Showing posts with label Linkdump. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Linkdump. Show all posts

Friday, March 20, 2020

From Ian:

Man, 88, dies in Jerusalem hospital, Israel’s first coronavirus death
An 88-year-old man died in Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek hospital on Friday night from the coronavirus, Israel’s first fatality in the global pandemic, while several other patients were in a critical condition.

The hospital said the patient had been admitted in a very serious condition with multiple preexisting conditions. Despite intensive treatment, including being resuscitated from heart failure, he had deteriorated rapidly in recent hours and died, the hospital said.

The condition of three other Israelis being treated at Wolfson Medical Center in Holon for COVID-19 deteriorated Friday, with all of them in serious to critical condition.

The three patients include a 67-year-old woman with a preexisting medical condition, a 91-year-old woman and 45-year-old man with no past health problems, according to the Kan public broadcaster.

Another 10 people infected with the virus are receiving treatment at the hospital, three of them in moderate condition.
Global virus death toll tops 10,000 as epicenter shifts west
The worldwide death toll from the coronavirus pandemic topped 10,000 on Thursday, as the scourge extended its march across the West, where the United States and other countries increasingly enlisted the military to prepare for an onslaught of patients and California’s governor ordered people in the most-populous U.S. state to stay home.

Worldwide the death toll surpassed 10,000 and infections topped 240,000, including 86,000 people who have recovered.

Italy’s deaths from the coronavirus pandemic eclipsed China’s on Thursday, infections across the globe passed the 240,000 mark, including some 86,000 people who have recovered.

In Israel, the number of cases jumped to 677, a single day increase of nearly 200, and a Jerusalem woman, 89, was fighting rapid respiratory deterioration to avoid becoming the country’s first fatality from the COVID-19 disease.

The virus has infected at least one European head of state: Monaco’s 62-year-old Prince Albert II, who continued to work from his office. And it appeared to be opening an alarming new front in Africa, where health care in many countries is already in sorry shape.
Record 627 deaths in Italy; military vehicles said used to transport bodies
Italy on Friday reported a record 627 new deaths from the novel coronavirus and saw its world-leading toll surpass 4,000 despite government efforts to stem the pandemic’s spread.

The Mediterranean country’s daily death rate is now higher than that officially reported by China at the peak of its outbreak around Wuhan’s Hubei province.

Italy’s previous one-day record death toll was 475 on Wednesday. Italy has seen more than 1,500 fatalities from COVID-19 in the past three days alone.

It has now recorded the five highest one-day tolls officially registered around the world.

Italian media broadcast pictures it said was military vehicles brought into the Bergamo area to transport away the hundreds of coffins.

Italy’s total number of deaths now stands and 4,032. Infections rose by nearly 6,000 to 47,021.

The nation of 60 million currently accounts for 36.6 percent of the world’s coronavirus deaths after surpassing China’s total on Thursday.

From Ian:

'Jerusalem stands with the world,' city walls declare
The Israeli flag lit up Jerusalem's city walls Thursday night, carrying the slogan "Jerusalem stands with the world," in a move seeking to reflect solidarity with nations worldwide during the global coronavirus pandemic.

The move followed an initiative by Israel Hayom, which called on all Israelis to fly the blue and white flag at home in this time of crisis.

"Just as the coronavirus does not differentiate between the people it threatens, our flag does not differentiate between the people it safeguards. Look at the flag and remember, we are together, always," Boaz Bismuth, Israel Hayom's editor-in-chief, wrote in an opinion piece Thursday.

Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion said in a statement, "Jerusalem, the eternal capital of Israel, lit up the Old City walls with the Israeli flag this evening [Thursday] as a sign of the tremendous strength of our society.

"Even during the coronavirus outbreak that is spreading in Israel and around the world, we will stand firm and win, as the people of Israel have done throughout history," he said.

Boaz Bismuth, Israel Hayom's editor-in-chief, praised Lion's initiative, saying, "I am pleased and thankful for Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion's response and his decision to illuminate the Old City walls with the Israeli flag.

"There is nothing more symbolic and unifying for Israelis than the flag. These challenging times call for national pride and unity. "

Netanyahu tells Israelis: Now it’s an order — you must stay at home
Netanyahu said the mandatory regulations would come into effect immediately after their overnight Thursday-Friday approval and would remain in force for an initial period of seven days.

“The purpose of these instructions — to ensure as few people will be infected and will infect [others],” Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu acknowledged the move was “unlike any since the founding of the State of Israel,” but said the country has never before faced anything like the coronavirus.

There was no immediate information on what the punishments would be for violators of the Health Ministry directives, which were originally announced Tuesday.
A man wearing a face mask cycles down Jaffa Street Jerusalem on March 19, 2020. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The regulations permit people to leave their homes only for the following activities:
1. Going to work and coming back;
2. Stocking up on food, medicine, necessary products and to receive essential services;
3. Receiving medical treatment;
4. Donating blood;
5. Participating in demonstrations;
6. Unorganized sports activity in groups no larger than five people;
7. Brief walks for a short time and to a place close to the person’s residence, without coming close to people they don’t live with;
8. Going to a wedding, funeral or for prayer;
9. Helping a person who due to their age, medical conditions or a disability, requires assistance;
10. Going out for a vital need that hasn’t been specified in articles 1-9.

During all those activities, people should maintain a distance of two meters, or six feet, from anyone, as much as possible. People staying in the same household do not need to keep that distance from one another.
Coronavirus: Infected Israelis hit 705 as emergency orders roll out
The Health Ministry guidelines to fight the spread of coronavirus will no longer be recommendations or requests. Rather, overnight Thursday the government signed existing restrictions into legally enforceable orders, hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a national state of emergency.

Going forward, for the next seven days, whoever breaks these orders will be subject to fines.

"There has not been anything like this since the establishment of the state," the prime minister said. "There has actually been no such thing like this in the last 100 years."

“It is not going to be easy; I am asking for your cooperation.”

In general, the new orders include that Israelis are not allowed to leave their homes unless "absolutely necessary." Visiting parks, beaches, pools, libraries and museums is prohibited, as are all social interactions. Work that can be done from home should be.

Currently all “essential” services will remain open, including supermarkets, pharmacies and most medical services. In addition, while Israelis are encouraged to work from home, employees who need to travel to work will be able to do so.

The announcement came on the backdrop of the largest spike in the number of infected Israelis: 677, according to the Health Ministry. At press time Wednesday, 433 Israelis had been diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 - an increase of 244 patients in one day.

Thursday, March 19, 2020

From Ian:

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks: "Coronavirus will change everyone"
Rabbi Sacks' extended BBC Newsnight interview on the Coronavirus situation

On Tuesday 17th March, Rabbi Sacks was interviewed by Emily Maitlis on BBC Newsnight about how the themes of his new book Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times* relate to the current Coronavirus situation. Please find the full interview below.

"As this challenging situation continues, please follow the various guidelines being put in place by your individual Governments. Please remember that pikuach nefesh, the sanctity of human life, is Judaism's highest ideal and sits above all other commandments." (h/t Yerushalimey)


Corona pandemic opens floodgates for anti-Semitism
The Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy published a new report this week detailing how anti-Israel and anti-Semitic outlets and activists are taking advantage of the global coronavirus pandemic in order to pin blame on Israel.

In Turkey, a senior official who is close to the president said that the virus "serves Zionist interests" and Turkish bloggers said that the Jews created the virus in order to take over the world.

Iran's PressTV ran a piece clearly insinuating that Israel and the US deliberately "engineered" the novel coronavirus as a form of biological warfare against the Iranian and Chinese regimes.

In France, a local politician shared an anti-Semitic video on social media that promotes the conspiracy theory that the virus was an invention that was designed to "cement Jewish supremacy."

In the US, a torrent of anti-Semitic content flooded twitter after it transpired that about 30 students who had attended The American Israel Public Affairs Committee's annual conference were forced into quarantine over potential exposure to a carrier.

"You created the virus, you started this," one user said with glee. "So you are telling me that I am going to be infected because a Zionist mother tried to talk with the pandemic manager?"


From Ian:

Rattled World ‘at War’ With Coronavirus as Deaths Surge in Italy, France
Hundreds of millions of people faced a world turned upside down on Wednesday by unprecedented emergency measures against the coronavirus pandemic that is killing the old and vulnerable and threatening prolonged economic misery.

“This is a once-in-a-hundred-year type event,” said Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, warning the crisis could last six months as his nation became the latest to restrict gatherings and overseas travel.

The fast-spreading disease that jumped from animals to humans in China has now infected over 212,000 people and caused 8,700 deaths in 164 nations, triggering emergency lockdowns and injections of cash unseen since World War Two.

“We have never lived through anything like this,” Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told a parliament chamber nearly empty with more than 90% of lawmakers staying away and a masked and gloved cleaner wiping handrails between speeches.

“And our society, which had grown used to changes that expand our possibilities of knowledge, health and life, now finds itself at war to defend all we have taken for granted.”

There was particular alarm in Italy, which has experienced an unusually high death rate — nearly 3,000 from 35,713 cases. It has called on student and retired doctors to help an overwhelmed health service.

On Wednesday Italy reported 475 new deaths, the biggest increase since the outbreak started and the highest one-day total posted by any nation.

