06/12 Links Pt2: Making Holocaust Education About Jews and Anti-Semites; BDS Is about Bigotry; Polish Police Involvement in the Nazi Final Solution

From Ian:

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Making Holocaust Education About Jews and Anti-Semites

Acknowledging the centrality of conspiratorial Jew-hatred to the Holocaust does not preclude also acknowledging the suffering of tens or hundreds of millions of people across Europe who fell victim to Nazi aggression, occupation, and oppression. Nor does it downplay the horror of the millions of non-Jews who perished in Nazi death camps—including Romani, gays, and Poles. It simply highlights the reason those death camps existed in the first place. Without the pressing need to eradicate international Jewry, the Nazis would never have developed their industrial death machinery. And like all other weapon systems, once the Nazis perfected it, they were inclined to deploy it broadly. “Never Again” is not meant to protect only the Jews; it is meant to stave off societal suicide.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is the entity charged with developing educational material under the new law. The museum currently teaches that anti-Semitism has “its origins in the days of the early Christian church.” It traces the Holocaust’s origins only within the context of Christian Europe. But Jews have recorded anti-Semitism, and attempted genocide, for many centuries before the church and in many cultures untouched by Christianity. As described in Jewish literature from the epochs of ancient Egypt, Persia, Rome, and Greece, and until today Jew-hatred has defined a unique, stunningly consistent, niche in the annals of human hatred. Millennia of Jewish literature relate how, in the deranged minds of conspiratorial anti-Semites of all races, creeds and cultures, the real battlefront is always the war against the Jews.

Holocaust education is not getting that message across. It was not merely “hate” that created the Holocaust then or that threatens Jews today. It was not the charismatic leader, the socialist, nationalist, and populist overlays, or even the assertion of racial purity. Nor was it merely a continuation of Europe’s Christian anti-Semitism. Haman is described to have won his bid for Jewish genocide based on claims that the Jews of the Persian Empire were a disloyal fifth column. Today, with the advent of the State of Israel, this argument takes the form of suspicions of Jewish “dual loyalty.” The Holocaust itself was framed as a conscious, strategic response to imagined Jewish manipulations.

For Holocaust education to counter anti-Semitism, it must be reoriented away from hyperfocus on the externalities and mechanics of Nazism toward the inner obsession that remains relevant and dangerous in disparate guises. Teaching the threat of conspiratorial Jew hatred can counter the barbarism of a Europe intent upon atoning for its atrocities against Jews by opening its borders to violent anti-Semites. It can explain why a member of Congress’ paranoid public fulminations about the Jewish State hypnotizing the world and Jewish money manipulating Washington are cut from the same cloth as swastika-brandishing white supremacists chanting about not being replaced. It can halt the accelerating descent of the American intelligentsia into paranoid blood libels that characterize hardcore anti-Zionism and BDS—including the rising obscenity of Jewish groups trafficking in the same delusional psychosis.

Understanding—and holding at bay—the ancient, culture-destroying threat of anti-Semitism lies not in obsessing over the inconstant identities of fungible Jew-haters, but in seeing beyond those details to the unique and consistent nature of toxic anti-Semitic conspiracy narratives.

Understanding history is vital. Fighting bigotry and racism is imperative. But those who take up the “Never Again” banner must not look away from what lurks in the heart of darkness that once again threatens to engulf society. “Never Again” education must focus directly on the dangerous delusions of the anti-Semite and stop providing that beast the narrative tools by which to scapegoat us. Anti-Semitism—including the Holocaust—is always all about the Jews.

Belgian TV show on Holocaust says Jews ‘massacred’ Palestinians

A Belgian state broadcaster claimed in a Holocaust documentary that Jews repeatedly “massacred” and “systematically” displaced Palestinians.

The claim was aired on May 26 in a voiceover narration in the fifth episode of the Dutch-language television documentary series titled “Children of the Holocaust,” produced by the VRT broadcaster.

After seven Arab armies declared war on and invaded Israel in May 1948, “Israel’s army systematically destroyed Palestinian villages, expelled the population and destroyed their homes,” the narrator said about the days following the end of the British Mandate over Palestine.

In the civil war between Arab and Jewish residents of the Mandate that preceded the Arab invasion, “Jewish militias perpetrated massacres in 20 Palestinian villages, prompting hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee,” the narrator says in the 48-minute episode.

The series mentions neither Arab killings of hundreds of Jewish civilians in the years 1947-49 nor dozens of Arab settlements that were left intact and incorporated with their residents into the State of Israel.

The Forum of Jewish Organizations of the Flemish Region sent a letter to VRT protesting the depiction and disputing its assertion of “massacres” by Jews.

“This objectionable and demonstratively inaccurate presentation implicitly subtracts from the messages of the Holocaust survivors” interviewed, Hans Knoop, the Jewish group’s spokesperson wrote.

Ha'aretz: Polish Police Involvement in the Nazi Final Solution

Polish historian Jan Grabowski's new book, On Duty: The Role of Polish "Blue" and Criminal Police in the Holocaust, published recently in Poland and forthcoming in English later this year, has upset the Polish right wing. Grabowski responded in a Facebook post: "I am glad that the book has had its impact not only among the more enlightened readers but also among those who prefer to build their historical identity on historical fallacies and myths."

"I was surprised to discover the role played by the Polish police in the murder of Poland's Jews," Grabowski told Ha'aretz this week. "Murder, rape, robbery - the scale is incomprehensible," he writes in the book.

The Polish police was reconstituted by the Germans in 1939, immediately after their conquest of the country. Many of the personnel in the new force came from the local Blue Police that had existed before the war. The Polish police under German command, Grabowski explains, became "a murderous and criminal organization which was a key element in the implementation of the Final Solution."

Grabowski provides documents that demonstrate that under German auspices, but with independent initiative and great fervor, the Polish police officers took part in the systematic murder of Jews in cities and villages, in ghettos and in places of hiding. "Without the Polish police, the Germans would not have succeeded in their plan," Grabowski said. "The Polish police became important actors in the German policy of extermination."

The Germans found it difficult to distinguish between Polish Jews and Poles who were not Jews. "The Germans were rather at a loss and did not have a clue about how to distinguish those who were Jewish, once they blended into the outside population and took off their arm bands." In this they were aided by the Polish police, who knew their Jewish neighbors well. Grabowski also documents many other cases in which Polish police officers acted independently and murdered Jews without any German involvement. "They were the people who made certain that there was no way for the Jews to escape."

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05/18 Links Pt2: Nakbacide - the failed genocidal war against the Jews; Moderna’s Israeli top medical officer: We’ve shown today that our vaccine works; One Professor’s Anti-Israel Fantasy

From Ian:

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The Unlearned ‘Nakba’ Lesson About Compromise

The war that would decide the fate of the country began the morning after the UN’s adoption of the partition resolution. Local Arabs, as well as others who came from surrounding countries, began a campaign of terrorism, attacking isolated Jewish communities and besieging Jewish Jerusalem. Their goal was to drive out the Jews, hoping that once the armies of five neighboring countries invaded the country on May 15, 1948, they would do just that.

Of course, that’s not the way things worked out, and the embattled Jewish state won this fight for its life. And far from celebrating the demise of the Jews, approximately 700,000 Arabs fled their homes, either because they feared what would happen to them under Jewish rule or in a few cases because they were driven out.

Rather than being resettled in the surrounding Arab nations or elsewhere in the Muslim world, they were kept in place in refugee camps. The United Nations created a refugee agency to deal with them — UNRWA — distinct from the single agency that helped the many millions of other homeless peoples throughout the world so as to aid the effort to use them as a weapon against Israel’s legitimacy. Meanwhile, approximately 800,000 Jews fled or were forced to flee their homes in the Arab world and found new lives in Israel or the West.

The Palestinian Arabs could have compromised and gotten a state. But they refused to accept anything less than their maximal demands, and as the years went by, their options in terms of territory and support from the rest of the Arab world dwindled. Not even after Israel repeatedly offered the Palestinian Authority a state would they agree to end their century-old war.

At any point in this narrative, the Palestinians could have accepted one of the deals offered them. If so, there wouldn’t be any Jewish communities in the territories for Israel to seek to annex.

But even now, with their cause largely abandoned by much of the Arab world, they refused to negotiate with the administration of President Donald Trump over its “Peace to Prosperity” proposal that would also give them a state, albeit not as large a one as they could have gotten in 2000 or 2008, let alone 1948. And the official newspaper of the Palestinian Authority this week published a front-page article again vowing Israel’s destruction as a religious imperative.

The lesson of the nakba is not one of the world’s indifference, Israel’s alleged sins or even the suffering of the Palestinians. It is, instead, the folly of maximalism, in which by seeking everything, they consistently wind up with nothing. What will happen this year with the settlements is just more proof of the fact that if all you care about is preserving a victim status, the price of intransigence will continue to rise.

Nakbacide - the failed genocidal war against the Jews

Imagine if every year on the 7th of May, Germans held an annual commemoration of the defeat of the Nazi state, complete with Swastikas, anti-Semitic chants and slogans, and claims that the Volksdeutsche expelled from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary were the real victims.

That's the spectacle that takes place every May as Muslims in Israel chant and riot to protest their unsuccessful genocide of the indigenous Jewish minority.

And the media sympathetically covers this repulsive spectacle of historical obliviousness, of a regional majority responsible for multiple genocides, dressing up as the victims because their invasion of Israel ended in a stalemate, rather than the intended genocidal purge of the Jews.

