02/14 Links Pt2: Benny Morris:The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Isn't about Race; CAIR's Media Enablers; The Harvard Hummus Protests; AOC bemoans ‘cancel culture’ that fired Marc Lamont Hill ~ EoZ

From Ian:

Benny Morris (WSJ$): The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Isn't about Race

In the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel conquered the West Bank - which most Israelis refer to as Judea and Samaria - and East Jerusalem from Jordan. This territory was the heartland of the biblical kingdom of David and Solomon, and successive Israeli governments have been unable or unwilling to give it up. Since then, more than half a million Israelis have settled there, making an Israeli withdrawal inconceivable even if Palestinian leaders were sincerely willing to agree to peace in exchange.

Despite what the new Amnesty International report says, racism is not what underlies the Israeli-Arab relationship. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is essentially national, a struggle between two nations over the same tract of land.

The Amnesty report "charges" that Israelis define Israel as "the nation-state of the Jews." Of course, that definition is correct. The world is divided into nation-states and Israel is the Jews' nation-state, just as the 22 member states of the Arab League are Arab nation-states.

Many Israeli Arabs resent the fact that "their" Palestine has become a Jewish state. But most seem to have made their peace with life in Israel, appreciating the prosperity, the social and health benefits, and the freedom that the Jewish state guarantees. Most Israeli Arabs, to judge by opinion polls, aren't eager to be inducted into a Palestinian Arab state should one arise next door.

If that did happen, many, if not most, Israeli Jews would regard it as a mortal threat. After Israel completely withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Hamas took over and began to rain down rockets on Israel, eventually sending missiles flying toward Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion International Airport.

Hamas would likely gain control of the West Bank if Israel withdrew, allowing it to bombard Israel's population centers. Hamas rule would allow Iran to install forces and weapons in the West Bank, as it has already done in Lebanon.

Who Are the Arabs of Jerusalem?

Jerusalem Arabs numbered 70,000 on the eve of the Six-Day War (according to a Jordanian census from 1966) and today, they are 380,000, while 120,000 live in the neighborhoods under Jerusalem Municipality jurisdiction but beyond the security fence.

Prof. Itzhak Reiter, an expert on Islam and the Middle East at Ashkelon Academic College, describes the different parts of Arab society in the city.

"About 50% of the present Arab residents of Jerusalem originally came from Hebron and...took over and developed their careers at the expense of the old locals, like the Nusseibeh, the Nashashibi and the El Khatib families."

Another group are educated Israeli Arabs who moved to Jerusalem from villages in the Galilee. The Christian community has shrunk to 13,000.

Inside the Muslim population there are Sufis, identified with a mystical approach to Islam, as well as Salafists, who are much more extremist both in religious and political terms.

There are also those identified with Hamas, which is quite strong in eastern Jerusalem, and those identified with Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Thanks, Whoopi! Why Holocaust Education Is mostly counter-productive

At best, Holocaust education accomplishes little or nothing for perpetuating Judaism or Jews and, at worst, offers unhelpful talking points to ignoramuses for their unrelated agendas. In its most ubiquitous form, Holocaust education results in “Godwin’s Law,” which posits that every argument on social media sooner or later finds one adversary calling the other a Nazi.

I personally know and pastor to Holocaust Survivors and their offspring. For most, the Shoah singularly defined the rest of their lives. Of course it did — and no decent person would tell them: “Get over it.” Their understandable life-calling is to bear witness. Moreover, Holocaust Denial eventually emerged as its own new form of anti-Semitism as memories faded, evidence vanished, and Survivors died. So it became even more compelling for Survivors to relate their personal experiences and show the branded numbers on their wrists. The truth must be known.

Nonetheless, it is time to re-think the “common wisdom” that tens of millions of dollars must be budgeted on general Holocaust education. A time comes when enough data exist for people to see what works and what not. Data and results on the street demonstrate unequivocally that fifty-plus years of Holocaust education has not brought young Jews closer to Judaism. Rather, it has driven them away. It does not inspire observance of Shabbat or kosher dietary practice. It just makes kids feel bad and determined not to grow up to be sheep and martyrs. Young Jews don’t want that in their lives, and they think they can run away from it.

