Israel welcomed some four million tourists over the course of 2018, breaking a new record, the Tourism Ministry reported this week.
This year saw an increase in tourist arrivals of 13 percent compared to 2017, and 38% compared to 2016, while tourism revenue exceeded NIS 24 billion ($6.3 billion), according to the ministry.
I found the statistics from previous years and the rise in tourism is stunning:
You can see the impact that BDS has had on tourism!
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Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss writes an essay about the joys of celebrating Christmas with his Christian wife, and how proud he is of the IfNotNow members who disrupt Birthright tours, and then:
Over the years, some Christians have said to me, Stop thinking that you’re Jewish, it’s neurotic. But I’ve not been able to do that, or anyway I never tried. I don’t like the entitlement and the Israel lobby, but I believe in tribe, and at some level I clearly love my group and thank it for cultivating traits I cherish, reading and intellectual detachment. A good number of my closest friends are Jewish, and I am taking Hebrew for the first time in 50 years, so as to study what the supremacists say in Israel.
My Judaism is anti-Zionism. That’s the spiritual challenge that has propelled me and this site. My social/political identity is Jewish; and my Jewish chore is clear. Being Jewish means helping to free my group and the world of the historic trauma that generated religious nationalism and all its evils.
Needless to say, there is nothing Jewish about Phil Weiss.
His entire spiritual and religious existence is centered on hating Israel. So much so that when he finally decides to learn Hebrew it is not to connect to the rich Hebrew literature that has been the backbone of Western civilization - but to attack Jews.
He is a believer - but his belief system is not Judaism. Philip Weiss' religion, loosely defined, is hate. It is the opposition to Jewish nationalism, Jewish self determination and Jewish pride.
It is laughable that he claims to have intellectual detachment. When every single article he writes is a crazed attack on Israel - which is no worse than any other country, and better than most, especially given the circumstances of being in a state of war for 70 years - you can be sure that there is no intellectual honesty nor detachment from Weiss. His own words, calling his anti-Israel crusade "spiritual," contradicts his smug pretense of intellectualism.
It is almost pitiful that Weiss feels that he must call his bizarre, perverted belief system his "Judaism." He is not willing to throw away his Jewish identity just yet. Maybe he clings to his pretense of Jewishness in order to give moral authority to his anti-Israel screeds, or he really has a "pintele yid" that nags him about his obsession with destroying the Jewish state.
Let me absolve him of that nagging.
Phil, there is nothing Jewish about you besides for perhaps your nose. There is no Jewish philosophy you can point to over two thousand years that remotely resembles what you absurdly call your "Judaism." Your own worldview is based on the negative - negating religious Jewishness, negating Israel, negating Jewish heritage. It is enshrining hate. There is nothing positive you bring to the table. The things you claim to love about Judaism are plentiful among Christians, atheists and others.
Don't pretend to be Jewish any more. Accepting the truth that you are a vicious hater will set you free to attack Jews and Israel with all your spiritual might.
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Manny’s, a new business in San Francisco’s Mission District, is part cafe, part bookstore, part political event hall. Owner Manny Yekutiel, a 29-year-old rising star in the world of liberal political organizing, calls it a “civic social gathering space.”
It’s hosted incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, San Francisco Mayor London Breed, activists with Black Lives Matter — and on the sidewalk outside, protesters upset because Yekutiel is a “Zionist gentrifer.”
“Zionists out of the Mission!” one marcher yelled on Wednesday, Dec. 26, as about 20 members of the Lucy Parsons Project and allied groups gathered outside Manny’s.
The self-described “radical black queer direction action group,” named for an early 20th century Latina anarcho-communist labor organizer, has protested at Manny’s every Wednesday this month, and says it will continue protesting every Wednesday until Manny’s is “shut down.” The Project only has about 300 Twitter followers, but among the protest’s supporters is a local rapper, Equipto, with 14,500 followers.
This reporter tweeted at the Lucy Parsons Project on Thursday asking for an interview and was promptly blocked. (The group tweeted on Dec. 21, “We Proudly Block all Zionists.”)
None of the events at Manny’s have concerned the Middle East. Instead, the protesters are targeting Yekutiel for his personal support for the existence of the Jewish state.
The Lucy Parsons Project claims that Yekutiel is furthering gentrification in their neighborhood and criticized him for posting things like “Happy 70th Birthday Israel!” and “I am so proud of Israel and its people” on his personal Facebook page. They also wrote that he is “pinkwashing and blackfacing his gentrification and Zionism” by bringing in minority and LGBT guest speakers. (Yekutiel is also gay.)
Yekutiel is renting his space from the Mission Housing Development Corporation, a local not-for-profit affordable housing development company that owns the 28-unit family apartment building that the ground-floor commercial space is attached to. “100% of [Manny’s] rent goes back into the building, and pays for residential and community services,” Mission Housing executive director Sam Moss told the Forward.
The 5,000 residents across the Mission Housing system also get to go to Manny’s events for free and get discounts on food. Moss said the neighborhood is safer now that Manny’s has replaced the failing restaurant that used to occupy the space.
The protesters have claimed that “no one in the poor/working class brown community asked him to open this gentrifier space.” But according to Moss, that’s not true. More than a dozen neighborhood community leaders came to him gushing about Yekutiel before Moss met him for the first time, he said.
Here is the first tweet from the Lucy Parsons Project laying out their reasons for protesting Manny's:
Today our group had an action against Manny's a Zionist pro-gentrification pro-tech and worst of all "pro-dialogue" liberal hell-space at 3092 16th. st Read our attached statement and join us in boycotting Manny and driving that gentrifying tool out of SF!!!!✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿 pic.twitter.com/sS22wwtAIv
There have been other more recent tweets about "gentrifier Zionists" and "Zionist gentrifiers:"
Come out Tonight and every week Wed. at 6:30pm to help our comrades at Black and Brown run this gentrifier Zionist Manny (Emmanuel Yekutiel) the fuck out of San Francisco!!!✊🏾✊🏾✊🏾 https://t.co/LH13imCgpv
The emphasis on "Zionist gentrifiers" shows that this isn't about Zionism or gentrification - but about Manny being a Jew. (Other tweets call Manny's a "settler outpost" in San Francisco.)
The Lucy Parsons Project also consistently refers to white people as "mayonnaise."
While prominent liberals are embracing Manny's and ignoring the protests, one wonders if they will call out the protesters for what they are: black racists and antisemites.
Or are they too afraid to do that given that the only bigots here happen to be gay and black, and it is too frightening to attack those who win on "oppression" points?
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These progressives overwhelmingly link antisemitism to attitudes they consider to be “right-wing”, anti-Muslim or anti-immigrant. Accordingly, their chief European bogeyman is Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban. He is widely deemed to be antisemitic, largely because of his campaign against the Hungarian Jewish financier and proponent of open borders, George Soros, and Islamophobic because of his policy of keeping Muslims out of Hungary.
Yet the countries where the survey’s respondents said antisemitism had increased “a little” or “a lot” were the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Sweden (increases of 24, 21, 14 and 11 percentage points respectively over the past six years). By contrast, in Hungary the share of respondents actually decreased (by 21 percentage points).
In Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom, the share of respondents who said they had considered leaving the country due to antisemitism increased by 19, 17 and 11 percentage points respectively. In Hungary, the share went down by eight percentage points.
More than 70 per cent of respondents in France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands considered expressions of hostility to Jews in the street and other public spaces a “very big” or “fairly big” problem; but fewer than half of Jews in Poland, Hungary and Denmark expressed such concern.
These three countries have all taken harsh measures to restrict Muslim immigration and activity. Coincidence?
The resurgence of antisemitism in the west is a symptom that it is in existential trouble. The evidence of just how much trouble it is in is that so many in the west fail correctly to diagnose it.
If anything, you’d think that black Americans might choose to walk a mile in Jews’ shoes. The two ethnicities, after all, share a common bond of persecution.
Yet, as conservative commentator Larry Elder, himself a black man, pointed out in 2002, a survey commissioned by the Anti-Defamation League “found blacks three to four times more likely than non-blacks to be anti-Semitic.” He continued:
Black Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., urges America to rethink its support of Israel. Reverend Jesse Jackson, who once called Jews “Hymie” and New York City “Hymie-town,” now demands that George Bush ensure the safety of Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat.
[…]
Trending: The first liberal vulture circles, slams Ruth Bader Ginsburg for not resigning before now
The Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan recently likened the “plight” of black Americans to that of the Palestinians, noting blacks “were in the same position.” Farrakhan also exaggerates the Jewish role in slavery, and once called Hitler a “great man” and Judaism a “gutter religion.”
