JPost Editorial: All the refugees
UNRWA’s clientele has grown from fewer than half a million to a claimed 5 million (UNRWA has not taken a census).Judeophobia and Marxism
Its schools, when not being used as Hamas launching-pads, teach hatred of Jews as part of an ongoing program of incitement. Surely the United Nations can do better.
And by the way, the United States will not. The State Department opposes any reform of UNRWA, or transferring its responsibilities to other UN agencies.
If peace negotiations are ever to resume, Israel would be wise to condition them in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 242 of November 22, 1967: All negotiations for “a just and lasting peace” must include all refugees, Jewish and Palestinian. This principle has since been reinforced by the US Congress, which passed a resolution in 2008 requiring that the Jewish refugee issue be raised in any talks on a Middle East peace settlement.
The Knesset finally passed similar legislation this year, after much lobbying by former Jewish refugees from Muslim countries and particularly their organizations in the US, such as Justice for Jews from Arab Countries and Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa. These former refugees today make up about half of Israel’s population.
On November 30, Israel observed its first national commemoration of the exodus of Jewish refugees from Arab lands and Iran. The date marks the day following the partition resolution, when the Arab countries attacked in their first war aimed at wiping out the Jewish state. Palestinians refer to it as the Nakba, catastrophe. But it was also the nakba of the Jews who were thrown out of their homes elsewhere in the Middle East; not to mention the Jews who lost their lives defending Israel in its first of too many wars. This is a point our Foreign Ministry should be making every day.
In the “post-Zionist” narratives of Israeli historians such as Ilan Pappé (formerly an active member of the Israeli Communist Party, Hadash), the entire Jewish national project is a nightmarish tale of occupation, expulsion, discrimination, and institutional racism perpetrated by alien and demonic Zionist invaders. In such accounts, the Palestinians are the permanent victims; Israelis are forever the “brutal colonizers.” According to Pappé, the “Zionist” ethnic cleansing of Palestine was already in full swing in 1948. It was a long-premeditated crime that has been escalating ever since. We increasingly find Jewish anti-Zionists presenting their certificates of divorce from the Jewish state, issuing petitions against Israel’s “apartheid wall” (the security fence to defend against Palestinian suicide bombers), and denouncing Israel’s allegedly racist oppression of local Arabs. At the same time, “progressive” Jews seem indifferent to the suffering of Israeli civilians—the innocent victims of so many savage Palestinian atrocities—including the recent murders of three Israeli teenagers near Hebron. The “progressives” shed tears for Palestinian children, but they invariably turn their heads from the dead of their own people, the Jews. This is a perverse form of humanism in which the systematic denigration of Israel coexists with a wholly romanticized and abstract “Palestinophilism” devoid of any critical thought or normal human solidarity.Hitler's Henchmen in Arabia
Contemporary Marxists and Islamists share a curiously similar apocalyptic agenda of earthly redemption that aspires to the installment of absolute “social justice” through violent means. For both parties, Palestinian martyrdom has become a glowing symbol of “resistance” not only to Israel but also to globalization and the “corrupt” West. At the heart of such radical utopianism, there is the quasi-religious belief that the world will only be “liberated” by the downfall of America and the defeat of the Jews. This chiliastic fantasy has today emerged as a notable point of fusion between the radical anti-Zionist left in the West and the global jihad. Meanwhile, in the real world, the transnational jihadi warriors are in the process of conquering large swathes of northern Syria and Iraq and establishing a new base for their Islamic caliphate. In dealing with these and related challenges involving the porous borders of an imploding Arab Middle East, a bankrupt Marxism has nothing to offer. Indeed, its de facto alliance with the Islamists is perhaps the final stage of its slow death.
What made the relationship between these former Nazis and the Egyptians and Syrians so successful was that it was a genuinely two-way deal. The Arabs offered the Nazis a haven, as well as a market for all their nefarious dealings in arms and black market currency. The Nazis, meanwhile, were able to provide technical and military experts, as well as the knowhow of establishing the instruments of repression.Hamas spokesman said to have harassed female foreign reporter
However, below the back scratching lay a deep and dark underpinning to the relationship between the crescent and the swastika. That was, of course, a hatred of the Jews, and in particular, a desire to see the eradication of Israel.
That shared exterminationist desire had been born during the war itself, when the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husayni, had made his home in the luxurious Hotel Adlon in Berlin in 1941, and had impressed Hitler with his hatred of the Jews. The Mufti lobbied the Nazis hard to kick the British out of the Middle East, and he was instrumental in raising recruits for a largely Muslim unit of the SS called the 13th Armed Mountain Division of the SS Handschar.
