08/31 Links Pt2: Is the money given to Palestinian leaders helping?; Israel’s Happiness Revolution

From Ian:

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Is the money we are giving Palestinian leaders helping?

Over the last 20 years there have been many stories of where the money goes that international donors give out to Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and Gaza. Whilst I would love to tell you that the money is spent on the wellbeing of the Palestinian people it is often spent on Palestinian officials, their corrupt habits and often worse terrorism.
For instance, in the last 20 years the Americans have invested $4.5 billion to promote Palestinian democracy in the West Bank and Gaza, as revealed by Palestinian Prime Minister, Rami Hamdallah during a meeting with Congressman Kevin McCarthy, the Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives. $4.5 billion is probably a conservative estimate as it excludes the significant amount of money which has gone into the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) coffers since its creation in 1994, with Palestinian economists estimating the PA has received around $25 billion in financial aid from the U.S. and other countries since then. In 2013, the level of corruption was so bad that even the EU admitted that the PA had somehow lost 2.5 billion euros in aid from 2008-2012.
In terms of success bringing about democracy through the money lavished on it, the PA is right up there with attempts to bring back the dodo from extinction. It is an incredibly naive enterprise considering there is little chance of free assembly in the West Bank or Gaza, an independent judiciary is not on the cards any time soon, press freedom seems a pipe dream, and a functioning democratic Parliament is non-existent. That’s not to exclude, at the top of the Palestinian pyramid, leaders who seem as likely to relinquish power democratically as a baby is likely to stop wanting milk.

MEMRI: Hizb Al-Tahrir Preachers Incite Against West, Israel, Jordan, PA At Al-Aqsa Mosque

An examination of sermons and lectures delivered at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in recent months, particularly by members of Hizb Al-Tahrir, reveals increasing militancy and rampant incitement not only against Israel and the West but also against Jordan, Arab countries, and even the Palestinian Authority. As all these elements become targets for religious belligerence, it seems questionable whether any of the political players that claim any kind of sovereignty over this potentially explosive compound have the political will to exercise their claimed authority and quell the incitement.
Of the various Islamic organizations that hold religious and political activities at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Hizb Al-Tahrir is undoubtedly one of the most active. Movement members deliver lectures and sermons and teach classes on Islam at the mosque throughout the week. In addition to these addresses, which are usually attended by dozens, Hizb Al-Tahrir holds mass rallies in Al-Aqsa that are attended by tens of thousands.

Douglas Murray: Has Jeremy Corbyn ever bothered to speak to ‘the other side’?

Likewise if the future Labour leader really has been involved in a peace process in the Middle East rather than shilling for Hamas and co, can anyone find any occasion when he has gone to pay homage to the heads of any settler movements in the West Bank? There must be some? Pictures of him shaking hands with them, invitations to them to speak in Parliament, videos of him describing them as ‘friends’ and so on? Surely at the very least he will have had meetings with political figures to the right of Netanyahu in the Israeli Knesset? There must be some record of these?
And if Jeremy is indeed concerned about remembering the people killed by all sides in the Middle East conflicts then surely he can’t only be interested in those killed by Jewish paramilitaries during the 1948 War of Independence. Certainly he appears keen to attend memorials for them, but is there any record of him attending events to remember the Jews massacred by Palestinians during the same period? Recently there were some memorials for the medical staff murdered by Arabs in the Hadassah medical convoy massacre . Was Jeremy Corbyn at any of these memorials? It would be very good to know if he was. Otherwise, again, people might think Jeremy’s memorialising has been a little selective, not to say partisan.
And as for inter-faith. This is Jeremy Corbyn’s reason for meeting with some of the most rancid anti-Semites on the planet. So I assume he can also point to meetings with the most viciously anti-Muslim and anti-Arab pastors and rabbis anyone can locate. Fred Phelps for instance must have been into meetings with Jeremy Corbyn. And I imagine Pastor Terry Jones must have been called into a session or two before he tried to torch some Qurans? Meir Kahane has been dead for some years now. But surely before he was shot there are some records of inter-faith meetings between him and Jeremy Corbyn?
Somebody must be able to find these, surely? I know that if I were a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn’s then I would make digging out the photos of these meetings an absolutely top priority. Wouldn’t you?