France also reported a spike in deaths — rising by 89, or 51%, to a total of 264 in 24 hours.
Eli Lake: China’s Ghastly Blame Game
Amid the tsunami of dread and panic this week regarding the coronavirus, on Monday Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took time to lodge an official complaint with China: Stop blaming the pandemic on America. In a phone call to the director of China’s office of foreign affairs, Pompeo “conveyed strong U.S. objections” to China’s efforts “to shift blame for Covid-19 to the United States,” according to the State Department.

Pompeo’s complaint did not come out of nowhere. In the last two weeks, Chinese officials and state organs have promoted the theory that the coronavirus was brought to their country in October when a group of U.S. army officers visited Wuhan for the world military games. It’s one element of a wider propaganda campaign by the Chinese Communist Party. The regime takes umbrage at labeling the virus as something from China or Wuhan, while presenting its mass quarantines as a model of public health and offering medical aid to countries now coping with the virus.

Like all effective propaganda, there is a grain of truth in China’s messaging. After bungling the initial response, including some truly chilling abuses of power, the regime now appears to have the outbreak under control (assuming the Chinese statistics are correct). There has also been an uptick in racist incidents against people of Chinese origin all over the world, including in the U.S. President Trump and others are wrong to stoke nativism in a national crisis by continuing to call the disease “the Chinese Virus,” even though it’s true that past pandemics were labeled by the World Health Organization were named by their place of origin.

At the same time, says Joseph Wu, Taiwan’s foreign minister, China is acutely aware of the stakes. “The Chinese understand that its national reputation suffered tremendously in the last few months because of the coronavirus,” he told Hugh Hewitt’s radio program on Monday. “And what it’s trying to do is trying to overturn that kind of situation.” China’s campaign, Wu said, is “like trying to turn black into white.”

For Beijing, this is a pattern. Whether it’s the treatment of Uighur Muslims or the construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea, China’s government demands that the world believe its narrative over the reality of its own government’s failures and aggression.
Eugene Kontorovich: To fight coronavirus spread, Israel is using cellphone technology – Could US do the same?
Israel's government this week approved the use of people's cellphone location information to help battle the coronavirus epidemic.

This has raised serious - and legitimate - concerns about privacy and governmental intrusion in the form of unseen surveillance. Placing such sweeping data about people's movements in the hands of the government is not to be taken lightly.

But in an epidemic or pandemic where strong public health measures are required, some rights will inevitably be restricted. Measures like Israel's can, on balance, be a lesser evil for individual rights. If they help contain the spread of the disease, they save lives and reduce the scope and duration of far greater restrictions, like quarantines.

Israel is using cellphone data to find out who a coronavirus patient may have exposed to the virus when asymptomatic. The vast trove of metadata allows public health workers to see where the patient went and what other cellphone users were in the same place. Those people can then be warned, limiting their unwitting ability to pass on the virus.

The broad use of cellphone data to track the movements of people infringes on the privacy of individuals and should not normally be tolerated. But the particular circumstances of a contagious and life-threatening pandemic make this an appropriate response.

Individual rights cannot come at the expense of others' rights. Individual rights are not absolute when their exercise creates significant risk for others. That is why measures are permitted in such circumstances that would otherwise be unthinkable.

Wednesday, March 18, 2020

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: Exploiting the Coronavirus for Anti-Israel Campaigns
The news cycle has been dominated by COVID-19, and a number of advocacy NGOs have made statements linking their agendas to this issue. In the Israeli context, this is consistent with previous attempts by NGOs to capitalize on prevailing public discourse, for instance manipulating narratives of climate change and LGBTQ rights as part of their anti-Israel campaigns.

The most notorious example today is a tweet from Sarah Leah Whitson, currently at the Quincy Institute and previously head of the MENA division at Human Rights Watch. Whitson used the classic antisemitic blood libel in responding to a cynical tweet about “6 million jewish israelis” understanding life under “occupation” due to the virus, stating “such a tiny taste. Missing a tablespoon on blood.” (March 14, 2020).

NGO statements relating to Israel and COVID-19 deal with a few common themes:

- “Occupation”: COVID-19 has been appended onto the standard anti-occupation rhetoric and existing campaigns that, for some NGOs and activists, are presented as the most pressing and real global concerns. Tellingly, complaints about Israeli policy in the West Bank do not seriously grapple with whether they will effectively curb the spread of disease, but rather presume that Israel must be acting in bad faith because “occupation.”
- Responsibility for Gaza: 15 years after the withdrawal, NGOs continue to blame Israel for a “humanitarian crisis” based on a unique standard of international law applied to Israel alone that denies Hamas and other actors agency for diverting resources to weapons, tunnels, and terror, instead of public infrastructure. In the current context, NGOs have been using COVID-19 as an excuse to criticize legitimate anti-terror policies and to preemptively blame Israel for an outbreak in Gaza.
- Human Rights Watch (HRW): On March 15, 2020, Executive Director Ken Roth tweeted, “The coronavirus will test the wisdom of Israel’s policies for crippling the economy and health systems of Gaza and the West Bank. As the occupying power (for Gaza, too, given Israel’s severe restrictions on movement), Israel is responsible for health care.” (March 15, 2020)
- Omar Shakir retweeted an article in +972 magazine titled “West Bank lockdowns didn’t start with the coronavirus pandemic.” The article argues that Israel’s quarantine regarding anyone who had been in Bethlehem is harmful to Palestinians working in Israel. This ignores the implementation of the same policies for the entire Israeli population, as well as tourists and anyone who had been in the vicinity of infected individuals – causing many to miss work. (March 11)
- Amnesty International: A local Amnesty UK group in Mid Gloucestershire published an article using coronavirus as a hook to further Amnesty’s antisemitic campaign that attacks international tourism companies (see NGO Monitor’s report). The article states, “This year many people’s holiday plans will be affected by coronavirus, and travellers will obviously want to get proper advice before they book. However, holidaymakers should also consider whether their vacations could negatively impact the people and places they visit. One example is holidays and activities in Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem…Please support our petition calling on TripAdvisor to ‘check out’ of the settlements – www.amnesty.org.uk/actions/checkout.” (March 14)
Daniel Pipes: Conspiracy Theories in a Time of Virus
Suddenly, influential voices blame the COVID-19 virus not on Communist China but on the United Kingdom, the United States and Israel. This shift fits a pernicious medieval pattern that needs to be taken seriously and refuted.

That pattern goes back to about 1100 A.D. and the Crusaders in Europe. Since then, confused folk hoping to make sense of unexpected and malign developments have the permanent option of conjuring up a world conspiracy. When they do, they overwhelmingly blame just two alleged conspirators: members of Western secret societies or Jews.

Secret societies include the Knights Templar, Freemasons, Jesuits, Illuminati, Jacobins, and the Trilateral Commission. Jews are supposedly ruled by a shadowy authority, the "Elders," that strictly keeps them in line through such front organizations as the Sanhedrin, the Alliance Israélite Universelle, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

In modern times, conspiracy theorists have added countries to the organizations: secret societies spawned the United Kingdom and the United States, Jewish Elders became Israel. Invariably, this trio of states is blamed for shocking surprises such as the JFK assassination, Princess Diana's death, 9/11, or the Great Recession.

And so it is with COVID-19. The virus demonstrably originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan, perhaps at a "wet market" with live animals awaiting human consumption, perhaps at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or perhaps a mix of the two (infected animals from the institute sold for food at the market). That the Communist Party of China (CPC) went to extreme lengths to cover up the virus both facilitated its growth and then obscured its source.

But what happened next is known to nearly every sentient person alive today: the virus spread from Wuhan to other parts of China, thence to the world. Everyone reading this has lived through and experienced that recent history; no mystery surrounds the CPC's unique responsibility for the pandemic. Wuhan virus is not a racist slur but an accurate description.
Past Pandemics Spurred Violent Antisemitism. Prepare For More.
Recent days have seen an outbreak of antisemitism related to the coronavirus and Covid-19.

The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish organization that fights bigotry, reports, “Extremists hope the virus kills Jews, but they are also using its emergence to advance their antisemitic theories that Jews are responsible for creating the virus, are spreading it to increase their control over a decimated population, or they are profiting off it.”

The actress Rosanna Arquette claims, falsely, that Israel has been working on a coronavirus vaccine “for a year already,” indicating advance knowledge of the virus, and that a Jewish-run company is poised to profit from it. A speaker from the 2016 Republican National Convention, David Clarke, blames Jewish-born billionaire George Soros for the virus and associated panic.

The head of a Turkish political party, Faitih Erbakan, declared, “this virus serves Zionism’s goals,” according to the Middle East Media Research Institute.

If history is a guide — and there’s no reason to think it shouldn’t be — expect even more of this as the pandemic worsens.

In the 2017 book Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World, Laura Spinney reports that in 1919, when “an international bureau opened in Vienna with the express mission of fighting epidemics,” one of the first things that happened was that “antisemitic elements started lobbying for Jewish refugees to be quarantined in eastern European concentration camps.”

Earlier pandemics yielded similar hatreds. The Jewish Encyclopedia entry on the Black Death that raged in Europe from 1348 to 1350, for instance, reports, “The Black Death not only resulted in the immediate destruction of hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives and the loss of Jewish homes and property in hundreds of communities, but had more far-reaching consequences. Popular imagination invested the already odious image of the Jew with even more horrible characteristics. It was this image that helped to shape the stereotype of the Jew represented by antisemitism and racism in modern times.”