A spokesman for Hamas has been accused of sexually harassing a female foreign reporter, and is under investigation by the group ruling the Gaza Strip, according to reports on websites affiliated with the rival Fatah movement. The reporter concerned was not named.
The Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, featured prominently in international media reports about the summer’s fighting in Gaza.
The senior Gaza sources quoted on the Fatah websites said that the journalist, a Gaza-based reporter for an overseas news agency, turned to Zuhri’s colleague, Fawzi Barhoum, with the complaint, according to the NRG news site.
Hamas leadership in Gaza opened an investigation against Zuhri, and decided to suspend him from speaking with foreign press and other public activities, the reports said.
Syrian TV: Israeli jets strike sites near Damascus
Israeli fighter jets launched an airstrike on two military sites outside Damascus, Syrian media and local activists reported Sunday.Richard Behar: The AP And New York Times Gaza Staff Swap
Jets hit military sites at Damascus’s main airport and at the town of Dimas on a key road near the Syrian-Lebanese border.
The alleged attack was reported by Syria’s official SANA news agency and by Shiite terror group Hezbollah’s official television station al-Manar, as well as the the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict in Syria.
“The Israeli enemy attacked Syria by targeting two security areas in Damascus province, namely the Dimas area and the area of Damascus International Airport,” said SANA, adding that no casualties were reported.
SANA called the attack “an aggression against Syria.”
With Matti Friedman’s recent second exposé about Associated Press and its Israel-hostile coverage, and an exposé in The Jewish Press a few days ago, the world’s largest news agency is coming under much-warranted criticism. Also, as revealed by the New York Times’ public editor two weeks ago, we learn that the Times’ top reporter in Gaza – Fares Akram – has gone to work for AP.Pity the Real Refugees
If anybody needed yet more evidence of AP’s bias, perhaps this is it. Akram, as some of you know, was exposed by me in my Forbes blog in August. I had discovered that he once put PLO leader Yasir Arafat as his Facebook profile picture. The Times’ public editor (Margaret Sullivan) notes that “some readers have objected” to the newspaper’s employment of Fares Akram as a “contributor” because of that Arafat photo. A few thoughts:
So we now learn for the first time that the Times only utilized Akram as a “contributor.” However, readers would only have known that he received bylines (and co-bylines with Jerusalem bureau chief Jodi Rudoren). Thus, readers would have had every reason to conclude that he was a staffer. He certainly was their #1 reporter in Gaza. Sullivan also decided to equate Akram with a second Times reporter (Isabel Kershner), who Sullivan notes has also been criticized because her son is starting Israeli military training.
It is now winter. Thousands of lightly-clothed Syrian refugees are holed up in tents, in half-finished buildings and all over the place in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. Refugees from the war with ISIS are in the same boat.Planting the Israeli flag on the Left Bank
Suddenly the United Nations has run out of money to keep them fed, warm and clothed. Many of the elderly, the sick, children and babies will die. Most will suffer for months. Where is the world? Where is humanity?
Is it because donor nations have not kept their promises to pay up?
On the doorstep of the refugee camps money is flowing freely both for war and to keep the status quo of the Palestinian Arabs there in limbo. There is plenty of money there but it is being used for other purposes, ignoring the human crisis in the Middle East.
While outside countries fund by the billions, real refugees die. As the United Nations cries, poor donor countries are allowing it to perpetuate endless conflict and permanent refugee status through UNWRA.
Myers gives the students a statistic: the $26 billion of European and American aid that were invested in the Palestinian Authority over the past two decades and that evaporated as if they had never existed. "Where are the new jobs? Where is the modern industry? Where are the infrastructures for water, power, sewage and roads?" he asks the students, who sit in silence. "Instead of building the infrastructure to set up a state, they built an infrastructure for terrorism. Instead of cherishing the Palestinians' human rights, they trample on them."Bennett Asks Indyk: How Many Need to Die Before You Wake Up?
One young woman whose eyes had been buried in her MacBook throughout the lecture suddenly raises her head and says to him: "You, the Israelis, have no moral right to judge Palestinian human-rights violations as long as you are in the position of the occupier. You must withdraw from Judea and Samaria first."
Myers pulls out the topic of Gaza. "Did you know that more than 160 Palestinian children were killed digging the terror tunnels for Hamas?" he asks. "Did you hear about the building contractors for those tunnels, who were killed after they had finished their work to keep the tunnels' locations from being exposed?"