The revisionist Muslim history of Israel ethnically cleanses the thousands of years of history of the original Jewish inhabitants and a thousand years of persecution under Muslim rule.

It leaves out the massacres and atrocities carried out by the Muslim invaders against the Jewish inhabitants in the 20th century, including the Hebron Massacre, and the Nazi collaboration of their leader, the Mufti of Jerusalem. Instead it begins and ends with Deir Yassin and angry old women holding up oversized housekeys while reminiscing about the good times they had massacring Jews.

There are about as many Jewish refugees from the Muslim world, as there are Muslim refugees from Israel. The difference is that the Jewish refugees were a minority fleeing the violence of a brutal majority, while the Muslim refugees were a regional majority making a strategic withdrawal in response to calls from the leaders of invading Arab countries to pull out so they could kill the Jews.

"We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down," Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said had promised

There's your Nakba. Go wave your fake giant housekeys in Baghdad.

Moderna’s Israeli top medical officer: We’ve shown today that our vaccine works

The Israeli chief medical officer of US biotech firm Moderna said Monday that its experimental anti-COVID-19 vaccine “actually works,” after tests on a small number volunteers, and that it will start Phase 3 testing on thousands of people in July.

“We got the first results today… and today we are showing that it actually works… we are able to stimulate the immune system,” Dr. Tal Zaks said.

In an interview with Israeli television, Zaks said he was confident that, toward the end of the year, “we’ll be able to present first results that prove that our vaccine indeed prevents the disease.”

“By about the end of the year, the start of next year, there’s a reasonable likelihood that we’ll see this vaccine on the market, at least on the American market,” he said in the Channel 12 interview from Moderna’s headquarters in Massachusetts.

Zaks said the battle against COVID-19 marked the firm’s ninth bid to develop vaccines against viruses, “and we succeeded with the previous eight.” Thus, he said, “the degree of confidence within the company was always high” that it would succeed this time, too.

News of the company’s progress, revealed in a release earlier Monday, lifted shares of Moderna more than 22 percent, and helped drive the broader stock market higher.

The company said the vaccine candidate, mRNA-1273, appeared to produce an immune response in eight people who received it, similar to that seen in people convalescing from the virus.

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05/15 Links Pt2: Ruthie Blum: A portrait of viral antisemitism; A Light Unto the Nations: Israel’s Lifesaving Aid in the Face of Global Crises; A Celebration of Israel's 72nd Independence Day #Israel72

From Ian:

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Ruthie Blum: A portrait of viral antisemitism

If history has taught us anything, it is that antisemitism is not simply a mild psychiatric disorder – since Jews are a tiny minority in every country in the world other than Israel, which itself is minuscule in relative terms; it is, rather, a symptom of Stage Four societal cancer. No amount of alcogel can sanitize that dirty little secret.

Which brings us back to the other plague – the one that has most of humanity living in limbo, keeping what is deemed a safe, six-foot distance from strangers, friends and family alike. Oh, and scrubbing our hands like Lady Macbeth, while draped in accessories befitting a brain surgeon.

Whether panic over the coronavirus was or still is warranted remains to be seen. This is something that will not be determined fully until the wave has blown over and/or a vaccine is available. It is difficult, if not impossible, to analyze the data properly in the midst of the commotion.

The same cannot be said about antisemitism. No, hatred of Jews and Israel has a proven record of death and destruction on a mass scale. All additional statistics on that score are the fault of new perpetrators and the passive response to them on the part of the willfully ignorant, apathetic or criminally negligent ostriches among us.

It is hard to fathom how Hitlerian rhetoric and Holocaust imagery elicit less of a reaction than a virus that appears to be running its course.
A common mantra these days is that “We’re all in this together.” Well, if enabling antisemites to disperse their poison beyond borders forbidden to travelers with the sniffles constitutes solidarity, the world really is in the throes of a fatal illness. And that’s not a cartoon characterization of the situation.

Nor is the fact that Jewish scientists in Israel and abroad are working tirelessly around the clock to come up with an antidote to the coronavirus. The rest of us would do well, in the meantime, to focus on finding a remedy for a far greater killer – one that mutates and metastasizes exponentially with each passing minute.

Israel Advocacy Movement: Greatest threat to Jewish existence | J-TV's Ollie Anisfeld and Joseph Cohen


What If Israel Vanished?

There are three main factions within the anti-Zionist, pro-Palestine camp: The Muslim Brotherhood and neo-Ottoman Islamist camp, the Iranian revolutionaries and their “resistance camp” and the Arab nationalists and leftist camp. All have close links with various Palestinian groups.

All three factions, of course, share the anti-Israel rhetoric and dream of regaining Al-Aqsa mosque. Nevertheless, each faction within this eclectic camp has a different outlook for the future of Palestine. Some advocate a future Islamist Palestine that would be part of a grand Ottoman caliphate. Others dream of a revolutionary Palestine loyal to the Iranian Islamic regime. The third group dreams of a leftist nationalist Palestinian utopia.

None of them, however, will ever address the tough questions about their future beloved Palestine. How will they reconcile their conflicting views on the future Palestinian state? How will post-Israel Palestine avoid the fate of post-Saddam Iraq or post Arab Spring Syria? Will the allies of the various Palestinian factions leave the Palestinian people to decide their fate, or will they try to impose their vision in exchange for financial and political support?

Will Hamas, Fatah and the other Palestinian factions that failed to unite under occupation reconcile their differences after “liberation”? Will the Islamists in post-Israel Palestine accept the secularists and liberals, or turn against them as the Mullahs did in Iran, and as Erdogan did in Turkey? How will Islamists treat minorities, such as the Bahai community in Israel? What will the future of their beautiful Temple in Haifa? be? Will the prominent Palestinian diaspora, including Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and activist Linda Sarsour, leave their prestigious careers in the US and “return” to campaign relentlessly for the “right to return to Palestine” and serve their beloved new state?

These are tough questions, so let’s ask an easier one: Who will control the Al-Aqsa Mosque after the imaginary end of Israel? Hamas? Fatah? Jordan? Turkey? Iran? Will the mostly Sunni Palestinians allow Shia Muslims to practice and celebrate the death of Hussein inside Al-Aqsa Mosque? Or will Shia be labelled “apostates”?

I once asked a hardcore pro-Palestine Islamist those questions. He was angrily dismissive. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “What matters is that we destroy the Zionist State first, then think of the day after.”

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05/03 Links: World Health Organization lies about Israel on coronavirus; The Palestinian Refugee Scam; Top Israeli judoka raises quarter million shekels to help fight virus

From Ian:

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World Health Organization lies about Israel on coronavirus and other health issues

Trump recently suspended U.S. funding of the WHO. America is by far the largest donor to the agency and was scheduled to give it $894 million during the current two-year funding period.

The president said Thursday that “the World Health Organization should be ashamed of themselves because they’re like the public relations agency for China.” He could have also added that the WHO has operated like a PR and propaganda agency for the enemies of Israel – the only democracy in the Middle East.

A year ago, WHO member countries voted 96 to 11 – with the U.S. in opposition – for an annual resolution blaming Israel for “health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syria Golan.”

While one might expect the WHO to be apolitical, it – like nearly every other U.N.-associated organ – is used by Israel’s enemies as a platform for viciously attacking the Jewish state. What may be even more disturbing is that democracies that should know better – including France, Belgium and Sweden – joined in the unjustified condemnation of Israel.

As U.N. Watch noted, out of 21 items on the WHO agenda, the only one focused on a specific country applied to Israel. This targeting of Israel has been going on since at least 2000.

U.N. Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer noted that “anyone who has ever walked into an Israeli hospital or clinic knows that they are providing world-class health care to thousands of Palestinian Arabs.”

It will not be surprising if this year the WHO adopts the usual Israel-bashing resolution and falsely accuses Israel of preventing Palestinians from getting treatment for COVID-19 – the disease caused by the coronavirus.

In fact, Israel is doing a great deal to help the Palestinians contain the coronavirus outbreak that first apparently arrived in the West Bank in Bethlehem.

NGO Monitor: BDS Group Makes a Mockery of Global Pandemic

On April 20, 2020, the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) published a “fact sheet” titled “Coronavirus under Israeli Apartheid.” The document promotes numerous allegations originating with Israeli and Palestinian non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which, since their original publication, have been removed, have been proven false, or are simply outdated. This failure to utilize factual and accurate information and make reasonable policy recommendations demonstrates that the purpose of this document is to demonize Israel and not to advocate for Palestinian health.

A core component of the “fact sheet” is the intersectional claim that Israeli policies “embody” something called “#CoronaRacism,” drawing false parallels between Palestinians and minority communities in the US and the UK. BNC also negates the responsibility of Palestinian actors for healthcare and ignores the diversion of resources by Hamas and other actors to weapons, tunnels, and terror, instead of public infrastructure in Gaza.

Distortions in the document include:
“Epidemics … are disproportionately violent to populations burdened by poverty, military occupation, discrimination and institutionalised oppression.” — Letter in The Lancet, March 26, 2020: The document opens by quoting a letter to The Lancet, which was, in fact, removed by the journal shortly after its publication. The letter was written by a group of anti-Israel activists, including repeat offender Mads Gilbert, and attacked “Israeli oppression and international complicity.” Ironically, the since-removed letter calls for Palestinians to “return” to Israel precisely when Israel was suffering from a much higher rate of infection than Gaza. The authors shamefully declare “no competing interests,” hiding their years of virulent anti-Israel advocacy behind a pledge of scientific objectivity.

