11/11 Links Pt2: Dershowitz: How Amnesty International suppresses free speech

From Ian:

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Alan Dershowitz: How Amnesty International suppresses free speech

Last month the Columbia chapter of Amnesty International invited me to deliver a talk on human rights in the Middle East. I accepted the invitation, anxious to present a balanced view on human rights, focusing on the Israeli-Arab-Palestinian issue. As a supporter of the two state solution and an opponent of many of Israel’s settlement decisions, I regard myself as a moderate on these issues. That was apparently too much for the national office of Amnesty International to tolerate. They demanded that the Columbia chapter of Amnesty International disinvite me. They did not want their members to hear my perspective on human rights.
The excuse they provided were two old and out of context quotes suggesting that I favored torture and collective punishment. The truth is that I am adamantly opposed to both. I have written nuanced academic articles on the subject of torture warrants as a way of minimizing the evils of torture, and I have written vehemently against the use of collective punishment of innocent people—whether it be by means of the boycott movement against all Israelis or the use of collective punishment against Palestinians. I do favor holding those who facilitate terrorism responsible for their own actions.
The real reasons Amnesty International tried to censor my speech to its members is that I am a Zionist who supports Israel’s right to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people.  As such, I have been somewhat critical of Amnesty International’s one-sided approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  For example, I wrote an article criticizing Amnesty International’s report on honor killings in the West Bank.  An honor killing occurs when a woman has been raped and her family then kills her because of the shame her victimization has brought.  Despite massive evidence to the contrary, Amnesty International mendaciously claimed that honor killings had increased in the West Bank since the Israeli occupation and that the fault for this increase in Arab men killing Arab women, lies with Israel.  The reality is that there are far fewer honor killings in the West Bank than there are in adjoining Jordan, which is not under Israeli occupation, and that the number of honor killings in the West Bank has been reduced dramatically during the Israeli occupation. But facts mean little to Amnesty International when Israel is involved. 

Dershowitz: Obama Must Fire Official Who Insulted Netanyahu

Renowned Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz made it clear that the case must not be closed regarding the Obama Administration officials who personally attacked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with various epithets. The insults were widely reported in the international press after having been first reported in the New Yorker.
Speaking with Newsmax TV this past Thursday, Prof. Dershowitz said that President Obama "must get to the bottom of this, find out who the two people are who made those statements, expose them, and fire them."
Dershowitz, who endorsed Obama in both of the last two Presidential elections, hinted that Congress should get involved in the matter. "Congress can have hearings to determine who those two senior White House officials are who used those terrible words about PM Netanyahu," he said.

Kristallnacht fundraiser for Gaza riles Danish Jews

A leader of Denmark’s Jewish community criticized local politicians who raised money for Gaza at a Holocaust memorial event.
Donations raised at Sunday’s event in Copenhagen’s Norrebro district - commemorating the victims of Austria and Germany’s 1938 Kristallnacht pogroms against Jews - would go toward buying ambulances in Gaza, organizers from the Red-Green Alliance party said.
“When the profits from the Norrebro event go to Gaza, whose government is at war with Israel, I think that there is inappropriate confusion,” Dan Rosenberg Asmussen, president of the Jewish community in Copenhagen, told the Kristelig Dagblad newspaper.

Palestinians Blast Appearance Of Israel In Google Search Results (satire)

Palestinian Negotiator Saeb Erekat lambasted Google today, criticizing the internet giant for promoting “normalization” with Israel by allowing the country’s name to appear in search results.
Erekat held a press conference at the Muqata, where he had met with President Mahmoud Abbas. He used the conference as venue for criticizing Google, which, he charged, offends Palestinian sensibilities and strengthens the “illegal occupation of Palestinian lands” by not filtering out mentions of the Occupier from its search engine display.
“By allowing the word ‘Israel’ to appear in its search results, Google endorses, or at least condones, the unacceptable Occupation. Having the Occupier’s name featured by default creates the impression that the situation is one of business as usual, as opposed to the horrific reality,” asserted Erekat.