Economy Minister Naftali Bennett expounded his political vision and discussed upcoming elections Saturday night at the Saban Forum in Washington during an interview with Martin Indyk, US President Barack's Obama's envoy to Israel-Palestinian Authority peace talks.Michael Oren: The Israeli Left 'Has Crashed'
In a heated portion of the dialogue, Bennett asked Indyk: "How many people need to die before you wake up?"
"I believe that the last summer moved anywhere from 10% of Israelis moved from the left to center, and from center to the right," Bennett stated, referring to public feelings in the wake of Operation Protective Edge last summer.
"It wasn't a two day thing, but a fifty day thing. People felt to some degree helpless...these missiles and rockets were fired from the very place we did things right."
Israel's former ambassador to the United States Dr. Michael Oren addressed the Saban Forum Saturday on the topic of the political process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority - and had some damning words for the Israeli Left.Clinton: US-Israel ties should deepen, intensify
"The Left in Israel has crashed, because it has not yet internalized that the Palestinians are not part of the negotiations, and aren't interested in being so," said Oren. "The Palestinians have chosen a different path, the destructive path of delegitimization of Israel."
"On the other hand, the Right doesn't yet have the courage to admit that Israel isn't able to protect its identity and its alliance with the US, while ruling 2.5 million Palestinians," Oren continued.
"Inaction isn't an option. Israel needs to take its fate into its own hands, and to come out with a political initiative that will serve its interests," he insisted.
Former US secretary of state and likely 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said Friday that the US must intensify and deepen cooperation with its Middle East partners, particularly Israel.Biden: ‘Iran won’t get the bomb on our watch. Period’
Dismissing the negative press coverage surrounding tensions between the Netanyahu government and the Obama administration, Clinton said that cooperation between Israel and the US over the past six years has been “quite extraordinary.”
“The funding on Iron dome, the funding of other military needs and equipment, the continuing strategic consultation that we’ve been consistently engaged in, no one can argue with the commitment of this administration to Israel’s security,” Clinton declared at the annual Saban Forum in Washington Friday evening.
Speaking at the Saban Forum in Washington, the vice president tried to dispel uncertainty over the Obama administration’s determination to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear arms.Europe is torpedoing the Palestinian State
“There’s been a lot of malarkey around our position on Iran,” Biden said. While there was an acceptable degree of disagreement between American and Israeli officials concerning dealing with Iran, the vice president said there was immense cooperation between the two allies about the issue, and “no daylight” on the need to stop Iran at all costs.
“We will not let Iran acquire a nuclear weapon. Period. Period. End of discussion. It will not happen on our watch,” he stressed.
“The long and dangerous reach of its nuclear ambitions is felt not just by Israel but by everyone in the neighborhood,” Biden said of the Iranian regime.
The architects of the 1993 Oslo accords, upon which the Middle East peace negotiations have been based wisely, barred unilateral action by either Israel or the Palestinians, and insisted on a permanent agreement reached through negotiation. They recognized the fact that only a mutual understanding between the two parties could bring lasting peace. Yet much of Europe is today enamored of the idea of recognizing a state of “Palestine” in the absence of negotiations, leaving Israel, which actually administers much of the territory that “state” aspires to, out of the discussion. This attempt at imposing a solution unrealistically raises Palestinian expectations, and is a recipe for failure.Israeli authors urge Belgium to recognize Palestine
By encouraging Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s misguided strategy of leapfrogging over the negotiations stage with Israel in pursuit of a theoretical statehood, the Europeans reinforce the Palestinian view that they need not compromise and can somehow get their state on a silver platter. Israelis, meanwhile, having been excluded from the decision, will feel abandoned by European countries, embittered about their treatment, and less likely than ever to make on-the-ground concessions to the Palestinians.
Many of the public figures behind the motion — including 10 Israel Prize winners, Nobel Prize laureate Daniel Kahneman, five former diplomats, several former MKs, and five ex-ministers — have already submitted the same appeal to the Danish and British parliaments, and will send a draft to other European countries seeking to pass a resolution on Palestine.Israel's Biggest Problem: Being a 'White Settlement'
“Your initiative to recognize a Palestinian state will advance the peace prospects, and encourage Israelis and Palestinians to reach a resolution to the conflict,” the letter exhorted.
The missive called for the establishment of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, with “Israeli recognition of Palestine, and Palestinian recognition of Israel.” It also decried the “political deadlock and ongoing occupation and settlement, which leads to conflict with the Palestinians, and torpedoes any possibility of an agreement.”