From Ian:

JCPA: Enforcing Compliance with COVID-19 Pandemic Restrictions: Psychological Aspects of a National Security Threat
As the world faces the threat of the coronavirus (COVID-19), many commentators and national leaders around the world are beginning to recognize it as a genuine national security threat.

In human behavior terms, however, the threat is not from an external enemy but from citizens who refuse to comply with guidelines and instructions and fail to change their behavior to adapt to the developing situation. With the coronavirus, the individual refusing to comply is an active and ongoing threat to others as well as or sometimes more than to themselves.

The obvious threats are the outright refusers. From a psychological perspective, these are people who are either oppositional in their attitude or in denial regarding the effects of their refusal. While the former understand that by intentionally violating guidelines they are creating risk for others, the latter deny it, at times adopting an "it won't happen to me" attitude.

Classifying the refusers' behavior as a risk and treating them as a genuine threat is a national priority. Since the cadre of those who intentionally or unintentionally put the public at risk cannot be eliminated solely through education and social pressure, law enforcement and government authorities may have to intervene.

While understandably not popular with those that value the protection of civil liberties, the suspension of these protections in times of national emergency may prove to be central in reducing mortality, as well as in limiting the economic consequences of a protracted battle with an unseen enemy hiding in a friendly population.
'Total lockdown inevitable' says Erdan as coronavirus patients reaches 433
As of Wednesday afternoon, 433 people in Israel have been confirmed positive to the coronavirus, the Health Ministry informed, with six new cases registered since the previous update.

Earlier in the day, the Ministry revealed that the number of patients had spiked in the country, with over 100 new people confirmed positive in the previous 24 hours.

Moreover, it was announced that over 2,200 tests were performed on Tuesday, more than double the amount of the previous days, highlighting a significant rise in the number of tests executed.

Minister of Public Security Gilad Erdan said on Wednesday morning that a total lockdown in Israel is inevitable given the situation of the novel COVID-19.

Erdan instructed the police and other security forces in Israel to prepare for the decision of a total lockdown in a phone call with the heads of internal security bodies throughout the country on Tuesday evening.

Of the 427 people infected in Israel as of Wednesday morning, 236 are hospitalized, 26 are in the process of being hospitalized, 71 are isolated at home or in a designated hotel, and 83 tested positive but the decision on how to treat them is yet to be made, while 11 already recovered and were discharged.



Israel has not lost anybody to COVID19, but that will not go on, warns Netanyahu


'I survived the Nazis, we'll get through this'
"I'm 85 and live in Tel Aviv. I was born in Galicia, which is now Ukraine," Shosh Trister tells Israel Hayom.

During the Holocaust, she says, she and her family were sent to a labor camp, from which they escaped and managed to make it back to the area where they had lived. They found various hiding places – including the forest, and with gentile families.

"For two years, we lived underground, nine people underneath a pigpen," Trister says.

In 1950, Trister made aliyah.

"At first, we lived in a ma'abra [immigrant camp] in Kfar Saba. Mom and Dad got typhus there and were hospitalized. I remember it as a very hard time, because I was far away. I thought it would be a day or two, but it was a few weeks. After the Holocaust, it was a major blow. I stayed in tent and cried."

Now, as the novel coronavirus outbreak is posing a new kind of threat to the Israeli population, Trister is confined to her home.

"It's very hard for me. Hard isn't the word – the distance makes me cry. When I'm alone, I remember the loneliness, my mother and father, and my husband, Shlomo, who died four and a half months ago," she says.

"I'm used to being an active person, going out, speaking to students, painting. Every day, I [usually] walk to our local community center and meet my friends. Now, I'm forced to stay home alone. Every morning I exercise on at home, water the plants, take care of the apartment, and then I sit down to write or paint my memories.

"I have a son who takes care of me. He comes and does my shopping. The rest of the kids also call, but it's terribly hard not seeing them."

Despite everything she has experienced in her life, Trister says she is "an optimist by nature."

"What we went through dwarfs everything. We might be stuck at home, but we have the freedom of being in Israel. We survived the Holocaust. In the end, we won. We'll beat corona, and get through it. We are strengthening everyone around us and taking strength from them. It will all be over – they'll find a cure and we'll go back to our daily routines. We overcame everything, and so will you – we owe it to future generations.

Tuesday, March 17, 2020

From Ian:

Mel Brooks, Son Post Humorous Viral Video With Coronavirus Tips
On Monday, comedy legend Mel Brooks and his author son Max Brooks teamed up for a helpful and humorous video outlining novel coronavirus-related tips, emphasizing that folks “#DontBeASpreader,” especially the elderly, who are more likely to have a fatal reaction to the virus.

“Hi, I’m Max Brooks. I’m 47 years old,” the younger Brooks started the video, before gesturing toward his father, who is standing behind a glass window. “This is my dad Mel Brooks,” he said. “Hi, dad! He’s 93.”

“If I get the coronavirus, I’ll probably be okay,” the “World War Z” author told viewers. “But if I give it to him, he could give it to Carl Reiner, who could give it to Dick Van Dyke, and before I know it, I’ve wiped out a whole generation of comedic legends!”

“When it comes to coronavirus, I have to think about who I can infect, and so should you,” Max said. “So practice social distancing, avoid crowds, wash your hands, keep six feet away from people, and if you’ve got the option to stay home, just stay home.”

“Do your part, don’t be a spreader. Right, dad?” Max asked his father.



‘This Is Nothing New’: Jewish Human Rights Icon Natan Sharansky Addresses Antisemitic Propaganda Around Coronavirus
Natan Sharansky — the former Soviet refusenik who spent nine years leading the Jewish Agency between 2009-18 — has spoken out against antisemitic conspiracy theories linking Jews to the COVID-19 pandemic, observing that these were “nothing new.”

Speaking to an online gathering on Sunday, Sharansky invoked the Black Death of the 14th century as a precedent for today’s woes.

“The idea that Jews are behind the virus, that Jews want to destroy markets, to make money or that Israel is behind it — there is nothing new in it,” Sharansky said. “We saw it during the Black Death in the Middle Ages. There was broad belief that Jews were behind it.”

Addressing the first digital awards ceremony of the US-based Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) — held online because of the continuing rapid spread of the virus — Sharansky emphasized that the “difference between then and now is that today the State of Israel is strong, we are fighting antisemitism and we will defeat it.”

State Department Special Envoy Elan Carr — who advises US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on antisemitism — also addressed the gathering, at which the 37 winners of a contest for creative proposals to fight antisemitism were announced.

“The current administration is determined by its words and action to fight antisemitism,” Carr stated. “The administration is committed to secure the physical security of Jews, to fight the spread of antisemitism on the internet, to end radicalization of students in the Middle East through textbooks, to educate about philo-semitism, and to take legal action against those who engage in antisemitism.”
Melanie Phillips: What will Jewish leaders say about Trevor Phillips
Instead, it seems that condemning Labour’s antisemitism produced what Phillips describes as the “political gangsterism” of the Islamophobia smear. It shows that the term is not about fighting real prejudice but is used as a weapon to silence inconvenient truths.

So where, one might wonder, does this leave these Jewish community leaders?

Phillips said he was the victim of the party’s adoption of a controversial new definition of Islamophobia. This definition, put forward by the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims at the end of 2018, had been influenced by MEND, a Muslim advocacy group described by the former head of Counter-Terrorism Command, Sir Mark Rowley, as “seeking to undermine the state’s considerable efforts to tackle all hate crime”.

Signatories to a letter calling on the government to adopt this definition included the Friends of al Aqsa.

Yet, according to a JC report last year, the Board of Deputies was poised to endorse this definition and was stopped only because of a last-minute intervention by moderate British Muslims and the Community Security Trust. The Board said it merely concluded it “wasn’t the right time” to endorse any Islamophobia definition.

So has anybody yet heard community leaders springing to the defence of Trevor Phillips? Or are these leaders going to double down on condemning anyone who is denounced as an Islamophobe?

There is, of course, a juddering contrast between the Labour Party suspending Phillips for actions dredged up from years ago while refusing to expel demonstrable antisemites in the party who are spreading their poison unchecked right now.

At the time of writing, Labour’s leadership front-runner, Sir Keir Starmer, had remained silent over the suspension of Trevor Phillips.

Failure to condemn the weaponisation of Islamophobia against the truth augurs ill for any effective action against antisemitism. It also augurs ill for the moral health of the Jewish community leadership.
Douglas Murray on the death of Europe & identity - BQ #11
Douglas Murray talks immigration, Islam, identity politics and his life. The Sun's Steven Edginton interviews Murray for the series 'Burning Questions'. The pair discuss Murray's books 'The Strange Death of Europe' and 'The Madness of Crowds'. Murray updates his views since the publication of both books and debates issues such as Brexit and the trans rights movement.


From Ian:

Until the Arab Parties Abandon Their Hatred of Israel, They Don’t Belong in the Government
Thus we have Tibi telling President Reuven Rivlin during the September 2019 parliamentary consultations that “we are the owners of this land… we did not immigrate here, we were born here, we are a native population.” Six months later, after another round of national elections brought the Joint List’s Knesset representation to an unprecedented tally of 15 MKs, Tibi was far more brazen. “The Land of Israel is a colonialist phrase,” he stated in a radio interview. “I contemptuously reject the term ‘Judea and Samaria’. This is the Palestinian bank, the occupied Palestinian territories.”

