Thursday, January 31, 2019

From Ian:

Ben Shapiro: Hijacking Holocaust Remembrance Day
The same holds true for Linda Sarsour, co-chair of the Women’s March. Sarsour is a supporter of the anti-Semitic boycott against Israel. In 2012, she tweeted, “nothing is creepier than Zionism,” and has publicly defended radical Jew-hater Louis Farrakhan. She has stated that support of Israel cannot coincide with feminism. Yet she, too, sent out a Holocaust Remembrance missive — this one curiously missing any mention of the Jews. “May the memories of those who perished inspire us to love and protect one another. May we never forget history so that we may never repeat it,” she tweeted. “May they rest in an eternal peace knowing that we will fight for each other no matter the consequences.”

Again, a message just vague enough with which to virtue-signal — all without ever having to acknowledge the real-life anti-Semitism in which Sarsour herself has engaged.

Her tweet is a convenient way of omitting the actual message of the Holocaust: first, that Jews must never again be dehumanized and murdered for political purposes; second, that anti-Semitism is not merely a subset of bigotry, but its own poisonous brand; and third, that mass murder is possible when purportedly civilized people forget the first two lessons. And yet, thanks to a deliberate campaign to obfuscate those first two lessons, enemies of the Jewish people can hijack Holocaust Remembrance Day to use as a political club.

One time, the Lubavitcher Rebbe was asked if the Holocaust could ever happen again. “Morgen in der fruh,” he answered. “Tomorrow morning.”

In a world in which Iran routinely threatens Israel’s Jews with annihilation, in which the Palestinian Authority and Hamas unite to teach their children about the eventual hope of a Judenrein Palestine, in which Jews across Europe live under the possibility of the knife, the Holocaust must be remembered. Obscuring it with platitudinous statements uttered by anti-Semites isn’t just disgusting, it’s dangerous.
Amnesty: Israel using antisemitism to whitewash its war crimes
Israeli ministers have accused Amnesty International of antisemitism to divert public attention away from the government’s “war crimes” against Palestinians in the West Bank, the group said on Wednesday.

It hit back at the right-wing reaction to its report on Israel’s tourism industry over the pre-1967 lines called “Destination: Occupation,” which it published on Tuesday.

The report called on the four major digital booking sites – Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia and TripAdvisor – to boycott hotels, rentals and tourism sites over the pre-1967 lines. This includes Jewish sites in Jerusalem’s Old City, with its Western Wall and the Temple Mount, which are the holiest sites in Judaism.

Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan tweeted Tuesday that Amnesty has become a leader in the antisemitic #BDS campaign and that its report was an “outrageous attempt to distort facts, deny Jewish heritage & delegitimize Israel.”

Emotions are particularly on the issue among Israeli politicians in light of the anticipated publication this winter of a blacklist of companies doing business with Israel over the pre-1967 lines, which the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is expected to publish later this month.

Emotions are particularly high on the issue among Israeli politicians, in light of the anticipated publication this winter of a blacklist of companies doing business with Israel over the pre-1967 lines, which the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is expected to publish later this month.

The next day Amnesty said that ministers, such as Erdan, are trying to “silence reports of Israel’s war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories.”

To use the charge of antisemitism in the context of the report is “blatant incitement based on lies, deceptions and distortions that are easy to refute and are intended to divert the discussion from the subject at hand, which is, war crimes and human rights violations against Palestinians in the occupied territories,” Amnesty stated.
An amnesty for Paliwood
What grounds are there to believe this is the fakest of fake news?

Although not stated explicitly by Amnesty International we are supposed to believe the boy in the photograph is bravely putting his body at risk to stop a home demolition.

Check out the bulldozer driver in the enlarged image. Does he look like an IDF driver? IDF uniform is olive-green. This driver appears to be wearing a shirt with a distinct blue stripe. If he was demolishing a building in Palestinian territory wouldn’t he for his own safety be wearing his helmet?

Check out the bulldozer. It is clearly not an IDF bulldozer. It is completely unarmoured and painted bright yellow not grey or khaki.

So maybe it is a civilian bulldozer? Is the boy in danger or not?

With photography distance relationships can be quite deceptive. Long lenses compress distance. Either way it looks as if he is nowhere near the path of the bulldozer. He has been placed there by the photographer for a good angle. Or did you think it was his idea to find a chair and a flag?



Remembering Frank Blaichman, a Jewish Partisan Hero
Born in the Polish town of Kamionka in 1922, Frank Blaichman died last month in his Manhattan home. In 1942, three years after the start of the Nazi occupation, Blaichman fled Kamionka for the forests, where he found fellow Jews eager to fight back against the Third Reich. Neil Genzlinger writes:

[Blaichman soon] organized a defense force, though at first its main weapon was illusion created with pitchforks. “We broke off all the teeth, left one tooth on, and put a strap on the shoulder,” he said in [his] oral history. “From far away it looked like a rifle.”