UK Jewish Group Demands Public Rejection of Terror Groups Hamas and Hezbollah From Labour Leadership Frontrunner Corbyn

The head of a top Jewish organization in Britain said the leading contender for leadership of the country’s Labour party, Jeremy Corbyn, must publicly denounce terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah if he wants to win the trust of the U.K.’s Jewish community, The Telegraph reported on Friday.
Jonathan Arkush, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said the Islington North MP will not be taken seriously by the Jewish community until he starts giving “clear, straight answers to straight questions” and repudiates a series of unsavory characters that he has been linked with. Among them are “antisemites, racists, terrorists bodies, people for whom I would expect any serious British U.K. politicians would want to maintain a great distance. Any British politician in a senior capacity will not be taken seriously if he has any partiality towards terrorist organizations,” according to Arkush.
Among the controversial figures linked to Corbyn are Holocaust denier Paul Eisen, head of the Islamic Movement in Israel Raed Salah, who has been accused of “virulent antisemitism,” Muslim extremist Dyab Abou Jahjah, who has been accused of propogating blood libels against Jews, and Rev. Stephen Sizer, who blamed Israel for the 9/11 attacks and was banned by the Anglican Church for six months for his antisemitic views.
Corbyn also infamously referred to members of the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah as “friends,” though he later claimed that he had used “diplomatic language in the context of dialogue.”

‘A Sinner in Mecca’ documents gay Muslim pilgrimage

The confession of a Pakistani murderer. Overzealous religious police. An Arab angered his pregnant wife was molested in the holiest site known to Islam.
A new film made by a gay Muslim pilgrim offers a English-speaking Western audience a warts-and-all view of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca in a documentary that has attracted death threats and an online hate campaign.
It is a rebuke of Saudi Arabia and its strict Wahhabi form of Islam, but it is also deeply personal — a man trying to reconcile his faith with his sexuality.
From that perspective which includes footage of his wedding to his American husband in New York, millions of Muslims will likely find “A Sinner in Mecca” provocative if not offensive.
But director and pilgrim, Indian-born New Yorker Parvez Sharma, sees it as a wake-up call for a faith followed by nearly a quarter of humanity which he believes has been hijacked by a violent minority.

The New Racists: Christians Who Hate Israel

That a serious Christian can place political agreement with an intransigent enemy before the simple morality of calling for an immediate end to terrorism beggars belief.
Given that the Palestinians refuse to recognize Israel or the rights of the Jewish people, the Pope's recognizing a state of Palestine seems a contradictory gesture. By making this badly-thought-out choice, the Vatican simply encourages the Palestinians in their conviction that their tactics of violence, rejection of peace offers and glorification of terrorists and suicide bombers across their towns and villages is, regardless of all morality and prudent policy, the right course of action.
If morality is at stake, it will also enthuse them to continue with the lies about Jews, hate videos, hate preaching, false historicism, and school textbooks and TV shows that teach children to despise Jews as "sons of apes and pigs." Is that what the Vatican really wants? Is that a goal remotely in keeping with the wishes of Pope Francis?
"Christian children are massacred, and everything is done in plain sight. Islamists proclaim on a daily basis that they will not stop until Christianity is wiped off the face of the earth. So are the world Christian bodies denouncing the Islamic forces for the ethnic cleansing, genocide and historic demographic-religious revolution their brethren is [sic] suffering? No. Christians these days are busy targeting the Israeli Jews. The Pope, who should represent the voice of one billion Catholics around the world, was not busy these days in writing an encyclical against the Islamic persecution of Christians. No, the Catholic Church was very busy in signing a historic agreement with the "State of Palestine," a non-existent entity which, if it (God forbid) should be created, would be the first state after the Nazi Germany to officially ban the Jews and expel the remnant of its Christians." – Giulio Meotti, journalist.