Of course the Land of Israel was known as such millennia before the advent of European colonialism, or even before the Roman colonialists renamed it Syria Palaestina precisely to obliterate the millenarian Jewish entitlement to this land. The biblical areas of Judea and Samaria were known by this name since biblical times, thousands of years before they were renamed the West Bank (of the Hashemite Kingdom) in 1950 by King Abdullah ibn Hussein. The League of Nations’ mandate for Palestine delineated the country’s borders according to its interpretation of the biblical term “from Dan to Beersheba,” while Mandatory Palestine included a substantial Samarian district comprising much of the would-be “West Bank.”

It is hardly surprising that Tibi and his fellow members of the Joint List would remain impervious to the historical truth. Theirs is the agenda of rewriting the story of the “Nakba”—the Palestinian misnomer for their wholly unnecessary self-inflicted 1947-48 disaster when, rather than accept the UN’s partition resolution, they tried to destroy the state of Israel at birth—and nothing would be allowed to stand in the way of this (self-destructive) agenda. As the Joint Arab List’s leader Ayman Oudeh told President Rivlin on March 15: “We are not solely interested in full civil equality. We are a national group that deserves full national equality.” In other words: ending Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.

But what about the three former IDF chiefs of staff heading the Blue and White party? Don’t they realize that they are but “useful idiots” for the Joint List’s ultimate goal (as candidly revealed by Oudeh, who described collaboration with this party as a steppingstone to “toppling the Netanyahu-led right-wing rule” en route to ending “the Zionist hegemony”)? Has their hatred of Benjamin Netanyahu blinded them to the point of forgetting the values and ideals for which they fought for decades and putting Israel’s future at risk?
David Singer: Gantz promises chaos and confusion in Israel for next six weeks
Gantz’s new partner was making it crystal clear to Israel’s President that Israel was not recognized by Tibi’s party as the Jewish National Home reconstituted after 3000 years by and with the unanimous resolution of all 51 member states that comprised the League of Nations and endorsed the Mandate for Palestine.

Balad – the second party included in the Joint List and now in partnership with Gantz - had a former MK Said Nafa among its ranks. Nafa was convicted of maintaining contact with a foreign intelligence operative and spent time in prison. Another former Balad Knesset member, Basel Ghattas, was convicted of smuggling cellphones to Palestinian prisoners in an Israeli jail, an offense for which he too was convicted and imprisoned.

Spokesperson for the Joint list is Ayman Odeh – the head of Hadash - the third party in Joint List.

Odeh stated on 5 March 2020:
“Right now, with Gantz’s attitude [in favor] of a Jewish majority and unilateral annexation, we have no one to recommend to the president. If there is a change after the elections in the direction of peace and equality, we will weigh our position again.”

Gantz has apparently capitulated to Odeh’s demands just 11 days later.

Vice President of the fourth party in the Joint List – Mansour Abbas - has declared:

“Of course, we are against the Zionist movement. However, from a pragmatic perspective, we are ready for a compromise between the Zionist movement and Palestinians”

Gantz has already caved to Balad's demands
In the past, Balad members described Gantz as someone who suffers from Zionist ideology, and is therefore unacceptable. On Tuesday, in another one of his speeches following his receipt of the mandate to form a government, he used the term "patriotic government." Some would interpret this as forgoing the term that has been accepted since Herzl – "Zionist."

Not everyone in the Arab street likes the support for Gantz. Balad's response: "Removing Netanyahu from power is the No. 1 priority." Balad also issued a statement pointing out what it had secured in negotiations with Gantz: "The first and most important [achievement] – recognition of the principle that no unilateral steps will be taken on annexation of areas of the West Bank; upholding the status quo at Al-Aqsa Mosque; and a stop to the demolition of illegally built homes."

With these "achievements" in place, Gantz launching negotiations for a "unity" government with the Right is a recipe for time wasted on pointless talks that will ultimately result in a fourth election.

Right now, we have a prime minister who is handling the coronavirus outbreak, one of the worst crises in the history of Israel, excellently. Next to him, Gantz looks like a sideshow attraction. Still, Gantz is doing everything so that the work to establish a government winds up undermining the prime minister. The natural, right thing to do – what former Labor party voters wanted – is a unity government under Netanyahu.

Netanyahu has legitimacy that is based on broad popular support and the Right's electoral victory. Gantz, on the other hand, is supposed to form a unity government to which those who recommended him object.


Monday, March 16, 2020

From Ian:

Daphne Anson: Zara's Zionism
Here's are excerpts from an article entitled "My Journey Through Antisemitism to Supporting Israel" by Zara Shaen Albright, a Muslim-born British lady of Pakistani heritage who converted to her husband's Catholicism.

From a position fot antisemitism and hostility to the Jewish State she came to realise, thanks to an open-minded mother who encouraged her curiosity about the Shoah and matters Jewish, that her previous stance was unjustified.
'For as long as I can remember, I grew up hearing some form of antisemitism. From hearing the casual “let’s go shoot some Jews” to being advised not to be open about my support in Eurovision for Israel, to being told that the holocaust was “Allah’s way of showing the Jews what would happen if Israel was formed”, to being told that I “look like a Jew with a big nose” as an insult, it became so normal to hear such sentiments, that they essentially became background noise....'

A visit to Israel proved seminal.
'Luckily, I ... was able to visit both Israel and Palestinian territories.... I able to see many holy sites that hold a lot of significance for me as an ex-Muslim-turned-Catholic-convert ... I was also able to explore the beauty of Israel’s culture, to hearing from Israeli settlers ... to seeing the Kibbutz where cute Winnie-the-Poo murals were painted on and inside bomb shelters so the children would not be afraid, to seeing the celebration of martyrdom in the refugee camps, and the expectations that awaited the little boys when they grew up, I changed from being neutral to being a Zionist, which, as it turns out, is the mere belief that Jewish people should be able to have a homeland....'

Regarding Muslim hostility to Israel Zara writes:
'Remember that Islam once had its own empire, and the existence of Israel is a reminder of the felt pain and anguish over such a great empire now only being a memory.

The true nature of the BDS movement
BDS focuses on the “settlements.” By this term, BDS supporters refer to Judea and Samaria Jewish towns, which they blame for the lack of “peace.” However, there was no peace before these “settlements” existed.

Why are Jews not to be allowed to live in Judea and Samaria? Jewish settlements in this area were based on virgin lands where no previous Arab homesteading took place. The idea that as Jews multiply, Palestinian Arabs “lose” more land is absurd. The truth is that there should not be any problem with Jewish towns, irrespective of where the Palestinian Arab state could in theory exist, in the same way there is no problem with Arab towns in Israel proper.

“Settlements” are not the cause of the lack of peace. Instead, this is due to the rejection of any Jewish presence at all in the area. BDS supporters do not care that Palestinian Arabs are second-class citizens in many Arab countries. For example, Kuwait expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs after the First Gulf War. Many Palestinian Arabs are now living under the brutal Islamist dictatorship by the Hamas in Gaza, or under the tyranny of Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, whose “democratic” term ended a decade ago. Why is BDS not protesting these injustices against Palestinians?

Do Jews have a right to live, build and create on un-homesteaded land? Yes, because they are human beings, and as such they are entitled to homestead any virgin resource. The fact that they chose Israel is due to the millennia-old connection between Jews and Judea.

According to UNESCO, the Temple Mount is actually Al-Haram Al-Sharif. Jerusalem is now Al-Quds, and the Western Wall is Al-Buraq Wall. This nomenclature constitutes a systematic attempt to erase the connection between Jewish history and the Jewish holy of holies. It would be offensive if it was not so transparently inane, even in terms of denying Christian history, and by extension that of the Muslim.

BDS supporters may very well stop buying Israeli products if they want to, and are free to persuade others to do so. However, they cannot legitimately lobby governments to use force against their own citizens who wish to trade with Israelis on a voluntary and mutually beneficial basis.

BDS is not primarily a pro-Palestinian movement, but an anti-Jewish one. Denying one group, and one group only, the right to homestead land is unjust.
‘Missing a Tablespoon of Blood’: Quincy Institute Scholar Laments Lack of Violence Amid Corona Outbreak in Israel
The managing director for research and policy of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft appeared to celebrate the draconian measures employed by the Israeli government to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Then she argued that whatever discomforts they impose on Israeli citizens, they are not enough to compensate for the suffering Israel has inflicted on its Palestinian neighbors.

"Such a tiny taste. Missing a tablespoon of blood," Sarah Leah Whitson wrote in a now-deleted tweet.

Whitson was responding to a tweet from the Israeli-American journalist Mairav Zonszein, who wrote, "6 million Jewish Israelis will now get a taste of what around the same number of Palestinians living under occupation have experienced for over half a century." Zonszein was referring to the tactics now being embraced by the Israeli government to reduce transmission of the coronavirus, including antiterrorism measures like cell phone tracking of infected individuals.

Neither Whitson nor the Quincy Institute replied to a request for comment. The Israeli government took drastic action over the weekend, including the closings of restaurants, bars, and gyms. Whitson appeared to be expressing frustration that the measures would not offset the violence perpetrated by the Israeli government on the Palestinians.

"It is stunningly revolting," said Deborah Lipstadt, a scholar of modern Judaism and anti-Semitism at Emory University and the author of a modern history of anti-Semitism.

After facing a flood of criticism on Twitter—as well as inquiries from the Washington Free Beacon—Whitson deleted her tweet and posted a follow up arguing that her previous tweet "didn't come out right" and that she had deleted it "to prevent misinterpretation." She made no reference to the possibility that she had hurt or offended Jews.