Illusion of a sort also helped them acquire real weapons in the winter of 1942-43. His group learned of a farmer who had a stash of guns. He and another man went to see the farmer and convinced him that they were Russian paratroopers under orders to establish a resistance unit to battle the Germans. The ruse worked. “When we headed back to the forest, we had eight weapons,” Mr. Blaichman wrote. “Finally we could defend ourselves.”

The group grew more sophisticated and better armed, and Blaichman eventually commanded more than 100 armed Jewish partisans. His group linked up with other Jewish partisans, as well as groups like the [Polish] Communist partisan force Armia Ludowa, and spent the war disrupting German supply lines and communications and ferreting out Poles who were collaborating with the Nazis.
An Australian Gold-Rush Town and Its Synagogue
In the 1850s, when prospectors were flocking to California, Australia experienced a gold rush of its own, turning Ballarat, located some 70 miles inland from Melbourne, into a boomtown. No small number of Jews were among Ballarat’s new residents, and by 1861 the city had a lavish synagogue, which still holds services today. Mark Pinsky writes:

On the whole, the Jews who streamed into Ballarat for the gold rush in the 1850s and 1860s were more likely to supply the shovels than to wield them. Yet there were some Jewish miners among the shopkeepers, tradesmen, and gold buyers. Two years after the initial find [in 1851], the first service was held in a hotel. A local newspaper observed, approvingly, that the fact that “the Children of Israel had made such an investment in Ballarat was by no means the least significant ‘sign of the times’ upon the great western goldfield.” According to [a book on the history of the synagogue], the cantor at High Holiday services on October 11, 1853, a native of Lemberg, [led services] in the traditional red shirt and high boots of a gold-mining “digger.” . . .

The synagogue, the oldest on the Australian mainland, . . . built to seat 350, is a rectangular box laid out in traditional Orthodox style, with the bimah in the center of the room, facing the ark on the front wall. There are numerous clues to the congregation’s vintage. Flanking the ark are two gold-leaf tablets honoring Queen Victoria’s 1887 jubilee, in Hebrew and in English. Other tablets memorialize members who were killed in the two world wars. A stained-glass window above the ark, said to have been taken from an Irish mansion, is thought to date from the time of Elizabeth I. . . .

When the gold played out, many Jews stayed in Ballarat and helped build the young congregation. At its peak in the 1870s and 1880s, membership included 300 men, who may have represented 1,000 family members and required expansion of the women’s gallery. . . .
Documentary on sex therapist Dr. Ruth one of snowy Sundance’s hottest films
On line for the world premiere of “Ask Dr. Ruth” at the Sundance Film Festival, I bumped into my slightly younger friend Paul from London. “I gotta admit, I’m excited for this,” I told him. And he had something to admit, too: Until reading about the film in the program, he’d never heard of sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer.

“She was everywhere in the 1980s and ’90s in America, especially New York,” I said. “This is going to be great.”

The documentary (a love letter, really, from director Ryan White) opens with the 90-year-old, German-born woman quizzing her newly installed Alexa about her own biography, and then races into a montage of “greatest hits” from her television appearances. When there was finally a breath, I turned to my friend. With a big grin, he whispered “I get it.”

With last year’s tremendous financial successes “RBG” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” it’s a sure bet that “Ask Dr. Ruth” will be a substantial hit. It’s a sort of blend of the two: the story of a tenacious and trailblazing Jewish woman and a nostalgic voice from a better era of television. And more so than either of those subjects, Dr. Ruth is (and always has been) a firecracker wit and master communicator.

Many people, I’m sure, don’t know her life story. She didn’t even get her doctorate from Columbia University (and become Dr. Ruth) until she was 42. At that point she was already on to her third husband after being, for a time, a single mother. Prior to New York she lived in Paris and Israel, and grew up in an orphanage in Switzerland during the war. She left Frankfurt on a Kindertransport at the age of 10.
WATCH: Ilhan Omar Suggests Israel Should Not Be Allowed To Exist As Jewish State, Suggests Not A 'Democracy'
Omar made the shocking remarks during a Tuesday interview on Yahoo News' "Through Her Eyes" with Zainab Salbi.

"I want to talk about Israel because it has been a point of contention," Salbi said. "How can America work productively towards a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians in your opinion?"

"Most of the things that have always been aggravating to me is that we have had a policy that makes one superior to the other and we mask it with a conversation that's about justice and a two-state solution when you have policies that clearly prioritize one over the other," Omar responded.