On Temple Mount, some see a dome and imagine an altar

The night before she visited Temple Mount for the first time last year, Aviya Fraenkel was so excited she couldn’t sleep a wink.
“I remember climbing the Mughrabi Bridge [leading to the Temple Mount] and seeing the Western Wall beneath me, so small, and and all these different Jews way down there,” Fraenkel told The Times of Israel recently, standing at the bottom of the same bridge and waiting to enter. “You ask yourself: ‘Hold on, what was I doing down there all these years? It just isn’t interesting. I’m up here now!’ That’s a feeling you can never take back.”
“We still go to the Western Wall and love it, but you suddenly realize the difference. Why settle for so little? Why settle for imitations when we have the real thing?”
Fraenkel, a 29-year-old doctoral student in Assyriology and Bible studies at Bar-Ilan University, is part of a new revival movement sweeping Israel’s national religious community. Defying a centuries-old rabbinical ban on entering the 35-acre compound — considered the holiest site in Judaism where the first and second temples stood — Fraenkel, who created a special tour guides’ course last summer tailored for Temple Mount visitors, now tries to go up every week.
“It was brewing in me for many years,” Fraenkel recalled. “So I took the ritual bath and went up. I can’t completely explain it. Part of it has to do with the belief that there’s a next stage, that our ideals aren’t limited to a state — which is a lot — but that the state must manifest our religious yearnings of the past 2,000 years.”

In New York, Edelstein invites his Arab counterparts to meet him in Jerusalem

Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein was set to turn a speech about the environment into an invitation for dialogue with neighbors in the Middle East in his address to the World Conference of Speakers of Parliament at the UN in New York on Monday.
“My friends and neighbors in the Middle East,” he said in a speech that The Jerusalem Post obtained a copy of on Sunday, “let us talk, people to people, parliament to parliament.
Come to Jerusalem. Come to the Knesset. Meet with me. Sit with me. Talk with me.”
Edelstein pointed out that he and his colleagues do not have the authority to define borders and make peace, but that they should not sit back and wait for their governments to reach agreements on their own.
“We can lay the foundations for any future peace by fostering international and regional cooperation on issues that transcend national borders,” he states, explaining that achieving sustainable development goals requires working across borders, even between states that do not have diplomatic relations.
“Let’s talk water. Let’s talk clean air. Let’s talk prosperity. Let’s talk partnerships. And peace? And borders? These talks, I assure you, will follow,” Edelstein is set to say.
The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), which organized the conference, can facilitate such talks, the speaker suggested.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Abbas moving to boot political opponents and tighten grip on power, critics claim

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s plan to convene the PLO’s parliament- in-exile, the Palestinian National Council (PNC), in order to elect new members of the PLO Executive Committee, is facing strong criticism from several Palestinian factions and officials.
Abbas’s critics claim his true intention behind the move is to get rid of his political opponents and tighten his grip on power. They also claim that contrary to recent reports, Abbas has no intention to resign or quit political life.
One of Abbas’s critics, Yasser Abed Rabbo, said that although he welcomed the decision to convene the PNC, he expressed concern that the upcoming session, which is scheduled to take place in Ramallah in mid-September, would be solely devoted to making personal changes in the PLO leadership.
Abed Rabbo, who was recently dismissed from his job as PLO secretary-general by Abbas, said the PNC meeting should also discuss ways of “correcting” the Palestinian political strategy “in light of the failure of the Oslo Accords.” He said the PNC session should be preceded by a meeting of representatives of various PLO factions to agree on the agenda and future steps.

Report: Abbas searching for candidates to replace him as PA head

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has asked members of his Fatah party to select three candidates to replace him, a daily linked to rival group Hamas reported on Monday.
A source in Fatah told the al-Resalah newspaper that Abbas, 80, is determined to announce his resignation soon from the leadership of the party, which controls the PA.
According to the daily, party organs are trying to dissuade the president from submitting his resignation.
Members of Fatah’s Revolutionary Council were summoned to a “crucial” meeting in Ramallah on Monday evening to discuss the party’s candidates for the PLO’s next Executive Committee.
There was no immediate response from Fatah officials.