A large part of Israel’s problem internationally is that it is viewed as an essentially white power, prevailing militarily and economically over officially sanctified minorities. As a result, the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict was not written by the victors – at least not the history promulgated by critical race theorists, anti-colonialists, and the current U.S. administration.Palestinian Wounded in November Car Attack Dies of Wounds
In a Guardian book review written months before 9/11, we find a candid racial expression of the modern multicultural leftist view of Israel:
For Israel's new historians, among them [Tom] Segev and Naomi Shepherd, the Zionist project is part of the saga of white settlement, as in north America and Rhodesia. The settlers declared independence only when they no longer required the mother country's soldiers to subdue the natives. Presenting Israelis as colonisers, rather than as enemies of imperialism, was once the preserve of Palestinian and Marxist writers.
Anti-colonialism evidently means that Europeans and Jews should not win wars. Now that the agenda of “Palestinian and Marxist writers” predominates within universities, Israel’s status is increasingly viewed as another chapter in “the saga of white settlement,” a theory propounded in scholarly tomes such as “Opting for Justice: The Critical Role of Anti-colonial Israelis in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement.” The problem for now is that the righteous non-white “natives” have thus far not shaken off the colonial yoke.
A Palestinian man who was injured in the November 5 car attack at a Jerusalem light rail station outside the Old City succumbed to his wounds Sunday.'It is time to set Pollard free,' Netanyahu urges Kerry
Abd al-Karim Nafith Hamid, 60, was injured when terrorist Ibrahim al-Akkari plowed his car into a group of pedestrians, killing a border police officer and a 17-year-old yeshiva student, and wounding 12 others.
Bethlehem-based Ma'an News Agency said he had suffered multiple fractures to his spine and feet in the attack, and subsequently had a heart attack.
It quoted his widow as claiming he did not receive treatment because he was Arab, but then added: "He has been in an intensive care room and he was given all the necessary surgeries, but he was declared dead today."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for the release of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, who was recently hospitalized, during a phone call with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry Saturday night.IDF begins probe of 8 incidents from Gaza war
"Jonathan Pollard's life is at risk and after 30 years in prison, the time has come to release him and allow him to live out the rest of his life as a free man," Netanyahu said.
Pollard was hospitalized on Friday after falling unconscious. Wife Esther Pollard was notified by prison administration of her husband's hospitalization. She was later informed that her husband recovered and would soon return to prison with medical supervision. It is believed that Pollard, 60, and in his 30th year of incarceration, will need surgery soon.
The statement also said that nine initial reviews had been closed with IDF Magistrate Advocate General Maj. Gen. Danny Efroni concluding that there was insufficient evidence to open a criminal investigation.Six busted for plundering artifacts from Dead Sea cave
With the IDF already having completed initial Fact Finding Assessment (FFA) reviews in a total of 47 cases, 25 cases are sitting on Efroni's case for a final decision.
Approximately another 50 cases are still at more initial stages of review out of the approximate 100 cases being reviewed from about 400 complaints filed.
Of the 13 incidents being criminally investigated, the IDF has revealed details regarding 10 of the cases, including new details in five cases.
The new five cases include an IDF air strike on the residence of the Abu Jama family on July 20 killing 27 Palestinians.
A criminal investigation was ordered as it was found that there was a "reasonable suspicion" that the attack "deviated from the rules which bind IDF forces."
An indictment against the six was filed by the IAA Sunday after the group was observed excavating illegally in the Cave of Skulls, an archaeological site located in the cliffs of a canyon near Masada. The men were also charged with illegally entering Israeli territory without a permit.Anti-Israel Hypocrites Hijack Ferguson
The IAA said officers arrested the suspects in possession of antiquities, including a Roman-era lice comb, after observing them conducting illegal excavations in the cave. The IAA hailed the red-handed bust as the first of its kind in the Judean Desert in 30 years.
The illegal excavation, the indictment charged, “critical damage to archaeological remains, and irreversible damage to archaeological strata” and destroyed numerous earthenware fragments.