Walls in Berlin and the West Bank

For decades, Palestine has been moving in two directions at once. On the one hand, it has taken greater steps toward nationhood, and on the other, it has rejected the responsibilities that such nationhood would require, chiefly the control of its own armed forces and a willingness to negotiate with its neighbors. The European Left has encouraged this double-game, and in the process has done more to harm prospects of peace than any wall ever can. It is an unfortunate reality that the wall between Israel and Palestine has been physically necessary to block terrorist attacks. If such attacks had been directed at any Western nation, a much larger and more violent response would have happened long ago.
Walls are tragic. But they are not all the same. Germans—on both sides—were ready to take down their wall when they did, and that was glorious, but Europe was not done with the forces that led to its construction, and our reluctance to accept this fact led to a slow response to conflict in the Balkans, and to the death of many innocent people. Until Palestine demilitarizes and accepts the existence of Israel, the wall that protects the most multi-cultural state, and the only functioning democracy, in the Middle East, Israel, must remain. The day when that wall falls will be glorious, but we cannot hasten that moment by comforting ourselves with illusions of an easy escape from the dangers of the past.

State Department’s War on Israel Exposed

This stand tells us two things about the Obama administration.
The first is that facts played no part in its attacks on Israel at a time when thousands of rockets were raining down on Israeli cities and terrorists were using tunnels to cross the border to attempt kidnappings and murders of Jews. Hamas did its best to hide behind civilians in Gaza, something that was aided and abetted by an international press corps that was either too intimidated by the Islamists to report on their activities or to shoot videos of photos of armed terrorists or missile launches. But, as Dempsey rightly concluded, the Israelis were cautious about firing at positions embedded among civilians and adopted various strategies to keep collateral damage to a minimum. The fact that the U.S. Armed Forces sent a delegation to learn about the Israel Defense Forces’ policies so as to help Americans to improve their own record speaks volumes about the Pentagon’s views about criticisms of the Israelis.
Yet the State Department and the White House both sought to hammer the Israelis for every incident in which civilians were killed. The fact that the Israelis were every bit if not more scrupulous about this concern than American forces operating in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, or Syria is not in dispute, certainly not by their U.S. commander.
The reason for these criticisms, which continue despite being contradicted by Dempsey, has to do with politics, not the ethics of war. The president and his foreign-policy team are determined to besmirch Israel and undermine its democratically elected government no matter what the circumstances. If the allegations are not supported by the facts, that doesn’t deter Psaki and her masters from continuing their broadsides since the objective is not to actually change the policies of the Israel Defense Forces. It is to pressure the Jewish state’s government to forgo the right of self-defense that she says the U.S. supports and to make concessions to the Palestinians that would make another round of even deadlier violence even more likely.

The construction censure reflex

Every time Israel announces a construction plan in one of Jerusalem's neighborhoods beyond the Green Line, we are inundated, almost as a matter of routine, with anguished cries from American and European representatives. For example, the statement issued by U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, who said construction plans in Jerusalem do not, allegedly, coincide with Israel's stated goal of the "two-state" solution. Psaki did not bother to explain why building apartments or adding rooms to existing homes in Jewish neighborhoods, which in any possible future diplomatic agreement will be part of Israel anyway -- whether according to agreements between George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon or the "Clinton Parameters" -- conflicts with the "two-state" solution (unless someone believes the planned Palestinian state will stretch into Jewish Jerusalem or at least encircle it in a Arab stranglehold).
These condemnations are not only illogical and contrary to previous understandings, they encourage the Palestinians to maintain their obstinate position regarding any possible future deal. And in light of the current sensitive situation in Jerusalem, they also exacerbate the violence on the ground. A short while after the 1967 Six-Day War, then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan identified the area where the neighborhood of Gilo was to be built. When someone pointed out to him that the land was beyond the Green Line, Dayan looked at the ground and answered: "I don't see any green line here."