Bassan Eid: Boycott the boycott

I don’t know who essentially is pushing the Palestinians towards this story of an economic boycott of Israel; to the best of my knowledge, the Palestinians aren’t the ones setting the economic boycott of Israel in motion on their own and the Palestinian Authority (PA) is trying to rest on its momentum and not to lead it. The BDS (Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment) movement is at the forefront leading the boycott, and as such it is hurting Palestinians a lot more than it is hurting Israel. To be sure, there are interested Palestinian parties, like Mustafa Barghouti, who ran from one dictatorial regime to become deputy under the auspices of the BDS movement and acts on its behalf to exacerbate and aggravate the boycott of Israel. To my mind, Barghouti can attain good results from his perspective with great ease in Norway, for example, but he would not even dare to enter refugee camps and suggest to the people living there that they launch a boycott against Israel.
Palestinian workers today are building homes in the settlements. They’re proud to build for Jews, and there’s no one to help find them alternative work.
Abu Mazen, head of the PA, hasn’t a clue about whom to target with this particular boycott. How can one impose a boycott on settlement products as long as one’s fellow citizens and nationals are the ones building the very same settlements?

Christian-Zionist Revolution is Brewing in Britain

When it comes to Christian Zionism, most people think of the United States - and with good cause. Groups like Christians United For Israel (CUFI) have been among the leading lights in Israel advocacy, with a highly motivated and active grassroots base and support from a diverse range of senior clergymen and women. In terms of numbers, they outstrip even their Jewish pro-Israel counterparts, and in terms of commitment and activism, they often put them to shame.
Less well-known are the Christian Zionist movements outside of the US, for example in Europe. This fact is also, to an extent, not without good cause: for a variety of reasons, Christian Zionists in Europe, while certainly active, have never managed to emulate the success of their American counterparts.
But that could be about to change. In the UK, something of a revolution is brewing, thanks to the vision and tireless efforts of one quietly-determined pastor in reaching out to both Christian and Jewish communities alike.
Dr. Oliver Manyemba is a Pentecostal Christian pastor, as well as a trained investment banker and lecturer at a top London university. He is also a one-man powerhouse who is shaking up the face of UK Christian Zionism - and, by extension, both wider Israel activism and Jewish-Christian community relations.

Hundreds gather for pro-Israel march in Stockholm

Some 600 Jews and pro-Israel activists gathered in the Swedish capital of Stockholm on Sunday to march for the Jewish state and support the battle against anti-Semitism.
The march, an annual event now in its fourth year, was held in the in Raoul Wallenberg Square in Stockholm, named in honor of the Swedish businessman who is credited with saving tens of thousands of Jews from Nazi-occupied Hungary during the Holocaust.
Among the participants in the event were leaders of the Jewish community and members the Swedish parliament, the Hebrew-language NRG news site reported.
A group of about a dozen pro-Palestinian protesters, sporting kefiya headscarves, held a counter-demonstration and called for a boycott of Israel. According to some reports, they also threw stones at the Israeli rally but police kept them apart from the main event.

Confronting anti-Israel views in Sweden

A new anti-Israeli organization has emerged in Sweden. But unlike other anti-Israeli organizations that are grassroots movements consisting mainly of Arabs, the “Jerusalem Committee” consists of Swedish politicians inspired by the extreme hostility toward Israel in the Arab world.
In the annual report of the Jerusalem Committee, from 2012, one can read that the initiative for the formation of the Jerusalem Committee was based on the Swedish participation in the Arab League’s International Conference on Jerusalem in Doha between February 26-28, 2012, where the participants from Sweden were major Swedish politicians like Kerstin Lundgren, foreign policy spokeswoman for the Center Party of Sweden, and Veronica Palm, a member of the Swedish parliament and one of the important names in the Social Democratic Party.
The International Conference on Jerusalem in Doha was hostile to Israel, with the participation of extreme anti-Israeli organizations like Neturei Karta. The purpose of the conference was to condemn Jewish presence in Jerusalem. In the final declaration of the conference the “Judaization” of Jerusalem was criticized. The host of the conference was the Qatari dictator Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. Being hosted by a dictator did not seem to be an issue for the Swedish politicians who were protesting against Jewish presence in Jerusalem.
This conference inspired the Swedish participants to create the Jerusalem Committee with the purpose of “raising the issues of Jerusalem and the Palestinian people’s situation during the occupation.”