Finally, even much worse, for pathological haters among non-Jews, Holocaust education ultimately inspires a deadly inference: If a hater despises several groups and wants to murder people in at least one of them — Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Asians — Shoah education proposes that Jews are easiest to murder without payback. Blacks, Mexicans, Asians might have illegal hand guns and shoot back. But Holocaust education propagates that Jews apparently are pretty easy and safe to kill. They don’t seem to carry guns but briefcases. They seem to go like sheep. So the imagery actually is counter-productive. You watch movies like The Godfather or Goodfellas, and that teaches you never to start up with Italians. But not enough focus is directed to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising or the armed revolts in places like Treblinka that show Jews fighting back.

That is partly why some people cannot process the idea of Israel fighting back when attacked. Holocaust education has so ingrained that Jews do not fight back that, when the one Jewish polity in the world actually does, the woke cannot handle it. Well, tough noogies.

If we do not re-allocate our Holocaust education funding to educating Jews instead about their culture and religion, we will end up with history museums recounting what Jews once were.

AOC bemoans ‘cancel culture’ that fired Marc Lamont Hill for ‘from the river to the sea’ comments

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) defended former CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill, who was fired from the network in 2018 over comments he made about Israel, in a new interview with The New Yorker’s David Remnick published on Monday.

“You talk about cancel culture,” the New York congresswoman told Remnick. “But notice that those discussions only go one way. We don’t talk about all the people who were fired. You just kind of talk about, like, right-leaning podcast bros and more conservative figures. But, for example, Marc Lamont Hill was fired [from CNN] for discussing an issue with respect to Palestinians, pretty summarily. There was no discussion about it, no engagement, no thoughtful discourse over it, just pure accusation.”

Remnick noted that Ocasio-Cortez had “criticized that term, ‘cancel culture,’ even dismissed it” in the past.

Lamont Hill, a professor at Temple University, was fired in November 2018 following his comments made at a United Nations event in which he advocated for a “free Palestine from the river to the sea” — widely interpreted to be a call for the destruction of the State of Israel — and said, “we cannot endorse a narrow politics of respectability that shames Palestinians for resisting, for refusing to do nothing in the face of state violence and ethnic cleansing.”

Months later, Lamont Hill again came under fire for comments he made about Zionism at an activist summit, which critics, including Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, condemned at the time.

AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) agreed to speak at a Peace Now memorial marking the 25th anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination, but she has now changed her mind (after BDS and pro-Palestinian supporters demanded she not go). #AOC #BDS #Rabin pic.twitter.com/Vck1l1X1l8
— Yaakov Kirschen (@drybonescartoon) October 8, 2020

Unpacked: What led to the 1991 Crown Heights Riots?

Despite strong ties in the years after the civil rights movement, the relationship between the Black and Jewish communities of Brooklyn began to deteriorate. Three decades later, the tension between these two groups came to a head during the Crown Heights riots of 1991.

Disclaimer: While Jews are a diverse, multi-racial people, in this video when we speak about the interactions between the Black community and the Jewish community we are speaking about Jews of European descent.

CAIR's Media Enablers

The Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), ostensibly a promoter of peace and understanding, has always sought out media allies willing to repeat its unending tales of victimization, and has achieved some success with outlets such as the Washington Post and Al-Jazeera.

But all through the recent imbroglio over a CAIR employee passing information to the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), a think tank that investigates radical Islamic terrorist groups, the Columbus Dispatch has emerged as one of CAIR's most ardent supporters. Its writers have spent the last several weeks repeating uncritically, almost gleefully, CAIR's accusations while ignoring CAIR's links to Hamas, the Islamic Association for Palestine, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Dispatch's articles are so one-sided that Cliff Smith, director of the Middle East Forum's Washington Project, suggests they violate the Gannett Company's ethical code for all its brands: to "be honest in the way we gather, report and present news — with relevancy, persistence, context, thoroughness, balance, and fairness of mind."

And no writer at the Dispatch seems more willing to tell CAIR's side of the story than Danae King. Her many articles on CAIR often quote only CAIR members and regularly refer to CAIR as a "Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization" and a "Muslim advocacy group" while calling the IPT "an anti-Muslim group." King's January 12 article features this sentence: "The IPT is based in Washington, D.C. and calls itself a nonprofit research group" (emphasis added). This phrase appears elsewhere in her work, for instance here and here.