From Ian:

Israeli Nobel Laureate: Coronavirus spread is slowing
However, that doesn't mean Levitt is dismissive of the precautions being put in place by governments around the world.

“You don’t hug every person you meet on the street now, and you’ll avoid meeting face to face with someone that has a cold, like we did,” Levitt said. “The more you adhere, the more you can keep infection in check. So, under these circumstances, a carrier will only infect 1.5 people every three days and the rate will keep going down.”

Isolation and limiting social contact is not the only factor at play, however. In Wuhan, where the virus first emerged, the whole population theoretically was at risk of becoming infected, but only 3% were.

The Diamond Princess cruise ship represented the worst-case scenario in terms of disease spread, as the close confines of the ship offered optimal conditions for the virus to be passed among those aboard. The population density aboard the ship was the equivalent of trying to cram the whole Israeli population into an area 30 kilometers square. In addition, the ship had a central air conditioning and heating system, and communal dining rooms.

“Those are extremely comfortable conditions for the virus and still, only 20% were infected. It is a lot, but pretty similar to the infection rate of the common flu,” Levitt said. Based on those figures, his conclusion was that most people are simply naturally immune.

Looking at the picture globally, Levitt was reticent to make predictions country-by-country as to when the spread of the virus will slow. China is nearing the point at which the number of new infections will be zero, while South Korea had already moved past the median point, and was starting to see a slow down in new infection rates.

Italy's higher death rate, he said, was likely due to the fact that elderly people make up a greater percentage of the population than they do in other countries such as China or France. “Furthermore, Italian culture is very warm, and Italians have a very rich social life. For these reasons, it is important to keep people apart and prevent sick people from coming into contact with healthy people.”

Israel doesn't have enough cases to provide useful data from which to make predictions, Levitt said, although he praised the government for its preventative measures. "The more severe the defensive measures taken, the more they will buy time to prepare for needed treatment and develop a vaccine,” he said.
The IDF's Policies on Coronavirus
The IDF will continue conducting regular situational assessments and will limit the movement of military personnel as necessary.

The IDF’s Home Front Command is assisting the Ministry of Health and civilians as needed. On March 15, 2020, the IDF Home Front Command opened a joint information center with Magen David Adom—Israel’s national emergency medical service—in order to act as a source of information for civilians who may have questions about the virus and increase the response to those infected.

In order to limit the spread of coronavirus in neighboring countries and in the Palestinian territories the IDF has:

- Closed Allenby Bridge border crossing (with Jordan), Erez border crossing (with Gaza), and Bethlehem except for emergencies.
- Conducted joint medical training sessions with the Palestinian Authority.
- Transferred test kits and disinfectant materials to the Palestinian Authority.

The IDF remains committed to protecting the people of Israel and its soldiers from any and all threats, while ensuring continuous and full operational capabilities.


Jerusalem mayor to the people of Italy: We are with you!
Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion expressed solidarity with the people of Italy during the coronavirus pandemic on Sunday when he said “Italy! Jerusalem is with you!” a press release on behalf of his office reported.

The walls of the Old City of Jerusalem were lit with the colors of the Italian flag in a show of support to the hardest hit nation after China with COVID 19.

Lion wished a quick recovery and plenty of health to the people of Italy and everyone in Israel and the world.

Rome and Jerusalem have a long mutual history, one of the founding texts of modern Zionism is the 1862 work by Moses Hess Rome and Jerusalem in which he framed the Jewish question in the framework of modern European, including Italian, nationalism.

Sunday, March 15, 2020

From Ian:

David Collier: Hamas antisemitic propaganda story taught in our schools
The Times ran an exclusive in May 2018 about a young child, an aspiring footballer in Gaza being shot whilst playing football with his friends. A few months later the World Health Organisation (WHO) published an embellished version on their website -having the Israeli soldier deliberately shoot the child after a face-to-face confrontation. Schools provides the WHO story as a key case study for students to learn. The only problem – much of the story surrounding this tragedy was created by the Hamas propaganda machinery. Bookmark this blog – it details how the propaganda of a radical Islamic terrorist organisation ends up being taught to British students at school.
The boy who plays football

The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), Scotland’s largest teaching organisation, provides material on the Israel /Arab conflict for both teachers and students. As you would expect, there is a lot of disinformation and distortion in their content. I was going through it to highlight the errors when I came across a shocking case study (activity 5) regarding the shooting of a young boy along the Gaza border.

The case study is a horror story. It is about Abdul, an eleven-year-old boy who loves to play football. He was too scared to play in his neighbourhood because of the ‘March of Return’ protests. Eventually his friends convinced him that his playground was far enough away from the fence. Then this happened:
One of the boys shot the ball too far and Abdul started running to get it. He was not aware that the ball had landed near the fence until he found himself face-to-face with an Israeli soldier. Abdul-Rahman had no time to run before the soldier aimed his gun at Abdul’s leg and fired. Because the bullet was fired at close range, Abdul-Rahman’s leg shattered and needed to be amputated below the knee. He is now the youngest amputee as a result of the mass demonstrations.

Propaganda Problems
Almost anyone who understands the Gaza protests can immediately see there is something wrong with the story. It claims Abdul came ‘face to face’ with the soldier who then deliberately shot him at near point-blank range. Israeli soldiers are not standing by the fence. Abdul would never have been face-to-face with anyone.

The case study describes a brutal, callous and deliberate shooting. It reads like it is carefully written propaganda. No student ever reading this would be left untouched by the tale. The story even has an image of a schoolboy kicking a football – designed to created identification between the student and the victim. The horror of this story made me look a little closer at the details. I am glad I did.
Reuven Rivlin: Coronavirus emergency will make Israel more resilient
President Reuven Rivlin told the Israeli public on Sunday to “keep calm and avoid hysteria.”

Speaking ahead of his meetings with members of the 23rd Knesset to receive their recommendations before announcing which member of Knesset will be tasked with forming a government in the next 28 days, the president reminded people to “follow the rules and instructions and do not give way to fear and panic.

“More than ever, the success of the State of Israel in dealing with this extreme crisis lies in the hands of our civil society,” said the president. “Now is when we are asked to give our children, on our own, a positive and normal routine. Now is when we are asked,more than ever, to take responsibility for our fellows, particularly the elderly among us – in our buildings, communities, neighborhoods, and those who are at the highest risk not just of getting sick, but of finding themselves isolated and without supplies.

“That is the spirit, our spirit, and if we maintain it, it will take care of us,” the president said.

He made clear that he did not believe that dealing with the coronavirus emergency - there are now around 200 people with the sickness in Israel - would be at the expense of Israeli democracy. Rather, he said, as in the past, dealing with enemies “has rather strengthened it and made our country, the State of Israel, more resilient.

“We are committed, more than ever, in light of the urgent need for a government, to hold essential democratic processes, even in a time of crisis,” he said.


Prof. Phyllis Chesler: The virus that has nothing novel about it
I have been tracking this virus for the last twenty years—no, make that for the last fifty years.

I am talking about another virulent virus, that of Jew hatred, a deadly plague that has managed to mutate over time and geography so that it is always at-the-ready, both in good times and bad, definitely in times of war, famine, plague, and natural disaster but also when hope is high and the going is good.

As has happened many times before, the Jews and Jewish Israel are being blamed for the Wuhan Virus by the mad mullahs of Iran. They say that “Zionists” are behind the Wuhan (Corona) Virus and that “Zionist elements developed a deadlier strain of Wuhan (Corona) virus just against Iran.”

China, ground zero for the pandemic, is now blaming America for having brought it into China in the first place.

Let’s visit Wuhan, Hubei Province, China for a moment.

My friend and colleague, Marion Dreyfus, has written about her time in Wuhan in the early part of the 21st century. The city had absolutely no potable water and little hygiene; there was open sewage in open marketplace “eateries,” where wild dogs roamed and where bats and all other manner of fish, fowl, and bird were slaughtered, sold, and eaten.

For lunch, Dreyfus and her Chinese friends went to “the dirty alley” where they purchased “unidentified frying objects in woks,” which were as “delicious” as they were unknown. Wuhan’s live market was like a “free zoo,” where rats, bats, snakes, and scorpions were sold to be eaten and the “floors were awash underfoot with spill from the livestock.” As she so delicately phrases it: “The smell was... not Chanel #5.”

Due to the Wuhan Virus, I cancelled my upcoming Sunday lecture in Philadelphia on Anti-Semitism. I’ve continually kept up with this subject—‘twas easier and easier to do since there have been so very many awful-beyond-belief incidents and many thousands of pages of analyses. It is a subject that never seems to go out of style. But for this new lecture, I wanted to read and re-read absolutely everything relevant since my last public lecture on this subject which took place four years ago.

Saturday, March 14, 2020

From Ian:

PM says all leisure venues to shut, urges Israel to adjust to ‘new way of life’
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and government officials on Saturday announced a shutdown of all leisure businesses and activities throughout the country, with the premier pressing upon the public the need to “adopt a new way of life” for the coming weeks and possibly months as the country deals with the new coronavirus — and particularly underlining a guiding principle of individuals maintaining a distance of at least two meters from others at all times.

Sunday morning will see public life further diminished, with the closure of all cafes, restaurants, hotels, malls, movie theaters, gyms, event halls and the like. It was implied that all non-essential shops would close, though not specifically stated. But Netanyahu stressed that supermarkets, pharmacies, banks and other essentials would continue to function.