Islamic refugee charities in 'significant cash irregularities' probes

TWO ISLAMIC charities that raised at least £1m between them for "refugees in war torn Syria and Palestine" and "victims of natural disasters in Pakistan" are facing probes into "significant financial irregularities"
The Light Charity UK (TLC) received more than £400,000 in one year, but after paying staff was left with just £8,000 for charitable causes, while the connected Fatimiyya Trust pulled in over £162,000 but had ZERO left after making a loss by spending close to £170,000 on staff and support costs.
The Charity Commission is to carry out separate inquiries into the two west London-based organisations which raised more than £1m between them from 2010 to 2012 and have failed to file subsequent accounts, so the total sum is unknown and could be significfantly higher.
TLC, based in Wembley, west London, according to its accounts for the year up to January 31 2013, raised £408,611 in that year.
But it reported fundraising activities cost it over £399,000 - the bulk of which (nearly £344,000 went on staff wages) - leaving under £8,000 in the charity pot.

Luxembourg chain halts sale of Israeli produce

Cactus supermarkets said it would stop carrying Israeli produce until suppliers demonstrated the goods didn’t come from the West Bank.
Tiny Luxembourg is a member of the European Union, which doesn’t recognize Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank and East Jerusalem. There’s been a growing consensus among European states that there needs to be a move “to differentiate between Israel and its settlements project in the day-to-day conduct of bilateral relations,” according to a EU think tank‘s recent paper.
The company’s management reportedly said income from Israeli produce was not very high, and wasn’t worth the bother caused by a local pro-Palestinian group known as the Committee for a Just Peace in the Middle East.
The Comite pour une Paix Juste au Proche-Orient, as the organization is known in French, has demonstrated outside Cactus stores over its alleged sale of settlement products.
The chain nonetheless would continue selling Israeli-made products, such as SodaStream.

US industry union votes to boycott Israel

The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers union [35,900 members 2014] voted on the resolutions on Aug. 20 during its national convention, the union reported on its website Friday.
The resolutions involving Israel and the Palestinians were voted on as part of a series of resolution on foreign policy issues, including support for the Iran nuclear deal. The union said in a statement that it was the first US national union to endorse BDS.
The resolution on Palestine and Israel “points to Israel’s long history of violating the human rights of the Palestinians, starting with the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians in 1947-48 that turned most of Palestine into the State of Israel,” according to the union. It also cites a statement issued by the union’s officers in 2014 condemning Israel’s war on Gaza.
The resolution also calls for cutting off US aid to Israel as well as US support for a peace settlement on the basis of self-determination for Palestinians and the right of return.

China Mulls Mass Conversion To Judaism To Bolster Banking Prowess (satire)

China’s turbulent economic fortunes have the country’s leadership considering a new economic policy that involves making the whole nation Jewish in order to optimize their banking capabilities.
Inflation, the aftereffects of a real estate bubble, currency instability, export pressures, debt, and other concerns have the Chinese Politburo worried that if they do not negotiate current perilous economic situation adeptly, the country will face economic collapse that will lead to widespread deprivation and social unrest. To forestall such a development, President Xi Jinping ordered the country’s political and economic leadership to explore measures aimed at augmenting the nation’s skills in the financial sector, including, if necessary, the adoption of Judaism, which has historically been associated with international banking prowess.
In March Xi had the Politburo commission a study of methods to better prepare the China’s economic stewards for their positions, positions that, in a system rife with cronyism and political horse-trading, were not necessarily secured through reputation. The result was a 450-page document published last week, discussing the avenues by which China might achieve better control over its economy, and minimize negative repercussions from events occurring beyond its borders. The report’s chief recommendation involved the adoption of the Jewish faith by at least the economic leadership figures, if not the entire population.

