Pages

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

03/30 Links Pt2: Associated Press willingly cooperated with the Nazis; Inside the BDS lions' den

From Ian:

Deri mulling revoking resident status of BDS founder
Interior Minister Aryeh Deri said Monday that he is considering revoking the resident status of BDS founder Omar Barghouti.
Deri was among four government ministers to participate in an afternoon question and answer round at Ynet and Yedioth Ahronoth's anti-BDS conference in Jerusalem. Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz also answered questions about combating BDS.
Earlier in the day, Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon and Education Minister Naftali Bennett took part in the morning question and answer round, along with Opposition leader Isaac Herzog, MK Tzipi Livni and MK Yair Lapid.
"The revoking of citizenship or residency is a tool that is hardly ever used because it constitutes a human rights violation," Deri said.
The interior minister has already revoked the resident status of several terrorists from East Jerusalem who committed attacks over the past six months.
Barghouti, he said, was born in Qatar and received a resident status in 1994 after marrying an Israeli woman from Acre and claiming his life is in Israel.

Associated Press willingly cooperated with the Nazis, new report shows
The Associated Press news agency willingly cooperated with Nazi Germany, submitting to the regime’s restrictive rulings on the freedom of the press and providing it with images from its photo archives to be used in its anti-Semitic and anti-Western propaganda machine, a new report reveals.
When Adolf Hitler’s National Socialists rose to power in 1933, all international news agencies but the US-based AP were forced to leave Germany. The AP continued to operate in the Third Reich until 1941, when the United States joined World War II.
According to German historian Harriet Scharnberg, the world’s biggest news agency was only allowed to remain in Germany because it signed a deal with the regime.
The news agency lost control over its copy by submitting itself to the Schriftleitergesetz (editor’s law), agreeing not to print any material “calculated to weaken the strength of the Reich abroad or at home,” she wrote in an article published in the academic journal Studies in Contemporary History.
Scharnberg’s research was first reported by the UK-based Guardian newspaper.
According to the paper, the Nazis’ so-called editor’s law forced AP employees to contribute material for the Nazi party’s propaganda division. One of the four photographers working for the company in the 1930s was Franz Roth, a member of the SS paramilitary unit’s propaganda division. His pictures were handpicked by Hitler, the Guardian writes.
Flashback 2003: CNN’s Iraqi Cover-Up
In a shocking New York Times opinion piece, CNN’s chief news executive Eason Jordan has admitted that for the past decade the network has systematically covered up stories of Iraqi atrocities. Reports of murder, torture, and planned assassinations were suppressed in order to maintain CNN’s Baghdad bureau.
Jordan has not always been so candid — nor honest. Just six months ago on public radio, when challenged regarding the veracity of CNN’s Baghdad reports, Jordan stated:
“CNN has demonstrated again and again that it has a spine; that it’s prepared to be forthright… we work very hard to report forthrightly, to report fairly and to report accurately and if we ever determine we cannot do that, then we would not want to be there [in Iraq]"



