Friday, August 12, 2016
Alan Dershowitz: Black Lives Matter must rescind anti-Israel declaration
To give Black Lives Matter a pass on its anti-Jewish bigotry would be to engage in racism. Black anti-Semitism is as inexcusable as white anti-Semitism or white racism. There can be no double standard when it comes to bigotry.Research Report: #BlackLivesMatter more about radical social upheaval than “Black Lives”
I write this column both in sorrow and in anger. In sorrow because I support the goals of the Black Lives Matter movement — I have long been involved in efforts to expose and prevent police abuses — and worry that this obnoxious and divisionary platform plank may destroy its credibility with regard to police abuse in America by promoting deliberate lies about Israel. It is also alienating Jewish and other supporters who could help them achieve their goals here at home — as many such individuals have historically done in actively supporting all aspects of the civil rights movement.
I write it in anger because there is never an excuse for bigotry and for promoting blood libels against the Jewish people and their state. It must stop. And those who engage in it must be called out for condemnation.
Black Lives Matter should rescind the portions of the platform that falsely accuse Israel of genocide and apartheid. If it does not, it risks ending in the dustbin of history, along with other discredited bigoted groups.
It would be sad if the good work done by Black Lives Matter were now to be sidetracked by the mendacious and irrelevant accusation of “genocide” and “apartheid” against one foreign democracy — Israel. (h/t Max Mendelbaum)
Using Black Lives Matter movement to redefine the American experience into anti-Capitalist upheaval
If you think the Black Lives Matter movement is just or even primarily about “Black Lives,” then you don’t understand the movement.
A new research report, based on detailed interviews with those active in the movement, demonstrates that the organized movement is a vehicle for a radical leftist anti-Capitalist agenda, using “Black Lives” as the hook.
The research is by Anne Sorock of The Frontier Lab using a “deep values” methodology. Several years ago Anne was a regular contributor to Legal Insurrection, but that has fallen off as she devoted herself The Frontier Lab.
Deep values research is something pioneered by Dr. Brian Wansink at the Food & Brand Lab at Cornell University. Anne received her MBA at Cornell and worked with that group. Deep values research seeks to understand not just what consumers like or want, but what deeply held values lead to such decisions.
IsraellyCool: Know Your History: Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver – From Israel-Hater To Zionist
With the Black Lives Matters movement being co-opted by Israel haters and antisemites, now seems like a good time to look at Eldridge Cleaver, a prominent activist of the Black Panther Party, who began as a rabid Israel hater.Why Anti-Israel Activists in Black Lives Matter Are Trying to Turn ‘Genocide’ on the Jews
For instance, this from the New York Times, July 23, 1969:
We’ve heard this all before, and certainly echoes the kinds of things we are hearing now – from within the Black Lives Matters movements, and from without.
There’s also this photo of Cleaver (right) holding hands with arch terrorist Yasser Arafat.
But then something interesting happened. During his trip to Algeria, he saw how the Arabs enslaved Africans, and had an epiphany. From then on, he became an ardent Zionist.
The following articles give insight into this part of his transformation.
Yet it seems unlikely that the Movement for Black Lives would agree to such a labeling. It identifies with anti-Zionist movements in the Middle East; it would object strenuously to being deemed complicit in a genocidal project. Their reticence, in turn, calls into question whether they seriously believe in the new definition they’re forwarding—will they apply it to friend as well as foe? I was talking the other day to the executive director of a prominent Middle Eastern Jewish organization who was incensed about the MBL platform and (especially) the demands by groups like Jewish Voice for Peace that all Jews endorse it without reservation (On JVP: “They completely ignored us for over a decade and now they want to speak on our behalf?”). It’s not that her group wants to call what happened to Jews like her a “genocide” (though they have used “ethnic cleansing”); but she is well aware that this discursive reframing is not done on her behalf and is not being made available to her.
We could push the argument further—groups like Hamas call for a genocide of Jews in a very “traditional” sense, but even some of the purportedly progressive anti-Zionist organizations operating in MBL’s circle who would abhor such exterminationist desires nonetheless campaign for a Middle East where there is no longer a sovereign and independent space of Jewish life capable of self-creation and self-determination. Is that project properly termed “genocidal”? Are they willing to cop to the legitimacy of that label? Discriminatory application of the new persuasive definition is an identifiable wrong, and one that is worth calling out. It suggests that the term is not being used as part of a genuine egalitarian political program, but as a “ticket good for this ride only.”