This was before anyone had heard of Barack Obama, a student of critical race theory whose admitted mentor was a devoutly anti-Semitic preacher. None of this of course prevented him from being sworn in as the nation’s forty-fourth president.
All of which leads back to the title question of this post, which arose for me following the recent publication in the the New York Times’s Sunday Book Review of an interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker.
In November, it was reported that the Pakistani Christian mother of five, Asia Bibi, was unlikely to be offered asylum by the British government due to concerns about "community" relations in the UK. What this means is that the UK government was worried that Muslims of Pakistani origin in Britain may object to the presence in the UK of a Christian woman who has spent most of the last decade on death row in Pakistan, before being officially declared innocent of a trumped-up charge of "blasphemy".
One person who has had no trouble being in London is Dr Ataollah Mohajerani, Iran's former Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance. Mohajerani is best known for his book-length defence of the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa against the British novelist Salman Rushdie.
This week we learned that the UK government has allowed in a man called Brahim Belkaid, a 41-year old of German origin, believed to have inspired up to 140 people to join al-Qaeda and ISIS. His Facebook messages have included messages with bullets and a sword on them saying, "Jihad: the Only Solution".
It is almost as though the UK government has decided that while extremist clerics can only rarely be banned, critics of such clerics can be banned with ease. The problem is that the trend for taking a laxer view of extremists than of their critics keeps on happening.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu landed in Brazil on Friday and met with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
"This is the first time an Israeli Prime Minister visits Brazil, and we are forming an alliance with a superpower that has close to a quarter of a billion civilians," Netanyahu said. "This is another sign that Israel is a rising power in the world."
Netanyahu and Bolsonaro agreed to tighten Israeli-Brazilian relations in the areas of the economy, security, water irrigation systems and technology, among others.
Bolsonaro said that he is planning to visit Israel after Netanyahu's visit.
"Israel is interested in Bolsonaro's promise to move the Brazilian embassy to Jerusalem," a senior political source said. "Brazil is a huge country that can turn in to a powerful ally."
Bolsonaro presented Netanyahu with the highest national decoration for visitors in Brazil, granted in the past to former US President Dwight Eisenhower and Queen Elizabeth.
Following the meeting with Bolsonaro, Netanyahu is expected to meet US Secretary of State Mike Pomepo in Brasilia.
Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro said Friday he expects to visit Israel by March 2019, after accepting an invitation by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who is currently on a state trip to Brazil.
“We will be starting a difficult government from January, but Brazil has potential,” Bolsonaro said, indicating that the Israel visit would come, in part, to reciprocate Netanyahu’s trip to Brazil. “So that we can overcome obstacles, we need good allies, good friends, good brothers, like Benjamin Netanyahu.”
Netanyahu arrived in Brazil on Friday, accompanied by his wife Sarah and son Yair, and the family is set to stay on through Tuesday to join other foreign dignitaries at the inauguration in Brasilia of Bolsonaro, a far-right, security-conscious politician and former army officer elected in October on pledges to crack down on endemic crime and corruption.
Netanyahu’s is the first-ever visit by an Israeli prime minister to Brazil.
Following a private meeting Friday in a century-old military fort on Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana beach, the two issued the warm words to the media, hailing a nascent “brotherhood” between their countries that will boost economic, military, and technological cooperation.
Brazil’s incoming president Jair Bolsonaro pushed back against critics and feted burgeoning ties with Israel Thursday, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made his way to Brasilia for the new leader’s swearing in.
Jair Bolsonaro said those who were protesting his drive to develop deeper ties with Israel had done nothing to help Latin America’s biggest country.
“There is no reason to criticize dialogue, especially when the criticism comes from those who did nothing, only destroyed and stole from the country,” Bolsonaro said on Twitter.
He said Brazil was interested in technological services that Israel is a world leader in, likely referring to agritech and cyber security.
“We want the best for Brazil,” he wrote.
The comments came shortly after Netanyahu played up potential ties with Brasilia as he boarded a plane for Rio de Janiero to attend Bolsonaro’s inauguration next week.
“I’m glad that we can open a new era in Israel’s relationship with this superpower,” he said, describing Brazil as “a vast nation that represents vast potential for Israel, including in the economic, security and diplomatic realms.”
Outgoing US Secretary of Defense James Mattis reportedly denied a request from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to soften the US conditions that were holding up a $500 million arms deal between Israel and Croatia over the sale of a dozen F-16 fighter jets, an Israeli official told Axios.
In order to approve the deal, the United States required that Israel uninstall Israeli systems included in the F-16s, which would return the planes to their initial state prior to Israeli upgrades, before sending them to Croatia. The Croatians said that they would nullify the agreement if they couldn’t receive the “upgraded” Israeli type of the F-16s.
“For reasons we don’t fully understand, the Americans hardened their conditions and, apparently, we misread their position on the deal,” the Israeli official told Axios. “Practically, the F-16 deal with Croatia is dead, and we don’t think it is possible to get an agreement that will reconcile the US conditions and the Croatian demands in the tender.”
The official added that Israel will have “to apologize to Croatia for the deal falling apart and move on.”
Yet Merkel’s legacy for the nation may to a large extent be heavily influenced by one fateful decision: opening Germany’s borders to refugees and other immigrants in September 2015. Since then, about a million and a half asylum seekers have entered the country. Many came from Muslim countries, particularly Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Merkel misjudged the problems that so many refugees would bring with them.
The Hanns-Seidel Foundation studied attitudes of asylum-seekers in the German federal state of Bavaria. It found that more than half of those from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan believe that Jews have “too much influence” in the world. And a study by Gunther Jikeli about Syrian and Iraqi refugees in Germany, commissioned by the American Jewish Committee, led to a statement by the organization’s Berlin Director Deidre Berger: “Until now, reports that many new arrivals in Germany espouse antisemitism have been largely anecdotal. But this new scientific analysis shows that the problem is widespread in the refugee communities from Syria and Iraq. Anti-Semitic attitudes, stereotypes, and conspiracy theories are common, as well as a categorical rejection by many of the State of Israel.”
The official story is that there are three to four antisemitic incidents per day in Germany. But there are probably more, because many victims do not complain.
German Jews are increasingly feeling the brunt of two phenomena: the many antisemites among Muslim immigrants and their descendants, as well as the revitalization of the antisemitic extreme right. Even if the situation does not get worse, it is already bad enough and unlikely to improve.
The country’s newly-appointed Antisemitism Commissioner Felix Klein has said that he is not surprised that many German Jews are debating whether to leave. This leads to a troublesome question: Chancellor Kohl enabled the building up of a greatly increased Jewish community through immigration. Will Merkel’s legacy be a substantially diminished Jewish community?
ToI journalists in Israel and around the world discuss their articles from the past year that have left the deepest impressions
Over the past year, as every year, Times of Israel reporters have pursued stories across Israel and around the world, striving to shed light for our readers on complicated and important issues, and sometimes directly affecting how those issues play out.
From stymieing (inadvertently) Israeli government censorship of the entire internet to examining the sordid case of a sex offender rabbi; from uncovering political aides’ inappropriate conduct to reporting objectively on the Pittsburgh tragedy despite a personal stake in the tragedy; from sampling the most iconic kosher food in New York, to introducing the world to a secret synagogue in Dubai, our journalists have worked to inform, entertain and empower our (4 million a month and rising) readers.
As we close out the year, we asked our reporters to look back over the articles they’ve written in the last 12 months, and select the ones that mattered most. Here, then, is their list of important and Times of Israel stories that made an impact in 2018.
An IDF combat helicopter struck a Hamas position in the southern Gaza Strip after a mortar was launched from the coastal enclave towards southern Israel late Friday night, the military said.
The Red Alert incoming rocket system was not activated as the projectile landed in an open area, causing no damage or injuries.
The mortar round was the first since the first to be launched from the Strip since intense fighting in November which saw hundreds of rockets fired towards southern Israel, killing one man and causing damage to property in several communities.
The launch came several hours after 26 year-old Karam Fayyad from Khan Younis was killed by IDF fire during the 40th week of border protests.
Another six people, including a journalist, paramedic and minor were wounded during the protests which saw some 4,000 Palestinians take part despite the stormy weather, throwing rocks and explosive devices at troops who responded with riot dispersal means including live fire.
Earlier on Friday several balloons attached to an explosive device was found in the yard of a kindergarten in the Sdot Negev Regional Council community of Kfar Maimon. Another balloon with an explosive device was found in the community of Moshav Zru’a later on Friday.
The balloons were the first after a lull of several weeks.
United Nations peacekeeping forces on the Israeli-Lebanese border on Saturday confirmed that a tunnel filled up and destroyed by the Israeli army a day earlier had crossed the border into the Jewish state and was in “violation of resolution 1701,” the UN decision that ended 2006’s Second Lebanon War.