King claimed in a local interview that she "aims to give a voice to the voiceless" (though CAIR is hardly "voiceless"), but this courtesy was hardly extended to Steven Emerson, the founder of IPT, for her December 21, 2021, piece where she wrote that her "phone call for comment to IPT on Tuesday evening was not immediately returned." IPT staff made its records available to me to show that King's call came in at 5:19 p.m. Her article was published at 5:33 p.m.

The day after CAIR's Facebook meeting where it announced its letter to the Department of Justice calling for an investigation into Emerson and the IPT, King's article (this time featuring a giant CAIR logo, dwarfing the Columbus Dispatch banner) referred to the IPT as "an anti-Muslim organization" in the first sentence, and in the second repeated nonchalantly the CAIR charge that Emerson "was working with the Israeli government."

Muslim Federation Event Speaker Glorifies Hitler, Says US is 'Owned & Controlled' by Jews

On March 18th, the South Florida Muslim Federation (SoFloMuslims), an umbrella group for the vast majority of South Florida’s radical Muslim institutions, will begin its two-day First Annual Conference, titled ‘Our Collective Strength.’ The group has been advertising the event’s featured speakers, since early November. One of these speakers is Khalid Griggs, an anti-Semite who has used his social media to glorify Hitler and someone who believes the United States is “owned and controlled” by Jews. Having Griggs on its roster shines a light on the motives of the Muslim Federation and all who agree to participate in this month’s conference.

Khalid Fattah Griggs is the imam of the Community Mosque of Winston-Salem (CMWS) in North Carolina. He is also the Vice President of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) and the Chairman of ICNA’s Council for Social Justice (CSJ). Unlike ICNA that has its roots in South Asian Islamism, Griggs, a black Muslim convert, took his main influences from the black power movement. In December 2019, Griggs wrote of the “honor” he had in meeting Kwame Ture, a rabid anti-Semite who claimed European-born Jews were not Jews but “Cossacoids” and said, “The only good Zionist is a dead Zionist.” Griggs called Ture a “courageous political visionary.”

Griggs has his own anti-Semitism problem. In May 2021, he posted on social media a news clipping from the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. The post accused Israel of “committing mass murder” and stated that “ZIONISM… MUST BE DESTROYED!” In May 2018, Griggs affirmed his belief in the wildly anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that the US is run by Jewish interests. When someone wrote on his Facebook page, “America has long been an Israeli colony” and “America from coast to coast is owned and controlled by pro-Zionist, Israeli fanatics,” Griggs clicked ‘like,’ declaring his agreement.

Middle East Studies Association Defends Terror-Infused Palestinian University, While Moving To Boycott Israeli Academia

MESA’s Committee on Academic Freedom did not see fit to issue any complaints whatsoever against Hamas, Fatah, or any other group for fostering or participating in violence on campus, leading to the closure of multiple universities. MESA did not complain to the Palestinian Authority about its security police “invading” West Bank universities, violating Palestinian students’ protest rights by using force to disperse protesters, arresting ten students into a corrupt judicial system, or failing to keep campuses as “safe spaces” by maintaining order on campus. It certainly did not accuse Hamas, Fatah, or the PA of violating students’ free speech rights.

It did not write to the administrators of these four universities objecting to the campus closures, not even when officials shut down Hebron University over men and women dancing together. It did not accuse them of violating their students’ academic freedom, right to education, or right to socialize with whom they pleased.

On January 10, Israeli soldiers arrested five Bir Zeit University students affiliated with Hamas and other Palestinian factions.

MESA Committee on Academic Freedom sent a February 8, 2022, complaint letter to Israel about its “invasion” of Bir Zeit University.

Because of that, MESA issued a protest letter February 8, complaining about Israelis’ “storming of the gates of Birzeit University, arrest of five students and firing of live ammunition on university grounds.” MESA condemned the so-called “invasion” as a “horrifying escalation of ongoing assaults on Palestinian universities,” especially Bir Zeit. MESA complained that the arrests violated Palestinian students’ “right to peaceful protest… academic freedom and freedom of speech,” their “rights to education,” and were “part of a larger assault on the Palestinian right to education.” MESA also asserted (without evidence) that the arrests were “arbitrary” and “turn[ed] campuses from safe spaces into zones where students’ and staff members’ politics put them in grave danger.”