But there is a deeper problem here worth interrogating. The term genocide, as many of the MBL platform defenders do recognize, has a special significance and sensitivity to the Jewish community. Its significance to the Jewish community, in turn, has been the subject of considerable frustration to those who frequently find themselves at odds with the mainstream Jewish community. Often, they treat the Holocaust as a sort of unearned advantage for Jews—a chip or a card that Jews can use to tilt the discursive game in our favor, as when Naomi Klein accused Jews of thinking “we get one get-away-with-genocide-free-card.” The contemporary Jew, they seem to think, is downright lucky that his or her relatives perished in the camps—look at the bounty it’s gotten us! How fortunate we are, to have this talisman of the Shoah that we can wave around to ward off all criticism going forward! They treat the Holocaust not as a source of trauma but as a source of privilege, and an unjust privilege at that.
Ryan Bellerose: The Truth About Haters
Ibtihaj MuhammadI find myself getting more and more annoyed at people who excuse these clowns.Argentina identifies last victim of AMIA bombing, 22 years on
They say “criticism of Israel is not antisemitic” but I believe, what is antisemitic, is when you make things up to criticize Israel. I think that if you only criticize Israel and ignore the far worse transgressions of far worse countries, then you are more than likely doing it out of Jew hatred or, if you are jewish (note the lower case j), out of a misguided desire to fit in.
I have never thought these things were difficult to see, in fact I am often baffled at how obtuse most people are about this stuff. I think it’s rather obvious and even sometimes blatant.
I called out Arabs for trying to piggyback on the struggle for native rights when it’s obvious to anyone with a functioning brain and Google that the Arabs themselves are the colonizers. They literally steal the identity of the Jewish people by claiming to be indigenous to a region that the first Arab set foot in in the 7th century. Is this mean? Is demanding consistency and critical thought really so harsh?
The only unidentified fatality of the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires was named Wednesday.IsraellyCool: BDS-Holes Film Themselves Committing A Crime
DNA analyses of the body and his mothers confirmed the victim as Augusto Daniel Jesus with more than 99.99 percent certainty, according to the Argentinian government’s AMIA Special Investigating Unit.
Jesus and his mother were among the 85 people killed and 300 injured in the solo suicide bombing — most but not all of them Jews.
Argentina has accused Hezbollah of carrying out the attack at the direction of Iran. No arrests have been made, and the investigation has been plagued with charges of incompetence and corruption.
The DNA analysis was conducted by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team and verified by the team along with the University of Buenos Aires. Efforts to identify the body began in 2002 after Jesus’ identity card was discovered in the debris at the scene.
Some believed the body may have belonged to the suicide bomber, but the theory has now been discredited.
For a while now, BDS-holes belonging to a group called Canadians for Justice & Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) have been defacing Israeli products by affixing stickers to them.Im Tirtzu lambasts EU for NGO 'hypocricy'
Now this group has done something really stupid – filming “educational videos” showing them clearly in the act of defacing the products.
In this first video, an overly cheerful BDS-hole by the name of Miranda Christina Gallo instructs viewers as to which brands are Israeli, while clearly placing some stickers on products.
I am not familiar with Canadian law but this seems to fall under Mischief, which is section 430 of the Criminal Code.
Filming yourself in the commission of a crime – while encouraging others to do so – does not seem like a smart move.
Just saying.
In Israel, similar concerns over foreign influence led to the recent passing of the Transparency Law, a law widely criticized by the European Union. In an official statement, the EU stated that the law goes “beyond the legitimate need for transparency and seem aimed at constraining the activities of these civil society organisations working in Israel.”How US states can promote Israeli-Palestinian peace
Im Tirtzu CEO Matan Peleg highlighted the hypocrisy and double standard of this EU report: “On the one hand, the EU criticizes Israel for protecting itself against millions of euros funneled by them to anti-Israel organizations, and on the other hand, they are advocating for the exact same protection.”
“This is hypocrisy like no other,” continued Peleg, “and another glaring example of the double standards that Israel is subjected to on a daily basis. Backed by European funding, Israeli foreign-agent organizations are leading the campaign of delegitimization against Israel and IDF soldiers through constant propaganda, lobbying, and petitioning to the Supreme Court.”
Peleg added: “Im Tirtzu will continue working to protect the State of Israel and IDF soldiers from harmful foreign intervention.”