When pressed for examples, Omar responded: "Our relationship, really with the Israeli government and the Israeli state."

"And so when I see Israel institute, um, law that recognizes it as a Jewish state and does not recognize, um, the other religions that are living in it and we still uphold it as a democracy in the Middle East, I almost chuckle because I know that if, you know, we, we, we, we see that in any other society we would criticize it."

"We would call it out," Omar continued. "We do that to Iran."


WATCH: Ocasio-Cortez Caught Lying About Her Comments On Israel Occupying Palestine
Ocasio-Cortez responded by doing what she does best, playing the victim card.

"Republicans are so scared of me that they’re faking videos and presenting them as real on Facebook because they can’t deal with reality anymore," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. "Here’s one bonafide truth: Election Day is November 6th."

The nine-day gap between The Daily Wire's original report on Ocasio-Cortez and Stuckey's parody video is key. The news cycle was saturated with Ocasio-Cortez's original, undoctored comments.


It's also important to note that Ocasio-Cortez never accused Firing Line of "doctoring" the original interview. She accused "Republicans" of "faking videos and presenting them as real," which also was not true, after the Stuckey parody video.

Her claim that "everyone" just saw "the doctored version instead of the actual exchange" is completely false and ignores the timeline of events and the overwhelming amount of media coverage on her remarks.
House Foreign Affairs Chair Criticizes Tlaib for Planned Trip to the West Bank
Rep. Eliot Engel (D., N.Y.), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called out Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) for her plan to lead a congressional delegation to the West Bank.

"Instead of her talking about things, she’s new here, she ought to listen and learn and open her mind and then come to some conclusions," Engel told Al-Monitor. "If you’re going to be close-minded and have your views, no one’s going to change her views. But I would hope that once you’re elected to Congress, you would at least care to see the other side of the coin."

Tlaib intended her trip as an alternative to an AIPAC-organized trip for freshmen members of Congress to see Israel. To organize her opposition trip, Tlaib would need to get approval from the House speaker or the leader of a committee on which they sit. Engel and Tlaib do not sit on the same committees.

"I want us to see that segregation [between Israelis and Palestinians] and how that has really harmed us being able to achieve real peace in that region," Tlaib told the Intercept before she took office. "I don’t think AIPAC provides a real, fair lens into this issue."
House Democrats Defend Tlaib, Omar Amid Antisemitic Accusations
Despite antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric that includes support for the BDS movement from freshmen Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), House Democratic leadership has come to their defense.

“Clearly, I condemn antisemitism,” said House Majority leader Steny Hoyer on Tuesday. “I don’t know that I draw the conclusion, however, that those attacking those two members are correct that they are antisemitic. I don’t accept that premise.”

Unlike Hoyer, House Democratic Caucus chairman Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) sidestepped the antisemitic and anti-Israel issues revolving around the congresswomen at issue: “I’ve found those two new freshmen members to be thoughtful colleagues on a wide variety of issues.”

The Daily Caller reported on Tuesday that Tlaib belongs to a Facebook group called “Palestinian-American Congress” that consists of antisemitic videos and other posts. Maher Abdel-qader, a crucial fundraiser for Tlaib’s congressional bid, posted a video last year questioning historical facts related to the Holocaust in addition to Jewish ties to Israel. The video calls Jews “satanic.”

“Research the truth about the Holocaust, and you’ll definitely start to question what you thought you knew,” said the video’s narrator.

On her first day in office, Tlaib displayed a map with a note posted over Israel that reads “Palestine.” Four days later, she attacked Republican lawmakers and opponents of the anti-Israel BDS movement by saying “they forgot what country they represent.”
Tlaib Denies Knowing Supporter Who Called Israel ‘Terrorist Entity’
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) responded to backlash over taking a photo this month with an activist who has called Israel a “terrorist entity” and said its founding was a “crime.”

The congresswoman was photographed with Abbas Hamideh, who has repeatedly expressed support for Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, at her swearing-in ceremony in Detroit on Jan. 12.

The Anti-Defamation League is among those who have called for Tlaib to “clarify this attendance and denounce his antisemitism.”

“No matter your political persuasion, all leaders—and Americans—need to unequivocally speak out against antisemitism and hate,” posted ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt in a Twitter thread. “That especially goes for members of Congress.”

“Days ago, @RashidaTlaib was photographed at an event with Abbas Hamideh, a man who has praised terrorist groups Hamas & Hezbollah and equated Zionists with Nazis,” he added. “We ask her to clarify his attendance and denounce his antisemitism.”

Tlaib told The Detroit Free Press last week, “A photo does not mean I agree with anything someone says. It is obvious this man thrives on media attention from his recent posts. It’s unfortunate that he was successful. I do not agree with the statements brought to my attention.”