MESA did acknowledge that the arrested were “all of them part of the leadership of the student movement at Birzeit University” – leadership which is largely affiliated with Hamas.

In the midst of MESA’s vote to ratify its resolve to boycott, divest from, and sanctions against Israel for the crime of existing, MESA offers further proof that its goal is to discredit, hound, and humiliate Israel for defending itself, and not to improve the lives of Palestinians who are daily oppressed by violent and corrupt Palestinian kleptocracies, in both the West Bank and Gaza.

The Harvard Hummus Protests

Harvard students from the group Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP) are demanding that Sabra hummus be taken out of dining halls because of ties to the Israel Defense Forces. The Strauss Group, which co-owns Sabra with PepsiCo, is the largest food company in Israel. It sends food and care packages to the Golani Brigade in the IDF. Since Israel practices universal conscription, donating food to the IDF is an unsurprising form of corporate charity.

As a former Harvard student, I had Israeli classmates who served in the IDF. These are students who are being told their country does not deserve to exist. And in the case of students who served, they are being labeled murderers for serving their country. The Harvard Israel Initiative (HII) responded to HOOP: "We stand against any attempt to single out the State of Israel and uphold the right of the Golani Brigade - a unit dedicated to combatting terror groups, including Hamas and Hizbullah - to defend Israel from those who wish to annihilate it."

StandWithUs Outraged at Attempt to Shut Down Antisemitism Awareness Stall

On Thursday 10th February 2022, educational charity StandWithUs UK joined the Manchester Jewish Society to set up a stall outside of the Student Union at Manchester University. The stall was part of Antisemitism Awareness Week with the purpose of raising awareness of the rising levels of antisemitism across the UK and the rest of the world and educating the campus community about combatting antisemitism.

Students engaged in civil and constructive discussion with the staff at the stalluntil a large group amassed in angry protest. The protestors noisily demanded the removal of the educational stall from campus, carrying signs including, “Zionism is Apartheid,” whilst chanting, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free!” – a slogan calling for the destruction of the Jewish State. Their aim was to make Jewish students feel intimidated and unsafe on campus. Home Secretary Nadhim Zahawi, when specifically asked if universities should investigate students who join this Hamas-related chant, commented recently: “Absolutely. This [Hamas] is a proscribed organisation… and they should be reported to the police and authorities.”

The educators who manned the stall continued their work, answering questions and addressing the crowds’ concerns. However, the protesters became increasingly heated and abusive. One protestor also called StandWithUs Senior Educator Charlotte Korchak, “worse than Hitler”, an extremely offensive slur towards a Jew.

They also graffitied ‘Israel = Apartheid’ onto the adjacent stone wall.

Despite this intimidation, the stall came to a close at the predetermined ending time.

University Of Manchester Friends of Palestine went on to slander StandWithUs UK with baseless accusations of racism in an effort to prevent freedom of expression on campus. As an independent educational charity StandWithUs UK is intent on ensuring that, for all of its programmes and activities, any and all individuals are welcome, regardless of race, religion, ethnic background, age, nationality, sex, gender political affiliation or socio-economic status. Our charity has explicit policies against Islamophobia and other types of bigotry.

Palestine action deface factory APPH in the night this group must be proscribed. Defacing anything to do with the Jewish state of Israel or it’s connections is #antisemitism @pritipatel @Campaign4T pic.twitter.com/FenbsHC2Mj
— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) February 14, 2022

BBC responds to a complaint from CAMERA UK on Temple Mount reports

That response obviously does not address the issue of the political motivations that lie behind the use of the term “al Aqsa Mosque” to describe the entire Temple Mount compound.

As noted here previously, BBC journalists generally adhered to the BBC News style guide until late 2014, when audiences began to see a change in the terminology used. Coincidentally or not, that change emerged after the PLO put out a “media advisory” document (since removed from its website) informing foreign journalists of its “[c]oncern over the use of the inaccurate term “Temple Mount” to refer to Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound in Jerusalem”. That directive is of course part and parcel of the PLO’s tactic of negation of Jewish history in Jerusalem.

In addition to promoting its preferred terminology “al Aqsa Mosque compound”, the PLO document dating from November 5th 2014 stated:
“Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound, sometimes referred to as the Noble Sanctuary (“Haram al-Sharif” in Arabic), is the compound that contains Al Aqsa building itself, ablution fountains, open spaces for prayer, monuments and the Dome of the Rock building. This entire area enclosed by the walls which spans 144 dunums (almost 36 acres), forms the Mosque.”