Egypt sentences 3 Al-Jazeera reporters to 3 years in prison

An Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced three Al-Jazeera English journalists to three years in prison, the last twist in a long-running trial criticized worldwide by press freedom advocates and human rights activists.
The case against Canadian national Mohammed Fahmy, Australian journalist Peter Greste and Egyptian producer Baher Mohammed embroiled their journalism into the wider conflict between Egypt and Qatar following the 2013 military ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.
The three were accused of supporting Morsi’s blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood in their coverage for the Qatari-owned broadcaster.
“I just want to go home today,” Mohammed told reporters in the courtroom as he waited for the session to begin.
“It is all about freedom of speech and professional journalism,” he said.

British envoy to Egypt summoned over Al-Jazeera comments

Egypt’s Foreign Ministry summoned the British ambassador in Cairo on Sunday to protest comments he made after a judge sentenced three Al-Jazeera English journalists to three years prison each for reporting “false news.”
The ministry said in a statement that John Casson’s comments were “unacceptable interference” in the country’s judiciary” and “incompatible with diplomatic norms and practices.”
The court sentenced the three journalists on Saturday, sparking international outcry over the long-running case and highlighting authorities’ crackdown on free speech in the country.
Speaking to television cameras in Arabic after the verdict, Casson said he was “shocked and concerned by the sentences,” in a case that is of “profound interest to Egyptians because it has become a symbol of the basis for stability in the new Egypt.”
“I am concerned that today’s ruling will undermine confidence in the basis of Egypt’s stability, both in Egypt and abroad,” he said.

The BBC must tell its audiences how it defines antisemitism

So, whilst we do know that the BBC does not work according to the EUMC Working Definition of Antisemitism, we do not know which definition it does use and hence the BBC’s funding public has no way of determining what the corporation does in fact consider “to be anti-Semitic material”.
That of course makes it very difficult for any member of the public wishing to submit a complaint concerning antisemitism in BBC content to know whether it is worth his or her time and effort to do so because the ‘goal posts’ are unclear. It also means that public funding is likely to be wasted on handling complaints which, were the general public privy to the BBC’s definition of antisemitism, may not have been submitted in the first place.
At the Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism held in Jerusalem in May, one of the many issues identified was the need for media organisations to adopt standard accepted definitions of antisemitism such as the EUMC Working Definition or the US State Department definition.
Until the day the BBC recognizes the imperative of working according to internationally accepted definitions, in the interests of transparency and accountability it must at least publish its own definition of antisemitism and inform its funding public with which experts (if any) it consulted in order to arrive at a definition it obviously considers to be superior to and more authoritative than the existing ones.

Activists Score Victory Against Radio New Zealand Bias

In late August 2014, Radio New Zealand (“RNZ”), New Zealand’s state-owned radio network, broadcast two controversial items about Israel in which, amongst other things, an interviewee stated that Israel’s actions in Gaza were “genocidal” and that “Zionism and apartheid are the spirituals twin of Nazism.”
The New Zealand Broadcasting Standards Authority (“BSA”) has now ruled that the broadcasts breached the standard that broadly requires controversial issues of public importance to be balanced, a serious and rare outcome.

Guardian/Economist fail to question film’s claim that 70% of IDF ‘atrocity’ testimony was censored

“A movie theater isn’t the ideal setting for forensic analysis of something so complex as a fast-moving, three-front war that changed Israel and the Middle East”, writes Martin Kramer in his investigation into claims made in a new documentary promising to “expose the Israeli military’s censorship” of “atrocities” committed in the 1967 war.