But Hamideh told The Daily Caller last week that he became acquainted with Tlaib during her congressional campaign, but they don’t have a “close relationship.”
Lib Dems Accept David 'The Jews' Ward Back Into Party
David ‘The Jews’ Ward has been accepted back into the Liberal Democrats, after he was finally sacked in 2017 for his “deeply offensive and antisemitic” comments. Despite this, Ward has in recent months been campaigning for the party.

Previously the Lib Dems refused to kick him out when he said he would fire rockets at Israel, when he mocked the #JeSuisJuif hashtag at the time of the Kosher supermarket murders, ranted about “the Jews” on Holocaust Memorial Day, compared Israel-Palestine to the Holocaust, and attacked the Home Affairs inquiry on anti-Semitism.

It was only after Ward blamed the west for the murder of PC Keith Palmer, and wrote a 15,000 word thesis on “the influence of the Israeli lobby on the British political system” that he was finally booted out. Given the Lib Dem’s refusal to crack down on him for years on end, perhaps it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that they let their odious former MP back in…
Uri Geller says he will use 'telepathic powers' to stop Jeremy Corbyn becoming PM
Celebrity psychic Uri Geller, famous for his spoon-bending and mind-reading antics, has said he will use his “telepathic powers” to stop Jeremy Corbyn becoming Prime Minister.

The Israeli-born psychic, who lives in a mansion in Berkshire, was speaking on a panel with Roseanne Barr, at an event chaired by American rabbi, Shmuley Boteach.

In answer to a question about the Labour Party leader, Mr Geller told the Jerusalem audience: “I have no problem in saying he is an antisemite.

“God forbid if he takes control.”

Mr Geller was asked by Rabbi Boteach if he thought it would damage his celebrity status if he spoke out by calling Mr Corbyn an antisemite.

Mr Geller said: “I have charisma, if I said it, I would say it in the right way. I would have to say it live on TV in Britain and feel the Jewish people looking at me.”
Pushing Aside Jewish Concerns About BDS
January saw the BDS-induced antisemitism crisis within the Women’s March reach its peak and a newly elected BDS supporter appointed to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. In both cases, Jewish concerns were pushed aside, fringe Jewish support was manufactured, and Israel accused of fear-mongering and conspiracies to create antisemitism. This pattern replicates that of the British Labour Party. Similar antisemitism and shallow moralizing in Ireland have pushed a BDS bill forward, at the risk of EU and US sanctions. At the same time, the significant drop in Women’s March support suggests that Americans will not embrace antisemites as readily as Britons, even in the guise of anti-Zionism and BDS.

The focus of BDS activity in January was centered on the Women’s March, its leaders, and their relationship with Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. After an exposé that revealed how a small cadre of BDS supporters had taken over the march, attention quickly focused on their explicit support for the Nation of Islam. In the latter part of 2018 a public relations crisis ensued and March leaders responded by rejecting critics and accusing them, among other things, of “tearing down” black leaders.

To deflect criticism the Women’s March organizers recruited a small cadre of progressive Jews, as well as fringe rabbis, who explicitly refrained from comment regarding antisemitism. This is similar to the response of the British Labour Party, which after exposure of its antisemitism crises formed its own “Jewish” groups that then proceeded to attack Labour’s critics.

In response, one of the original organizers of the March stated, “Linda Sarsour is an antisemite and even when she is apologizing to the Jewish community on the one hand, she is condemning it on the other. She can’t help it. This is who she is and as long as the five board members are in power you will continue to see these sharp divisions they themselves foster.”

But prior to the march a number of high profile sponsors quietly withdrew support, including the Democratic Party and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Local marches also removed their affiliations from the national organization or canceled their public activities, with many specifically citing the antisemitism crisis. Turnout at the March in Washington, DC was far lower than previous years.
Exposed: Campus ‘Palestinian Youth Movement’ Promotes Terrorism, Tied to Terror Groups
The Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), an activist organization which has gained prominence on US campuses in recent years, and especially on those of the University of California, has been promoting acts of terrorism against Israel and has associated itself with US-designated terror organizations, according to an extensive new report on the organization.

PYM, a political, international organization, has been exposed as an organization that justifies terror attacks and supports members of US-designated terror organizations such as Ghassan Kanafani, a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Khader Adnan, a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

PYM has also used its social media accounts and conventions to endorse violence, while PYM-U.S.A. collaborates with terror-affiliated organizations in the US, such as the PFLP-affiliated Addameer and Samidoun.
Open Support of Terrorism

An extensive report by a monitoring group on PYM’s activities in the US found that in July 2018, the Critical Refugee Studies Collective, supported by the University of California, awarded a grant to PYM to help fund a three-day conference in San Francisco commemorating “70 years since the Nakba.”
State Department Failed to Mobilize Against Irish Effort to Boycott Israel
As the State Department sat on the sidelines, the Irish BDS effort has passed critical procedural hurdles.

