won the award for “Best Director on a Documentary” by the Berlin Indie Film Festival, “Best Producer Award” by the Eastern Europe International Movie Awards and received an Honorable Mention at the London International Film Festival.

Running from October 14-17, the CFF will also showcase the pilot episode of the English-language TV series “Stuck!” from Israeli director Omri Anghel. The show is about how “an oddball, a hothead, and a former child star become unlikely friends as they band together to fight for their shared dream of becoming actors as they discover that it really is about the long ass journey, not the destination,” according to the film festival.

In addition, the 9th-annual CFF will present “Surviving on LES,” a full-length English-language comedy about New York City’s Lower East Side, directed by Anthony Amatullo. The film follows three Lower East Side stalwarts — 60-year-old Jewish Orthodox store owner Sammy Markowitz, his sales associate and store manager — as they try to adapt to gentrification and cultural changes in the neighborhood.

F-35 Components Made in Israel

The helmet worn by an F-35 stealth fighter pilot is manufactured by Israel's Elbit Systems.

Each helmet is personal, tailored to each pilot individually, a match that takes several days to complete and includes a 3D scan of the head and the distance between the pilot's eyes.

The helmet directs the armament to its target by a simple movement of the pilot's head, enabling rapid response and reduction of the pilot's workload.

The F-35's wings are produced with the utmost precision by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), which to date has manufactured 270 pairs of wings.

Record number of Bedouin drafted into IDF in 2020

Some 600 Bedouins voluntarily drafted into the Israeli military over the past year, a record number from previous years.

"In the past year, we have continued the upward trend in the recruitment of Bedouins to the IDF, with more than 600 conscripts, and we continue to work to increase the number,” Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Wednesday evening at a ceremony marking the role of Bedouins in Israeli security forces.

While Bedouin are not obligated to serve in the army, the IDF has stepped up attempts to recruit Bedouin soldiers, including sending Bedouin troops into towns to encourage youths to volunteer.

“Military service and national service are not taken for granted, and I am glad that more and more members of the community are enlisting in diverse tracks,” Gantz said. “From an understanding of the importance of diversity I want to see more of you in senior command positions, as well as in technological units and places that act as a gateway to Israeli society.”

The Bedouin are highly respected for their tracking and navigational skills. Gantz praised these tracking skills of those who join Israeli security forces, saying that even in the days of technological progress, “there is no substitute for the sharpness of the trackers, their familiarity with the terrain, experiences handed down through generations.”

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