Historians, community leaders and political pundits can debate until blue in the face how Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would react to the Ferguson verdict and protests. But when it comes to Israel, the indisputable fact is that Dr. King was an adamant Zionist who said, “The whole world must see that Israel must exist and has a right to exist and is one of the great outposts of democracy in the world,” leaving little doubt that he would be appalled at the barrage of anti-Israel activity, and by those hijacking African Americans’ legitimate civil rights issues by comparing “Ferguson to Palestine” in order to score public opinion points.Charity in France Is Accused of Being a Front for Financing Terrorism in Syria
Now, in the wake of the grand jury decision not to indict in the Eric Garner case, what we’ve seen in Ferguson will surely crop up in New York City, home to Israel’s strongest base of support, as well as some of the nation’s most virulent anti-Israel forces. And home to a heck of a lot of tv cameras, as well.
Sadly, co-opting the struggles of Black America to promote disdain against Israel and Jews is not new.
As far back as 1968, Dr. King warned of the hatred behind using “Zionism” as code for “Jews.” In the December 1969 issue of Encounter magazine, political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset wrote about a dinner at Cambridge he attended with King:
The charity called itself Pearl of Hope, and its appeals on social media featured poignant images of wounded children and calls for donations to promote the health and education of sick Syrian and Palestinian toddlers.Terrorist Prisoners Make More than PA Police
“Syria needs us and we need you,” says one of its exhortations for charity.
But in November, after months of surveillance, the charity was shut down. Now two of its senior leaders, Nabil Ouerfelli, 22, and Yasmine Znaidi, 34, have become the first members of an Islamic charity in France to be charged with financing terrorism since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office.
Mr. Ouerfelli, prosecutors said, was also suspected of fighting for a jihadist group in Syria. Three other members of the charity were arrested in late November but were later released.
The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee debated Sunday a groundbreaking proposal to offset the money Israel collects for the Palestinian Authority (PA) by funneling money given to terrorists back into the State.Russian deputy FM meets with Hezbollah chief
MK Orit Struk (Jewish Home), one of the initiators of the bill, noted that funds given to the PA are a significant factor in encouraging terrorism against Israelis and Jews.
"Being a terrorist actually becomes a profession of choice," Struk stated during the hearing. "I did the math and saw a significant gap between the average salary of a terrorist sitting in Israeli prison and the average salary for a PA police officer is roughly 800 shekel (per month) - in favor of the terrorist."
"Are we mad?" she added. "Why do we have to pay for them to have this advantage?"
Bogdanov arrived in Beirut on Thursday and met with Lebanese leaders, including Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, Prime Minister Tammam Salam, parliament speaker Nabih Berri, and former president Michel Suleiman. The Russian diplomat pledged that Russia would help arm Lebanon against Syrian rebel groups, and said Moscow was working to restart negotiations between the Syrian government and opposition without preconditions.Egypt Restricts Travel to Turkey to Stem Terrorist Recruitment
Both Russia and Hezbollah back the Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad, and both have condemned the US airstrikes against the Islamic State. Hezbollah has dispatched fighters to Syria to bolster Assad’s forces.
Bogdanov arrived at the invitation of the Lebanese government to celebrate 70 years of diplomatic ties between the two countries.
Egyptian authorities have enacted new rules that ban their countrymen from travelling to Turkey without a permit, a move intended to stem terrorist recruitment, Egyptian airport officials told The Associated Press (AP) on Saturday.Islamic State training kids for jihad, UN says
According to the officials, Egyptians aged 18-40 now need to apply for security clearance in central Cairo ahead of departure to Turkey. Over 200 people have been barred over the past 24 hours.
Interior Ministry spokesman Hany Abdel-Latif said the new measure was an effort to prevent Egyptians from travelling through Turkey to join terrorist groups in Syria.
A total of seven images were distributed across social media platforms, including Twitter and jihadi forums, showing a group of adolescents wearing face masks and military fatigues, crouching in shooting positions, and struggling to cock large weapons.Iran rejects US claims it made concessions for talks extension
The Islamic State’s exploitation of children for warfare and other purposes was documented in a November report by the UN entitled “Rule of Terror: Living under ISIS in Syria.” ISIS, as well as ISIL and IS, is an acronym for Islamic State.
According to the dispatch, the jihadi group has “instrumentalized and abused children on a systematic scale,” using them in combat roles, as spies, guards, cooks, medics and even suicide bombers.
Kamalvandi was responding to an AP report that Iran promised to allow snap inspections of its facilities and to neutralize much of its remaining uranium stockpile.Iran increases military spending despite economic woes
Those terms are included in a document that US officials say represents the terms for a seven-month extension in nuclear negotiations between world powers and Iran, agreed to when the last deadline of November 24 passed without an accord. A copy was obtained by The Associated Press.