"The State Department barely went through the motions of pressuring the Irish, even though this is a law that has enormous consequences for American citizens and American companies, and that's before you get to the consequences it has for our Israeli allies," according to one senior congressional official familiar with the situation. "Maybe they would have still lost if they actually put some effort into it but we'll never know. It's exasperating how they can't do even basic things right."

State Department officials, when pressed, would not comment on what happened behind-the-scenes, only telling the Free Beacon the administration opposes the BDS movement.

"The Trump administration's strong opposition to boycotts, divestiture and sanctions of the State of Israel is well known," State Department Spokesman Robert Palladino told the Free Beacon.

Some in the American pro-Israel community also were surprised to see that State Department stand on the sidelines, particularly in light of its efforts in 2018 to all but ensure the BDS legislation died.

"In light of their previous efforts and the administration's position on BDS, I was surprised to learn that the State Department did not engage with the Irish on this issue," said one senior official with a major pro-Israel organization who was not authorized to speak on record about the matter. "I imagine that when the secretary learns his staff dropped the ball here he'll be very displeased."
New York Times News Article Whitewashes BDS Movement
My point here is different: it relates to the “aims” of the BDS movement. Its official website lists as one of its goals the “return” of “more than 7.25 million Palestinian refugees” to “their homes” — not in the “West Bank,” but in the land of Israel that was established in 1948. This isn’t so much a “right of return” as a foreign invasion, because the vast majority of these “refugees” are children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who left during the War of Independence or at other points. Such an invasion would effectively eradicate and eliminate Israel as a Jewish state. No government elected by Israel’s current citizenry would allow it.

BDS, in other words, isn’t only about the “occupation” of the West Bank, but about the existence of Jews in Israel. Arabs have been boycotting Jews in the land of Israel since before the state even existed, and certainly since before the 1967 war in which Israel recaptured parts of Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria that had been occupied by Jordan.

The misleading description in the news article comes after a series of recent pro-BDS moves by the Times, including an official Times staff editorial critical of steps to counter the movement, a command by the Times news columns that readers “celebrate” the election of a BDS-supporting congresswoman, and op-ed columns by two regular Times columnists, Michelle Alexander and Michelle Goldberg, who are supporters of BDS.
Excavating The Washington Post’s Narrative on the Israel-Islamist Conflict
In sum: the conflict is less about “land” than it is about Palestinian denial of Jewish history and rights. And this too might explain why some anonymous Palestinian officials are objecting to a historical dig that will likely unearth more evidence of the latter.

Yet, somehow—in an article that ran more than one thousand words—The Post failed to address the obvious. Rather, the newspaper seems more comfortable embracing, if implicitly, the narrative that the conflict is merely territorial; that the lack of a Palestinian state is its casus belli.

Elsewhere in the report, The Post uncritically quotes two NGOs, Emek Shaveh and the Wadi Hilweh Information Center, both of which oppose the archaeological digs. However, Emek Shaveh “promotes distorted facts and unsubstantiated positions that promote the Palestinian narrative of victimization and sole Israeli aggression,” according to NGO Monitor, an organization that monitors non-governmental groups.

NGO Monitor also noted that Emek Shaveh is almost entirely reliant on foreign funding—much of it from governments and organizations that are hypercritical of Israel. NGO Monitor’s profile on the organization highlighted that Emek Shaveh “utilizes highly biased and politicized rhetoric” and routinely accuses Israel of seeking “to demolish Palestinian village on ‘archaeological’ grounds.” Outrageously, in a 2014 interview with +972 Magazine, Emek Shaveh officials even compared Israeli archaeological digs to the terror tunnels used by Hamas to kidnap and murder Israelis. This record of bias and politicization, however, goes unmentioned by The Post. By contrast, the newspaper sneeringly describes—without explanation—the City of David Foundation as “nationalist.”

Archaeological digs are about uncovering history and truth—not narrative. It is no wonder that those who deny the Jewish people’s connection to the land would find them objectionable and inconvenient. The Washington Post, however, should take a cue from the archaeologists and dig deeper.
BBC News Eurovision BDS report follows the usual template
Research carried out in the UK shows “a clear link between antisemitism and hostility towards Israel, finding that a majority of people in the UK who support boycotts or regard Israel as an apartheid state hold anti-Jewish views.”