Sunday will also see the closure of preschools, kindergartens and daycares that had remained open on Friday amid a closure of all educational institutions.

Furthermore, the government announced a new restriction on gatherings of over 10 people in the same place. There were no new restrictions announced on public transportation; Netanyahu said this matter was still under discussion.

For non-leisure workplaces, the prime minister said work would continue, but all employers were urged to encourage work from home wherever possible.

“This is a battle for public health,” Netanyahu said at a press conference from the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem. “We are at war with an invisible enemy…We are adjusting as things develop. The situation is dynamic.” But, he said, “we can beat it.”

Comparing the situation several times to a state of war, the premier said it was imperative for Israelis to change gears and “adopt a new way of life” for the near future, noting that many Israelis appeared not to be heeding officials’ calls to avoid physical contact and displays of affection, but stressing that this was crucial for the nation to curb the spread of COVID-19.

Noah Rothman: Iran Rages Against the Perfect Storm
This violence comes at a time of unprecedented stress on the Iranian regime. The Islamic Republic has been hit particularly hard by the Coronavirus, in part, as a result of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” sanctions regime. Tehran’s efforts to evade American sanctions has increased its reliance on China—links that it could not afford to sever even as the outbreak worsened. “Iran’s strategic partnership with Beijing has created a constellation of potential contacts that helped unleash the illness,” the Wall Street Journal reported. This has only contributed to the anti-regime sentiment in Iran that has produced sporadic episodes of violent unrest for the better part of three years. “We were unhappy with all these crappy Chinese goods everywhere,” one Iranian housewife told WSJ reporters. “Now they brought us this crappy virus, too.”

According to official regime statistics, just over 500 people have died as a result of the outbreak. But there’s reason to be skeptical of these figures. As CNN reported, private satellite imagery indicates a rapid excavation of trenches around the city of Qom—a municipality with some of the closest economic links to China—which analysts believe are to be used as graves. A provocative analysis by the Atlantic‘s Graeme Wood concludes that Iran is deliberately underreporting domestic COVID-19 cases by tens or even hundreds of thousands. Still, Iran’s official news agencies are reporting that the disease has taken a grim toll on the nation’s governmental and security apparatuses. “Iran’s senior vice president and two other Cabinet members have contracted the new coronavirus,” Iran’s FARS news agency reported this week. “Among the dead are five of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard members and an unspecified number of the Guard’s volunteer Basij force,” Iran’s health ministry revealed.

“The economic depression is far more pervasive and contagious than the virus itself,” said one Iranian business owner. Iran’s economy is already estimated to have contracted by almost 10 percent in 2019 as a result of international sanctions, and the reduced domestic economic activity and trade with its remaining partners will only exacerbate these conditions. Perhaps more urgent for Iran, the efforts by Saudi Arabia and Russia to ramp up energy production have sent global oil prices into a tailspin.

Tehran is slightly more insulated from the oil-price shock than it might have been in the absence of American sanctions, which have curtailed Iranian energy exports. But plummeting rates of production and export have deepened the economic crisis in Iran and produced “mass layoffs” in the Iranian oil sector. It was only last November that the economic pressure on the Iranian regime forced it to pare back the subsidies that kept domestic gasoline prices low, yielding to widespread protests, violence, and a shutdown of the Internet. It’s unlikely to be coincidental that this domestic unrest coincided with the escalating military provocations against Americans and their allies in Iraq that culminated in the Soleimani strike.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the level of risk the Iranian regime is prepared to accept is directly proportional to the economic hardships it endures. And for Tehran, the threat posed by a global Coronavirus pandemic alongside the collapse of global oil prices is a perfect storm. It’s reasonable to assume, then, more violence in the Middle East will be forthcoming.
Bethany Mandel: Collapse of Bernie Sanders campaign saves us from administration full of anti-Semites
In the wake of recent 2020 primary election results, there is an unexpected silver lining for Jewish Americans: Sen. Bernie Sanders will almost certainly not be the Democratic presidential nominee.

One would think that for the Jewish community, having a Jewish nominee would have been an achievement to be celebrated instead of a possibility to fear, but sadly, no. Due to both the Vermont independent’s radical beliefs and policy positions, as well as his propensity for surrounding himself with suspect characters, the prospect of a Sanders presidency was concerning indeed for many Jewish Americans like me.

Sanders often touts his trip to Israel to live on a kibbutz when he discusses the America-Israel relationship. But there is an important point lost on many Sanders supporters: He wasn’t spending time in the Jewish state learning about or promoting Judaism or Zionism.

Writing for the Hudson Institute, Ron Radosh explained:
"But in 1963 when Sanders worked on Hashomer’s kibbutz, its members considered themselves Marxist-Zionists, and they held a pro-Soviet orientation which included supporting Soviet foreign policy. Their ideological orientation on Zionism and socialism came not from the social democrats of the Socialist International, who were strongly anti-Communist and anti-fascist during the years of World War II (like Germany’s Willy Brandt), but from a rather unknown figure, a Zionist named Ber Borochov.

"I knew members of Hashomer Hatzair in the same period that Bernie worked on their kibbutz. They would always urge me to read Borochov’s books. Although he passed away in 1917, too early to see the horrendous results of the Bolshevik Revolution, Borochov’s followers argued that he had proved that “socialist Zionism” had to be Marxist-Leninist.

"Their only criticism of the official Israeli Communist Party was its refusal to see that Stalin was wrong to argue that Jews did not need their own nation and that they instead should work within their own countries to foment a communist revolution. (If you want to know more about Borochov, Wikipedia accurately summarizes his views.)"


Things aren’t any better in the present day either. Sanders has consistently surrounded himself with surrogates who are clear about their position not just on the Jewish state but on Jewish people as well — and it’s not pretty.


Hamas Joins Bernie Sanders’ Presidential Campaign (satire)
Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign has taken some public criticism for some of his campaign surrogates’ questionable views on Israel. It seems though that rather than attempt to assure Jewish communities that the Sanders campaign doesn’t support anti-Semitic propaganda, they’ve gone the other direction:

Earlier this week, Hamas announced that it was going to join the Sanders 2020 campaign as a digital media partnership.

In a statement, one Hamas spokesperson said, “The Bernie Sanders campaign is struggle against a powerful regime to achieve hilariously unrealistic goals by calling anyone who disagrees with them a terrorist and we very strongly identify with that attitude.” He continued by explaining “that it was nice to work with someone who hates Benjamin Netanyahu as much as we do”.

Although the Sanders campaign is facing serious criticism for the choice, Sanders supporters such as IfNotNow, Linda Sarsour, and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei are praising the bold choice. The campaign has also defended itself saying that the choice to include Hamas in their election efforts stems from Hamas’ position as being anti-occupation and their commitment to make sure every citizen of Gaza has a job in tunnel construction. The Sanders campaign comms director said that “Hamas was hired for their experience creating viral videos like the 2014 song titled Kum, Aseh Piguim, whatever that means”.

Friday, March 13, 2020

From Ian:

Jonathan S. Tobin: Pandemic panic a breeding ground for Jew-hatred
What happened during the period when the bubonic plague through Europe from 1347 to 1351 has been burned into the historical memory of the Jewish people. The "Black Death" was one of the greatest demographic catastrophes to afflict the human race in recorded history. Historians estimate that up to 50% of Europe's population died in the pandemic with death rates as high as 75% in Italy, Spain, and France, where the disease was present for four years.

The tragedy for Jews was not just the risk of a deadly contagion. In the midst of unimaginable suffering, many European Christians wanted a scapegoat. The Jewish minority – often set apart in ghettos, and subject to demonization from both church and state – was an easy choice, and massacres and pogroms targeting Jews across Europe followed.

Though the world changed a great deal in the following centuries, the impulse to find someone to blame for diseases or other calamities is still embedded in the human psyche. It's hardly surprising to learn that there has been a surge of anti-Semitic activity in which anti-Semites have sought to tie Jews to the creation and/or spread of the coronavirus.

As JNS reported on Monday, a group of George Washington University students attended the AIPAC policy conference and, due to fears of an affected person being at the event in Washington, DC, were briefly quarantined. Some of them found themselves being targeted on social media by other students who spread the lie that people would get the disease because of the actions of "white supremacists" and "Zionists." Another student, who wears a kipah, reported that he was surrounded and taunted by a group who called him "yahood" (Arabic for "Jew") and asserted that Jews had "started" and "produced" the virus.

The presence of an infected person at AIPAC also drew an unhealthy interest from many Israel-haters with none other than Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) reportedly retweeting (and then subsequently deleting) an account of what happened – either out of a sense of schadenfreude or to please fans of the hate she's spread about Israel and its Jewish supporters.

The disturbing reactions to the AIPAC story weren't isolated incidents. The Anti-Defamation League reported in early February that neo-Nazis and white supremacists were using the Internet to spread conspiracy theories about Jews being behind the disease. Since then, the contagiousness of anti-Semitic bile has kept pace in parallel with the spread of the virus and likely will continue to build, as frustration over the increasing shutdown of communal life gives idle minds even more time to waste staring at the screens of computers and smartphones.

There are some obvious conclusions that can be drawn from this depressing example of humanity's weaknesses.
Melanie Phillips: Will a microbe seal the fate of Iran's virulent regime?
This week, the International Atomic Energy Authority has reported that Iran is accelerating its production of enriched uranium and is blocking its nuclear inspectors from inspecting Iranian activities. Some analysts suggest that Iran has dramatically shrunk its theoretical "breakout" time to acquire a bomb's worth of weapons-grade uranium to less than four months.