Fars also reported than a source close to Iran’s nuclear negotiating team rejected claims that Iran had put a freeze on testing new centrifuges.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani will hike military spending by more than a third in the next fiscal year despite presenting a "cautious, tight" budget to parliament on Sunday in response to falling oil prices and punishing sanctions arising from the country's disputed nuclear program.Iran's Military Mastermind Is 'The Leader Of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, And Yemen'
Rouhani proposed a general budget of 8,400 trillion rials ($312.13 billion at the official exchange rate) for the Iranian fiscal year starting March 20, 2015. This includes the entire the sprawling public sector.
Ali Khedery, who served as a special assistant to five US ambassadors and a senior adviser to three heads of US Central Command between 2003 and 2009, told The New York Times: “For the Iranians, really, the gloves are off.”Al Qaeda militant wanted for plotting to bomb NYC subways killed in raid, Pakistan military says
He highlighted the role of Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Qods Force, the foreign arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps. Qods is directing sectarian militias in both Iraq and Syria. At the same time, Suleimani is nurturing the guerilla proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis rebel group in Yemen — in other words, he is controlling powerful Shia proxies all across the Middle East.
“Suleimani is the leader of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen,” Khedery said. “Iraq is not sovereign. It is led by Suleimani, and his boss, [Iranian Supreme Leader] Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei."
For the Americans, any campaign against ISIS means US planes and combat advisors working in parallel with Iranian planes and Shia militias who have US blood on their hands.
Adnan Shukrijumah was killed along with two other suspected militants in the lawless tribal area Saturday, the military said.France vows to fight anti-Semitism after attack
"The al-Qaida leader, who was killed by the Pakistan army in a successful operation, is the same person who had been indicted in the United Stated," said a senior Pakistani army officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to talk to journalists.
Shukrijumah, 39, held a position that once was Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The FBI lists the Saudi as a "most wanted" terrorist and had offered up to a $5 million reward for his capture.
Prosecutors in the U.S. allege Shukrijumah recruited three men in 2008 to receive training for the attack. The New York indictment links him to the Manhattan plot that was supposed to be similar to another plot to bomb British subways.
France’s interior minister vowed Sunday to make the fight against anti-Semitism a “national cause” after the country was rocked by an attack on a couple apparently because the man was Jewish.A Jewish festival in a town without Jews
Speaking at a rally in the Paris suburb of Creteil, where the attack took place on Monday, Bernard Cazeneuve said: “We need to make the fight against racism and anti-Semitism a national cause by getting all bodies concerned involved.”
“The Republic will defend you with all its force because, without you, it would no longer be the Republic,” he added.
Speaking at the same rally, Roger Cukierman, the head of the France’s main Jewish organization (CRIF), said that “Jews feel in danger. Some are already leaving France.”
Cazeneuve said anti-Semitic acts and threats have more than doubled in the past 10 months and called for the authorities to ensure that “none of them goes unpunished.”
Of the 50,000 citizens in the Polish town of Kutno, not one is Jewish - yet it staged perhaps the most impressive concert of Jewish music I've ever heard.The Irreplaceable Work of the Bedouin Soldiers in Judea & Samaria
The performers were all children from schools in the town, the youngest no more than six or seven.
They belted out old hits in Yiddish and Hebrew with a fluency and stage presence that few adult performers could match.
The concert was the finale of an ambitious festival of Jewish culture that the town has held since 1993.
So why does it happen? The short answer is that my great-grandfather was born there.
There's a long answer too, but we'll come on to that.
Their work is essential when searching for clues in places where terror attacks occurred. They know every inch of the ground like the palm of their hand and are able to detect even the smallest changes. Meet the Bedouin Reconnaissance Unit of Judea and Samaria.
In recent months, there has been a rapid increase in violence in Judea and Samaria. Stone hurling, burning tires, stabbings, and shootings are becoming disturbingly frequent. Among the first called to the scene of these violent incidents are the soldiers of the Bedouin Reconnaissance Unit, unofficially called ‘gashashim’, – ‘trackers’, or literally, ‘feelers’. Their knowledge of the terrain and their tracking skills help them give recommendations in real-time to senior commanders on how to deal with these incidents.
Many of the Bedouins serving in the IDF are nomadic pastoralists, raised in sparsely populated areas. As children, they spent much time outside, and thus developed intuitive tracking, which they call ‘the sense’. “We are regular soldiers, just like every other infantry unit,” said Warrant Officer Salaj Sabuad who has been a tracker for more than 23 years. “We take part in every incident that happens in our field.”