This is not to say that diversity of opinion and academic freedom are not vital. But there needs to be a differentiation between criticism and delegitimation of the right to exist. Most Jewish BDS supporters, in their naiveté, have no grasp of how they fuel the virulently anti-Israel groups that use this message to validate their agendas. Even more problematic are those groups within the Jewish community that believe dialogue via this kind of discussion will further peace between Israelis and Palestinians.Major Jewish Campus Groups Hail UC Irvine Decision to Implement Regents ‘Statement Against Intolerance’ as ‘Major Step’ in Combating Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism
As the US presidential election approaches, there is a need to make a stronger case for Israel, as this has becoming increasingly more difficult when Jews adopt a Palestinian agenda that detracts from the real issue behind the conflict: mutual recognition. And above all, mainstream Jewish groups have a responsibility to their stakeholders to establish clear lines that they will uphold while affording their constituents a wide range of opinions that fall within the realm of legitimate debate and public discourse. However, being a “big tent” community doesn’t mean killing yourself to be in it.
New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s executive order, signed on June 5, which punishes companies that engage in BDS activity that conduct business with NYS, is a healthy response to BDS. In short, anti-BDS laws and regulations show real promise to influence a change in Abbas’s effort to internationalize the conflict strategy and his refusal to negotiate with Israel.
An important next step would be for European countries to follow the lead of France and the United Kingdom. France’s 2013 anti-discrimination Lellouche law has been successfully applied to BDS groups seeking to damage Israel’s economy. Former British Prime Minister David Cameron helped enact penalties against city councils that promote BDS.
BDS is a dead end street for those seeking a two-state solution. The challenge for the next US president will be to de-internationalize the conflict and let Palestinians and Israelis take control over the negotiating process.
The University of California, Irvine’s (UCI) recent announcement that it will begin to fully implement a groundbreaking statement against intolerance is a major step forward in combating campus antisemitism, the heads of two major Jewish campus groups told The Algemeiner on Thursday.Artfully Countering BDS at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, co-founder of the AMCHA Initiative — which combats, monitors and documents antisemitism at institutions of higher education in America — and Roz Rothstein, CEO and co-founder of Israeli advocacy organization StandWithUs, praised the decision by UCI Chancellor Howard Gillman to adopt the UC Regents “Statement Against Intolerance,” which asserts in part that antisemitism and antisemitic forms of anti-Zionism “have no place at the University of California.”
“UCI’s announcement is a welcome development, and we thank Chancellor Gillman for being a leader in this regard,” Rothstein told The Algemeiner, while Rossman-Benjamin noted that Gillman is the “first of 10 UC chancellors to make the Regents statement a living document, giving it meaning on campus.”
UCI became the epicenter of controversy after the school played host to two major antisemitic and anti-Zionist events in May. As part of “Anti-Zionism Week 2016,” anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox sect Neturei Karta member Yisroel Dovid Weiss was invited to give an address to students, during which he invoked classic antisemitic tropes that were used with respect to Zionism and Zionists.
How do you steal a beach? For the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, the answer is: one grain of sand at a time.How to spot a Jew hater
The cultural boycott effort seeks to rob the world of one of its most valued treasures — freedom of artistic expression — one artist, one performance and one exhibit at a time.
A case in point is the dangerous undertow at the Scottish Edinburgh Fringe Festival,
“The Fringe” is the largest performing arts festival in the world; it attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every August and provides unparalleled exposure for up-and-coming performers.
The anti-Israel Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) has cast a shadow of censorship over this popular and important cultural exchange with protests against Israeli participation.
The protests date back to at least 1997, but have been growing steadily in their impact.
In 2012, performances by the world-acclaimed Israeli dance company, Batsheva, were continuously disrupted by protesters intimidating artists and audience alike.
Condemning that isn’t Jew hatred.Celtic fans to greet Israeli team with Palestinian flags
On the other hand, condemning Israel exclusively, obsessively and selectively is.
Indeed, the BDS campaign is particularly insidious because, as the Parliament of Canada rightly noted in passing a Conservative-led motion condemning it earlier this year by a margin of 229 to 51, it specifically “promotes the demonization and delegitimization of the State of Israel.”
In other words, this isn’t just your average, run-of-the-mill protest in favour of human rights.
The true purpose of the BDS campaign for those who support it, while consistently and willfully ignoring other human rights violations around the world, is to promote the Big Lie that Israel is the worst human rights violator on Earth, comparable to South Africa under apartheid or, ironically and despicably, Germany under the Nazis.