A European Open Letter to the EU Foreign Affairs Chief

Endowed with the authority of a Top Diplomat as EU Foreign Affairs Chief, you travelled to the Holy Land. There you called to divide Jerusalem and demanded the partition of Israel.
Your words were: "I think Jerusalem can be and should be the capital of two states." You also said: "We need a Palestinian state - that is the ultimate goal and this is the position of all the European Union."
And then — what? What does the EU expect to happen next? After the partition? Do you expect the Palestinians will stop their incitement and all attacks against Jews once they have a state?
You said: "We need a Palestinian state - that is the ultimate goal and this is the position of all the European Union." Fact is, not even the Palestinians themselves think they need one, or they would have accepted the numerous offers for a state from the Israeli side. All the Palestinians need is the destruction of Israel. Even during your visit to Israel, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called on Saturday for the destruction of Israel, whereby he used the term an end date for "Israeli occupation."

France-Spain, Be careful what you wish for

It occurred to me that the two should be concerned about setting a precedent. Five secessionist movements are represented in Spain with Catalonia being currently the most demanding. On Sunday, well above a third of Catalonia’s electorate voted in an informal referendum. 80.76% (1,861,7536 people) of participants voted yes that they thought Catalonia should be a state and that state be independent. Unlike Palestine the Catalans can point to independence in their history, beginning in the 10th century. Unlike the Palestinian basket case Catalonia is one of the most economically dynamic regions of Spain. Unlike the Palestinians the Catalans have a distinct language.
France also has five potential areas vying to be new states. One, Occitania, would take about one-third of France’s land area if successful. However, Corsica has the most active independence movement.
Corsica was only conquered by France in 1769 and has been struggling for independence since then. It, too, has enjoyed periods of independence. 1975 marked the beginning of an armed nationalist struggle against the French government. Ever since, Corsican nationalism has been a feature of the island’s politics, with calls for greater autonomy and protection for Corsican culture and the Corsican language. Periodic flare-ups of raids and killings culminated in the assassination of Prefect Claude Érignac in 1998.
In other words, be careful what you wish for.

Swedish Ambassador: 'Palestine' Recognition Not Anti-Israel

Sweden's ambassador to Israel said that his country's decision to recognize a "Palestinian state" was not meant to be an "anti-Israel" move.
The Israeli ambassador to Sweden, Isaac Bachman, was recalled over a week ago following the Swedish government's decision to officially recognize "Palestine" as a state on October 30.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman responded harshly to the decision: "the Swedish government's [recognition of] a Palestinian state is a deplorable decision which only strengthens extremist elements and Palestinian rejectionism."

The Swedes Court the Muslim Vote

Last Thursday, Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström announced Sweden's official recognition of the State of Palestine. Britain has already done its part in this regard, and now Spain, France and Belgium are expected to continue the trend. The Swedish street considered this decision as 'strange', but there's no mystery to those who know that the ruling party is a left-wing one which has unconditionally supported the Palestinians for years. The reason for this policy has nothing to do with Israel itself, despite what the Israeli Left might claim.
When you examine the anti-Israel winds blowing in Sweden and Europe in general, you first need to read the demographic map. There are now about 650,000 Muslims in Sweden, or about 7% of the population. The left recognizes this electoral reality. While the right fights to retain the state's Judeo-Christian identity and strives for immigration reform, the left has adopted the Muslims as a kind of foreign national minority within the country. This means constant and ever more vocal political activity against the State of Israel.

PreOccupied Territory: 11 SS Men Killed As Jews Try To Change Status Quo At Sobibor (satire)

SobiborSobibór, Occupied Poland, October 14, 1943 – The Jews of this camp in the Government-General region of Poland tried to change the status quo at the site this week, sparking violence that left eleven SS officers and a number of guards dead.
The status quo has been in place since Sobibór began its operations in May of last year, a situation that had remained more or less stable. In recent weeks, however, it has become apparent that the Jews of Sobibór have become dissatisfied and sought to secure greater privileges they had not hitherto enjoyed at the camp.
The violence began with the Jews killing eleven SS men and an unknown number of guards, murders that evidently were expected to be conducted in secret and claim the lives of all the SS personnel in the camp. However, camp authorities discovered the murders and forced the Jews to scatter, whereupon hundreds were eliminated by gunfire, minefields, and a dragnet to recapture escapees, restoring the status quo.