The Victims Of The World’s Best Teacher’s Terrorist Husband
Not only was Hanan al-Hroub’s husband a terrorist who murdered Jews, he was a terrorist taking orders and money directly from Fatah, the PLO and Mahmoud Abbas’s predecessor, Yasser Arafat! What’s more, the world’s best teacher has her husband’s “operation” listed as a mark of pride. She doesn’t try to dress it up as a mistake of his past or pretend that he rejected violence while in prison as many other terrorists now claim. Her bio has a direct line between his murderous attack and her decision to marry him.
While finding the details of al-Hroub’s terror attack wasn’t on the first page of a Google search, it didn’t exactly require me to hire a private investigator either. But when reporting on Ms. al-Hroub, no one was able or, more likely, interested in digging any deeper than the shallow headline of “Palestinian teacher wins award for non-violence.” The Guardian happily reported that her terrorist husband and her two daughters were “were shot at by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint” but give absolutely no context and certainly don’t mention his terrorist past (if it is indeed only in his past). Sadly, that is was passes for journalism these days.
The mainstream media is not interested in muddying its perfect story by mentioning that its heroic teacher is in bed with a terrorist with blood on his hands. There isn’t much we can do to change this, but we can at least make sure the world does not forget the names of the Jews whose lives were taken by the beloved husband of “the world’s best teacher.”
Our embassy in Israel belongs in Israel’s capital
Washington has never formally recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. When asked what the country’s capital is, administration spokesmen tie themselves in knots to avoid giving an answer. This isn’t just an absurdity, it’s an insult to an ally. It’s also a continuing act of appeasement to rejectionists who oppose Jewish sovereignty over any part of the Jewish homeland. Such discriminatory treatment is obnoxious; that is why presidential hopefuls keep pledging to fix it, and why the House and Senate more than a decade ago, by overwhelming majorities, passed a law — the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 — requiring that the embassy be moved.
Yet nothing changes. A waiver provision in the 1995 law empowers the president to suspend the relocation for six months if necessary “to protect the national security interests of the United States.” Every six months, with perfect regularity, each president since Bill Clinton has issued a waiver.
When pressed, the White House or State Department says that relocating the embassy would amount to prejudging an issue that should be settled through negotiation. That might be plausible if the US embassy were to be established in East Jerusalem — which was occupied by Jordan from 1948 until Israel liberated it in the Six Day War. But no one has ever suggested that the embassy go anywhere but West Jerusalem, the undisputed seat of Israel’s government since 1948.
Israel’s enemies don’t object to siting foreign embassies in Jerusalem because it would undermine diplomatic negotiations. They object because they deny Israel’s claim to any part of Jerusalem, even parts that have always been sovereign Israeli territory. They deny, in other words, that Israel’s very existence is a settled issue. Moving the US embassy to Jerusalem would send one message, simple but significant: Americans do not regard the survival of the Jewish state as negotiable.
Douglas Murray: The questions nobody wants to ask about Asad Shah’s murder
On Easter Saturday a Muslim shopkeeper in Glasgow was brutally murdered. Forty-year-old Asad Shah was allegedly stabbed in the head with a kitchen knife and then stamped upon. Most of the UK press began by going big on this story and referring to it as an act of ‘religious hatred’, comfortably leaving readers with the distinct feeling that – post-Brussels – the Muslim shopkeeper must have been killed by an ‘Islamophobe’. Had that been the case, by now the press would be crawling over every view the killer had ever held and every Facebook connection he had ever made. They would be asking why he had done it and investigating every one of his associates.
But it soon emerged that although the Asad Shah murder was being treated by police as ‘religiously motivated’ the suspected killer was in fact another Muslim who allegedly struck just hours after Mr Shah had posted a message on Facebook wishing a very happy Easter to his ‘beloved Christian nation’ and suggesting people follow in ‘The Real Footstep of Beloved Holy Jesus Christ’. The murdered man’s family have now been advised by police to watch what they say and to disguise where they are in Britain because it is believed that they too could now be targeted.
Mr Shah was an Ahmadiyya (Ahmadi), a member of – against some stiff competition – one of the most persecuted sects within Islam. Persecution against them in Pakistan and elsewhere around the Islamic world is rife. Yet despite that (or perhaps for that very reason) they are probably the most peaceable and indeed admirable sect within Islam. Among other things, Ahmadiyya Muslims formally reject the concept of Jihad that other schools cling to. In Britain whenever there is a vaguely positive news story about Islam it almost invariably involves Ahmadi Muslims. Remember the bus adverts a few years back saying that Islam had ‘love for all, hatred for none’. That was paid for by Ahmadiyya Muslims. Remember the stories of a Muslim group not burning poppies but actually selling them for the Royal British Legion? Ahmadiyyas again.
Obama will leave his successor more Middle East disasters than he inherited
Obama brags about turning away from the pressure to involve America more deeply in Syria. Perhaps that was a good idea, given the results of the involvement America does have. As I write, two different militias that the United States government has armed in Syria are fighting each other with U.S. weapons. In effect, the CIA's weapons are shooting at weapons from the Pentagon. This is the legacy of not doing stupid sh--.