That is not only a lie, it’s a modern version of the blood libel -- the ancient false, Jew-hating accusation that persists in some parts of the world even today, that Jews murder Christian children to use their blood to bake matzah -- unleavened bread -- during Passover.
It really all comes down to the maxim that while not all critics of Israel are Jew haters, all Jew haters are critics of Israel.
Fans of Scotland’s Celtic soccer team are planning to stage a protest against Israel when their team faces off with Hapoel Beersheba next week in the Champions League.“Jews of Color Caucus” – Jewish Voice for Peace’s newest front group
The Israeli champion will play against the Scottish powerhouse at Celtic Park next Wednesday, August 17, with Beersheba hosting the return leg the following Tuesday. Celtic fans are waiting to greet the Israeli team and its fans with Palestinian flags. A Facebook page set up in honor of the occasion has already attracted 837 “interested” Facebook users. The page, entitled “Fly the flag for Palestine, for Celtic, for Justice,” was set up by a group that goes by the name Celtic Fans for Palestine.
The group says an Israeli soccer team should not be allowed to participate in the soccer competition “due to the system of apartheid laws and practices including religious- and ethnic-based colonization, military occupation and segregation of what remains of Palestinian land and over 90 laws which discriminate against indigenous Palestinians who make up 20 percent of the population of current-day Israel.”
Leaders of the initiative plan to distribute free Palestinian flags at the entrance to Celtic Way.
We wrote recently about the Black Lives matter platform statement (under the name MB4L: Movement for Black Lives) and, in particular the “Invest-Divest section,” which attacks Israel and accuses Israel of ‘genocide’ and being an ‘apartheid state’.A Comprehensive Response to Anti-Israel Tourist Activism Talking Points - Part I: Geography, Fences and Security
As reported, the statement was condemned by the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of Boston, and the Anti-Defamation League. Subsequent condemnations were issued by the American Jewish Committee, the Union for Reform Judaism, as well as the more left-wing J-Street (the liberal “pro-Israel, pro-Peace” lobby group), and T’ruah: the rabbinic call for human rights.
These statements joined by others from the more liberal end of the Jewish community were met with fierce criticism by radical left groups and BDS activists.
Leading the Charge: JVP’s new front organization
Only three days after the publication of the M4BL statement on August 1st, a group that calls itself “Jews of Color Sephardi Mizrahi” announced its formation as:
Betty Purcell, a member of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, is best known for her former role as a current affairs producer at RTE, Ireland’s public service broadcaster. Purcell is a television producer of longstanding, who wrote a book called Inside RTÉ: A Memoir about her thirty-three year career at the Broadcasting institution, which indicated the extent to which she influenced RTE’s political culture.A Comprehensive Response to Anti-Israel Tourist Activism Talking Points, Part II
Purcell trenchantly advocated against the Jewish State in the mainstream media, in the aftermath of a supposed fact-finding tour of Judea and Samaria/West Bank, organised by the Bethlehem branch of the YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association). Purcell’s staunch anti-Zionist claims, as expressed in an Irish Examiner article, letters, and during an RTE interview, echo most of the normative propagandistic talking points found when anti-Israel tourism activists share their insights with the international media. This article uses Purcell’s commentary as a starting point to closely critique these broad talking points.
Of land and settlements
On November 2nd, 2015, the Irish Examiner published an opinion piece by Betty Purcell, entitled ‘A boycott of Israel can help end the injustice’.
This article addresses the propagandistic talking points of tourist activism, so designed to undermine the international standing of Israel. The anti-Israel commentaries by former RTE producer, Betty Purcell, in the aftermath of a 2015 visit to Judea and Samaria/West Bank, organised by the Bethlehem branch of the YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association), in which she toured and lived with a Christian family, are utilised as a starting point for the arguments of rebuttal featured in this essay. Part One of this series addresses other topics of contention.Haaretz Has Crossed Democracy’s Most Fundamental Red Line
In any true democracy, citizens cannot allow institutions to threaten their well-being. Israelis must now hold the newspaper Haaretz accountable for shamelessly and selfishly demonize the country and its army, knowing full well that the hateful lies of its writers will be repeated by foreign enemies.NYT Interactive Feature Used as Teaching Tool Distorts Palestinian-Israeli Conflict
One of the great challenges of democracy is balancing cherished values. Among these is freedom of expression, –an unhindered press and a public able and even required to speak freely without fear of reprisal. Another, even more basic fundamental value is self-protection. Enshrined in the dictum that “democracy is not a suicide pact,” which means that none of its shared values can be allowed to threaten society itself.