Palestinian communities in Israel are “likely to become epicenters of the coronavirus outbreak” due to deficiencies in testing, information and health services: BNC links to an opinion article published on March 31, which provides no citations to back up its allegations, and is in any case, outdated. Reality over the ensuing month showed the prediction to be false: Jewish communities, in particular Ultra-Orthodox areas, were the epicenters in Israel, whereas Arab communities were relatively unaffected. Indeed, Haaretz now features an “update” in the article, linking to an April 2 piece titled “Israel ramps up coronavirus testing in Arab cities where infection rate relatively low.”

Corona doesn't stop the NIF from trying to harm Israel

People of Israel, fear not – while the world, including Israel, deals with corona virus, record level unemployment and what the “new normal” looks like, the radical, extremist New Israel Fund and their grantees continue to apply pressure on the Jewish State.

The goal of the New Israel Fund – an organization which continues to openly advocate a boycott of the Jewish State – is to create a “New” Israel, this, despite the fact that Israel is only a 72 year old country.

Take Hamoked, an organization which since 2008 has received upwards of $720,000 from The New Israel Fund, and claims to work “for the enforcement of standards and values of international human rights and humanitarian law,” and to date has focused on defending the families of terrorists. Just this month, Hamoked sent an urgent letter to demand the authorities "stop preventing Palestinian Arabs undergoing family unification procedures who live in Jerusalem.”

Do you get it? While all those who live in Israel were restricted for health reasons to not exceed 100 and then 500 meters from their home, Hamoked – in defiance of global distancing procedures – advocated for Palestinian Arabs to be able to move “freely and without delay.” And in Jerusalem, which has one of the highest ""rates of infection in the country.

Then, a group of New Israel Fund grantees led by Hamoked petitioned the High Court of Justice “… to demand that inmates classified as security inmates, and particularly those among them who are minors, be allowed to maintain family contact with their families at this time via the telephone.” In its April 1 response to the petition, the state announced its decision to allow “juvenile security prisoners and detainees who are not held in Damun prison [where a telephone-contact pilot test is being run] to have one telephone call with a first degree relative during the next two weeks…”.

Is that what American Jewish supporters of the New Israel Fund want from the State of Israel, for Palestinian Arabs (or anyone?) to move freely while corona is endangering the world?

Surviving COVID-19: Special Interview with Eli Beer of United Hatzalah

In the first episode of Together with Rabbi Yonah we speak with the incredible and inspiring Eli Beer about his experience surviving COVID19. Eli is the President of United Hatzalah in Israel, the volunteer paramedic organization.

In this video you will hear his incredible saga of how a person dedicated to saving lives was himself saved miraculously by doctors in Miami.

This moving and powerful story of survival and his message are potent medicine during this difficult time. Eli heard the doctors in the ICU unit deciding his fate. Then he prayed to God for healing.

Eli also shares a heartwarming story about a Hatzalah volunteer helping a Holocaust survivor and much more.

Simply put, Eli’s amazing recovery is teaches us that when God hasn’t decided on bringing someone back home, that our actions, prayers and good deeds can and do make a difference.

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05/01 Links Pt2: 1920: The end of innocence; David Collier: Gaza’s secret electronic army – exposed; Dexter Van Zile: What Jews (and non-Jews) Need to Know About BDS

From Ian:

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The end of innocence

April 19, 1920, on a train on his way to the San Remo Conference, Chaim Weizmann wrote to his wife, Vera, who was living in London: "My dear, the most terrible, awful thing has happened to us: A pogrom in Jerusalem, with all the accompanying signs of a pogrom… I am tired and shattered and exhausted and nauseated by it all. If the bayonets of the English had not stopped us, we would have overcome the Arabs on the first day, but the English dismantled the weapon of our self-defense and imprisoned our people, including Vladimir Yevgenyvich (Jabotinsky)."

Two weeks earlier, on the first day of the week of Passover, 1920, the riots broke out in Jerusalem and its environs. Today, they would be considered not much more than midsize terrorist attacks. "Only" seven people were killed and 200 injured. Still, it was the start of a new era; the opening shot of the Israeli-Arab conflict, and the first major non-criminal incident of an ethnoreligious nature.

A month earlier, Yosef Trumpeldor and five of his comrades had been killed at Tel Hai, but that battle had more to do with the Arabs' desire to fight against how Britain and France were splitting up the region and less to do with Jewish-Arab relations.

It's not that budding nationalism and fears of Zionism and aliyah hadn't been simmering among the Arabs already, but in 1920 they came into focus and took on clear political and religious angles. That same year saw the foundations for the religious aspect of the national conflict, especially on the Arab side under the leadership of the Grand Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini.

Husseini elevated the status of the mosques on the Temple Mount, using them for his political purposes and inventing the blood libel "Al-Aqsa is in danger," which even then falsely accused the Jews of intending to demolish the mosques on the Mount. The riots and the libel spurred the growth of the Palestinian national movement. In 1920 the seeds of the modern-day Palestinian outlook, which does not recognize Israel as the national state of the Jewish people, were sown. This worldview is willing to accept Judaism only as a dhimmi, a protected subservient religion, and not as a sovereign entity in an independent state.

David Collier: ihbid194 – Gaza’s secret electronic army – exposed

The attack on the Israel Advocacy Movement
A couple of weeks ago as Ihbid194 were spamming a thread with posts about Palestinian prisoners, a pro-Israeli activist countered a comment and linked to a video produced by the Israel Advocacy movement. IAM’s video pointed out many prisoners are terrorists – explicitly naming some problematic figures. It obviously caught the eye of someone at ihbid194 – because that IAM video became their next target.

This was the response:

Heroes? The people mention in Joseph’s video were those such as Adnan Jabar, who murdered six people as they returned home from Friday night prayers. Once again, the pro-terrorist leaning of this group exposes itself.

I witnessed the attack on IAM in real time. There were over 1000 responses in an hour – but this did not mean that 1000 people were responding. For example, Adman M Al-sahri, one of the leaders of ihbid194, posted over 30 messages on the video. The images that he posted were for the most part of terrorists – not political prisoners. Other accounts also posted multiple messages. Most of the accounts did use one of the seventeen formulated messages provided for them on the Ihbid194 page. It was a coordinated spam attack.

Labour and Jeremy Corbyn
The date is 25 September 2019. The Labour Party conference has just ended and it is clear we are heading for a general election. The Labour Party post a call on Facebook for people to register to vote. This is pure internal UK politics. Ihbid194 jumped into action – sending positive messages onto the Labour Party post.

labour partyThere were a total of 1000 comments on the post. This is a UK election post and over half of the comments were incredibly supportive and were placed onto the page under the instruction of an online army in Gaza. This isn’t the first time Gaza has mobilised for Jeremy Corbyn. Last year I discovered a Hamas propaganda group also posting pro-Corbyn messages. How many of the pro- Labour Party comments were organised Palestinian interference? They also ran other campaigns to place positive messages directly onto posts by Jeremy Corbyn.

MEMRI: Al-Jazeera Network: MBC TV's Ramadan Programming Promotes Normalization Of Relations With Israel, 'Demonizes The Palestinians And Turn The Jews Into Angels'

On April 28, 2020, Al-Jazeera Network (Qatar) aired a report by one of its journalists, Lebanese national Fatima Triki, criticizing MBC TV, a Saudi channel that broadcasts from the UAE. The report was posted on YouTube under the title "After Its Desecration of the Values... MBC Demonizes the Palestinians and Turns the Jews into Angels." It claimed that recent Ramadan MBC series "Makhraj 7" and "Umm Haroun" promote normalization of Arab relations with Israel. Triki's report focuses on a segment in "Makhraj 7", in which characters are shown describing the Palestinians as shameless and ungrateful for the support they receive from other countries. The report also criticized another show, "Umm Haroun", which describes the Jews who lived in the Arab world favorably. Triki then compared these shows to "Dirilis: Ertugrul," a Turkish series about the father of the founder of the Ottoman state. She elaborated that "Dirilis: Ertugrul" was dubbed into Urdu and that Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan instructed Pakistani state TV to broadcast the show during Ramadan in order to teach about Islamic history and identity and in order to espouse the values he said are being destroyed by Hollywood and Bollywood. The report was posted on YouTube accompanied by the following text: "After MBC TV has made it its practice to desecrate the Arab and Islamic ethics and values, it has chosen for this year's month of Ramadan to malign the history and memory of the Arabs by turning the Palestinian Cause into an ominous catastrophe and presenting the Palestinians as ungrateful, while the Jews are presented as angels."

"A Lively Banquet Of Normalization... In Order To Lure The Arabs... Away From Their Core Values And Their History"

Presenter 1: "And now, unfortunately, for drama with a flavor of normalization. This is what followers of TV series from the Gulf have called them. These series enjoy wide publicity and are aired during the month of Ramadan, focusing on accepting the Israelis as fait accompli and polishing the image of the Jews, while distorting the image of the Palestinians."

Presenter 2: "According to the followers, this continues the campaign against the Palestinian people and against the just nature of their cause. This raises questions. Who is pushing the Gulf dramas in that direction?"

Narrator: "Ramadan brings us together."