It was the third such tunnel that UNIFIL forces confirmed crossed over the Blue Line, which demarcates the internationally recognized border, out of five that the Israel Defense Forces have so far said they have uncovered. UNIFIL has not confirmed Israel’s allegations they were dug by Hezbollah.
The IDF on Friday said it poured an unspecified “liquid” into the underground passage to block it, and aired footage of people in the southern Lebanese village of Kafr Kila reacting to an overflow of viscous material, that some media reports said was cement.
UNIFIL’s statement on Saturday said that the tunnel opening in Kafr Kila had been inside a cement factory, indicating that the material could have been a mixture of both substances.
“In the course of the ongoing investigation into the presence of tunnels along the Blue Line, UNIFIL together with the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) surveyed the premises of an old concrete factory in the southern part of [Kafr Kila], after UNIFIL had observed liquified cement flowing out from the building within this facility,” the peacekeepers said.
“The liquid overflowing on the Lebanese side had been injected by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) through a shaft drilled on their end of a tunnel that UNIFIL had previously independently confirmed to be crossing the Blue Line in the same general area. Based on this observation, UNIFIL can confirm that the old concrete factory in [the village] has an opening to the tunnel, which is crossing the Blue Line.”
Saudi Arabia has completed a $50 million donation to the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees, the organization’s leader said Friday, amid a funding shortfall following the US decision to cut all financial aid.
Pierre Krahenbuhl, commissioner-general of United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA, signed an agreement to finalize the transfer of Saudi funds during a visit to the Gulf kingdom.
“We are extremely grateful for the generous support consistently provided by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in recent years. The exemplary 2018 donation of $50 million to UNRWA’s core services is a new milestone in our important cooperation,” he said in a statement.
The agency said the donation was the “fulfillment of the pledge” made by King Salman in April and brought Saudi Arabia’s total contribution for the year to $160 million.
“This very generous and crucial $50 million contribution has now been transferred to UNRWA, confirming the unprecedented mobilization of support by donors and partners worldwide this year to help UNRWA to overcome its worst financial crisis ever,” the statement said.
In August, the Trump administration announced it would end all support for UNRWA, after having long been its largest donor.
Egyptian security forces have killed 40 suspected militants in three separate incidents in North Sinai and Giza, the ministry of interior said on Saturday, a day after a deadly bombing on a Vietnamese tourist bus in Giza killed four people.
The ministry did not say whether the suspected militants were connected to Friday's attack, but said its forces killed 30 people during raids on their hideouts in Giza where it said "terrorist elements" were planning a series of attacks targeting state institutions and the tourism industry.
Security forces also killed 10 suspected militants in North Sinai, where the country is fighting an insurgency led by Islamic State.
State news agency MENA said that the suspects were killed in a gun battle.
The ministry did not give any details about the suspects' identity or whether there had been any casualties or injuries among the security forces. The statement said the three raids took place simultaneously.
The ministry published photos of bloodied bodies with their faces concealed and assault rifles and shotguns lying on the floor beside them.
Three Vietnamese tourists and an Egyptian guide were killed and at least 10 others injured when a roadside bomb blast hit their tour bus on Friday less than 4 km (2.5 miles) from Egypt's world-famous Giza pyramids.
A brief filed last week by Arizona’s attorney general maintains that the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel aids terrorists — potentially marking the first time a US government official has formally taken such a stance, according to a lawyer familiar with the case.
In an opening argument submitted to the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich wrote that legislation enacted by his state in 2016 that bars public bodies from contracting with companies that boycott Israel seeks to prevent taxpayer funds from subsidizing discrimination based on nationality, national origin, and religion.
The law, passed with bipartisan super-majorities, was blocked by a federal court in September following a lawsuit alleging First Amendment violations, with Judge Diane Humetewa ruling in favor of plaintiff Mikkel Jordahl, a state contractor who said his ability to boycott Israel in a professional capacity was being unconstitutionally limited.
“A restriction of one’s ability to participate in collective calls to oppose Israel unquestionably burdens the protected expression of companies wishing to engage in such a boycott,” Humetewa determined.
Similar legislation was suspended and subsequently amended this year in Kansas, one of 26 states to pass measures in recent years against BDS, a Palestinian-led campaign that says it seeks to redefine Israel “as a pariah state” until it abides by international law.
You can be gay, intern in the Obama White House, work on Barack Obama’s reelection campaign, and serve as the Silicon Valley fundraising director for the Clinton presidential campaign in 2016, but if you also happen to be Jewish and support the existence of Israel, hard leftists want you gone, as 29-year-old Manny Yekutiel found out the hard way when he opened a café/bookstore in San Francisco’s Mission District
Yekutiel was catalyzed to open his café/bookstore, which also hosts leftist political events, after the 2016 election. He said it took two years to create it, asserting, “Over 1,000 people were involved in the building of this space.” Among the people he has hosted have been incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, San Francisco Mayor London Breed, and activists with Black Lives Matter, according to The Forward. According to Eater, donors gave over $75,000 to the project on Kickstarter. Yekutiel pointed out that the idea of a café with political events was not new, saying, “For centuries there have been certain cafes, bars, and restaurants that have doubled as spaces for civic engagement, social justice, and activism, places to consume, react, and create the news.”
But on Wednesday, protesters associated with the Lucy Parsons Project, a self-described “radical black queer direction action group,” joined other groups to yell Yekutiel was a “Zionist gentrifer,” and “Zionists out of the Mission!” The Lucy Parsons Project even tweeted their instructions to do so:
The Forward reports that the group “has protested at Manny’s every Wednesday this month, and says it will continue protesting every Wednesday until Manny’s is ‘shut down.’ The Project only has about 300 Twitter followers, but among the protest’s supporters is a local rapper, Equipto, with 14,500 followers.”
In early December, an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force in Ohio arrested 21-year-old Damon Joseph for planning an attack on a synagogue in Toledo, Ohio. Joseph was inspired by ISIS, making this the 105th Islamist terror plot or attack since 9/11 against the U.S. homeland.
Law enforcement first located Joseph on social media where he made posts of weapons and in support of ISIS.
Undercover agents contacted Joseph and he sent them ISIS propaganda and recruitment literature. He expressed support for violent “martyrdom operations” in the U.S. and following the attack on the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue in October.
Joseph expressed interest in carrying out a similar attack.
He then spent the next month deliberating over whether or not to conduct such an attack but ultimately decided that it was time for him to move from “virtual jihad” to “physical jihad.”
By the end of November, Joseph was plotting the specifics of his act of terror, still interested in attacking a synagogue with firearms.
Lisa Marie Burns, a North Carolina citizen, was arrested by the local police and has admitted to vandalizing the Cary Sha'arei Shalom Synagogue on Friday.
Burns, 57 years old, threw bricks at the Sha'arei Shalom synagogue in Cary, North Carolina, as well as painted "FU" on the door and vandalized vehicles.
Burns was arrested by the police on Saturday, as she confessed to committing the crimes, and was bailed out.
“We’re not going to respond by being afraid. We’re not going to respond with despair. We’re not even going to respond with bitterness,” Messianic Rabbi Seth Klayman, leader of the congregation, said. “The ultimate goal would be to see a transformed heart.”
The Sha'arei Shalom congregation has been subjected to antisemitic actions in the past, as a man delivered antisemitic threats through the intercom, merely a few hours after a Saturday memorial for the Pittsburgh massacre victims.
A Jewish family that has received multiple threats in their home in Belgium reported that someone fired a bullet at their bedroom.
The incident happened last month in Marchienne-au-Pont south of Brussels to Eitan and Nicole, who asked their last name be withheld from reports about their case in the media, La Nouvelle Gazette daily reported.
The incident happened at 3 a.m. A car passed their home, backed up and the shot was fired from inside the car into the house, Eitan said.
“I head a bang, looked out the window and saw a black Citroen car with a male driver,” he told the daily. The car had no license plates. The following morning, Eitan found a bullet casing where the car had stopped.
The previous month, Nicole told SudPresse that a man pointed a gun at her on the street on broad daylight.
More than 20 percent of non-Christians in France have never heard of the Holocaust, a new survey found.
The survey — of 1,014 Christian and non-Christian adults, as well as those who said they were without religion — was conducted this month for the American Jewish Committee and two other groups by the Ifop research group.
Ignorance about the Holocaust and revisionism appeared strongest among far-right and far-left voters, and people who said they follow a faith that is not Christianity. Islam is France’s second-largest religion, with 8.8 percent of the population according to a 2017 Pew study. Judaism is third with 0.8 percent.