Kerry calls Netanyahu over Iran talks, condemns Khamenei’s ‘destroy Israel’ comments

The officials said Kerry also condemned comments posted this weekend on the Twitter account of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that called for Israel’s destruction
His feed also tweeted various posts about the negotiations — including one detailing Iran’s “red lines” of things it could not accept — while the Oman talks were ongoing.
Earlier in the day State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said the US “strongly condemned” Khamenei’s statements, which included a tweet with a nine-point plan for Israel’s destruction.
“The remarks are offensive and reprehensible, and the entire international community should condemn such rhetoric. This rhetoric is, unfortunately, not new, but it’s not conducive to regional security either,” she said.

 The West's Dangerous Enchantment with Islam

There are no women's rights in Islam; there are no women's rights in most Muslim countries. And there is no freedom of expression in these countries; people have become virtually voiceless.
To make a positive change in Muslim countries, we need to be able to speak openly, without putting one's life at risk, and tell the (too-often criminalized) truth about what Islamic teachings and traditions actually contain.
If one is called "racist" or "Islamophobe," the answer is that these are the accusations bullies always use to silence those who disagree with them. The real Islamophobes are those who degrade, abuse and kill their fellow Muslims.
If oppression of women is rooted in the culture, shouldn't one be asking, 'what makes a culture that misogynous?'
There is a situation even more frightening. It now seems to be difficult to speak openly about fundamentalist Islam even in Western countries. The worst thing any Western progressive or feminist can do is to stay silent.

Lest only some of us forget

It’s Remembrance Day. But not for everyone. The Greater Essex County District School Board in Ontario circulated an e-mail to the 75 schools it runs in places like Windsor and Leamington. The memo says teachers should be prepared to exempt Muslim students from Remembrance Day.
“Some families may be reluctant to have their children attend your location municipality’s ceremonies. Please note that meaningful alternate activities should be provided at the schools for those families who do not wish their children to participate in any Remembrance Day ceremonies.”
In case you were wondering which families they might be referring to, the school board didn't say specifically but pointed teachers to two Muslim-themed websites, including the story about the first Muslim soldier in the Canadian Forces who wore a hijab, an Islamic head covering.

Israel-Hating Bullies Behaving Badly (Yet Again)

A group of “pro-palestinian” protesters (read: rabid Israel haters) have been expelled from a talk with Daniel Taub, Israel’s ambassador to the UK, after showing the kind of disrespect no ambassador should be subjected to (hat tip: Sussex Friends of Israel).
UCL security this evening expelled two pro-Palestine protesters from campus for disrupting a talk with Israeli ambassador Daniel Taub
The pair, which included prominent UCLU Friends of Palestine activist Layth Hanabli, stood up and shouted at Taub for 5 minutes for sponsoring a ‘terrorist regime’ and supporting Israel’s actions in the Gaza war this summer.
Security failed to act as the talk descended into chaos and Hanbali accused Israel’s ‘terrorist army’ of ‘murdering Palestinians’ in Gaza.
Several attendees were frustrated and asked the activists to ‘shut up’ – Ambassador Taub, an alumnus of UCL, remained calm and appeared to chuckle at them. (h/t MtTB)

Palestinian Terrorist, Convicted on Immigration Charge, Leads Supporters: 'Yes We Can!'

Darshan-Leitner's organization, Shurat HaDin, assisted U.S. prosecutors by obtaining documents from Odeh's original case in Israel. The documents defeated Odeh's original claim that she was not the person convicted of the supermarket bombing.
The Legal Insurrection blog posted video of Odeh addressing her supporters outside the courthouse after being convicted. "Thank you for supporting me," she said. "We can't fight for justice in such [a] place," she added, smiling and waving a fist defiantly at the federal court building. "We will fight injustice in this world. We will fight injustice!" she shouted, as her supporters cheered. Odeh then led chants of "Yes we can! Yes we can!"