Apparently, the BBC apparently sees no impartiality issues with promotion of that PLO narrative and terminology it claims is used by “most Palestinians”.

The second section of the BBC’s response relates to the part of our complaint concerning the failure to clarify that interviewee Hanady Halawani is associated with the Northern Islamic Movement – an organisation which is banned in Israel. The BBC News website replied:

AFP’s 2022 Innovation Cite Israelis on ‘Terrorist,’ Use Scare Quotes, Omit Facts

This is the second time in less than a week that AFP whitewashed Palestinian terrorism. Last week, AFP likewise employed scare quotes around the t-word and unnecessarily attributed the information to Israel, citing “what Israel described as an operation against a ‘terrorist cell’ …” By that time, though, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a designated terror organization, had itself already proudly claimed the men in question as members, so AFP’s superfluous use of scare quotes and Israeli sourcing was extremely misleading, casting doubt on the information when in fact it had been confirmed.

Media outlets are not compelled to use the word “terror.” Simply describing the facts — in this case, Palestinians fired on a passing car, killing an Israeli civilian — can sufficiently communicate to readers the correct information. In fact, that data is exceedingly more informative than non-specific unsubstantiated Israeli allegations about “terrorism.”

Indeed, Associated Press, another leading news agency, published captions which commendably reported the essential facts, stating: “Israeli forces rolled into Silat al-Harithiya village near Jenin to destroy homes of two Palestinian detainees accused of opening fire at a car traveling near a West Bank settlement outpost and killing a settler in December.”

Perhaps AFP regards its qualified reference to Israeli claims of unspecified “terror” (in scare quotes) as a convenient workaround to avoid actually reporting Palestinian terror activity. But make no mistake: This week’s captions cover up for Yehuda Dimantmen’s suspected murderer just as much as AFP captions in 2019 covered up for the murderer of Rabbi Eitam and Naama Henkin.

BBC again omits relevant background in report on Gaza book shop

Any reader who clicked on that link in the hope of finding some context that would explain why the book shop “was demolished” would be disappointed. The link leads to a report by BBC East Midlands from last June on the same story which likewise simply states that the shop was “completely destroyed in the recent Hamas/Israeli conflict” without any reference to Hamas’ use of the same building for military purposes.

Both those BBC reports quote one of the organisers of a campaign to help Mansour rebuild his business.

“Mahvish Rukhsana, a human rights lawyer based in London, was one of the main organisers of the appeal.”

In an interview on the same story with the Guardian last month, Rukhsana alleged that “When Israeli war planes bombed this bookshop it was a further attack on the community’s access to knowledge”. The Guardian’s report does however clarify that:
“The Israeli military has said that the store was not its target, claiming that the building that housed it also contained a Hamas facility for producing weapons and intelligence-gathering.”

In contrast, BBC audiences have not been provided with that integral background information in any of the corporation’s reporting on this story to date and hence would not understand that the reason why “a Leicester business” and others had to contribute to a campaign to rebuild that bookshop is Hamas’ use of the civilian population under its rule as human shields.

PreOccupiedTerritory: BLM Offers Canada Truckers Arson, Looting Services So Media Will Be More Sympathetic (satire)

Leaders and prominent activists among the movements that spearheaded violent demonstrations across the US in 2020 reached out to counterparts in the convoy protests taking place to the north over vaccine mandates and other instances of perceived government overreach, proposing to the latter group that the same activists who torched businesses, destroyed neighborhoods, and undermined the rule of law do the same on the other side of the border, since such activities on the part of the progressive American protesters kept them in the good graces of most major news outlets, which were eager to paint those protesters in a positive light.

To date, Canadian truckers assembling here in the capital and in various other places around the country have in the main managed to avoid creating disturbances more troublesome than blocked thoroughfares and loud honking. Nevertheless, government and local authorities have called on law enforcement to suppress the popular movement, with limited success; the truckers enjoy widespread popular support, including from military personnel, and measures to disperse the protests have failed to yield significant results. Escalating rhetoric by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and those closest to him in the Liberal Party have exacerbated the situation by characterizing the demonstrators as anti-democratic and dangerous by calling attention to a handful of fringe phenomena featuring extremist or far-right imagery or slogans, a move that has only turned the populace against the government and emboldened the truckers. Government-run media and similarly-minded American mainstream networks and publications have ignored the popular support and instead amplified the official version of events, a development that Black Lives Matters and Antifa leaders observed marks a sharp departure from the same organizations’ attitude toward the social justice protests in which those organizations’ often-violent activities received sympathetic coverage by those networks and publications.