Among non-Christians, 21 percent said they had never heard of the Holocaust, compared to only 10 percent of all respondents. Overall, 21 percent of all respondents didn’t know when the Holocaust happened. Among non-Christians, the figure was 34 percent.
Among respondents who said they are religious but not Christians, 11 percent said the figure of 6 million Holocaust victims was “exaggerated” and a further 4 percent said the Holocaust was “invented.”
Just over a quarter of non-Christian respondents said the Holocaust was merely “another tragedy among many others in a war with many victims.” Overall, only 3 percent of all respondents agreed with the statement.
A mosque that opened recently amid protests in a heavily Jewish part of London announced plans to host an exhibition celebrating Muslims who saved Jews during the Holocaust.
Golders Green Mosque is set to feature the exhibition prepared by the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Israel at the beginning of the new year, The Jewish News of London reported Thursday.
The exhibition is about Muslim Albanians who hid and protected Jews during the Holocaust, when Albania was under fascist control.
Rabbi Natan Levy, head of operations for the interfaith group Faith Forums for London, is helping the mosque organize the event.
“The exhibition is a powerful reminder that during the Jewish community’s darkest hour, the Muslim community in Albania were one of the few who did not stand idly by when the Nazis attempted to eradicate their Jewish neighbors,” Levy told The Jewish News.
Some Jewish opponents to the mosque’s opening in 2017 cited traffic concerns, while others said they feared it would introduce security problems, drawing accusations of xenophobia by other Jews.
Albanians rescued about 2,000 Jews during the Holocaust.
When a huge auction was held at Sotheby’s earlier this month of items belonging to Frank Sinatra and his wife Barbara, the item that made the most headlines was one of the smallest: a hand-knit yarmulke, owned by Frank, which was purchased for nearly $10,000 by an unknown party.
But untold, until now, was the story why Sinatra had a kippah, where and when he got it, and the memorable night nearly 40 years ago when multiple members of the Rat Pack were among the unlikely guests of honor at a fundraising dinner for a Jewish day school on the Jersey Shore.
The kippah was presented to Sinatra on an evening in May or June of 1981, at the old Teplitzky’s Hotel in Atlantic City. The occasion was the annual awards dinner held by the Hebrew Academy of Atlantic County, then located in Margate, N.J. And the man presenting the kippah to a tuxedo-clad Ol’ Blue Eyes was Samuel “Sonny” Schwartz, a longtime journalist, columnist, radio host and man-about-town in the Atlantic City area.
A photo of the occasion was shared with us by the late Schwartz’s daughter, Pauline, who said that a framed version of the photo hangs in her mother’s home to this day.
Each year at its gala, the Hebrew Academy would honor a Man of the Year. The Academy “would choose one person in the community who had made an impact on the community, and through this person’s connections we would be able to raise funds for the school,” remembers Rabbi Mordechai Weiss, the longtime principal of the Hebrew Academy. Sonny Schwartz was the honoree in 1980, which his daughter said was “a super-big deal for our family.” She remembers saying the Hamotzi blessing at that dinner along with the evening’s emcee, the Jewish comedian and Rat Pack fixture Joey Bishop.
Tzvika Levy, a leading advocate for Israel’s lone soldiers, passed away at the age of 70 on Saturday. Levy was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2016.
Levy, known as “the father of lone soldiers,” received the Israel Prize for Life Achievement in 2017 for his work on behalf of lone soldiers and the families of IDF soldiers lost in combat.
“Tzvika Levy: a warrior, a friend and a father,” said former IDF chief of staff and leader of the new Israel Resilience Party Benny Gantz said. “Tzvika was called ‘father’ by his biological children as well as by lone soldiers for being so caring and loving. Even in his last days, he never stopped fighting his disease and continued being a father and a friend. I treasure years of pleasant memories and appreciation for Tzvika. I too loved him, as everyone did.”
“Tzvika passed away and the pain is immense,” said chairman of the Knesset’s Lobby for Lone Soldiers Itzik Shmuli wrote. “He made giving his life’s work, and thousands of lone soldiers found a home in the IDF and Israel thanks to him. I saw how stubbornly he fought to help the soldiers, even from his deathbed. You will be greatly missed.”
“A man who loved and supported our soldiers,” MK Amir Peretz said. “This morning thousands of soldiers became fatherless.”
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Israel's Foreign Ministry lodged a protest after Jordan's Information Minister and Government Spokeswoman Jumana Ghunaimat was seen stepping on an Israeli flag.
Ghunaimat had trampled on the Israeli flag during a visit to Amman's trade union headquarters, where a Jordanian government meeting was held.
The trade union headquarters in Jordan stuck an Israeli flag at the entrance to its offices, inviting passersby to step on it on their way inside, a deep insult in the Arab world.
Prime Minister Omar al-Razaz entered the road through a side entrance, thus avoiding the Israeli flag.
More than one minister, as well as the mayor of Amman, deliberately stepped on the Israeli flag painted on the floor.
Al-Razaz's decision to avoid stepping on the Israeli flag has angered Jordanians. Here he is going in through the side door.
Members of the trade union and Jordanian media were upset at their leaders that allowed Al-Razaz to enter through the side door, wanting them to force him to publicly renounce Jordan's ties with Israel.
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If the “West Bank” was part of the “Hashemite Kingdom” up to 1967, how did it suddenly become the Palestinian Arabs’ long-yearned-for homeland which, up until then, they were submissively willing to cede to an alien potentate?
Not since the time of Dr. Goebels [Head of the Nazi Propaganda Machine] has there ever been a case in which continual repetition of a lie has born such great fruits...Of all the Palestinian lies, there is no lie greater or more crushing than that which calls for the establishment of a separate Palestinian Arab state in the 'West Bank'... - From “Palestinian Lies” in Ha’aretz, 30-7-76, by former far-Left Meretz Education Minister, Prof. Amnon Rubinstein.
As the new elections approach, the “Palestinian problem” is once again likely to dominate much of the inter-(and intra-) party debate. In many ways this debate is entirely superfluous. After all, a simple mental experiment will suffice to strip away the veil of mendacity shrouding the Palestinian Arab grievances against Israel.
Imagine for a moment…
To demonstrate this, imagine for a moment that the 1967 Six Day War, in which several Arab armies marshalled their forces with the undisguised intention to annihilate Israel, never took place. Imagine that Israel had not been compelled to launch a preemptive strike in self-defense to thwart the Arabs’ openly proclaimed aim of total genocide that resulted in it taking over Judea-Samaria (a.k.a. the “West Bank”)—which the Palestinian Arabs now contend is their long-yearned for homeland.
Then ask yourself: If that war had not occurred, where would “Palestine” be?
Trump, Stephens complains, “shows no interest in pushing Russia out of Syria. He has neither articulated nor pursued any coherent strategy for pushing Iran out of Syria. He has all but invited Turkey to interfere in Syria. He has done nothing to prevent Iran from continuing to arm Hezbollah. He shows no regard for the Kurds. His fatuous response to Saudi Arabia’s murder of Jamal Khashoggi is that we’re getting a lot of money from the Saudis.”
Then Stephens asks, “Is any of this good for Israel?” And answers, “if you think that the ultimate long-term threat to Israel is the resurgence of isolationism in the U.S. and a return to the geopolitics of every nation for itself, the answer is more emphatically no.”
Stephens could be right that Trump’s limited pullback, if not full retreat, from the liberal internationalism or “Democratic realism” of some prior administration could be bad for Israel. But there’s a counterargument that Stephens doesn’t mention, let alone rebut, and that is worth considering.
That counterargument is two-pronged.
First, one of the original, profound, and inspiring ideas of Zionism had to do with Jewish self-reliance. The Jewish state would defend itself with its own foreign policy and armed forces, rather than existing at the mercy of, or under the protection of, some foreign colonial power. This is better for the Jews, in part because no matter how closely allied or powerful some foreign country, even America, may seem, in the end those powers have other interests that rank higher than the survival of the Jews. Better for Israel to realize that and act accordingly than to operate under some illusion — a delusion, really — of an American security umbrella. Those of us who have opposed the idea, raised from time to time, of American troops on the Golan Heights or in the Jordan Valley should be similarly skeptical of deploying American troops in Syria for the sake of Israel’s security.
If, as widely anticipated, Netanyahu and the Likud win in April, he will need to form a coalition with several smaller parties. Although Likud’s natural coalition partners in the right-wing and religious parties have stated that they will join a coalition with Likud even if Netanyahu is indicted, those parties together are polling fewer than 61 mandates out of a total of 120.