The survey:
“…sought to examine the relationship between anti-Jewish sentiment and a belief that Israel should be boycotted and is an apartheid state – two of the central, interrelated claims of the country’s critics in the UK. […]

“A relationship exists between British people’s agreement with each of the two key contentions and their predisposition towards anti-Jewish sentiment – as one scale increases, so does the other,” write the authors, Dr. Jonathan Boyd, executive director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, and Dr. David Graham, its senior research fellow. […]

The correlation between anti-Jewish sentiment and support for BDS was stronger than the belief that Israel is an apartheid state and bigotry against Jews, although the latter correlation is “clearly evident”.”


Among the public purposes set out by the Royal Charter and Agreement that are the constitutional basis for the BBC are the provision of “accurate and impartial news” and “learning for people of all ages”.

As long as the BBC continues to unquestioningly amplify politically motivated delegitimisation such as the ‘apartheid’ smear and to report stories relating to the anti-Israel BDS campaign without providing audiences with the full range of information concerning the aims of that political campaign, it not only neglects those public purposes but, as the above research shows, opts out of playing a part in tackling anti-Jewish racism in the UK.
BBC News’ account of TIPH story sidesteps violent incidents
The BBC’s report did not adequately clarify to audiences the one-sided nature of the TIPH’s mandate. As Professor Eugene Kontorovich notes:

“The anti-Israel bias of TIPH is built into its mandate, which tasked organization members with the one-sided mission of “promoting by their presence a feeling of security” for Palestinians in Hebron. Protecting Jews from constant terrorist attacks is not part of their job description.”

Nowhere in the BBC’s report was there any mention of the incidents involving TIPH personnel which took place last year – the assault of an Israeli child by a Swiss member of the group and the slashing of the tyres of an Israeli owned vehicle by an Italian member. As the Jerusalem Post notes, those incidents were a factor in the call to review the renewal of the TIPH mandate.

Predictably the report erased from its section on the background of Hebron all mention of the city’s Jewish history, including the fact that Jews lived there uninterrupted for hundreds of years until the 1929 massacre. Readers did however see a dubious ‘religious importance’ rating.
Brooklyn Police Arrest Two Suspects on Hate Crimes Charges After Brutal Beating of Crown Heights Jewish Man
Police in Brooklyn have arrested two men and are searching for a third in connection with a brutal assault on an Orthodox Jewish man early on Wednesday morning.

18-year-old Navar Walters, 20-year-old Teshon Bannister and an as yet unidentified third man are accused of punching and kicking the 51-year-old victim in the Crown Heights neighborhood.

Walters and Bannister were charged later on Wednesday by police with assault as a hate crime. The victim was taken to NYU Langone Hospital, where he was treated for minor injuries.

Wednesday’s attack was the latest in a series of alarming assaults on members of the Orthodox Jewish community in Crown Heights over the last three months.

“Some 10 people were violently attacked in the last 60 days alone,” noted Rabbi Yaacov Behrman, who heads the Crown Heights-based “Jewish Future Alliance,” in a statement on Wednesday.

Behrman said his group condemned “in the strongest possible terms these type of cowardly attacks on innocent civilians, and we call on the NYPD to drastically increase police presence throughout the community.”

Behrman continued: “We ask what is going wrong in Crown Heights, when innocent Jews are being beaten in the streets in 2019? Is there an atmosphere that is encouraging violence or antisemitism? And, an equally important question, where is the public outrage? Indeed, why isn’t this front page headlines?”
MEMRI: Article On Egyptian Website: There Is No Evidence The Holocaust Happened
On the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Wasim 'Afifi, a columnist on the Egyptian news portal Elmwatin.com, published an article in which he listed "five reasons that caused the Arab world to reject the veracity of the Holocaust." He stated that the media inflated the dimensions of the Holocaust as part of a conspiracy by Russia, which wanted to blacken Germany's image, and the West, which wanted to establish a state for the Jews in Palestine. Auschwitz, he added, was not a concentration camp but rather a factory for manufacturing pesticides, and the crematoria were meant for burning the bodies of typhus victims. The world's misguided ideas about Auschwitz are a result of propaganda by Russia, which controlled the camp and manufactured fake evidence there after the war. Also according to 'Afifi, calculations prove that the Germans cannot have exterminated six million Jews, nor is it possible that their wealth was confiscated, considering that they now possess "the greatest wealth in the world." He claimed further that no official documents prove that the Nazis had a policy of exterminating the Jews. The German plan, he says, was to create a Jewish homeland in Madagascar, but "technical difficulties" and the need for working hands prompted them to use the Jews as laborers instead.