Fatima Triki: "These are things that are bought and sold in a lively banquet of normalization under the pretext of Ramadan, in order to lure the Arabs - who are quarantined in their homes - away from their core values and their history. This could have passed as a normal thing, if that Gulf-funded TV channel [MCB TV] would have stuck to what it does best. But it has chosen to plunge into thorny religious and political matters, in the form of a drama series of disputed quality, which served as an 'exit' for defeated minds. [MBC TV] has produced something that is called 'Makhraj 7.'"

"This Is How The Campaign To Demonize The Palestinians Was Born"

Man 1: "An enemy is someone who does not value your support of him and who curses you day and night - more than the Israelis."

Man 2: "What do you mean?"

Man 1: " I am referring to the lack of shame among the Palestinians. We entered wars for the sake of the Palestinian people. We declared an oil boycott for the sake of Palestine. Ever since they had their [Palestinian] Authority, we have been paying for its expenses and its salaries."
[...]
Man 2: "There are Palestinians who sold their lands to the Jews, and there are Palestinians who faces the Israeli tanks with their bare chests during the Intifada."

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04/07 Links Pt1: Netanyahu announces Passover closure and curfew, but says exit may be in sight; Israeli researchers design low-cost open-source ventilator

From Ian:

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Israel’s death toll rises to 60 as coronavirus cases top 9,000

The death toll in Israel from the coronavirus pandemic climbed to 60 on Tuesday, with over 9,000 infections recorded by the Health Ministry.

Among the three new victims since Monday night was an 80-year-old man who died in central Israel on Tuesday. The man, who had unspecified underlying illnesses, had been hospitalized at the Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva. He had been sedated and on a ventilator for several weeks prior to his death, the hospital said.

On Tuesday, the Ichilov Medical Center in Tel Aviv said a 95-year-old woman with preexisting health issues succumbed to the virus.

The third fatality, who died late Monday, was not immediately identified.

According to the ministry, 9,006 people were sick with the virus as of Tuesday morning, 153 of them seriously. Of the serious cases, 113 were on ventilators. Another 181 people were in moderate condition, with the remaining patients showing mild symptoms. The updated figures marked a rise of 102 cases since the previous evening.

The death Tuesday came after eight fatalities from the virus were reported a day earlier and as officials say they scrambling to secure more medical equipment amid a furious global battle over ventilators, masks, test kits and other essentials in the fight against the virus.

Health Ministry Director General Moshe Bar Siman-Tov said Tuesday that Israel had secured enough ventilators to bring the country’s count of the machines up to 3,000.

Netanyahu announces Passover closure and curfew, but says exit may be in sight

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday announced that Israelis would be barred from leaving their homes during the first night of Passover, as part of a general lockdown throughout the country over the holiday.

He also said restrictions meant to contain the coronavirus may begin to be rolled back after the holiday, but that the next few days were “fateful” to tackling the outbreak.

Beginning at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Israelis will not be able to leave the communities where they live until Friday at 7 a.m., Netanyahu said, while residents of some Jerusalem neighborhoods will be not be allowed to travel beyond restricted areas.

However, later Monday, Hebrew media, citing a draft of the measures that still need to be approved by the cabinet, said the lockdown would only end on Saturday evening at 7 p.m.

On Passover itself, which begins Wednesday evening, the prime minister said all Israelis must remain at their homes from 6 p.m. until 7 a.m. Thursday morning.

“We’re in a fateful week. A fateful week for the world and for Israel,” Netanyahu said in a televised statement from his official residence in Jerusalem.

Netanyahu said there were some “positive signs on the horizon,” but called on Israelis not become “complacent” and not to ease up on social distancing measures.

“Pesach won’t be Purim,” he declared, referring to the holiday festivities in early March that health officials believe contributed to the spread of the virus.

Israel PM Netanyahu Announces Nationwide Lockdown During Passover Holiday

Due to the restrictive measures taken by the Israeli authorities "we see positive signs on the horizon", Israel's caretaker Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday as he announced new anti-coronavirus restrictions ahead of the Passover holiday in Israel, with inter-city travels for non-essential reasons banned.

The full lockdown is to come into force Tuesday 4 pm local time -- 10 am EST -- and will end Friday morning.

Wednesday evening will also see what is apparently a full curfew for Israel, with Israelis urged to stay at home, except for the Arab communities that do not celebrate Passover.

Announcing the move, Netanyahu stressed that the week to come will determine whether the situation in the country deteriorates or takes a turn for the better and said that the upcoming Passover will not be like the holiday of Purim, which saw an uptick in transmissions.

Israel Makes Wearing Masks in Public Compulsory to Stem Coronavirus Spread

The Israeli government issued orders on Tuesday making the wearing of masks in public compulsory to try to stem the spread of the coronavirus.

It also approved a timeline for tightened travel restrictions for the Passover holiday, which begins on Wednesday when Jewish families gather for a festive meal commemorating the Biblical exodus from slavery in Egypt.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that this year the dinner should be a small affair, limited to household members, in a bid to keep infection rates in check.

Netanyahu last week urged Israelis to wear masks while in public, a measure the government said would become compulsory as of Sunday. Children under the age of six, the mentally disabled or those alone in vehicles or workplaces are exempted. The government said masks could be homemade.

From Tuesday evening until Friday morning, a ban on unnecessary out-of-town travel will be in place, effectively preventing large gatherings for Passover.

From 3 p.m. on Wednesday, a few hours before the meal gets underway, until 7 a.m. on Thursday, food shopping within towns will also be forbidden, in a tightened lockdown. Israelis are already banned from moving more than 100 metres from home except for visits to grocery stores and pharmacies, and travel to work.

Announcing an exemption in the Passover restrictions, a government statement said the holiday shopping ban would not apply to “non-Jewish minorities.” Around a fifth of Israeli citizens are Arabs, mostly Muslims, Druze and Christians.

Public transportation, including flights in and out of Israel, will be suspended from 8 p.m. (1700 GMT) on Tuesday until 8 a.m. (0500 GMT) on Sunday, the statement said.

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04/02 Links Pt2: The Man Who Saved the World from Two Pandemics; Coronavirus Passover: Why is this year different from all others?; The Coronavirus in Perfect Hindsight

From Ian:

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The Last Resort: The Man Who Saved the World from Two Pandemics

Scandal, anti-Semitism, and experiments on human beings – when we opened this fascinating archive to have a look at the documents contained within, we could not have imagined how this incredible tale would unfold – the story of a Zionist scientist who was determined to save the world from the plague and cholera against all odds. Introducing Waldemar Mordechai Wolff (Zeev) Haffkine.

Haffkine was born in the Russian Empire in 1860 in what is today the Ukraine. His life trajectory was determined as soon as he completed his studies in Switzerland in the late 19th century, when he decided to dedicate his life to the study of tiny organisms. At the time, Louis Pasteur was one of the best-known scientists in the field, and Haffkine decided to seek work at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. He was accepted but was given a job as a librarian, as that was the only available opening at the Institute. Bureaucracy, what can you do?

While Haffkine was working with experts like Pasteur and Ilya Mechnikov, cholera outbreaks in Russia and India emerged as a serious threat. Haffkine felt his time had come, and after tireless research, he managed to develop a cholera vaccine based on attenuated bacteria. People may have been dying in masses of a rampant pandemic, but no one stepped up to support Haffkine’s research. He decided to take a drastic step – a last resort to prove the vaccine’s credibility: Haffkine picked up a syringe full of an attenuated strain of cholera, inserted the needle into his arm, and injected the disease straight into his bloodstream. How many would have done the same?

After several days of suffering from fever and worrisome symptoms – the long-awaited turnaround arrived, and on July 30th, 1892, Haffkine reported his findings and the success of the vaccine to the Biological Society in France. But France and other European countries remained skeptical and suspicious of his methods, and refused to accept his results. At the time, European official medical establishments weren’t very enthusiastic about the idea of vaccines in general.

Holocaust Remembrance Day can still be held communally despite coronavirus

As measures to curb the coronavirus around the world keep people isolated in their homes, Jews are still able to commemorate the Holocaust together on Holocaust Remembrance Day as the social initiative project "Zikaron BaSalon" is now holding events online via Zoom.

"This year, even more than ever, we will mark Holocaust days and the heroes at home, in our private living rooms together with family members," said project founder Adi Altschuler.

In the past, Zikaron BaSalon – meaning "remembrance in the living room" – hosted events in private homes, where discussions were held on the Holocaust in attempts to keep the memories alive. Bridging the past to the present, the project has had over a million hosts in over 54 countries worldwide.

This year a website has been launched online so that hosts can hold events, since official events have been canceled, parades and tours have been stopped and Holocaust survivors have been told to stay home in order to stay healthy. "Despite all of this, it is important to hear the stories and testimonials of the survivors," said Altschuler.

On the website, special events can be found tailored to families, designed for kids and teens alike, as well instructions on how to have a Zoom meeting with grandparents or second generation family members.

As the Holocaust survivors are most vulnerable to the virus, the project will unfortunately proceed without their live testimonials, as the social initiative aims to protect them.

"It is the personal responsibility of all of us to commemorate the Holocaust Remembrance Day along with its heroes, listen to the testimonies and stories, in every way possible, even in today's reality – despite the coronavirus, so we will never forget," said Altschuler.

Coronavirus Passover: Why is this year different from all others?