This is not an easy task, nor one approached lightly. Israel has always been quite liberal in its attitude, willing to expose itself to criticism, and even harm, in the name of honoring freedom. But democracy is not a “one size fits all” proposition. Not all democratic countries are under the same pressures or face the same threats. Unlike critics of Israel, no one questions Denmark’s right to exist or Peru’s to be recognized as a sovereign nation. Indeed, Israel is unique in this respect, with constant attempts to delegitimize it into oblivion.
Fortunately, Israel is not oblivious to this fact. Belatedly, perhaps, we are now pushing back against the global phenomenon of BDS, which is widely recognized as code for the weakening to death the world’s only Jewish state. We have little difficulty in identifying many of the purveyors of such hatred, whether in the Arab world, on the European continent, on the far-Left or the far-Right.
A New York Times website interactive feature is currently being used as a teaching tool about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in some U.S. public schools.Hamas-linked Journalists Fool Journalists on Google Maps and Palestine
The documentary, "Challenges in Defining an Israeli-Palestinian Border," is comprised of 5 short films (each under 10 minutes) about the conflict. Its underlying premise is that the key to peace between neighboring Palestinian and Jewish states is to establish a permanent border between the two sides along the 1949 Armistice lines and that the failure to do so forms the crux of the conflict.
But this is a mistaken notion that disregards the history of the Arab-Israeli struggle: It fails to consider the primary issue that has motivated and fueled the dispute from the 1917 Balfour Declaration calling for "a national home for the Jewish people" until today – namely, the steadfast refusal by Arab and Palestinian leaders to accept a permanent Jewish state in the region, within any borders at all.
It is not just the most extreme leaders who reject a Jewish state. All Palestinian leaders – including Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is considered a moderate – consistently and clearly articulate their rejection of a Jewish state of any size in the region. Indeed, Abbas is now planning a lawsuit against Great Britain over the Balfour Declaration on the grounds that it led to what the Palestinians call their Naqba, or "catastrophe" in Arabic, referring to the establishment of the State of Israel and subsequent war.
By ignoring this metaphorical "elephant in the room," the feature misdirects the audience away from the essence of the conflict.
They all should have known better — not only because skepticism is a core journalistic value, but also because the source of the allegation was a group linked to the radical, anti-Semitic Hamas organization.AFP Headline on Stabbing Says Less With More
The Washington Post reported that "when a Gaza City-based journalism group claimed that the nation of Palestine had literally been wiped from Google's maps, readers were, well — indignant." That journalism group, the Post explained, is the Palestinian Journalists' Forum. Reports in the Huffington Post, Mashable, Al Arabiya and others likewise cited the Palestinian Journalists' Forum statement as the instigator of the online outrage.
The statement in question doesn't exactly project credibility. Those accepting its claims at face value should have seen red flags in its description of Israel as a "cancerous" entity — and its insistence that Google emphasize the country's cancerousness. The statement also blames the purported deletion of the word Palestine on a conspiracy by the Zionist lobby. Google "is part of the Israeli scheme to establish its name as a legitimate state for generations to come and abolish Palestine once and for all," Al Arabiya translates the PJF statement as saying.
That language might not seem especially journalistic. But it is typical of Hamas rhetoric — which is not surprising when considering that the director of the Palestinian Journalists' Forum, Imad al-Efranji, is also the head of the Gaza branch Quds television station, a Hamas station that traffics in naked anti-Semitism — assertions that Jews make Passover matza out of Christian blood and global Judaism is a "plague" that controls the world's financial system, for example — and broadcasts explicit calls to anti-Jewish violence.
AFP's headline is: "Jewish man stabbed in suspected Jerusalem 'terror' attack: police"Horse Battered in Gaza Brought to Safety in Israel
AP's headline states: "Palestinian stabs, wounds Israeli teen in Jerusalem"
The differences between the two are striking.
1) AFP's headline does not identify the perpetrator. AP's does (Palestinian). Therefore, AP gives more basic information critical to the story. AFP gives less.
2) AFP uses the passive voice ("Jewish man stabbed"). AP uses the active voice ("Palestinians stabs"). Passive voice obscures the perpetrator.