If this remains the case after the elections, then to form a government, Netanyahu will need to bring in populist or left-leaning parties. And the leaders of populist parties and center-left parties have signaled or stated outright that they will not join a coalition with Netanyahu if he is indicted.
In other words, by dangling the Netanyahu probes over the heads of politicians like a sword of Damocles, Mandelblit is effectively threatening to nullify the results of the elections if the public doesn’t vote as he and his fellow attorneys wish.
And so we return to the European ambassador’s dim assessment of the European parliament. It works out that European voters agree with him. Since 1999, voter turnout has never reached 50% and it has dwindled from election to election. A mere 42% of voters showed up in 2014.
The Europeans are right. Why vote if your vote is meaningless?
In April, Israelis will choose which party to vote for based on any number of considerations. But in the end, only one central question will be decided on April 9.
Do we want for our votes to matter, or are we prepared to have all aspects of governance dictated to us by unelected bureaucrats governed by unelected lawyers?
This week the Knesset convened and decided to disperse. It was a decision based on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s understanding that his government would be a lame duck and the looming societal and security challenges requires to restart the system and regain faith in government.
Since the announcement, anti-Israel supporters have come out and claimed that as Israel once again heads for elections, millions of Palestinians ruled by it cannot vote.
This is a claim that is false.
It is a frequent talking point by the supporters of BDS and is raised by anti-Israel online activists as they dub Israel a masquerading democracy. This is a simplistic, populist way of framing the reality on the ground and it is used mostly by those who desire a one-state solution.
Looking carefully at the narrative they are trying to envisage it is important to realize the facts on the ground contradict their own premise. The claim of “occupation,” is not enough to discount the actual Palestinian institutions, functions and representatives, even though their internal Palestinian legitimacy is undoubtedly disputed. Those activists love to ignore the achievements and foundations already laid down for the future Palestinian state.
The Palestinians, as a result of the Oslo Accords, have a self-rule system. They have a Palestinian Legislative Council with 132 elected officials. The legislative council is the Palestinian equivalent to the Knesset. The PLC was established as a provisional parliament with the responsibility of enacting legislations, and oversight over the executive authority. This is the body the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza are supposed to vote for, not for the Knesset. The last election took place in 2006, with Hamas winning the election that caused the violent rift between the leadership, peoples and territories, which remains unbridgeable until today.
In the PLC they receive foreign lawmakers and the Palestinian Legislative Council is a member, observer, or partner in different international parliamentary organizations such as the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and many others. These platforms serve as staging grounds to bash Israel by the Palestinian representatives.
The year 2018 has provided a series of reminders that antisemitism, the world’s oldest hatred, is alive and well in our country.
In October, 11 Jews were massacred in Pittsburgh as they prayed on the Sabbath. It is just the latest in a series of violent attacks that have targeted the Jewish community in recent times, which come not only from the radical right but also from the radical left, and from radical Muslims.
The enemies of the Jewish people don’t only physically attack us from the outside. They have also long worked to divide the Jewish people by turning our own against us. For example, a number of Jewish individuals and organizations have become leaders within the BDS movement, which seeks to destroy the Jewish state.
Jewish self-hatred did not begin with the BDS movement. Isaiah 49:17 says, “Your destroyers and devastators will depart from you.” History is replete with examples of Jews who hated the Jewish people so vehemently that they dedicated their entire lives to its destruction.
Take the new Jewish group IfNotNow, which together with their collaborators Jewish Voice for Peace set its sights on demonizing Birthright Israel – an organization that has helped over 600,000 young Jews from 67 countries connect with their Jewish heritage and with the State of Israel, the homeland of the Jewish people.
Last summer, IfNotNow launched a campaign to harass Birthright participants at JFK and Heathrow airports, and planted saboteurs to infiltrate and disrupt Birthright trips, using these stunts to secure slanted media that demonizes Birthright and its Jewish supporters. In doing so, they sought to erode support for a program that made a transformative impact for hundreds of thousands of young Jews – and to discourage participants from accepting this tremendous life changing gift.
The leaders of IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace, who are Jewish themselves, sympathize with Hamas and other terrorist organizations. They present their movement as an anti-occupation group but have never recognized Israel right to exist or the Jewish people right for self-determination.
Along the same lines, some media outlets within the Jewish community are now actively working with explicitly anti-Israel – and in some cases antisemitic – networks, such as Electronic Intifada and Al Jazeera, to attack and demonize pro-Israel leaders and organizations.
It was recently revealed by pro-Israel activist and journalist Noah Pollak that a Forward reporter was using Al Jazeera as a source for a story to smear pro-Israel entities.
SPEAKING WITH The Jerusalem Post before the current winter season of Birthright trips began, Birthright director Gidi Mark talks about how more than 100,000 Israelis have participated in the tours alongside the participants from the Diaspora, and emphasizes the importance of creating this mass of Israelis who have friends and direct connections to Jews and Jewish communities abroad.
He also addresses the walkout demonstrations that gained significant media coverage and were seen as a symptom of alienation from Israel among liberal-minded Diaspora Jewish youth.
Several Birthright groups during the course of this summer were, to all intents and purposes, infiltrated by activists from the IfNotNow organization, who during the course of their trip declared that they were dissatisfied with how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was discussed and demonstrably walked out.
They were filmed by co-activists and the event was live-streamed on social media for maximum effect, after which they went to participate in activities relating to Palestinian life in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
And there was a similar incident earlier this week in which IfNotNow activists were removed from a tour while trying to discuss the security barrier with their tour guide and filming him during the discussion.
IfNotNow has described the trip as “a bribe” to Jewish youth by Birthright’s benefactors, especially Sheldon Adelson, a patron of the Israeli and American right-wings, whereby they are given a free trip to Israel to bolster their Jewish identity and connection to Israel but are shielded from the realities of Palestinian life, and thus they ignore a critical issue that the Jewish state is caught up in.
First and foremost, Mark insists, Birthright is an educational organization dedicated to providing an educational experience to its participants, and is not designed to deal with political issues.
“We refuse to turn Israel into something which is 99% political and 1% Jewish life,” he says.
Israeli author Amos Oz, respected worldwide as one of his country’s leading intellectuals, passed away on Friday at the age of 79 from cancer.
Born as Amos Klausner to a right-wing Revisionist family in Jerusalem during the British Mandate era, Oz was drawn to Labor Zionism as a teenager and moved to Kibbutz Hulda in central Israel.
Oz’s illustrious writing career began with articles he penned for his kibbutz’s newsletter and the left-wing newspaper Davar. He would go on to publish 40 books — which have been translated into 45 languages — and hundreds of essays.
His literary prowess earned Oz numerous prominent awards both at home and abroad, including the Israel Prize in 1998 and the French Legion of Honor the previous year.
Oz’s most famous works include the autobiographical novel A Tale of Love and Darkness (which was made into a film starring Natalie Portman in 2015), as well as In the Land of Israel, My Michael, Black Box and Judas, among others. His final book, which came out last year, was Dear Zealots: Letters from a Divided Land.
As a young man, Oz did his mandatory IDF service in the Nahal Brigade, and he later fought as a reservist in the Six-Day War in 1967 and Yom Kippur War in 1973.
Following the 1967 conflict, Oz became an early proponent of a two-state solution to the conflict with the Palestinians, and he was involved in peace activism throughout the rest of his life.
With the help of an anti-Israel legal group, an admitted boycotter of Israel named Bahia Amawi sued a Texas school district and the Texas attorney general this week to try to overturn the state’s anti-BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) contracting law (Texas Gov. Code § 2270.001, et. seq.).
Briefly, Ms. Amawi wants a renewed contract to provide speech-pathology services to Texas public schools, but is refusing to sign a non-discrimination legal certification agreeing not to boycott Israel and companies that do business with Israel (including American companies that are targeted by the BDS movement) during the term of her contract. Her lawsuit deserves to be summarily dismissed by the courts.
This is not a free speech issue, as Ms. Amawi and her friends in anti-Israel circles wrongly claim. The Texas anti-BDS law has nothing to do with free speech. Ms. Amawi can continue to say whatever lies about Israel that she chooses — on her Facebook page, in the public square, at demonstrations, and in private all she wants — without violating the Texas anti-BDS law. She just can’t engage in discriminatory boycotts, discriminatory economic activity.
Under settled law, secondary and tertiary boycotts such as BDS boycotts are not free speech.
London-based international banking giant HSBC has decided to divest from Israeli defense contractor Elbit, The Jerusalem Post has learned. The move was hailed by pro-BDS groups as “proof positive” of “collective campaigning” against Israel.
The decision, seen as a victory for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign, comes one month after the global vacation rental website Airbnb decided to delist sites in West Bank settlements.