Has mufti of Jerusalem earned his place in Holocaust museum exhibits?

The Yad Vashem chairman recently released a statement defending the Israeli Holocaust museum's decision no longer to display a photograph of an infamous meeting in 1941 between Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini and Adolf Hitler.

The chairman argued that being forced to include the contested photograph is "tantamount to partaking in the debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

In fact, the move, which glosses over the role that the mufti played in recruiting troops for the Nazis and personally helping to spread Nazi ideology throughout the Middle East and North Africa, prevents museum visitors from viewing a primary source with deep historical and present-day relevance.

Throughout Hitler's rise to power, the mufti remained a leading figure in the Arab world, and his vehement anti-Semitism and contribution to organized war crimes against Jews have been and will remain significant facts in Holocaust history.

The mufti is best known for directly forming and training Arab refugees and Arab-Europeans in Waffen-SS (combat) divisions. He was tasked in 1943 by the SS with recruiting Bosnian Muslims in an effort to establish the "Mountain division."

In Himmler's Bosnian Division, author George Lepre explains the significance of the Nazis' securing of a religious authority like al-Husseini in their expansion efforts, since local Muslim leaders prohibited Muslims from working alongside the Nazis. Due to the mufti's commitment to the program and robust propaganda efforts, an estimated 27,000 recruits signed up.

In addition to his endeavor to recruit Arabs into Axis armies, al-Husseini wholeheartedly supported Hitler's master plan for Jews and had personal knowledge of how Nazi concentration camps operated. In a series of photographs sold at a Jerusalem auction in 2017, the mufti is seen alongside a handful of other global leaders at the Trebbin concentration camp in 1942. This serves as proof that the mufti understood the fate of Jews in Europe and hoped to emulate that path for Jews in the Arab world.

Former German Muslim Leader Sentenced for Inciting Hatred, Antisemitism on Social Media

The former head of an influential Turkish Muslim association in Germany was convicted of inciting hatred and condoning crimes in antisemitic social media postings he made.

Mustafa Keskin, was given a 10-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, according to the verdict by the district court of the university city of Gottingen. Keskin — who resigned last March as chairman of the Gottingen branch of DITIB, a Turkish religious group, after his posts on various social media platforms were exposed — was also ordered to pay a fine of 1,200 euros in installments of 75 euros to a charitable organization.

He was charged over at least five posts online between 2015 and 2019 that contained insults against Jews and Armenians and conspiracy myths.

Keskin, who was not present at the court for his verdict, can appeal the decision over the next two weeks, but his lawyer indicated that the defendant would likely accept the penalty order, Germany’s newspaper Die Zeit reported, citing a court spokesperson.

One post depicted Pope Francis and the Turkish right-wing extremist Mehmet Ali Ağca, who seriously injured Pope John Paul II in an assassination attempt in 1981. Since Pope Francis recognizes the Armenian genocide as a historical reality, the text of Keskin’s post read, he should not be surprised if he is shot in the head.

Last year, an investigation by Die Falken (The Falcons), a socialist youth organization, led to the exposure of Keskin’s postings on various social media platforms.

Keskin’s Facebook page, meanwhile, had featured “antisemitic and anti-Israel posts and images since 2013,” the youth group reported. “In one personal post, for example, Israeli soldiers are referred to as ‘Jewish dogs,’ while other images and posts suggest that Jews and Israelis would specifically kill children.”

Team of #Antisemitic attackers cruising Brooklyn to film themselves punching Jews pic.twitter.com/cOXqYHrgXw
— John-Paul Pagano (@johnpaulpagano) February 14, 2022

NYC Mayor Condemns Attack on Jewish Teen in Brooklyn, Latest in String of Antisemitic Assaults

A Jewish teenager was attacked in Flatbush, Brooklyn, on Friday night, while another man was menaced by what appears to be the same perpetrator, prompting a condemnation from New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

The Flatbush Shomrim Safety Patrol shared two videos of the first assault, which follows a string of antisemitic incidents in Brooklyn over the past month. Both recordings show a visibly Jewish male being followed by a thin man in a hood, who punches his target in the face before running off and jumping into a passing van.