3) AFP's headline is nine words. AP's is just seven. AP uses less to say more. AFP wastes words. The headline identifies police as the source of the information that a Jewish man was stabbed, so it is redundant to label the stabbing as a "suspected" terror attack. Moreover, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld was definitive in his characterization of the attack as terror. He did not refer to a "suspected" terror attack. (In addition, the scare quotes on the word "terror" aren't necessary, because, again, the headline already attributes the information to the police.)
The Jerusalem Post reports: After suffering from poor treatment at a farm in Gaza, an Israeli horse named Ohio has now safely returned home.WATCH: Israeli Surfers Seek to Kickstart Wearable Sunscreen Dispenser
Ohio’s owner had sold him to a trader in Gaza, only to later find out that he was being used for show jumping at a farm in the strip, according the Agriculture Ministry. Once the owner became aware of the situation, he requested the ministry’s help in bringing the horse back home.
Due to the horse’s poor state of health at the farm, the ministry’s Veterinary Services made a special exception and decided to immediately bring Ohio back to Israel.
As officials arranged for Ohio’s release, they also established a quarantine stable in an Israeli community close to the Gazan border, the Agriculture Ministry said.
They selected the specific community for its close proximity to the border as well as the lack of other horses within a 300-meter radius.
With 300 days of sun per year, it was only a matter of time before some entrepreneurial spirit in Tel Aviv – the famed capital of the Startup Nation – would invent a futuristic gadget for applying sunscreen.
All ye sun-worshipers, hail to SunZee, a wearable sunscreen dispenser that ensures you get perpetual protection.
Resembling a watch, SunZee is a silicon wristband with a little dispenser attached. The capsules are disposable and contain two doses of 40 SPF water-resistant sunscreen and pressing a button releases them.
It’s perfect for surfers who tend to apply sunscreen once before getting in the water and can spend hours without reapplying.
In fact, surfing was what gave co-founders Nitsan Nir, Heday Kinarti, and Ori Ram the idea.
Longtime fans of the sport, the co-founders realized they were suffering from sun damage because they failed to apply sunscreen at regular intervals when catching waves.
“The idea started with a real need we had,” Nir told Breitbart Jerusalem. “We are surfers and cyclists, we kept getting burnt when out in the sun for long hours.”
“We realized that we had to make the reapplication easy and accessible. The more we learned, we came to understand that this is a daily problem for many people.”
British rock band The Searchers will perform in Haifa and Tel Aviv
Liverpool didn’t produce its disproportionate share of successful rock groups by chance back in the 1960s. The blue-collar port city that spawned The Beatles, Gerry & the Pacemakers, The Searchers and dozens of other British Invasion pop acts who had a hand in revolutionizing modern music played an instrumental role, no pun intended.Significant increase in number of tourists from China visiting Israel
According to John McNally, a founding member of chiming guitar pioneers The Searchers, the workingclass homes of Liverpool were full of new, adventurous music from the US brought back by returning seamen as gifts for their kids.
“We were fortunate to have a great seaport, and our family members were seamen in the merchant Navy,” said the 74-year-old McNally who, along with fellow founding Searcher Frank Allen, is bringing the classic band to Israel next week.
“So they would bring all this great music back with them from America – early Motown, blues and country and western like Hank Williams. All the young lads picked up on that, and the skiffle craze developed in the mid- 1950s,” he added, referring to the distinctive British blend of upbeat shuffle music that John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s first band, The Quarrymen, tried their hand at.
There was a 112 percent increase in the number of Chinese tourists visiting Israel last month, while the overall number of visitors from China since the beginning of the year rose 53 percent compared to last year.
According to the Tourism Ministry, some 6,400 Chinese tourists arrived in Israel in July 2016, compared to some 3,000 in July 2015. Since the beginning of the year, 38,832 Chinese visited the Holy Land, compared to some 25,000 between January and July 2015.
One of the reasons for the rise in tourists from China is the fact that Hainan Airlines starting offering flights to Israel. According to a report by the Israel Airports Authority, in July 2016 the company flew 5,575 passengers on its Tel Aviv-Beijing line, 660 more passengers than El Al, which was the only airline flying to China up until three months ago.
In light of the increase in the number of Chinese tourists coming to Israel, the Tourism and Interior Ministries decided to approve a request made by the Israel Incoming Tour Operators Association to cancel the fee for tour groups.
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