The regime's failure to protect Iranians against the virus has provided a fresh outbreak of public protests. More ominously for the regime, the people are openly mocking it. Since mockery is a sign of condign disapproval in Iran, the regime will be well aware that its already fragile hold on power over the public is slipping further.

This all adds to the increasing pressure the regime has been under through the resumption of sanctions, not to mention the grievous blow it suffered from the US drone killing of its principal military strategist, Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

In addition to all of the above, having empowered the Shia from Beirut to Baghdad, the regime is now finding that these people are also turning against it. They are blaming its corruption, ineptitude and foreign adventurism for causing their many woes. In Iraq, the Shia are literally praying for the coronavirus to kill the mullahs.

This week, two Americans and one British soldier were killed after the Taji military camp hosting US and UK troops in Iraq was hit by a rocket attack. No one has claimed responsibility, but the most plausible suspect is Iran.

If so, this suggests that the regime is panicking. For when fanatics feel cornered, they are likely to lash out on the basis that if they're going down, they'll take down with them the enemies they believe are their Divine mission to destroy. Perhaps that's also why it's not fanciful to suggest that the coronavirus is "a blessing" they wish to magnify.

This microbe might just achieve what humankind has failed to do and seal the fate of the regime itself. With the pandemic predicted to reach its peak around Passover, the coronavirus may thus lay claim to becoming the 11th plague.
Caroline B. Glick: What happened to the Israeli Left?
This week, with the liberal mass media providing wall-to-wall support for Blue and White's efforts to form a post-Zionist government dependent on the anti-Zionist Joint Arab List, it appears that over the past 19 years, Shelah's post-Zionism has moved from the margins to the mainstream. The media's energetic attempts to defend Blue and White's efforts show that post-Zionism is the predominant position of the Israeli left.

How did this happen?

Dozens of leading lights of Israeli society signed the Kinneret Charter in July 2001. The next month, the ideals they embraced were bludgeoned by the international community. In late August 2001, the UN convened its anti-racism conference in Durban, South Africa. At Durban, UN member states and the most prominent non-governmental organizations in the world came together to libel and criminalize the Jewish state and people with unprecedented brutality.

Just ten years before, in 1991, the US used its post-Cold War clout at the UN to repeal UN General Assembly resolution 3379 from 1975. Resolution 3379 defined Zionism, the Jewish national liberation movement as "a form of racism." At that time, it was still taken for granted in the Western world that it is anti-Semitic to deny the Jewish people's right to self-determination in their homeland.

Two conferences were convened at Durban – a conference of UN member nations and a conference of non-governmental organizations. In both, Resolution 3379 was not merely brought back from the dead. It was transformed into the cri de coeur of the UN and the international NGO community. The NGO conference produced a shocking resolution that called for Israel's destruction as a Jewish state and accused Israel of being a Nazi, Apartheid regime that was committing genocide and other war crimes. UN member states and NGOs were directed to enact a total boycott of Israel.

The international boycott campaign against Israel was initiated shortly thereafter.

One of the groups most responsible for the diplomatic pogrom at Durban was an Israeli Arab legal advocacy organization called Adalah. The heads of Adalah played leading roles in drafting the resolution. Adalah, which is funded by the EU and anti-Israel foundations in the US set about organizing the Israeli Arab community around the NGO resolution. Arab MKs all parrot the language of hatred and rejection of Israel and Jewish peoplehood that was so violently expressed in the Durban resolution.

Together with other subversive, anti-Zionist NGOs, Adalah works through the post-nationalist Supreme Court to block elected officials in the government and Knesset from enforcing the laws of the state towards Arab Israelis. In accordance with the Durban NGO resolution, they demand that Israeli Arabs be accorded "communal rights," and so effectively undermine Israel's ability to operate as a democracy governed by the rule of law. Internationally, Adalah is actively involved in boycott efforts against Israel whose goal is to criminalize Zionism, Israel's supporters abroad and Israel's very existence. The anti-Israel portion of the Black Lives Matter charter was reportedly written by Adalah.

Among Israeli Jews, views like Adalah's have long been dominant in many universities. Already at the outset of the Palestinian terror war against Israel, professors from Israel's premier universities signed petitions calling for IDF soldiers to refuse to serve in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza and calling for the economic boycott of Israel.

From Ian:

Israel Now Looks Like a Coronavirus Containment Visionary
The walls went up, and Israel is now a fortress. In a dramatic decision the government made this week, all those entering the country from abroad – regardless of where they have been – must be quarantined for two weeks to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Many other Western countries have begun taking similar measures, including the US, which barred entry from Europe on Wednesday night.

But when Israel first started pulling up the drawbridges, it was taking the most extreme measures in the West to contain COVID-19. After the government announced it was stopping flights from China, there was talk about adverse diplomatic effects.

China is very sensitive to its image in the world, and as a result, Israel made efforts to show that its problem was with the virus, not all of China. Those efforts included a video, produced by the Foreign Ministry, of Israelis saying that they stand with the Chinese in this difficult time; it was such a success that major Chinese newspapers and official TV channels reported on it. Israeli aid organizations also tried to send supplies to Wuhan, where COVID-19 first broke out.

The challenge is to try to maintain economic ties as normally as possible, even when people are not moving between the countries because of steps necessary to maintain the public’s health, sources in the Foreign Ministry said. (h/t Zvi)

127 Israelis infected with coronavirus, 2,479 health workers in quarantine
The Israeli Health Ministry confirmed that 2,479 healthcare workers had entered quarantine as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases rose to 127 people on Friday.

Some 1,174 hospital workers are in quarantine, as well as 171 MDA employees, 24 IDF healthcare workers, 93 psychiatrists, 128 geriatric care workers, 106 east Jerusalem healthcare workers, 20 administrative workers and 763 community staff.

Furthermore, the ministry reported that 949 doctors, 635 nurses, 127 assistants, 81 lab technicians, 64 logistic workers, 40 administrators, 83 pharmacists, 14 dietitians, 31 social workers, 108 physiotherapists, 171 paramedics and 176 others have entered quarantine.

Two of the coronavirus patients are in serious condition, five are in moderate condition and 119 are in fair condition. The others have recovered and been released.

The Health Ministry shared the epidemiology of many of the sick patients Friday morning, including four new cases - siblings between the ages of six and 18 - who had been in "close contact with a known coronavirus patient." These four, numbered patients 119-122, have gone to their respective schools and preschools before being put into isolation, those being the "Orot" school in the town of Or Yehuda, and the "Tzivoni" and "Dekel" kinder-garden, as well as the "Ulpana Tzfira".
Corona Is Slowing Down, Humanity Will Survive, Says Biophysicist Michael Levitt
Nobel laureate Michael Levitt, an American-British-Israeli biophysicist who teaches structural biology at Stanford University and spends much of his time in Tel Aviv, unexpectedly became a household name in China, offering the public reassurance during the peak of the country’s coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak. Levitt did not discover a treatment or a cure, just did what he does best: crunched the numbers. The statistics led him to the conclusion that, contrary to the grim forecasts being branded about, the spread of the virus will come to a halt.

The calming messages Levitt sent to his friends in China were translated into Chinese and passed from person to person, making him a popular subject for interviews in the Asian nation. His forecasts turned out to be correct: the number of new cases reported each day started to fall as of February 7. A week later, the mortality rate started falling as well.

He might not be an expert in epidemiology, but Levitt understands calculations and statistics, he told Calcalist in a phone interview earlier this week.

The interview was initially scheduled to be held at the fashionable Sarona complex in Tel Aviv, where Levitt currently resides. But after he caught a cold — “not corona,” he jokingly remarked — the interview was rescheduled to be held over the phone. Even though he believes the pandemic will run its course, Levitt emphasizes his support of all the safety measures currently being taken and the need to adhere to them.

Levitt received his Nobel prize for chemistry in 2013 for “the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems.” He did not in any way intend to be a prophet foretelling the end of a plague; it happened by accident. His wife Shoshan Brosh is a researcher of Chinese art and a curator for local photographers, meaning the couple splits their time between the US, Israel, and China.

When the pandemic broke out, Brosh wrote to friends in China to support them. “When they answered us, describing how complicated their situation was, I decided to take a deeper look at the numbers in the hope of reaching some conclusion,” Levitt explained. “The rate of infection of the virus in the Hubei province increased by 30 percent each day — that is a scary statistic. I am not an influenza expert but I can analyze numbers and that is exponential growth.” At this rate, the entire world should have been infected within 90 days, he said.

Thursday, March 12, 2020

From Ian:

Jonathan S. Tobin: Obama is back
The centerpiece of Obama's foreign policy was an attempt to bring about a rapprochement with Iran that would, in the words of the former president, give the Islamist regime a "chance to get right with the world."

Unfortunately, Iran was never interested in that opportunity and exploited Obama's eagerness for a nuclear deal that would be his signature foreign-policy accomplishment. The result was a weak pact and an emboldened Iranian regime.

Trump's decision to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal has been denounced by Democrats, as well as Obama's "media echo chamber." But his "maximum pressure" campaign against Tehran has put the regime on its heels and given other states in the region hope that its quest for regional hegemony can be stopped.