The following are excerpts from the article:
"There are five main reasons why the Arab world is waving the banner of refusal to accept the Holocaust as an historic fact. The most obvious of these is the claim that six million Jews were exterminated. This number is greatly exaggerated; according to European statistics, before World War II the total number of Jews in Europe was 6.5 million. This means that in the Holocaust, nearly all Europe's Jews were killed. This contradicts other numbers from immigration departments in Europe, according to which between 1933 and 1945, 1.5 million Jews emigrated to Britain, Sweden, Spain, Australia, China, India, Palestine, and the U.S. According to German government statistics, by 1939, 400,000 of Germany's 600,000 Jews had emigrated. Likewise, 480,000 Jews emigrated from Austria and Czechoslovakia, as part of the plan to settle Jews in Madagascar, but they ended up in other countries. Their property was not confiscated – otherwise, the Jews would not today have the greatest wealth in the world. Other numbers show that over two million Jews immigrated to the USSR.

"Historians point out that in 1938, there were 16.5 million Jews in the world, and that a decade later, that is, in 1948, there were 18.5 million Jews in the world. Assuming for the sake of argument that six million Jews were annihilated during World War II, it is inconceivable that the remaining 10 million reproduced at such a rate as to become 18 million a decade later. This is contrary to the laws of statistics, and to the human population growth [rate].
Dumbest Holocaust denial ever (NSFW)
Meet Raspect, the rapper who made his name campaigning against racism. In this video he explains to us why he "thinks" the Holocaust didn't happen. You have to see it to believe it.


ISIS supporter planned attack on Ohio synagogue
A man was indicted on a federal hate crime charge for planning a mass shooting at a synagogue in Ohio, the Associated Press reported on January 30.

Damon Joseph, 21 from a suburb of Toledo, was partly inspired by the deadly attack at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Joseph is additionally charged with trying to provide material support to ISIS.

Joseph did not pose an immediate threat to the public, according to the investigators. However, he spent months talking about and planning for an attack. He was under investigation for several months by the FBI, and was arrested after receiving two AR-15 rifles from an undercover agent.

Court documents revealed that Joseph tried to choose which synagogue to attack based on "which one will have the most people, what time and what day. Go big or go home."

“I admire what the guy did with the shooting,” he said of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter.

Robert Bowers was accused of storming into the Tree of Life temple in Squirrel Hill, the heart of Pittsburgh's close-knit Jewish community, yelling "all Jews must die" as he opened fire on members of three congregations holding Shabbat services there on Saturday morning.
French Jewish Students Take Fight to Antisemitic ‘Comedian’ Dieudonné With Vocal Protest Outside Paris Show
A group of French Jewish students vocally chastised fans of the antisemitic “comedian” Dieudonné M’bala M’bala as they arrived at one of his shows at a Paris theater on Wednesday night.

About thirty members of the Union of French Jewish Students (UEJF) and activist group SOS Racisme distributed leaflets with images of the Nazi death camps and the faces of Holocaust victims outside the theater in Chatillon, in the southwest of the French capital. Showgoers were repeatedly asked whether they “find it funny to attend a show by a Holocaust denier” as they filed into the theater.

Despite local police preventing the Jewish activists for entering the theater, they attempted to disrupt the performance by loudly broadcasting audio of the names of Jewish children murdered by the Nazis from a PA system parked in a van across the street. Once Dieudonné began his one-man act, the activists changed the soundtrack, pounding those inside the theater with a selection of heavy metal tracks played at full volume.

UEJF chair Sacha Ghozlan told the French news agency AFP, “Dieudonné spreads racism, anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.”

Ghozlan continued: “He denies the existence of the gas chambers and feeds his audience with rage and anger.”


European court backs Germany on British bishop’s Holocaust denial conviction
The European Court of Human Rights ruled Thursday that Germany was within its rights to convict British bishop Richard Williamson of Holocaust denial.

Williamson, 78, sparked an outcry in 2009 by denying that the Nazis used gas chambers during the systematic murder of six million Jews during World War II.

His lawyers tried to argue he should not had been convicted because the comment was made during a television interview broadcast in Sweden, where Holocaust denial is not illegal.

But the interview was recorded in Germany, where it is a criminal offense to dispute the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis.

Williamson was convicted of incitement to hatred and ordered to pay a 12,000-euro fine, which was reduced to 1,800 euros ($2,100) in 2013 after a series of legal challenges.

The European court said it found no reason to disagree with the German ruling that Williamson’s “denial and downplaying of the genocide perpetrated against the Jews had disparaged the dignity of the Jewish victims”.

It pointed out that Williamson knew his comments were illegal in Germany, and confirmed that since the interview was recorded there it was legal to prosecute the case in the country.
Israel Aerospace Industries to Supply India With $93 Million Worth of Surface-to-Air Missiles
Israeli government-owned defense contractor Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. (IAI) has entered into $93 million in agreements to provide India with naval medium-range surface-to-air missile (MRSAM) systems, IAI announced Wednesday. The contracts were entered into with the Indian Navy and Bombay-listed government-owned company Cochin Shipyard Ltd.