As the Health Ministry strives to stop the spread of the deadly coronavirus pandemic across Israel, it has issued a list of guidelines in conjunction with the Chief Rabbinate to help keep Israelis safe.

Why is this Passover different from all others before it?

This Passover:
1. We will celebrate in our own homes and only with our nuclear families.
2. None of our dishes or other utensils will be kashered and no hametz will be burned outside of our homes.
3. We will not hire outside cleaning help but will clean our homes on our own with store-bought bleach or other cleaning products.
4. We will order our groceries to be delivered.

“This Passover, send love remotely through Zoom or phone calls,” the ministry advised, adding that if for any reason people leave their homes, they should wear a face mask and stay two meters from anyone they encounter. The ministry said people should pray alone, refrain from taking walks in nature or anywhere more than 100 meters from their homes.

“Please obey the Health Ministry guidelines so that we can all celebrate together next year,” the Health Ministry wrote.

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02/10 Links Pt2: Tu B’Shvat: The Festival that Proves the Jewish People’s Connection to the Land of Israel; Confirmation Bias and Antisemitism; Hakarot Hatov: ‘Week of Thanksgiving’ to the Druze

From Ian:

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JPost Editorial: Celebrating Tu Bishvat, New Year for the trees

Tu Bishvat, the 15th of Shvat in Judaism’s lunar calendar, which we celebrate today, is also known as Rosh Hashanah Le’ilanot - “New Year for Trees.” Judaism’s arbor day celebration is a good opportunity to take stock and consider some environmental New Year resolutions.

Tu Bishvat is one of the Jewish festivals that is uniquely tied to the Land of Israel and is widely celebrated here by Jews – religious and secular – while less well known or marked in the Diaspora.

Tied so inextricably with nature, the festival has taken on a more universal environmental theme. Tu Bishvat is a reminder that environmental laws and precepts are not a modern invention. From the earliest times of the Bible, we have been commanded to respect the land, animals, plants and trees. Today, we face a peculiar situation in which both the means of destruction are more widespread and massive but also the ways of protecting the environment are much more advanced.

Tu Bishvat expresses down-to-earth Zionism, highlighting the link of the Jewish religion and people to their homeland. While environmentalism is becoming something of a new world religion, Zionism is out of fashion. Sadly, as the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip continue to launch balloons and kites attached to incendiary or explosive devices, fire is being used as a form of ecoterrorism. Fortunately, environmental issues can also create common ground to bring Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians together to solve problems which do not recognize man-made borders. Israeli R&D is famous worldwide for its contribution to water management, alternative energy and agriculture, to the benefit of all.

This is the festival when the sentence in Deuteronomy (20:19) that “A person is like the tree of a field” most comes to mind. People, like trees, need the correct balance of natural elements including water, sunlight, clean air and good nourishment.

Honest Reporting: Tu B’Shvat: The Festival that Proves the Jewish People’s Connection to the Land of Israel

In contemporary Israel, tree-planting is central to the Tu B’Shvat experience. The practice can be traced back to the time when the Jewish pioneers began to settle in the Land of Israel. For them, working the land became an ideal, and they began a process of afforestation in order to overcome the desolation of the land.

The planting of trees on Tu B’Shvat gradually became customary, and in 1908, the Jewish National Fund and the educational system officially adopted the custom. Since then, Tu B’Shvat has been known in Israel as a holiday for planting trees, on which schoolchildren and their teachers plant trees all over the country. The tree-planting ceremonies symbolize the renewed connection between the nation and its land.

By 1948, approximately 2% of Israel was covered by trees. Over the space of the seventy years thereafter, the percentage had grown to roughly 8.5%, making Israel the only country in the world with a net growth in trees over the course of the twentieth century.

So strong is the connection to Israel’s identity, that on February 14, 1949, Israel’s Constituent Assembly convened for the first time in the Jewish Agency building in central Jerusalem. The Hebrew calendar date that day was Tu Bishvat. Each year, the Knesset celebrates its establishment on the New Year of the Trees, and on that day, its members participate in tree-planting ceremonies around the country.

Outside of Israel, Tu B’Shvat generally remains a minor holiday, with no special prayers recited in synagogues and no connection to any particular historical event. Nevertheless, Jews around the world view the day as an opportunity to be grateful for the planet we live on, and specifically for the Land of Israel. Even if one is unable to relocate to Israel, we are all able to partake in this day, enjoy fruits and grains grown in Israeli soil, and celebrate the millennia-old connection the Jewish people have with the region.

While Jews have lived all over the globe, Jewish tradition has always centered around the Holy Land, and these rituals and their specifics serve to highlight the centrality of the Land of Israel to the Jewish people’s identity.

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01/04 Links: Ben Shapiro: Trump Taking Out Soleimani Just Made The World A Better, Safer Place; Yes, Targeted Killings Work; NY Times Reporter Blames White Nationalism for Anti-Semitic Attacks in New York

From Ian:

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Ben Shapiro: Trump Taking Out Soleimani Just Made The World A Better, Safer Place

On Thursday, in the most audacious and brave move of his presidency, President Trump ordered the killing of Iran’s top terrorist, Qassem Soleimani — a man who was also the top general of the country. Commentators have compared Iran’s loss of Soleimani to the loss of the Defense Secretary, head of the CIA, and the head of the FBI simultaneously. Soleimani was the man closest to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and some speculated that he would succeed Khamenei at some point. Now, he’s been reduced to pulp.

His death makes the world a significantly better and safer place. Soleimani was responsible for the killing of hundreds of American troops in Iraq (by State Department estimates, 17 percent of all Americans killed in Iraq were Soleimani’s handiwork), the arming of Hezbollah in Lebanon with tens of thousands of rockets, the Houthi terrorism in Yemen, the building of Islamic Jihad, and a bevy of terror plots all around the world, including the latest assault on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Speculation that this represents an “act of war” is utterly baseless — Soleimani is a terrorist who was killed while abroad, in Iraq, planning further acts of terrorism.

Suggestions that the Trump administration is responsible for “escalation” with Iran — after months of Iranian aggression in international waters and in foreign countries, after downing an American drone and attacking an American embassy — are absurd and morally disgusting. When Nancy Pelosi tweets that it is “disproportionate” to kill a terror leader planning action against Americans and our assets and allies, she’s not just reflecting moral confusion — she’s evidencing moral foolishness of the highest order.

There is a lot to be nervous about here. Is the Soleimani killing part of a broader American strategy with regard to Iran, or a supposed one-off? Has the U.S. hardened its assets on the ground in the Middle East in preparation for Iranian retaliation? Are America’s allies ready for the surge in terrorism that will surely follow, given the Iranian government’s need to show strength in the face of this devastating loss?

With all of that said, it’s obvious that President Trump was attempting to restore a deterrence against Iran that had been completely disintegrated by the Obama administration. History didn’t begin with Trump, and Iranian aggression didn’t start with the end of the Iran nuclear deal. Far from it. Iran has become more powerful and aggressive thanks to the overt planning of the Obama administration.

President Obama’s preferred strategy with Iran was wishful thinking and bribery. The Obama administration openly lied to the American people, claiming that there was a “moderate” faction inside the Iranian government that would be elevated through signing them checks and ushering them into the world economy. That was utter nonsense, as national security aide Ben Rhodes later admitted. The Obama administration engaged in the worst sort of appeasement, guaranteeing billions of dollars in economic growth to a regime dedicated to the destruction of American interests around the world and hell-bent on regional domination.

Trump: Soleimani's Reign of Terror Is Over

President Donald Trump on Friday said the United States should have taken out Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani a long time ago noting the violent acts recently led by the terrorist leader. The Washington Free Beacon is a privately owned, for-profit online newspaper dedicated to uncovering the stories that the powers that be hope will never see the light of day.

Commentary Magazine Podcast: The Day After Soleimani’s Death

A special episode of the COMMENTARY podcast unpacks the events of the last several weeks in the Middle East, culminating in a targeted strike on Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Commander Qasem Soleimani.

In Just A Few Months, Trump Has Taken Out Some Of The World's Top Terrorists

President Donald Trump has taken out some of the world’s top terrorists in a matter of months, approving military raids and strikes that have decapitated the leadership of various terror-affiliated organizations.

The death of Qasem Soleimani, the leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force, on Thursday night, was just the latest in a line of successful assassinations by the Trump administration.

Hamza bin Laden
While it is unclear when exactly Hamza bin Laden, the son of late al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, was killed, Trump confirmed his death in mid-September. The younger bin Laden was taking on a more prominent role in al-Qaeda before he was killed in a U.S.-led counterterrorism operation in South Asia.

The State Department had put out a $1 million reward for information on bin Laden’s whereabouts in early 2019, but reports say he may have been killed anytime between 2017 and 2019.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed during a Trump-approved U.S. special forces raid in late October.

The raid reportedly lasted about two hours and took place at al-Baghdadi’s compound in Syria. al-Baghdadi was chased into a tunnel by a special forces canine and, after reaching a dead end, the ISIS leader killed himself by detonating a suicide vest. Three children were also killed in the blast.

Trump later gave a medal to Conan, the dog who successfully chased down al-Baghdadi.

Noah Pollak: Yes, Targeted Killings Work

One of the main arguments against the strike that killed Qassem Soleimani is that targeted killings of terror leaders are ineffective: They invite escalation and reprisals, and the removal of senior terrorists doesn’t degrade the effectiveness of the groups they lead because they can be quickly replaced.