HSBC sources confirmed to the Post that the bank, said to be the seventh largest financial institution in the world, had divested from Elbit, one of Israel’s largest defense companies and developers of some of the IAF’s most advanced drones.
The bank framed its decision to divest from Elbit as a human rights issue, claiming that it “strongly supports observance of international human rights principles as they apply to business.” In addition, it said HSBC does “not take positions on political issues”, seeming to insinuate that it was not connected to the BDS movement.
Bank sources would not reveal when the divestment would occur, or what percentage of investments were to be divested.
In a statement posted on its website, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), an pro-BDS organization in Britain, claimed “banking giant HSBC divests from Israeli arms manufacturer following pressure from human rights campaigners,” writing “HSBC confirmed to campaigners that it has fully divested from Israeli drone manufacturer Elbit Systems, which sells weapons to the Israeli military used in attacks on Palestinians.”
The group claims that more than 24,000 petitioners emailed HSBC with “concern over its investments in Elbit Systems,” which they say is, “one of Israel’s largest arms manufacturers, notorious for its deadly drones used in attacks on Palestinian civilians, and marketed abroad as ‘combat proven.’”
DRUG cartels, mafia, celebrities and the European aristocracy: when it comes to laundering “dirty money” world giant HSBC is king and proof it may actually be impossible to regulate banks.
An ABC-TV Four Corners program about HSBC — the Hong Kong and Shanghai’s Banking Corporation’s reveals the scope of the global financial institution’s scandal-ridden operations.
The French-TV made “Banksters” claims HSBC was the go-to bank for “a raft of illegal activities, from money laundering for the mafia, to enabling tax evasion and currency manipulation”.
The program screened on Monday night, following recent bombshell revelations in Australia’s banking industry at the Haynes Royal Commission into misconduct in the banking, superannuation and financial services industries.
HSBC is one of the world’s largest and most powerful financial institutions, with offices on five continents, including in Australia.
The Hong Kong-based bank, which has branches around Australia, “likes to spruik its financial might and global reach”.
But behind the corporate gloss, it has been at the centre of several of the biggest financial scandals uncovered this century.
Leaders of the Jewish community in the Netherlands are pressing the mayor of Amsterdam to enact an outright ban on the provocative anti-Israel rallies that are held regularly next to the city’s National Monument to World War II.
“These demonstrations draw antisemites,” Eddo Verdoner — president of the Centraal Joods Overleg (CJO), which serves the 30,000-strong Jewish community in the Netherlands — told The Algemeiner on Thursday.
The most recent demonstration on Dec. 15, Verdoner reported, had prominently featured strident antisemitic rhetoric and signs on display.
Such scenes “dishonor our monument to the Second World War,” Verdoner declared.
According to the Dutch newspaper Het Parool, the Jewish community’s demand is being supported by the center-right CDA and the right-wing VVD parties, who control seven seats on Amsterdam’s 45-seat city council. The paper on Thursday quoted CDA faction leader Diederik Boomsma describing the pro-Palestinian demonstrations — which frequently feature openly antisemitic and strident anti-Zionist rhetoric and signs — as “inciting hatred.”
A Dec. 18 joint letter to Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema signed by the CJO’s vice chairman, Ronny Naftaniel, and Hanna Luden, the director of the pro-Israel CIDI organization, quoted from antisemitic tirades delivered at the rally in Dam Square, where the National Monument is located. One speaker — identified on social media as Finidi Fares, a far-right activist — declared, “The Jews are the enemy of all people.”
Aside from the atrocious grammar and spelling, the entire storyline seemed suspicious. If the incident had indeed occurred as reported by the Free Gaza Team, it would have been plastered in the front pages of the New York Times, the Guardian and Al-Jazeera as these publications are notoriously anti-Israel.
I then proceeded to perform a Google image search and Voilà, Noor’s image magically appeared. Unfortunately, this Noor wasn’t injured by Israeli rockets. In fact, she wasn’t even from Gaza. The girl advertised by the Free Gaza Team was in fact a Syrian child from Deir ez-Zor, injured as a result of airstrikes. The images of Noor had been circulating on social media for more than a year. When I pointed this out to the Free Gaza Team, they quite predictably unfollowed and blocked me. I immediately reported the scam to the Social Fund, which responded positively to my complaint and promptly terminated Free Gaza Team’s donation drive. Having been deprived of the Social Fund platform, the fraudsters of the Free Gaza Team opened another “charity drive” for “Noor,” this time on PayPal. I have since filed a complaint with PayPal as well.
The fraud perpetrated by The Free Gaza Team represents the essence of Pallywood and is reminiscent of similar schemes perpetrated by Palestinians and their allies throughout the years. The list is too numerous to outline but here are some of the more notable ones.
But seriously, Ariel Gold, the Code Pinker who detests Israel (not that there is any other kind) and asks all and sundry to boycott us, wants desperately to visit the country threatening to wipe us off the map.
It was thanks to an on the ground delegation with Eyewitness Palestine that my passion for human rights turned into my life’s work for freedom and justice in Palestine. Now, having been banned by Israel from entering Palestine, I am looking to travel with CODEPINK to Iran, the country that both the U.S. and Israel are trying to go to war with.
The January 12-20 delegation to Iran will deepen my understanding of the country and help me to be part of helping the U.S. and Iran move from a place of hostility and military threats to a place of mutual respect and peace with one another.
Funds raised in excess of the $2,500 ($1,500 cost of the delegation, plus airfare) will go towards Iranian human rights organizations on the ground or a scholarship for a young person of color to join the delegation.
Look over the details of the delegation and sign up yourself!
As you can see, she has only raised $300 in two months – her fail here is priceless!
Thrillist is an online media website covering food, drink, travel and entertainment. They seem to have a relatively large following.
Which means their inclusion of Reems Bakery in Oakland on its list of Best Chef Restaurants of 2018 is a really bad thing (hat tip: Jason)
What makes it even worse is how they go out of their way to portray owner Reem Assil so sympathetically, knowing how she has a mural of a terrorist who murdered two innocent people.
New York saw more hate crimes against Jews in 2018 than all other targeted groups combined, according to police figures.
Anti-Semitic incidents rose by 22 percent from last year, NYPD figures show, according to a report Wednesday on Patch. Of the 352 hate crimes this year recorded as of Sunday, 183 were anti-Semitic incidents. Brooklyn has seen a spate of hate crimes against Jews in recent months, but the Patch report did not break down the figures by boroughs.
Overall, the tally of hate crimes in New York is up about 6 percent from 331 in the same time last year.
Evan Bernstein, the Anti-Defamation League’s New York Regional director, told Patch that those holding anti-Semitic beliefs are feeling emboldened. ADL believes that 12 to 14 percent of Americans hold such beliefs.
The Oct. 27 slaying of 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue by a lone gunman unleashed a spate of incidents in New York and “opened up people even more to act out on these feelings,” Bernstein said. “I think for certain people it gave them (a) green light and that’s what is so concerning.”
The ADL has recorded a 60 percent increase in anti-Semitic assaults this year, according to Bernstein.
The book of Esther describes the Persian king Ahasuerus as having reigned over an empire that stretched “from India to Ethiopia”—and thus, as a matter of simple geography, must have included Egypt. It was Cambyses II, the son and successor of Cyrus the Great, who added Egypt to the vast empire he inherited in the late 6th century BCE. Recently, archaeologists have discovered the ruins of a Persian military base near the Israeli city of Acre that Cambyses likely used in preparing for his campaign against the pharaoh, writes Philippe Bohstrom.
Among the findings at Tel Keisan, a hill rising 28 meters from the coastal plain . . . in northern Israel, were ruins dated to the Persian period by ceramic jars and cooking pots in the Greek and Phoenician styles typical of that time. The Phoenicians . . . and their fleet had been subjugated by the Assyrians and then by the Persians; and the ancient Greek historian Herodotus said that Greek mercenaries fought in the Persian emperor Cambyses’ army. The Greek and Phoenician ceramic finds in the Persian layer of Tel Keisan [thus] suggest that this area was part of the base camp of the great Achaemenid campaign.
It was on the Acre plain that Cambyses assembled his army that would sweep down to Egypt, in the 520s BCE. Why were the Persians so adamant about conquering Egypt, aside from the usual human weakness for building empires? One reason is because the various empires in the Levant and Middle East considered Egypt to be a major threat. That is just one more reason for their desire to control the land of Israel—a fertile land with a long coast, and a convenient [place from which to launch] attacks on Egypt. Or, at least, to contain Egypt’s influence over the Levant. . . .
Alex Trebek — the longtime host of the hit television show “Jeopardy” — was photographed touring the City of David archaeological site in Jerusalem on Thursday.