How many Western film critics and other journalists, Kramer asks, will critically examine the claims made in such a film?
Enter the Guardian and The Economist, which both recently published articles that fail to challenge one of the central premises of the documentary: that out of 200 hours of testimony about the Six-Day War from 140 soldiers, all kibbutz members, transcribed into a book published in 1967 entitled “Soldiers’ Talk”, 70% was censored by the Israeli government.
Indeed, Kramer (a renouned scholar on Middle East history) persuasively argues that this claim is simply not true.
Here’s the relevant section from Kramer’s thorough investigation of the film, which is scheduled to be released in Britain in the fall.

Showers installed outside Auschwitz remind visitors of gas chambers

A group of Israelis who visited the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland on Sunday was surprised to see external showers set up at the entrance to the site.
“As a Jew who has lost so many relatives in the Holocaust, they looked like the showers that the Jews were forced to take before entering the gas chambers,” Meir Bulka, 48, told The Jerusalem Post.
According to Bulka, he was not the only one deeply disturbed by this unusual scene.
“All the Israelis felt this was very distasteful," he said. "Someone called it a ‘Holocaust gimmick.’”
Bulka decided to do something proactive about the situation rather than let it go. He went to the main offices and asked the management for an explanation to the strange scene.

Illinois man arrested for toppling Chabad menorah

A 20-year-old man was arrested last week for knocking over a 9-foot menorah at the University of Illinois in Champaign.
Max Kristy of Champaign was arrested several days after the Aug. 21 incident on the front lawn of the Illini Chabad Jewish Center, the Daily Illini student newspaper reported.
Kristy, who does not attend the university, was caught on a surveillance camera pushing the menorah until it snapped at the base. The electrical wiring inside also was damaged.
The menorah also was knocked over in April; the police have not connected the two incidents.
Kristy reportedly told police he was drunk at the time of the incident and planned to take the menorah as a gift to a Jewish friend, the News-Gazette reported. The friend confirmed to police that the two had talked about what he had done, according to the News-Gazette.

MEMRI: Egyptian Filmmaker: Jewish Conspiracy behind Egyptian Film Failure at Cannes Festival

In an August 10, 2015 interview on the Egyptian ON TV channel, filmmaker Khalef Yousuf said that the Jews were behind the failure of Egyptian films at the Cannes film festival. They would buy up all the tickets and then leave the movie theater in droves, in order to get the press to give the film bad reviews, he said. "The same thing happened at the advent of Islam," said Yousuf.

Zionists Sank The Titanic, New Study Shows (satire)

What many people don’t know is that the Titanic was built at the Harland and Wolff Shipyard, which was co-owned by JEWS, Gustav Wolff. Wolff clearly used his JEW TRICKS to build a ship that was sure to become one of the great tragedies of our time. Why, you ask?
The sinking of the Titanic led directly to the filming of the 1997 movie, Titanic. Hollywood, run by JEWS, made $1,843,201,268 from the movie’s release. Aside from the massive success of Titanic, it skyrocketed a young actor named Leonardo DiCaprio into superstardom. DiCaprio became an object of desire for millions of women all over the world. However, in 2005 it was revealed that out of all these women, the actor had begun a relationship with ZIONIST AGENT, Bar Refaeli.
Too many questions surround the Titanic. How did an unsinkable ship sink? Why did a JEW want to build it? Why would a handsome actor become associated with a SHE-JEW? This was clearly all orchestrated as part of the ZIONIST PLOT, aimed at making Bar Rafaeli a household name, thus expanding the influence of the ISRAELI REGIME.
OPEN YOUR EYES!!!!!!!!

Is Kanye's upcoming trip to Israel a ploy to boost his presidential profile?

Rapper Kanye West announced his plan to run for president in 2020 at Sunday's MTV Music Video Awards ceremony.
He ended his speech by declaring, "I have decided in 2020 to run for president," quickly riling up the live audience and social media.
West already clarified his political stance on the legalization of marijuana.
"You all might be thinking right now, I wonder, did he smoke something before he came out here, the answer is yes, I rolled up a little something, I knocked the edge off..." he said.
His announcement to run for the presidency comes ahead of West's scheduled trip to perform in Israel on September 30 at Ramat Gan Stadium. Is his upcoming trip the launch of his presidential campaign?