The other major difference concerns the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

Biden has sounded more supportive of Israel than his boss or most of his 2020 Democratic competitors. But the former vice president also remains an enthusiastic supporter of Obama's efforts to pressure the Jewish state into concessions that the majority of its people have rejected as irresponsible and a danger to their security.

Biden opposes Trump's efforts to end Obama's policy of more "daylight" between the United States and Israel, such as the move of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the recognition of the Golan Heights as Israeli territory and the effort to force the Palestinian Authority to stop funding terrorism.

Instead, a Biden administration – staffed by Obama alumni – may take the region back to the old failed US policies that believed Israel had to be saved from itself, and which also rejected the strong consensus among the Jewish state's voters that there is no viable Palestinian peace partner.

Turning back the clock to the way the world looked four years ago may sound good to Trump's critics, but in the Middle East, it will be also be good news for a dangerous regime in Iran and Palestinian rejectionists who long for the days when America was joining with the mob trying to pressure Israel rather than standing up to it. Unless and until Biden is ready to say where he differs from the man he served so faithfully, he will be vulnerable to criticism that his election will be a rerun of Obama's Middle East policies that have already been tried and failed.


Bernie Sanders and the End of Sharia-Bolshevism
The men running Senator Bernie Sanders campaign for the Democratic Party nomination may have been oblivious to how ordinary Americans feel about his close relationship to Sharia-supporting Muslims, but the rest of the country, including liberal Muslims and Indian Americans, found his close association with more radical Muslims deeply disturbing.

Sanders' advisors make for a strange combination. His Campaign Co-Chair is Rep. 'Ro' (Rohit) Khanna who, despite being a Hindu of Indian ancestry joined the 'Pakistan Caucus' in the U.S. Congress; a move hailed by Pakistan's Ambassador, but condemned by 230 Indian American organizations.

Sanders' campaign manager Faiz Shakir, also of Pakistani Muslim ancestry, was believed to be instrumental in getting the Senator to speak at a convention of the controversial group Islamic Society of North America.

If the objective was to add an extra (Muslim) 2-3% of the vote to an already enthusiastic base of young Americans, blue-collar white workers and the Latino vote bank, it is not difficult to understand why on the eve of Super Tuesday One, Sanders was pictured hugging controversial Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

As if this wasn't enough, liberal and reform-minded American Muslims tell me, even the socialists and social democrats among them have said goodbye to America's "democratic socialist."

Some of us are old enough to have seen the failings of the mainstream left in Europe, Iran, India, Turkey, the Arab World and Africa. The Islamists latched on to the 'anti-Americanism' of the Marxists and then decimated the left like a parasite.

Today, they would rather live with a President Biden or even a re-elected Trump than see a potential Islamist in the White House.

Rasha Al Aqeedi, Managing Editor of Raise Your Voice magazine, put the feelings of liberal and secular U.S. Muslims in a tweet: "Seriously who is advising Sanders? It's not a marginal issue when we have been for months hearing about "Muslims support Sanders." Either drop that line if you don't want to hear the counter perspective or change it to "opportunist sectarians support Sanders."
California State University Professor Claims Israel Will Place Arab Coronavirus Patients in ‘Mass Prisons’
A professor at California State University, Stanislaus, with a long history of anti-Israel and antisemitic statements claimed on Sunday that the Jewish state was planning to discriminate against Arab coronavirus victims and put them in “mass prisons,” and then blamed subsequent complaints on the work of “Zionist hoodlums.”

Asad Abukhalil, a professor of political science, tweeted on March 8, “Israel will — I am sure — have different medical procedures for Jews and non-Jews. Non-Jews will be put in mass prisons.”

The response was immediate, with many pointing out that there is equality of treatment and employment in Israeli hospitals, with many Arab doctors and nurses.

“I’m so surprised you would say that,” said one response. “My Israeli mom was hospitalized for 2 months in Israel. Her supervising Dr. & many of her Drs & nurses were Israeli Arabs working side by side w Israeli Jews. They were wonderful.”

“Are you suggesting that those Arab doctors will discriminate???” it asked.

Another respondent said, “Ive personally been in Israeli hospitals seeing Jewish & Arab Israeli staff treating Jewish & Arab citizens w/ same protocols in same rooms.”

On Tuesday, Abukhalil said he had been merely joking, and then went on a tirade about “Zionist hoodlums” reporting his tweet.

“If mocking Israeli racism is anti-Semitism, how do you deal with the true racism of the Israeli state, which was founded on series of discriminatory law [sic] and which has only been adding more Racist discmriminatory [sic] laws ever since it was founded atop the Palestinian nation,” he tweeted.

Printfriendly

EoZTV Podcast

Podcast URL

Subscribe in podnovaSubscribe with FeedlyAdd to netvibes
addtomyyahoo4Subscribe with SubToMe

search eoz

comments

Speaking

Follow by Email

translate

E-Book

For $18 donation








Sample Text

EoZ's Most Popular Posts in recent years

Hasbys!

Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 14 years and 30,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

Donate!

Donate to fight for Israel!

Monthly subscription:
Payment options


One time donation:

subscribe via email

Follow EoZ on Twitter!

Interesting Blogs

Categories

#PayForSlay Abbas liar Academic fraud administrivia al-Qaeda algeria Alice Walker American Jews AmericanZionism Amnesty analysis anti-semitism anti-Zionism antisemitism apartheid Arab antisemitism arab refugees Arafat archaeology Ari Fuld art Ashrawi ASHREI B'tselem bahrain Balfour bbc BDS BDSFail Bedouin Beitunia beoz Bernie Sanders Biden history Birthright book review Brant Rosen breaking the silence Campus antisemitism Cardozo cartoon of the day Chakindas Chanukah Christians circumcision Clark Kent coexistence Community Standards conspiracy theories COVID-19 Cyprus Daled Amos Daphne Anson David Applebaum Davis report DCI-P Divest This double standards Egypt Elder gets results ElderToons Electronic Intifada Embassy EoZ Trump symposium eoz-symposium EoZNews eoztv Erekat Erekat lung transplant EU Euro-Mid Observer European antisemitism Facebook Facebook jail Fake Civilians 2014 Fake Civilians 2019 Farrakhan Fatah featured Features fisking flotilla Forest Rain Forward free gaza freedom of press palestinian style future martyr Gary Spedding gaza Gaza Platform George Galloway George Soros German Jewry Ghassan Daghlas gideon levy gilad shalit gisha Goldstone Report Good news Grapel Guardian guest post gunness Haaretz Hadassah hamas Hamas war crimes Hananya Naftali hasbara Hasby 2014 Hasby 2016 Hasby 2018 hate speech Hebron helen thomas hezbollah history Hizballah Holocaust Holocaust denial honor killing HRW Human Rights Humanitarian crisis humor huor Hypocrisy ICRC IDF IfNotNow Ilan Pappe Ilhan Omar impossible peace incitement indigenous Indonesia international law interview intransigence iran Iraq Islamic Judeophobia Islamism Israel Loves America Israeli culture Israeli high-tech J Street jabalya James Zogby jeremy bowen Jerusalem jewish fiction Jewish Voice for Peace jihad jimmy carter Joe Biden John Kerry jokes jonathan cook Jordan Joseph Massad Juan Cole Judaism Judea-Samaria Judean Rose Judith Butler Kairos Karl Vick Keith Ellison ken roth khalid amayreh Khaybar Know How to Answer Lebanon leftists Linda Sarsour Linkdump lumish mahmoud zahar Mairav Zonszein Malaysia Marc Lamont Hill Marjorie Taylor Greene max blumenthal Mazen Adi McGraw-Hill media bias Methodist Michael Lynk Michael Ross Miftah Missionaries moderate Islam Mohammed Assaf Mondoweiss moonbats Morocco Mudar Zahran music Muslim Brotherhood Naftali Bennett Nakba Nan Greer Nation of Islam Natural gas Nazi Netanyahu News nftp NGO Nick Cannon NIF Noah Phillips norpac NSU Matrix NYT Occupation offbeat olive oil Omar Barghouti Only in Israel Opinion Opinon oxfam PA corruption PalArab lies Palestine Papers pallywood pchr PCUSA Peace Now Peter Beinart Petra MB philosophy poetry Poland poll Poster Preoccupied Prisoners propaganda Proud to be Zionist Puar Purim purimshpiel Putin Qaradawi Qassam calendar Quora Rafah Ray Hanania real liberals RealJerusalemStreets reference Reuters Richard Falk Richard Landes Richard Silverstein Right of return Rivkah Lambert Adler Robert Werdine rogel alpher roger cohen roger waters Rutgers Saeb Erekat Sarah Schulman Saudi Arabia saudi vice self-death self-death palestinians Seth Rogen settlements sex crimes SFSU shechita sheikh tamimi Shelly Yachimovich Shujaiyeh Simchat Torah Simona Sharoni SodaStream South Africa Sovereignty Speech stamps Superman Syria Tarabin Temple Mount Terrorism This is Zionism Thomas Friedman TOI Tomer Ilan Trump Trump Lame Duck Test Tunisia Turkey UAE Accord UCI UK UN UNDP unesco unhrc UNICEF United Arab Emirates Unity unrwa UNRWA hate unrwa reports UNRWA-USA unwra Varda Vic Rosenthal Washington wikileaks work accident X-washing Y. Ben-David Yemen YMikarov zahran Ziesel zionist attack zoo Zionophobia Ziophobia Zvi

Blog Archive