The photo was posted on social media by Yossi Raskas, the deputy director of the City of David.
During his stay in Israel, Trebek also visited Masada in southern Israel’s Judean Desert, where news anchor Jim Gardner, from the Philadelphia-based station 6 ABC, snapped a photo with him and then uploaded it onto Twitter.
Trebek also visited Israel in 2009, which resulted soon after in a “Journey Through Israel” category on “Jeopardy,” according to Haaretz.
Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has developed a component for the outer-wing set of the F-35 stealth fighter jet that will make it invisible to radar, according to an announcement by the company.
The company said it will develop a new production line for the next 20 years, which is anticipated to begin producing outer wing sets at the beginning of 2019 as a subcontractor for Lockheed Martin, and is expected to generate revenues of $2.5 billion in the next 10 to 15 years.
“The construction of the new production line significantly upgrades IAI’s technological capabilities, automation and robotics, and will enable the company to establish itself as a major player in the military and civilian aerostructures,” IAI said in a statement.
An estimated 811 pairs of F-35A wings are expected to be produced by 2034, and will include a unique Automatic Fiber Placement material that is woven of tiny threads. This gives planes the ability to evade radar detection.
The F-35 fighter jet contains parts from several Israeli defense companies, including Elbit System Cyclone, which made the center fuselage composite components, and Elbit Systems Ltd., which made the pilots’ helmets.
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Israel will not “accept the Iranian military entrenchment in Syria,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday.
Yet it’s the tunnels, all of which were later destroyed, that are of special concern. Built in urban areas, they were surprisingly large and equipped with ventilation shafts and electricity, and they reached at least 80 feet underground. All of them terminated near Israeli population centers.
They appeared designed for use in a future war, when Hezbollah fighters smuggled underground would join operatives infiltrating above ground, backed by missile fire from Syria and Lebanon.
That, as Netanyahu noted, constitutes “a double war crime: It’s targeting Israeli civilians while hiding behind Lebanese civilians.” It also violates a 2006 UN resolution requiring Hezbollah to remain north of Lebanon’s Litani River.
This week the Security Council debated the tunnels but took no punitive action. Leaving Israel to counter the menace alone.
On Dec. 6, the United Nations failed to pass a resolution condemning Hamas’s terrorist activities. On Dec. 9, Hamas praised a terror attack that critically injured a pregnant woman Shira Ish-Ran and six other Israelis, calling it “heroic.” On Dec. 12, Shira’s baby, Amiad Yisrael, died as a result of the attack.
The UN General Assembly claims to want peace between Israelis and Palestinians, but it seems to think it can achieve it by defending terrorists. Given the choice between peace and terrorism, the General Assembly has chosen to defend terrorism.
The UN has condemned Israel — a UN member state — hundreds of times. But it has never condemned Hamas, the terrorist group that controls Gaza and terrorizes the people of Israel.
Just a month ago, Hamas fired over four hundred rockets into Israel. It has released hundreds of burning kites and encouraged violent demonstrations. These wanton acts of violence, which have risked the lives of untold numbers of civilians and caused millions of dollars worth of damage, clearly deserve the strongest of condemnations.
On Dec. 6, the United States sponsored a resolution that gave the UN the opportunity to express its condemnation of Hamas for its terrorist activities. The U.S. resolution blames Hamas for firing rockets into Israel — a clear and blatant act of terrorism.
But instead of welcoming the opportunity to denounce terrorism as an indispensable step toward peace, allies of Hamas maneuvered to ensure that the General Assembly maintained its perfect record of silence on Hamas terrorism and chose to side with those who use violence against civilians
Opponents of the resolution altered the rules to require a two-thirds majority — rather than a simple majority — for the resolution to pass. When it came time to vote, a majority of countries voted to condemn Hamas. But 57 countries were willing to stand in support of terrorism and that was enough for the resolution to fail.
The IDF on Friday released footage of what it said were people in the southern Lebanese village of Kafr Kila reacting when an unspecified “liquid,” pumped by the Israeli military into a Hezbollah attack tunnel, flowed out of the opening and into the street.
Hebrew-language media reported that the IDF used cement to block the tunnels, and that some of the individuals seen in the footage responding to its flow at their end of the tunnel were members of the Hezbollah terrorist organization.
In the film, some people can be seen fleeing from the thick substance, while others try to remove it using a bulldozer or stop the spread of the viscous material by dumping rocks to seal the area.
The IDF on Thursday said it had destroyed all of the attack tunnels dug by Hezbollah from Kafr Kila into the northern Israeli border town of Metulla, but was still tackling such tunnels in other border areas.
The army released photos and video footage that it said proved “without a doubt” that the tunnels were dug from Lebanon into Israel. It also revealed some of its methods to seal the passages — including pumping the “liquid” into the tunnels, which, in some cases, gave away the location of the tunnels’ openings in civilian areas of southern Lebanon.
🤭 The reaction of what appears to be Hezbollah terrorists when they see the cement we poured into the attack tunnel that they had been digging from Lebanon into Israel, spilling out on the Lebanese side.
The important thing—the overwhelmingly important strategic aim which, unlike his critics at home and abroad, Trump really gets—is to defeat the Iranian regime.
Which is why his resumption of sanctions is so important. And which is why the Senate vote to end America’s military assistance for Saudi Arabia’s war against Iran in Yemen, a resolution moved by the Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, was this month’s really stupid American isolationist gesture.
Lawmakers of both parties want to punish Saudi Crown Prince Salman bin Mohammed, whom they hold responsible for the murder of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi.
Aside from this hypocritical moral grandstanding, the most ignorant comment came from Republican Sen. Mike Lee who said: “… we have been led into this civil war in Yemen, half a world away, into a conflict in which few Americans that I know can articulate what American national security interest is at stake.”
Well, someone should give Sen. Lee and his colleagues a map of the world pretty damn quick. For if Iran takes Yemen, it will not only encircle Saudi Arabia by water but will gain access to overland routes through Somalia, Eritrea and Sudan. It would thus threaten not just Saudi Arabia but also Egypt, Jordan and Israel, and become as a result a vastly greater danger to America and the West.
Yet while the air is thick with outrage over Trump’s decision to withdraw 2,000 soldiers from Syria, the Senate’s decision to end support for Saudi Arabia in defending the West’s crucial security interests in Yemen has been received with little more than a passing shrug.
The Trump administration lobbied intensively against the Senate’s resolution. That’s because the Trump administration understands America’s vital strategic interests in a land thousands of miles away. But hey, it’s Trump who’s the dangerous isolationist, right?
Maybe his decision over U.S. troops in Syria is a mistake. But for the most morally bankrupt isolationism and strategic incoherence about defending America and the West, we need to look elsewhere.
Hamas continues to seek missiles to bombard Israeli civilians and to construct cross-border tunnels to perpetrate atrocities. That's the reason Israel must maintain its blockade and has undertaken three major military incursions into Gaza over the last 10 years.
Hamas continues to transform Gaza's cities into battlefields by positioning military headquarters, weapons caches, and rocket launchers near, in, or under civilian buildings. That's the reason the fighting has injured and killed Palestinian noncombatants.
Hamas continues to foment hatred of Israel through the media and schools, to persuade Gazans that what is now Israel rightfully belongs to them and will someday, through force of arms, be theirs. That's the reason Israel must safeguard its borders and prevent its territory from going up in flames.
Were it not for Hamas' acts of war, Gazans would not face today an appalling scarcity of electricity and potable water; rivers of untreated sewage polluting beaches and ground water and spreading parasites; and a decimated economy.
The Center for a New American Security and the Brookings Institution published a report this month, "Ending Gaza's Perpetual Crisis: A New U.S. Approach." It calls for stabilizing Gaza through humanitarian relief and reintegrating it into the Palestinian Authority in order to establish an independent state through "vigorous diplomacy."
Yet despite its ambition to break with the mistakes of the past, the report embodies the old approach. First, by offering anodyne formulations about the "cycle of violence" that blur the difference between Hamas' desire to destroy Israel and Israel's desire to be left alone, the report obscures the abiding sources of Gaza's humanitarian crisis.
Two days before Israeli government coalition leaders announced that general elections will take place on April 9, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas made a statement that was hardly noticed by many in Israel.
Speaking at a meeting of the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah last Saturday, Abbas said that the Palestinians, too, will be heading to the polls.
“The Palestinian Constitutional Court has decided to dissolve the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) and call for parliamentary elections within six months,” Abbas said. The decision, he added, will soon be published in the Palestinian official gazette.
But while the decision to hold early elections in Israel has engendered excitement and competition among political parties, politicians and pundits, the initiative to hold elections for the Palestinian parliament has intensified tensions between Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction and Hamas.