But this argument doesn’t hold up to the experience of recent history. Take two examples of targeted killing campaigns against terrorist groups in the past 20 years: Israel during the Second Intifada, and the Obama administration campaign against al-Qaeda.

In both campaigns, Israel and the U.S. combined precise intelligence with precision-guided munitions to systematically eliminate the leadership and top operatives of dangerous terrorist groups. The key to these campaigns was that they weren’t one-offs — they were sustained over the course of years.

During that time, in places like Gaza, Afghanistan, and the tribal regions of Pakistan, targeted killings did much more than symbolically remove terror leaders from the battlefield. They helped cripple the effectiveness of terror groups by forcing them to shift from offense to defense.

Instead of recruiting followers and planning attacks, they had to spend time and energy worrying about security. The sophisticated intelligence employed by the U.S. and Israel raised suspicions of informants. Distrust grew. The ability of operatives to propagandize, communicate, plan, and move freely was undermined as every phone call and meeting raised the specter of surveillance or a missile strike. As leaders were killed off and replaced, only for the replacements themselves to be killed, morale suffered.

There is nothing "disproportionate" about killing an enemy commander, in a war zone -- where U.S. troops are deployed according to proper legal authorities -- who is planning and executing attacks on U.S. personnel. https://t.co/z4zAiLAatP

— David French (@DavidAFrench) January 3, 2020

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12/20 Links Pt1: The New Rocket Threat to Israel; Col. Kemp: Turkey’s shameful support for Hamas terrorists could provoke a full-scale Middle East war; For the Anti-Zionist, Jewish Peoplehood Is Itself an Offense

From Ian:

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The New Rocket Threat to Israel

Over the past five years, the Israelis have been fighting a quiet war nearly every night. During what is now known as the “Campaign Between Wars” or “War Between Wars,” the Israelis have taken out high-value targets—more than 200 of them, according to estimates published last year, and it’s probably closer to 300 now—from Syria and Iraq to Lebanon and beyond. As early as 2013, the Israelis spoke euphemistically about such strikes, noting that they were targeting “game-changing weapons” that Iran was transferring to its proxies amid the chaos of Syria’s civil war.

Recently, the Israelis have become much more specific. Their targets are precision-guided munitions, or PGMs.

Until now, Israel has been blessed with ill-equipped enemies. The efforts of Iranian proxies such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and PIJ have been mitigated by Iron Dome, which has an 86 percent success rate (some Israeli officials say it’s even higher) in neutralizing incoming enemy projectiles. That rate is boosted by the fact that Israel’s foes have been firing unguided, or “dumb,” rockets. Without GPS or target-acquisition capabilities, many of these rockets undershoot or overshoot their intended targets. When Iron Dome assesses a rocket’s errant trajectory, it declines to intercept it and allows it to explode in an uninhabited space.

Iran is now working overtime to establish a program that will allow its proxies to convert their dumb rockets into smart ones. The United States began a process of converting its own unguided rockets into PGMs back in the late 1990s. The Israelis utilized similar technology. The result was the deadly Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM). If the Iranian project proves similarly successful, Israel’s enemies will achieve the capability of striking within five to 10 yards of their intended targets.

Converting an unguided rocket (what some Israeli military types call “statistical” rockets) into a precision-guided munition is both simple and complicated. It’s simple because all it takes are tail fins, a circuit board, and the right software. One former Israeli official estimates that an entire PGM-making kit might cost as little as $15,000 per munition. But it’s also complicated because dismantling a rocket to retrofit it with precision-guided technology and then reassembling it requires knowledge and infrastructure that Iran’s low-tech proxies don’t have. They are laboring to acquire them. But with the Israelis patrolling from the skies with remarkably accurate intelligence, the tasks of transporting parts and assembling PGMs have become hazardous. Israel’s estimated 300 strikes in recent years have reduced the PGM talent pool and destroyed a significant amount of hardware.

Iran and Israel have been playing a quiet game of chess across the Middle East—difficult for the casual observer to discern but punctuated by the periodic explosion. The Iranian effort continues despite the occasional setbacks. And so does the Israeli effort, which is thankless and time-intensive. Both sides understand that when enough PGMs reach the hands of Israel’s enemies, the effect will indeed be game-changing.

Col. Kemp: Turkey’s shameful support for Hamas terrorists could provoke a full-scale Middle East war

An investigation by this paper has made clear that Hamas terrorists have been planning attacks against Israel from Turkey. President Erdogan knows this but denies it. He even denies that Hamas is a terrorist organisation despite the group’s categorisation as such by the US and EU.

According to Erdogan, Hamas is ‘a resistance movement trying to protect its country under occupation’. This is a lie. In fact, Erdogan’s support for Hamas is itself an act of aggression against Israel. In 2015 Turkey agreed to prevent Hamas planning attacks from its territory but has never done so. This inaction harms Israel but is even more damaging to the Palestinian people. Rather than developing Gaza, which it has controlled since Israel left in 2005, Hamas has consistently used the Strip as a base to attack the Jewish state.

Millions of dollars of international aid have been diverted to stockpiling missiles and other weaponry, digging attack tunnels and funding strikes against Israel. Much has also been diverted into the personal bank accounts of Hamas leaders who have been branded the wealthiest terrorists in the world. Not only have Gazans been deprived of much-needed economic development, hospitals, schools, utilities and humanitarian supplies, they have also been blockaded by Israel to protect its own citizens from attack. This has in turn intensified the hardship and suffering faced by ordinary Palestinians.

By encouraging and facilitating Hamas, Erdogan has helped make this situation worse. But any concern he may have for the Palestinian people is heavily outweighed by his long-standing animosity towards the State of Israel.

Caroline B. Glick: Israel's winner takes all election

Thanks to the Trump administration, today Netanyahu has the diplomatic opportunity to implement his vision in relation to the Palestinians. Netanyahu set out that vision in the lead up to the inconclusive elections in September. It involves moving past the failed and mordant peace process with the PLO, and securing Israel’s national and strategic interests in Judea and Samaria by applying Israel law to the Jordan Valley and the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria.

But now that the international path is open, a domestic obstacle has risen to stop him. That obstacle is an opposing revolution – the judicial revolution initiated by retired Supreme Court president Aharon Barak some 25 years ago. Just as Netanyahu is on the verge of completing his revolutionary work, so the legal fraternity that embraced Barak’s revolution is poised to complete Barak’s.

All of Netanyahu’s actions have been taken against the wishes of Israel’s entrenched elites, whether in the labor unions or government service or the media. The economic elites that benefited from Israel’s socialist system opposed his free market reforms. The hidebound diplomats who were promoted on the basis of their allegiance to the idea that making peace with the PLO was the key to Israel’s diplomatic standing, opposed his view that international relations are based on common interests not on ideology or appeasement. The military for a generation was trained to believe that there is no military solution to terrorism.

All along, the source of Netanyahu’s power has been the voters. Without their support, he would never have achieved anything.

In stark contrast, Barak’s revolution is a revolution against Israel’s democratic system. Its goal is to transform Israel from a parliamentary democracy into a post-democratic regime controlled by unelected state prosecutors and Supreme Court justices who control all aspects of public life in the name of “substantive democracy,” and the “rule of law.”

For the past 25 years, with the support of the media and the cooperation of radical NGOs, the Supreme Court, the attorney general and the state prosecutors have seized the powers of Israel’s elected leaders by judicial decree and legal opinion. Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit’s decision last month to indict Netanyahu for behavior that has never been defined as criminal either in law or court precedent is just the latest bid to empty elections of all meaning and deny elected leaders, and the voters who elect them, the sovereign power to determine the path that Israel will advance along.

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12/13 Links Pt2: Caroline Glick: Why American Jews slander President Trump; Like Pepsi, Democrats Need To Reverse Course On Boycotting Israel; Print to Fit A 120-Year Exposé of the New York Times

From Ian:

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Caroline Glick: Why American Jews slander President Trump

The royal host of the American Jewish establishment hissed that in speaking thus, Trump reinforced the anti-Semitic stereotype that Jews love money.

Such twaddle.

As he said, Trump was addressing his fellow real estate developers in the crowd. He was talking to them as his competitors, not as his enemies. When he said, "You’re brutal killers" he was paying them a compliment. They understood, which is why they laughed.

Trump’s claim that they would vote for him even if they didn’t like him because they feared the Democrats’ confiscatory tax policies is his standard line on Democratic tax policy. He says it to everyone, not just to Jews. The audience knew this too – which is why they laughed and applauded.

The Jewish establishment types joined the bandwagon and agreed Trump’s playful, friendly statement was anti-Semitic because they want to believe Trump is an anti-Semite. If Trump is an anti-Semite then it’s reasonable for them to remain loyal to the Democratic party which, led by "the squad" is leaping towards the anti-Semitic cliff that Britain’s Labour Party jumped off when it elected Jeremy Corbyn its leader.

In other words, they slander Trump as an anti-Semite because they prefer their partisan interests to the interests of the Jewish community in America and the Jewish people throughout the world.

Luckily, as Trump’s consistent record of support for Israel and the Jews in America and worldwide and as his warmth for Jewish people makes clear, the President doesn’t have an anti-Semitic bone in his body. And he won’t become an anti-Semite no matter how poorly the American Jewish establishment treats him.