Shomrim said the attack took place at 10:30 pm at Avenue L and E. 32nd, the community publication Yeshiva World reported. A second man said he was targeted by the same perpetrator at Nostrand Avenue and Kings Highway, but escaped unhurt.

In both cases, an accomplice appeared to record a video of the attack.

Mayor Eric Adams issued a brief statement on Twitter on Saturday night, saying the NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force “is investigating this attack, and make no mistake an attack on our Jewish community is an attack on every New Yorker. We will catch the perpetrators of this assault.”

Manhattan Crossing Guard Investigated After Allegedly Abusing Rabbi, Child With Antisemitic Slurs

A New York City crossing guard has been removed from her post and is under investigation for allegedly verbally abusing a rabbi and her child with antisemitic slurs.

Rabbi Erica Gerson was crossing 79th Street and Amsterdam Ave in January when the harassment took place, local ABC affiliate WABC reported.

“It was pick-up time and I was crossing as [I] always do with my nine-year-old,” Gerson recounted. “I overheard [the crossing guard] describing one group of kids as ‘those Jewish kids,’ and I thought that was strange.”

“She called us ‘nasty people, now we know why there’s no peace in the Middle East,’ and along with that she cursed a Kosher establishment,” Gerson said.

“We stood there and looked at her and said, ‘I see you looking at me, let’s see you put a hand on me,’ the whole thing was totally surreal,” she added.

After Gerson filed a police report, the NYPD released a statement saying, “Anyone who has taken an oath to serve in the NYPD is expected to act as a role model for our children and families. The NYPD does not tolerate discrimination in any form, particularly if it is rooted in hate speech or a bias against individuals.”

Gerson said the police had been “incredibly supportive.”

Israel’s Thetaray to Monitor Transactions for UAE’s Mashreq Bank

Mashreq Bank of the UAE and Israeli company ThetaRay announced on Monday that they will collaborate in transaction monitoring. The implementation of ThetaRay’s AI-driven solution allows safe and secure cross-border payment transfers for correspondent banking with protection from financial crime.

The collaboration between the UAE bank and ThetaRay came to fruition thanks to the Abraham Accords that were signed in September 2020 to normalize relations between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco.

“ThetaRay’s technology, underpinned by advanced machine learning-based models complementing rules, sets the foundation for next generation transaction monitoring,” said Scott Ramsay, Group Head of Compliance and Bank MLRO of Mashreq Bank. “By combining speed and agility with efficiency, it allows banks to effectively thwart financial crime risks in the increasingly complex space of cross-border payments.”

ThetaRay, which raised $31 million last May, taking its total funding to $90 million, claims its solution allows banks and fintechs to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO), rapidly expand revenues, improve customer service, and speed ROI from months to only days.

A terrorist's worst nightmare? Israeli camera sees through walls at 300 feet

A groundbreaking camera developed in Israel can see through walls, even from a distance of over 300 feet.

"It can be used remotely from one apartment to another, inside a shelter, or an autonomous car," said Amir Beeri, managing director and founder of Camero, of the Xaver Long-Range system (XLR80).

"So it can position itself up to 100 [yards] from its target, and see inside the room or house, if there are people inside, how many, whether they are on the move, and decide how to operate," he said.

In case of a terrorist attack or kidnapping in an urban environment, security forces, in theory, will no longer need to perform certain dangerous tasks, such as house-to-house searches, to gather information. They will be able to concentrate their efforts on the whole building at once.

"It's like a long-range sight. It's an observation system but it sees through walls. So we aim the sight precisely at the target," Beeri added. "It is calibrated with an antenna, so we know exactly what is happening in this room through the concrete walls."

This detector understands how far from the wall people are standing, their position, and therefore the way in which the security forces can operate.

A camera made in Israel which sees through walls

#OTD 1896: Theodor Herzl published 'The Jewish State', his vision for the modern State of #Israel.

Today, his dream has been realized. Amnesty Shamnesty, today we have a strong, proud, thriving Jewish nation and democratic country, with control of our destiny.

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— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) February 14, 2022