J Street Poll Shows Obama Out of Touch with US Jews

A poll of American Jewish voters carried out by the left-wing J Street lobby shows an overwhelming number of Jew support building in some Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.
The results of the survey should be a wake-up call to President Barack Obama, who has surrounded himself with left-wing Jewish advisers and has given J Street a free pass to the White House while distancing traditional Jewish lobbies, particularly AIPAC.
J Street has been a consistent opponent of almost everything the Netanyahu government does, as reflected in President president’s holy ghost, otherwise known as the “Peace Process.”
A whopping 72 percent of polled American Jewish voters said they support construction in Jewish communities that are not outside the core settlement blocs. Twenty percent of that number back building for Jews in all of Judea and Samaria as well as Jerusalem.

i24news correspondent Jonathan Sacerdoti on the UK Charity Commission investigating terror funding


Islamic Extremists Use YouTube's Automated Copyright Dispute Process To Access Critics' Personal Data

YouTube's infringement reporting system is -- like many others around the web -- fundamentally broken. Making bogus copyright claims is still an easy way to get channels shut down or to siphon ad revenue from existing videos. It can also be used as a censor -- a cheap and dirty way to shut up critics or remove compromising video.
Apparently, Islamic extremists linked with Al-Qaeda have found another use for YouTube's mostly automated dispute process: low-effort doxxing. According to German news sites, a YouTube channel (Al Hayat TV) known for its criticism of Islam has had to send its listed contact person into hiding after bogus copyright claims filed by extremists led to the exposure of his personal information.
On September 25th, someone using the name "First Crist, Copyright" filed bogus copyright complaints against Al Hayat TV. In order to prevent the channel from being shut down for multiple "strikes," Al Hayat TV was forced to file a counter notification. But in order to do so, the channel operators had to expose sensitive information.

More BBC promotion of the ‘Jewish lobby’ trope

So, here we have the BBC once more promoting the age-old antisemitic trope that a “Jewish lobby” made up of rich Jews uses its power and financial clout to manipulate political policy. Moreover, viewers are fed the ridiculous idea that a British politician with a “brave” and “principled” stance is being punished by a wealthy ‘lobby’ (which obviously does not share the same characteristics) simply because “you’re not supposed to say anything anti-Israeli”.
This is just one more example of the growing phenomenon of BBC enablement of the mainstreaming of antisemitic discourse. Broadcasting House: you have a very serious problem.

BBC Radio 1 breached Ofcom rules after ISIS jihadist compared 'quite fun' murder with playing Call of Duty

BBC Radio 1 breached broadcasting guidelines by playing an interview with a jihadist describing terrorism as “quite fun” and just like Call of Duty, Ofcom has found.
The radio station, aimed at younger listeners, broadcast an interview with ISIS fighter Abu Sumayyah as part of the lunchtime Newsbeat, in which he likened a real-life terrorist spree to playing a computer game.
A listener complained to Ofcom, stating the interview had “glorified terrorism”, as both the broadcasting watchdog and the BBC Trust launched an investigation.
Both have now ruled the interview breached guidelines, being played out at an inappropriate time, without proper warning or challenge to Sumayyah.

 What Has the Guardian Got Against Jews?

The Guardian is well known for its slanted reporting on Israel and has done much to earn its position as Britain’s anti-Zionist paper of choice. Yet quite often one gets the impression that the Guardian’s problem with the Jewish state may actually extend to being more of a problem with Jews in general. Take the reaction to Julie Burchill’s latest book Unchosen: the memoirs of a philosemite. In response to Burchill’s love letter to the Jews the Guardian has hit back with not one, but two hatchet jobs ripping Burchill, her book, and her philosemitism to pieces. But eventually one has to ask: if this newspaper has such a problem with those who have anything nice to say about Jews, then what does the Guardian really think about Jews themselves?
The Guardian now has this sort of thing down to an art, and so of course both pieces are written by Jews: Hadley Freeman and Will Self. Although in his case Self would prefer that we say ex-Jew; apparently he finds Jewishness so distasteful that he claims to have renounced his. This barely noticed abdication took place back in 2006 in protest at events surrounding Israel’s Second Lebanon War. Israel’s critics endlessly insist their antipathy toward the country has nothing to do with it being Jewish, and yet almost as often we have characters like Self and Shlomo Sand affirming Israel’s Jewishness and more to the point adding that they find the place so abhorrent that they can’t bear to remain Jews any longer.

Did Daniel Barenboim use a fake Rabin quote on the pages of the Guardian?