Trump’s Jewish critics said he was trafficking in anti-Semitic "tropes" when he told the IAC, that in the U.S. "you have people that are Jewish people, that are great people – they don’t love Israel enough." But he was doing no such thing. He was telling the truth. Those Jewish people love neither Israel nor the children of Israel, the Jewish nation enough.

Thankfully, President Trump loves the Jews and Israel so much that he makes up for them.

President Trump deserves our thanks for combating antisemitism

This is an important start – but it’s not nearly enough, given how successful BDS has been in its efforts to spread antisemitism. Hatred of Jews is on the rise around the world, with more than 20% of Europeans claiming that Jews have too much influence in business, finance, media and politics, according to a recent CNN poll. France and Germany both reported marked increases in antisemitic attacks over the past year, and incidents closer to home – in San Diego this year, Pittsburgh last year and likely Jersey City this week – make clear that America has not been spared.

This rising tide of antisemitism is especially dangerous given the dwindling number of Holocaust survivors who have for decades acted as a bulwark against those who seek to propagate hatred of Jews. Without the evidence of our history – of the horrors that arise when antisemitism goes unchecked – we are liable to lose the knowledge and understanding of it as well. Once that is gone, it may not be recovered. Without it, we risk repeating the mistakes of the past.

That’s why it is more important now than ever before to preserve Jewish heritage. As the chairman of the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, I’ve been tasked by President Trump with protecting historic sites of great significance to US citizens and particularly to members of the Jewish community and their ancestors.

Thankfully, the president has been a tireless advocate of the commission’s work. American heritage is inextricably linked to the tapestry of identities that make up the American experience, and with President Trump’s support we have been more active in preserving that heritage than ever before.

JPost Editorial: What is the situation of American Jews, if Trump needed to issue an EO?

What has the situation for Jews in the United States come to if the president needs to issue an executive order to combat antisemitism?
Forget for a moment about all the backlash surrounding the executive order – and there has been an enormous amount, ranging from thoughtful, qualitative considerations of free speech and criticism of Israel, and babbling debate about whether Jews are a nation, race or religion, to absurd claims that its enactment marks the beginning of an ominous era aimed at seperating Jewish people out of the collective.

Instead, let’s focus on the facts. In 2019, nearly 75 years after the end of World War II and the Holocaust – years in which American Jews experienced unprecedented freedom and opportunity and rose to become a hugely proactive force across all facets of American life – there is a remarkably frightening rise in violent antisemitism.

What is US President Donald Trump’s executive order? It directs the Justice Department and the Education Department to address discrimination cases against Jews under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which stipulates that discrimination on the basis of “race, color or national origin” is prohibited. It also adopts the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which states that efforts to demonize, delegitimize or apply double standards to Israel are antisemitic.

NYTs: Executive Order on Jews Has Firm Legal Grounding

President Trump signed an executive order instructing federal agencies to use Title VI of the Civil Rights Act - the law that bars federally funded programs from discriminating on the basis of "race, color, or national origin" - to combat anti-Semitism.

His interpretation of Title VI as applying to anti-Semitism is neither new nor troubling. The characterization of anti-Semitism as a form of racial or national-origin discrimination has a secure place in American law.

In 1982, after Shaare Tefila synagogue in Silver Spring, Md., was spray-painted with swastikas, Ku Klux Klan symbols and other anti-Semitic messages, the synagogue and several members responded by suing those who had vandalized their house of worship. The plaintiffs cited the Civil Rights Act, arguing that even though Jews are not a racially distinct group, the vandals viewed Jews as a distinct race and were motivated by racial animus. The case ultimately reached the Supreme Court, which voted unanimously in the synagogue's favor. Jewish groups cheered the ruling.

The Shaare Tefila case teaches that placing a group within a racial category for purposes of civil rights protection does not require us to endorse the idea that the group is racially distinct. Anti-Semitism can be racism for legal purposes even though Jewishness cannot be reduced to racial terms.

Jews do not fit neatly into categories of "race," "religion" and "national origin" that took their present shape millenniums after the Jewish people came into existence. The nuances of Jewish identity do not, however, shield Jews from attackers who see Jews as a nation apart. Jews can suffer national-origin discrimination regardless of whether Jewishness is a nationality.

The Education Department under President George W. Bush recognized that anti-Semitism could constitute racial or national-origin discrimination within Title VI's ambit. The Justice Department under President Obama reaffirmed that view. President Trump's executive order is consistent with those interpretations.

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11/29 Links Pt1: Melanie Phillips: As the west goes terribly wrong, Arabs inch in the right direction; French Prosecutors Drop Charges Against Muslim Man Who Killed Sarah Halimi; London Bridge Terror Attack

From Ian:

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Melanie Phillips: As the west goes terribly wrong, Arabs inch in the right direction

As the west goes in one direction, so the Arab world is now going in the other.

While British and western “progressive” circles descend ever deeper into the sewers of antisemitism and its contemporary mutation, the campaign to exterminate the State of Israel, the Arab world is beginning to renounce its own desire to wipe Israel off the map.

Prominent figures from 15 Arab countries met in London last week to reject the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement — whose aim is to destroy Israel — and encourage the establishment of relations with Israel instead.

The Clarion Project reports that participants were drawn from Morocco, Libya, Sudan, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq and the Gulf states and included journalists, artists, politicians, diplomats, Quranic scholars, women and young people. The meeting was publicised only after its participants returned to their native countries. The New York Times was allowed to post a live stream of the meeting (held in Arabic) after the event.

“The Times reported that the group in London agreed that ‘BDS] has only helped [Israel] while damaging Arab nations that have long shunned the Jewish state. Demonizing Israel has cost Arab nations billions in trade.’ Mustafa el-Dessouki, an Egyptian who is the managing editor of the prominent news magazine Majalla (which is funded by Saudi Arabia), was one of the main organizers of the meeting.

“In recent travels around the Middle East, Dessouki said met many Arabs with similar views to his, including citizens of Lebanon. This was in spite of the fact that the Arab news media and entertainment industry have long been ‘programming people toward this hostility’ against Israel and Jews, he said, while politicians were ‘intimidating and scaring people into manifesting it.’”

Caroline Glick: The split screen

In normal times, a full screen of anti-regime protests in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon would be followed by full screens of security cabinet meetings. We would see Facebook and Telegram videos of Netanyahu speaking in Farsi directly to the Iranian people and expressing solidarity with their aspirations for freedom. In response to requests by Iranian opposition forces, the government would restore Farsi-language Voice of Israel radio broadcasts, directly into Iran.

In a full-screen reality, we would have seen a more serious response to the statements that US Central Command leader General Kenneth McKenzie made to The New York Times last Saturday. In remarks to the paper, the US commander responsible for the Middle East said that the possibility Iran will attack the Gulf states and Israel has risen.

In the event, the Israeli response was limited to a statement Sunday by Netanyahu. On a tour of the Golan Heights with IDF commanders Sunday morning, Netanyahu said that Israel is fully committed to preventing Iran from attacking it.

In normal times, a statement like McKenzie’s would have been followed by a sudden trip to Washington by Israel’s defense minister to visit with his counterpart at the Pentagon.

Our times are not normal times. We are relegated to living in a split-screen reality because our government is incapable of carrying out any real action. Its paralysis is not the result of its status as an interim government. Israel has been living under an interim government for some time now. And its members, including the prime minister, have shown no aversion to doing their job responsibly.

The reason our government is incapable of fulfilling its duty, particularly on issues of strategic importance, is because Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit has decided that almost all government activities require his prior approval.

French Prosecutors Drop Charges Against Muslim Man Who Killed Sarah Halimi in 2017

A French prosecutor has dropped charges against the killer of Jewish kindergarten teacher Sarah Halimi after experts ruled he had suffered a massive psychotic episode by smoking cannabis.

Ms Halimi, who was Orthodox, was killed after Kobili Traoré broke into her council flat in eastern Paris on April 4 2017.

Witnesses said the 65-year-old was beaten and called a “demon” by her attacker, who recited Koranic verses as he threw her off her balcony.

In an appeals court hearing on Wednesday Traoré admitted killing Ms Halimi, saying he was not aware of his actions on the night of the murder and did not recognise when he broke in.

“I felt persecuted. When I saw the Torah and a chandelier in her home I felt oppressed. I saw her face transforming,” he said.

But in a rare turn of events, French prosecutors were divided on how to proceed.

Local prosecutors in Paris initially argued that Kobili Traoré should be put on trial for his actions. But they were opposed by the more senior procureur général, which argued Traoré should be hospitalised.

French Jews Are Fleeing Their Country

France is home to Europe’s largest Jewish population, the third largest in the world after Israel and the United States. Yet this historic community—dating back to the Roman conquest of Jerusalem and expulsion of the Jewish population 2,000 years ago—is in the midst of an existential crisis.

France's interior minister has warned that anti-Jewish sentiment is "spreading like poison." President Emmanuel Macron declared that anti-Semitism was at its highest levels since World War II. Amidst a string of attacks, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe admitted that anti-Semitism is “deeply rooted in French society.”

Eighty-nine percent of Jewish students in France report experiencing anti-Semitic abuse, according to a poll published in March. In 2017, Jews were the target of nearly 40 percent of the violent incidents classified as racially or religiously motivated, despite making up less than 1 percent of the French population. In 2018, anti-Semitic acts rose by nearly 75 percent.