The Fatah-Hamas rift, which reached its peak with Hamas’s violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, is the main reason why Palestinians have not been able to hold long overdue presidential and parliamentary elections.
Abbas’s four-year-term in office expired in 2009, while the mandate of the PLC ended a year later. In light of the continued power struggle between the two rival parties, the prospect of holding new elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is slim to none.
Hamas leaders say they are fully confident that their group would win in any election, provided it’s held in a fair and free climate.
Nabil Abu Rudaineh, President Abbas's spokesman: All the settlements in the Palestinian territories are illegal, and they will all be removed like the ones that were removed from the Gaza Strip.
The European Union and France lashed out Thursday at Israel for its advancement and approval this week of 2,191 new settler homes in the West Bank.
“All settlement activity is illegal under international law. It undermines the viability of the two-state solution and the prospects for a lasting peace,” the EU said.
Some 61% of those units are slated to be built in isolated settlements, located beyond the route of the security barrier.
The EU, however, considers all Jewish building over the pre-1967 lines to be illegal, and does not distinguish between isolated settlements and the blocs.
The Land Authority published tenders for 641 settler homes on Thursday, bringing the total of tenders for the year to 3,808, according to the Left-wing group Peace Now.
That’s a 20% increase over last year’s total of 3,154.
The combined number of tenders published over the last two years, since US President Donald Trump came into office totals 6,962. It’s almost as many as the 6,806 tenders published from 2008 to 2016.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed what he said would be a “new era” in ties with “great power” Brazil ahead of meeting Friday with the Latin America’s country’s incoming far-right leader, Jair Bolsonaro.
Netanyahu also stressed that he would press Bolsonaro on an announcement — since walked back — that Brazil would follow the United States in moving its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
“The president-elect (Bolsonaro) announced he would (transfer the embassy). You can be certain I will speak with him about that in our first meeting,” Netanyahu, speaking Hebrew, told reporters on his flight before it landed in Rio de Janeiro.
Netanyahu was greeted at the airport by Rio de Janeiro Mayor Marcelo Crivella and Brazilian MP Eduardo Bolsonaro, the son of the president-election, who last month told US President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner the embassy move was a question of “when, not if.”
As the year winds down, the Coalition and the ALP have ramped up discussion on Israel and the Palestinians.
Each assert they have the same goal – a two-state solution where both Israelis and Palestinians live in safety and security.
There is also an acknowledgement that the status quo cannot continue.
In a two-day period earlier this month, 460 rockets were fired indiscriminately into Israel from Gaza. Israel retaliated against military targets in the beleaguered Gaza Strip. Hamas claimed responsibility for a terrorist attack on the West Bank this month in which a young woman, who was 30 weeks' pregnant, was shot in the stomach, killing the baby.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority continues to name children’s sports events after those who have killed Israeli civilians. Since 2014, the PA has refused all peace talks, and there have been no serious talks between it and Israel since 2008.
Despite agreement on the need for action, the paths being pursued by the two major political parties are quite different.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison simply acknowledged reality in announcing that Australia would officially recognise that West Jerusalem, where Israel’s government is located and which has been Israel’s capital since 1949, is in fact the site of Israel’s capital.
The Palestinian Mission to Berlin took down a pro-terror Facebook post after receiving a rare rebuke from Germany’s Foreign Ministry, Benjamin Weinthal reported for The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.
The mission removed a Facebook post featuring the image of hijacker Leila Khaled, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization. The picture was accompanied by a caption with the phrase, “Resistance is not terrorism.”
A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry explained, “We have made it clear to the Palestinian Mission that we need clarification on the Facebook post, and the glorification of terrorism and a glorification of Lufthansa kidnapper Leila Khaled are completely unacceptable.”
The rebuke of the Palestinian Mission came after Filipp Piatov, a reporter for the newspaper Bild, reported on the post praising Khaled.
Khaled was a member of a PFLP cell that hijacked TWA flight 840 in August 1969. She also participated in the attempted hijacking of an El Al flight a year later.
The rebuke issued by Foreign Ministry came just days after Germany decided to stop funding foreign organizations that promote anti-Semitism.
Senior Hamas Official Mahmoud Al-Zahar: U.S. Embassy Is Unacceptable in West Jerusalem, in Tel Aviv, or Even in Safed pic.twitter.com/3Xy8NXMRht
Police said Friday that a suspected incendiary device attached to a number of balloons was discovered in a community close to the Gaza border, and that sappers were called to the scene.
Hebrew-language media reported that the suspected device landed close to a kindergarten.
The discovery comes after a lull of several weeks for the airborne arson attempts from the coastal enclave, and hours ahead of threatened renewed violence at the border by terror groups during Friday protests.
Police reiterated a call for the public to be extremely careful around any such objects — balloons and kites — as they could contain dangerous explosive or inflammatory material.
Anyone who finds such an object should report it to the police call center and to leave handling of the device to sappers, the statement said.
Gaza protesters have launched hundreds of incendiary kites and balloons into Israel, sparking fires that have destroyed forests, burned crops, and killed livestock. Over 7,000 acres of land have been burned, causing millions of shekels in damages, according to Israeli officials. Some balloons have carried improvised explosive devices.
Several students from the Orot Israel College in Samaria on Thursday called on the United Nations to condemn a Dec. 9 terrorist attack that left one of their classmates seriously wounded and also caused her baby's death.
Seven Israelis were wounded in the shooting, which took place at a bus stop near the Samaria settlement of Ofra, including 21-year-old Shira Ish-Ran, who was 30-weeks pregnant at the time.
Her baby was delivered via emergency cesarean section but the newborn – named Amiad Yisrael – died three days later.
Through outgoing Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon, Ish-Ran's friends send a letter to U.N. Secretary General António Guterres demanding he denounces the attack.
The letter says Guterres, who has yet to comment on the shooting, "must condemn the terrorists who cut short the life on an unborn baby, killed in his mother's womb solely for being Jewish."
Two days before Israeli government coalition leaders announced that general elections will take place on April 9, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas made a statement that was hardly noticed by many in Israel.
Speaking at a meeting of the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah last Saturday, Abbas said that the Palestinians, too, will be heading to the polls.
“The Palestinian Constitutional Court has decided to dissolve the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) and call for parliamentary elections within six months,” Abbas said. The decision, he added, will soon be published in the Palestinian official gazette.
But while the decision to hold early elections in Israel has engendered excitement and competition among political parties, politicians and pundits, the initiative to hold elections for the Palestinian parliament has intensified tensions between Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction and Hamas.
The Fatah-Hamas rift, which reached its peak with Hamas’s violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, is the main reason why Palestinians have not been able to hold long overdue presidential and parliamentary elections.
Abbas’s four-year-term in office expired in 2009, while the mandate of the PLC ended a year later. In light of the continued power struggle between the two rival parties, the prospect of holding new elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is slim to none.
Hamas leaders say they are fully confident that their group would win in any election, provided it’s held in a fair and free climate.
Imports of Iranian crude oil by major buyers in Asia hit their lowest in more than five years in November as US sanctions on Iran’s oil exports took effect last month, government and ship-tracking data showed.
China, India, Japan and South Korea last month imported about 664,800 barrels per day (bpd) from Iran, according to the data, down 12.7 percent from the same month a year earlier.
South Korea cut imports to zero for a third month in November while Japan followed suit. India’s November imports are down about 40 percent from October, the data showed.
Asia’s Iranian oil imports are set to rise from December after the United States granted eight countries waivers from sanctions against Iran’s oil exports for 180 days.
China’s Iranian oil imports rebounded to close to 390,000 bpd in November, up from about 247,000 bpd in October, the lowest in more than five years.
Sinopec, Tehran’s biggest crude buyer, resumed Iran oil imports shortly after China received its waiver in November while China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) will restart lifting its own Iranian oil production in December.
The Washington Free Beacon bids a fond farewell to departing U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.
For two years, she faced down Israel-bashing, led a global sanctions regime against North Korea, stood tall against the Russians, and provided a strong voice of moral, forceful American leadership in the world.
A former South Carolina governor believed by some critics to be too inexperienced in foreign policy to navigate the difficult terrain of the U.N., she proved doubters wrong during her widely praised tenure.
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Israel Voted
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Well, it looks like neither side has won. Most of the votes have been
counted and now we will see some wild maneuvering and negotiations. Likud,
Bibi's ...
BBC News reports a Hamas letter but ignores another
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Like many other mainstream media outlets, on March 14th the BBC News
website reported a Hamas statement calling on Iran not to strike
neighbouring...
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Thanks to the readers and commenters who have supported this blog over the
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