Top 5 AR, VR and 7D movies in Israel

Going to the movies has long been a favorite way to beat the heat of stifling summer or stay warm and dry during winter. While regular cinema experiences are always fun, Israel is a country of creative technologies and a flair for the extreme.
Augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), interactive edutainment and 7D films add that extra dollop of excitement to screen time.
ISRAEL21c has picked five state-of-the-art movie experiences to enjoy in Israel.

An Israeli ‘white-ball solution’ to water stress

A new study by the World Resources Institute says that Israel — along with the entire Middle East — will be extremely “water stressed” in the coming decades.
But there is plenty of water stress going on in the world right now — such as in California, where earlier this month desperate officials dumped 20,000 black plastic balls into a Los Angeles reservoir to prevent further water losses due to evaporation in the devastating five-year-long drought.
The balls are a good idea — in principle. But according to Israeli water tech start-up NeoTop Water Systems, its water-ball solution is better on all counts than the one implemented in California.
“Not only is our solution cheaper, but it also saves more water. Using our method, we are able to decrease evaporation by 90%,” said Zeev Birger, the company’s founder. “If we manage to cover all of Israel’s reservoirs, we might be able to double our water supply in Israel.”

Unique Second Temple-era podium has Jerusalem archaeologists puzzled

A newly exposed stepped structure of large stone blocks on an ancient street in Jerusalem may have been a platform for public announcements, the Israel Antiques Authority said on Monday.
The pyramid-shaped, finely hewn piece of masonry was uncovered on a 2,000-year-old street that led from the Siloam Pool up to the Temple Mount, where the Second Temple stood at the time.
Archaeologists Nahshon Szanton and Joe Uziel, who are leading the dig, said in a statement that the exact purpose of the raised podium was unclear as no similar dais has been found in previous excavations.
“The structure exposed is unique,” the statement said. “Its exact use remains enigmatic. The structure is built along the street in a place that is clearly visible from afar by passersby making their way to the Temple. We believe the structure was a kind of monumental podium that attracted the public’s attention when walking on the city’s main street.”
Ancient rabbinical sources say stone assemblies were used for public announcements in biblical times, and the Talmud intriguingly mentions a “Claims Stone” in Jerusalem where lost and found-related transactions took place.

Matti Friedman: Israel’s Happiness Revolution

The Israeli culture wars arrived in my kitchen a few months ago when I discovered that the cure for my daughter’s grumpy preschooler moods was a Hebrew dance hit called “Happiness Revolution.” The song is of the genre known loosely as Mizrahi, a blend of Middle Eastern, Greek, and Western influences associated with Israelis who have roots in the Islamic world. In the country’s early decades Mizrahi music was deemed primitive and generally kept off radio and TV, shunted instead into an underground of small clubs, cheap wedding halls, and cassette stores clustered around the grimy bus station in Tel Aviv.
It turned out that my daughter not only knew the words (“A happiness revolution / Because we’re all family! We’ll dance like crazy / Because it’s time to fly!”) but also dance moves that she performed while watching her reflection in the oven door. She had learned the song at her Jerusalem kindergarten from the music teacher, a young ultra-Orthodox woman with no Middle Eastern roots that I can discern. When I attended the year-end party at the kindergarten, the kind of affair where the customary soundtrack has always been Naomi Shemer, the kids put on a performance involving a dozen songs, more than half of which were Mizrahi.
When I played “Happiness Revolution” at home, it turned out that my 8-year-old twins knew the song too—and, while we were at it, they wanted to hear “Terminal 3,” a Mizrahi hit about a South American vacation whose lyrics they learned on the bus during class trips. They didn’t think the music was strange or funny. They had breathed it in the Israeli air and it was theirs.