Barenboim in fact also used this alleged Rabin quote in a Nov. 11th op-ed at Haaretz in a Hebrew version of the same op-ed.
However, though we’ve come across quite a few oft-cited quotes by the late Israeli leader, this one used by Barenboim didn’t look at all familiar. Indeed, though we searched both in Hebrew and in English, we couldn’t find any evidence of the quote, or even some similar version of the words cited by Barenboim.
We’ve contacted Guardian editors asking for a source to back up Barenboim’s alleged Rabin quote and will let you know when we receive a reply.

New York Times Opinion Bias by the Numbers

The New York Times is nearly seven times more likely to publish pieces primarily critical of Israel than those primarily critical of the Palestinians, continuing a pattern of bias previously seen at the newspaper, a new CAMERA analysis has found.
The newspaper is also twice as likely to publish opinion pieces that predominantly support the Palestinian narrative about which side deserves more sympathy or criticism than pieces that predominantly support the Israeli narrative.
The analysis, which examined staff columns and guest Op-Eds during the year period from Oct. 5, 2013 through Oct. 4, 2014, considers the 75 opinion pieces that focused on Israel or the Palestinians. Of those, 31 were either predominantly critical of Israel or sympathetic to Palestinians; 14 were either predominantly critical of Palestinians or sympathetic to Israel; the remaining 30 did not predominantly criticize or support one side over the other, although they often suggested a moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas by criticizing both in roughly equal measure.

Guardian publishes two anti-Jewish screeds by ‘ex-Jews’, but censors ‘ex-Muslims’

To recap: Whilst Jews are clearly free – in the spirit of free and open debate – to use the pages of the Guardian to smear Judaism as an inherently racist faith, a respectful and intelligent comment (below the line) by former Muslims critical of Islam is inconsistent with their community standards.
In addition to the egregious double standards at play, the deleted comment simply gives more credence to the ExMuslimForum’s critique of the moral relativism of some “white liberals”, who, in silencing such dissenting voices, seem to believe that “everyone else is free to critique their own religion, and other faiths and ideas too….but Islam must be protected.”

Diplomats say Iran refused to let in UN nuclear expert 5 times

Iran has refused five times to let a UN atomic agency official, believed to be an American bomb expert, into the country as part of a team investigating its disputed nuclear activities, diplomats said.
Iran says it has the right to decide who has access to its territory, adding it had allowed in other International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) staff seeking to advance a long-stalled probe into suspected atomic arms research.
But its repeated failure to provide a visa to one specific IAEA expert may reinforce an impression in the West of a continuing reluctance by Tehran to fully answer allegations that it has worked on designing a nuclear-armed missile.
For the IAEA "to be able to address the outstanding issues effectively, it is important that any staff member ... with the requisite expertise is able to participate in the agency's technical activities in Iran," the agency said in a confidential report to member states.

Russia to build two more nuclear reactors for Iran

Russia on Tuesday signed a deal with Iran to build two new nuclear reactors and agreed to expand the total number of Russian reactors in the country to eight, the state nuclear agency Rosatom said.
A series of agreements, signed during a visit to Moscow by Iran’s nuclear program chief Ali Akbar Salehi, includes a contract for two new reactors at the existing Russia-built Bushehr plant.
The so-called Bushehr Phase II consists of two reactors at the same Persian Gulf coast site as the existing 1,000 megawatt reactor Russia launched last year.

Did FIFA Cancel Qatar's Hosting of 2022 Games?

There were conflicting reports on Monday regarding FIFA’s position on Qatar’s hosting the 2022 World Cup.
While the German newspaper Der Spiegel reported that FIFA president Sepp Blatter told members of the Norwegian FA that "the 2022 World Cup won't take place in Qatar" during a dinner held in October, the international federation later denied the report.
According to the Der Spiegel report, Blatter called Qatar's rulers "arrogant" and said that "they think they're allowed to do anything with their money". Blatter allegedly rebuked Qatar for backing the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group.
However, a FIFA spokesperson later denied that Blatter made the comments and reaffirmed to the International Business Times (IBT) that Qatar will host the 2022 soccer tournament.