In October, IAI signed a $777 million contract with Indian state-owned company Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) to supply it with long-range surface-to-air defense missiles and missile defense systems.

To date, MRSAM has produced more than $6 billion in sales, according to IAI statements.

Israel is the third largest arms supplier to India, according to a 2017 arms transfer report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Between 2013 and 2017, India made up 49 percent of Israel’s arms exports, the report showed.

Founded in 1953, IAI is Israel’s largest aerospace and defense company. The company develops, manufactures, and supplies systems including anti-missile systems, unmanned and robotic systems, and intelligence and cybersecurity systems.
Mellanox 2018 revenue tops $1 billion for first time in firm’s history
Mellanox Technologies Ltd., a maker of high-speed servers and storage switching solutions, said late Wednesday that revenues for 2018 crossed the $1 billion mark for the first time in the firm’s history, as clients demand higher speeds for their cloud platforms, AI computations and data centers.

The record results come amid reports of US giants bidding to acquire the Yokne’am, Israel-based firm. Mellanox shares surged 7.2 percent on the Nasdaq on Wednesday after reports in the Hebrew-language press said US tech giant Intel Corp., a Mellanox competitor and client, made a bid to acquire the firm for $5 billion to $6 billion, a premium to its current market price. Microsoft, a Mellanox client, and US tech firm Xilinx Inc. are also reportedly in the running to buy the firm.

On Thursday, the Calcalist financial website, which broke the news about Intel’s bid on Wednesday saying the firm had made a $6 billion cash and stock offer, reported that Intel has made it to the final stages of the bidding process. Intel and Mellanox have declined to comment on the press reports.

Mellanox shares have advanced some 35% in the past 12 months, bringing its market value to $4.7 billion, as of end of day Wednesday.
Israeli Companies Bagged a Fifth of Worldwide Venture Capital Investments in 2018
Israeli cybersecurity firms bagged a fifth of all venture capital investments in the domain in 2018, according to a new report. Only US firms topped Israeli firms in terms of overall cybersecurity investments, according to the report by Start-Up Nation Central (SNC), a Tel Aviv-based non-profit organization managing a database of Israeli tech companies. 450 cybersecurity firms currently operate in Israel, the report published Monday states.

Exports of cybersecurity technologies and products from Israel reached $5 billion, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday. Israel is set on cutting red tape to make it easier to set up new companies in the domain, he stated. 60 new cybersecurity companies were founded in the country in 2018, according to the report by SNC, a lower number than in previous years.

Netanyahu spoke at a cybersecurity conference in Tel Aviv Tuesday. Called CyberTech, the two-day event attracts private companies, nonprofit and governmental entities from around 80 countries. The event was also attended by Saulius Skvernelis, Prime Minister of the Republic of Lithuania, formerly the country’s Minister of the Interior.

Ahead of the conference, Israel and Lithuania signed a declaration of intent to increase cybersecurity cooperation on Monday, and the following day Skvernelis met with Netanyahu in Jerusalem to discuss more extensive collaboration between the two countries. Israeli Minister of Economy and Industry Eli Cohen and Lithuanian Minister of Economy and Innovation Virginijus Sinkevicius also participated in the meeting.

Other speakers at CyberTech included Yigal Unna, director general of the Israel National Cyber Directorate; Aharon Aharon, head of the Israel Innovation Authority; Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. CEO Gil Schwed, and senior executives from companies including Dell EMC, IBM, and Deloitte.

Israeli cybersecurity companies raised a record $1.19 billion in 2018, up 47 percent from 2017, according to SNC. Deal size median rose from $3.5 million to $6 million in 2018.
Rachel Riley announced as co-host of Jewish News’ Big Family Show and Expo!
Rachel Riley is the latest big name to join the line-up for Jewish News’ Big Family Show and Expo.

The countdown presenter, who has been at the forefront of fighting antisemitism online in recent months, will join Nick Ferrari to host one of the biggest communal events of the year at Allianz Park on 17 March.

A day out for the whole family, the extravaganza will feature entertainment in music, dance and magic from the main stage, while kids will be able to enjoy arts and crafts, face painting and balloon activities in a special zone. Just three days before Purim, younger visitors will be encouraged to come in fancy dress, with prizes offered for the best costumes.

More than 120 exhibitors will also be present across six zones including lifestyle, retail, and travel. Many of the community’s main organisations will have stands in the community zone, while visitors will be able to tick into shawarma, falafel, bagels and sushi in a dedicated food zone.

LBC host Nick Ferrari said: “The Jewish News’ Big Family Show & Expo is a key date in the community calendar, with an amazing entertainment, fabulous food and incredible live performance. I look forward to seeing you there!”



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