The current wave of immigration began in earnest after the 2012 Toulouse massacre, in which a French-born Islamic extremist opened fire at a Jewish day school, killing a young rabbi who was shielding his three- and six-year-old sons, then shooting to death both boys and an 8-year-old girl. Three years later, a gunman pledging allegiance to ISIS killed four customers at a kosher supermarket in Paris. “In the days after that, we received thousands of calls from people saying they wanted to leave,” says Ouriel Gottlieb, the Jewish Agency’s director in Paris. “Of the four people murdered at Hyper Casher, three of the families moved to Israel.”

Nearly every year since has seen another deadly anti-Semitic attack, from the beating and defenestration of 65-year-old Sarah Halimi in 2017 to the gruesome killing of Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll in 2018. Less frightening, but just as damaging to this fragile community, are the constant smaller-scale incidents, such as the desecration of Jewish cemeteries and memorials, or attacks on boys wearing yarmulkes. Such attacks have led many here to hide outward appearances of their faith. Others choose to leave.

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11/22 Links Pt2: Anti-Semitic Jeremy Corbyn Is Not a ‘Man of the People’; Israel Denial in the Academic World; Ontario Premier condemns anti-Israel protest; The Ethiopian Jews longed for Zion

From Ian:

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Anti-Semitic Jeremy Corbyn Is Not a ‘Man of the People’

Last week, the reliably anti-Israel British newspaper the Guardian published a letter signed by 24 prominent citizens—some among them not otherwise known for friendship toward Jews or the Jewish state—stating that they could not vote for the Labor party on account of its leader’s anti-Semitism. Yet, writes Tamara Berens, the media in both the UK and elsewhere continue to portray the Labor leader, Jeremy Corbyn, as a “man of the people” rather than an unreconstructed Communist and to treat his hostility toward Jews as a matter for debate:

When it comes to anti-Semitism in the Labor party, the media have fallen for Corbyn’s deception. . . . Corbyn’s longstanding support for radical causes includes a penchant for Islamist anti-Semites. He invited members of Hamas and Hizballah to the British Parliament as “friends” and was paid perhaps as much as £20,000 (about $27,000 at the time) to appear on Iranian Press TV—the same network that was banned in the UK for its broadcast of a forced confession by a tortured Iranian journalist. In one appearance Corbyn mused that “the hand of Israel” was involved in a terror attack in Egypt.

Anti-Semitism has benefited Jeremy Corbyn politically. When he was unexpectedly elected leader of the Labor party in 2015, the media described an anti-Semitism “row” and “claims” surrounding him. This suggested that Corbyn’s association with anti-Semites was not factual but alleged. Labor’s grass-roots activists rallied around, defending Corbyn from these so-called allegations, and the conspiratorial anger toward his rivals, accused of stoking such “claims,” grew. The pro-Corbyn organization Momentum organized aggressive no-confidence votes against members of parliament who criticized him, including the former Labor Friends of Israel chair Joan Ryan.

Today, the party has been purged of almost all of its moderates and Corbyn’s ideology reigns supreme. The Jewish community in the UK is afraid for its future: a recent poll found that 47 percent of Jewish people in the UK would seriously consider emigrating if Corbyn came to power. Yet Labor continues to get away with anti-Semitism. For the British general election, the Labor party has selected multiple candidates with a history of anti-Semitism, including a union official who compared the state of Israel to a child abuser replicating the Holocaust.

New UK Labour manifesto calls to ban arms sales to Israel

The Labour Party has vowed to suspend at least some arms sales to Israel if it wins next month’s general elections in the United Kingdom.

The pledge was included in a section on human rights in the party’s election manifesto, which it released Thursday.

Labour will “immediately suspend the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen and to Israel for arms used in violation of the human rights of Palestinian civilians,” the manifesto stated. It was not immediately clear which weapons this pledge would affect.

The party also promised to “immediately” recognize a Palestinian state if it forms a government after the December 12 vote and said it supports a two-state solution that would see “a secure Israel alongside a secure and viable state of Palestine.”

Labour has called for halting arms sales to Israel at its annual conferences and party leader Jeremy Corbyn has previously vowed to swiftly recognize a Palestinian state if he becomes the British prime minister.

These things aren’t done by accident; there is a message for us. Today Corbyn launched his Marxist manifesto in Birmingham on the exact anniversary of the day his IRA friends bombed a Birmingham pub, the deadliest bombing in England between WW2 & 7/7, an act of his other friends. pic.twitter.com/vKI74deX3X

— Rɪᴄʜᴀʀᴅ Kᴇᴍᴘ ⋁ (@COLRICHARDKEMP) November 21, 2019

Corbyn on the IRA, Now and Thenhttps://t.co/vYBw5WamjR pic.twitter.com/CeVysy8x0H

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) November 21, 2019

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11/21 Links Pt2: Hen Mazzig: The Damage Done by Shouting Down Ideas; Netanyahu to stand trial for bribery, fraud; Wikipedia’s Anti-Israel Editors Unmasked; ADL survey: 25% of Europeans anti-Semitic

From Ian:

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Hen Mazzig: The Damage Done by Shouting Down Ideas

For the past several years, I’ve traveled around the United States as an advocate, speaking about my family’s story of exile from Iraq and Tunisia and its journey home to Israel. I visit schools, temples, community centers, LGBTQ groups — you name it.

After each talk, listeners tell me that their knowledge about the Mizrahi community was limited before hearing me. Although Mizrahim make up 60% of Israel’s Jewish population today, even devoted Zionists entrenched in Israel’s policies know little about the largest demographic living there.

Leaving the story of Mizrahi Jews out of pro-Israel advocacy is a mistake. Jews from the Middle East and North Africa — and our story of survival — are the greatest threat to anti-Zionism. That’s why anti-Zionist groups are so intent on harassing and silencing us.

This proved particularly true recently when I was targeted by an anti-Semitic group of anti-Zionists at Vassar College. I was there to give a talk titled: “The Indigenous Jews of the Middle East: Forgotten Refugees.”

As soon as I arrived at the on-campus venue, I was greeted by protesters. As a staunch supporter of free speech, I invited them to join the talk and ask me the hard questions.

Instead of discussing their concerns with me, they decided to scream over me. One said she decided to oppose me telling my story because she’s a “white queer Jew.” Another claimed they were protesting me telling the story of Mizrahi refugees as a means of fighting white supremacy.

It’s ironic because I was there to speak about how my grandmother narrowly survived the Farhud, a catastrophic event in which the Iraqi government collaborated with Hitler’s white supremacist regime and killed around 280 Jews in two days. To put this in perspective, British newspaper The Guardian reported in August that more than 175 people have been killed worldwide by white nationalists in the past eight years.

Why Israel's Cause is a Progressive Cause - Mark Regev

Some erroneously say that Israel's cause can never be a progressive cause. Mark Regev, Israel's ambassador to the United Kingdom, explains why, actually, Israel's cause is an inherently progressive cause.

Anti-Israel protesters shout 'Viva Intifada' in Toronto

Protesters affiliated with the Students Against Israeli Apartheid at York University (SAIA York) in Toronto on Wednesday evening demonstrated against Herut Canada's event at the campus featuring former IDF soldiers.

The protesters chanted “Viva, Viva Intifada” and “Free, Free Palestine.”

The IDF reservists spoke to students about Israel and their experiences in the army. The reservists' visit to the university sparked a “no killers on campus” campaign organized by anti-Israel student groups.

Flyers protesting the event now cover the walls of the campus, portraying a photoshopped image of an IDF soldier who appears to be strangling a child. Anti-Israel groups have vowed to disrupt the event and are circulating a number of chants students can use to derail the event, such as “From Toronto to Gaza, Globalize the Intifada!”

Students Against Israeli Apartheid at York University organized an event on Facebook urging people to show up on Wednesday evening and tell the university’s administration that “we will not tolerate war criminals on our campus.”

According to a statement from B’nai Brith Canada, officers of the Toronto Police Service and private security personnel were on hand to enable attendees to enter the event, despite the best efforts of protesters outside to block them.

Among the protesters present was Holocaust-denying newspaper editor Nazih Khatatba, who glorified a 2014 massacre at a Jerusalem synagogue and has described Judaism as a “terrorist religion.”

At one point, police were forced to intervene to prevent physical violence and injury.

Dozens of University of Toronto Faculty Call Out ‘Antisemitic BDS Movement,’ Urge Adoption of IHRA Definition

Dozens of University of Toronto faculty members urged President Meric Gertler on Tuesday to root out antisemitism on their campus, which they warned had worsened after a student union formally backed the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign.

The faculty call came after the university’s Graduate Students’ Union (GSU) said its Executive Committee may be reluctant to support a motion to bring kosher food to campus because the initiative was being spearheaded by a “pro-Israel” group — namely Hillel, the largest Jewish club on campus.

The GSU Executive Committee has since said it was “deeply sorry for the harm” caused by its response, which has been widely decried as antisemitic.

Professor of dentistry Howard Tenenbaum and 20 other faculty co-signers dismissed this apology as “tepid at best” in their letter, which was endorsed by 30 additional faculty members since its submission to Gertler on Tuesday morning, according to B’nai Brith Canada. The Jewish civil rights group was involved in organizing the letter.

“Since 2012, when the UTGSU endorsed the antisemitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and committed student funds to this discriminatory campaign through the formation of its BDS Committee — dedicated solely to the delegitimization of the world’s only Jewish State — the situation on campus for Jewish students has continuously worsened, culminating into this most recent episode,” the faculty warned.

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