Conflict-themed eatery in Pennsylvania closes after threat

A western Pennsylvania takeout restaurant that serves food from countries at odds with the United States, and came under fire from Jewish groups who said the the menu was anti-Israel, has temporarily closed following a threatening letter.
Pittsburgh police are investigating the threat against Conflict Kitchen, a kiosk in the city’s Schenley Plaza, but declined to release details.
Public safety spokeswoman Sonya Toler said Saturday that the letter was sent to police, but she wasn’t sure when it was received.

Vandals, Anti-Israel Protesters Assail Istanbul’s Largest Synagogue (VIDEO)

Unknown vandals posted a note reading “To be Demolished” on the doors of Istanbul’s main Neve Shalom Synagogue on Friday, according to a local newspaper.
A young male in his teens, wearing a Turkish flag on his back, posted the note, a local source, who requested anonymity due to the unsafe atmosphere, told The Algemeiner on Monday.
Neve Shalom, Istanbul’s largest synagogue, was empty and closed at the time of the incident, which apparently took place after Friday evening Sabbath services.
After checking out the vicinity for possible bombs, security guards removed the note.

Israel, India successfully test advanced missile system

The test, conducted with the Defense Ministry and India’s Defence Research and Development Organization, validated all components of the weapons system, from radar detection to interception and detonation of the incoming projectile.
“The system’s impressive, advanced capabilities proven today in this complex test, are another testimony of IAI’s resilience, advanced and groundbreaking capabilities,” said Israel Aircraft Industries president and CEO Joseph Weiss.
Dr. Avinash Chander, the head of India’s DRDO and an adviser to the defense minister, called the test “an important milestone in the cooperation between India and Israel.”

Jet Blue and El Al. Together at last

The BDS ' holes must be feeling rather blue right about now. Their efforts to isolate Israel are falling flat.
El Al, Israel's national airlines has proudly announced its new partnership with JetBlue Airways, offering direct flights from 38 US cities. All three local airports will be served- San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco.
Luggage will automatically be transferred between the JetBlue and EL AL flights. El Al's Matmid frequent flyer points will be earned on the JetBlue domestic flights and passengers only need to purchase one ticket through one transaction for travel between their home city and Israel

Rare Canadian Jewish comic book turns up in Toronto

The National Post reported on October 31 that the 1944 comic book, “Jewish War Heroes,” turned up in a box of books donated to the Kelly Library at the University of Toronto’s St. Michael’s College. The comic book was the first installment of a three-issue series published by the Canadian Jewish Congress to raise awareness about Jewish participation in the war effort against Nazi Germany and the Axis powers. The series was a means of combating the incorrect perception among some Canadians that Jewish citizens were shirking their national duty.
Each page of the found comic book was devoted to a different featured Jewish war hero. Yank Levy wrote a book on guerrilla warfare and appeared on the cover of Life magazine; Israel Fisanovitch was a Soviet submarine captain; and Brigadier Frederick Hermann Kisch and Alfred Brenner received the Distinguished Flying Cross.
The first issue contained an informational page stating that 1.5 million Jews were known to be serving in the various Allied armies, navies and air forces — the bulk of them in the US and Soviet armed forces (500,000 each). There were at least 12,000 Jews in Canadian uniform, the same number as from Australia, New Zealand and Africa combined. Palestine and the UK each had 50,000 Jewish officers and enlisted men and women.

Thank you, vets: A survivor’s story of gratitude

The problems our nation now faces feel enormous and daunting. They are. But no more so than those we have confronted and conquered in our past.
I still remember as a boy looking up at a brick chimney at Auschwitz as smoke belched the vaporous remnants of corpses into the air.
I remember frantically scanning the angular piles of bones wrapped in leathery skin that cropped up around the Buchenwald concentration camp in search of my father.
And yet, the men and women of the US military liberated the concentration camps and razed the crematoria. They rescued me, and America welcomed me here and eventually claimed me as one of her own.
I am overwhelmed with gratitude for those brave enough to serve — and for the loving spouses and children who support them.
On this Veterans Day — on every day — let us never forget our heroes in uniform and those who gave their all.
Martin Greenfield is the author of the new book, “Measure of a Man: From Auschwitz Survivor to Presidents’ Tailor.”

Elder's already posted the transcript of Prosor's comments here's the video
Amb. Prosor responds to latest wave of terror attacks at UN press stakeout