George W. Bush had believed in a democratic domino theory in the Middle East, where a transformed Iraq would leave the region on a path toward liberalization. By the time he left office, popular movements had already resulted in Islamism and terrorism in Iraq and in the Palestinian territories. Somehow, the Obama administration didn't notice this and welcomed the upheaval of the Arab Spring, quickly cutting the feet underneath longterm allies (of dubious value, sure), like the Mubarak regime in Egypt. The result energized Islamist movements in Egypt and led to an uptick of persecutions.
Beyond that, there is the refugee crisis in Europe, which is straining Europe's own remarkably tolerant and liberal political arrangements. This is a direct result of the failed state in Libya and the region-destabilizing war in Syria. Beyond even that, Obama will leave a legacy of nearly unrestricted and unsupervised drone warfare.
And yet I'm afraid afraid of what disasters await when America turns the page again this year.
Bloody tide: Terror deaths increased 8-fold since 2010, says study
The deadly toll of terrorism around the globe has jumped nearly 800 percent in the past five years, according to an exhaustive new report that blames the alarming expansion of Islamist groups across the Middle East and Africa.
The nonprofit Investigative Project on Terrorism found that an average of nearly 30,000 people per year have been killed by terrorists since 2010, when terrorism's death toll was 3,284. The authors of the study, which tabulated the numbers through the end of 2015, say that the exponential increase shows two troubling trends: More attacks are happening, and they tend to be deadlier than ever.
“Everyone has known that terrorist attacks have generally been increasing yearly since 9/11,” Steven Emerson, executive director of IPT, tells FoxNews.com. “But the magnitude of the increase of the attacks surprised us, especially in the past five years. Even if you look back at the annual reports issued by the most senior analysts in the top five intelligence and counter-terrorism agencies, there is not one report that predicted or forecasted that we would likely see such a massive escalation of attacks.”
Analysis: ISIS and the fantasy of an Islamic caliphate are not long for this world
The idea of ISIS will not disappear, but its power and and attraction will weaken. When this happens, ISIS will shrink to its true dimensions: a violent gang of Ba'athist Sunnis, and it will go back to its essence: an al-Qaida style terrorist organization, even if it is a more sophisticated and cruel one. The group's losses on the battlefield will affect its affiliated groups that have pledged allegiance to it and weaken them. From Boko Haram in Nigeria to Ansar Bayit al-Maqdes in Sinai and those in Europe.
The victory in Palmyra gives Assad's army a massive morale boost. After solidifying its control in Damascus and the Alawite coast, and after turning its gaze to the north and east, soon Assad's army will try to regain control of the south, near the border with Jordan, where the uprising against the regime began five years ago, and to the area bordering Israel. The quiet on the Golan Heights is likely to be maintained if and when this occurs.
Assad is improving his bargaining position in talks with the opposition on a diplomatic solution, while in the background, surprisingly, the fragile cease-fire has been holding for the better part of a month. Assad's improving position is turning from a problem to a solution and serving to further highlight the failure of US President Barack Obama's Middle East policy.
Isi Leibler: American Jews face dilemma in presidential elections
Democratic supporters witnessed a struggle between Hillary Clinton – who until recently faced virtually no competition – and Bernie Sanders, a relatively unknown older Jewish senator from Vermont, a leftist throwback to prewar Jewish socialists raging against the “domination” of Wall Street and calling for a redistribution of wealth. He is also highly critical of Israel and a J Street supporter, pandering to the growing anti-Israeli sentiment among left-wing Democrats. His populism has generated substantial support, especially from young people.
Nevertheless, despite being widely resented and distrusted in her own party, Clinton is likely to win the Democratic nomination. But the dramatic flow of support of the radical views promoted by Sanders has created concern that in office, she would seek to placate the radicals within the party. That, in turn, could encourage her to revert to the hostile attitude that prevailed during her term as secretary of state toward Israel and especially Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
It also reinforces concerns about some of the vicious anti-Israeli advisers she engaged in the past, who were exposed in her declassified e-mails.
Every presidential candidate invited to the recent annual convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC ) passionately supported the Jewish state. The only exception was Sanders, who declined to address AIPAC and spoke at another location where he bitterly criticized Israel. But electoral pledges and passionate undertakings by presidential candidates and politicians at AIPAC must be treated with considerable cynicism, as from experience they are frequently watered down or breached when the candidate is elected.
Lindsey Graham in Israel: Trump’s foreign policy worse than Obama’s
If the US presidential race comes down to Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump, Israel should “pull for Congress,” an institution that “has Israel’s back more than any other institution,” South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said Tuesday in Jerusalem.
The former presidential candidate headed a six member Congressional delegation on a 24-hour visit to Israel as part of a regional tour that will take them to Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The group met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, and will meet Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon on Wednesday.
“One thing I can say is that the Congress has historically had Israel’s back, and that presidents come and go,” Graham said when asked by The Jerusalem Post who he would favor in a Trump-Clinton race were he an Israeli.
“I’ve been pretty open that I don’t think Donald Trump is a reliable Republican conservative. I think his foreign policy is ill conceived and would be dangerous for the entire world,” he said during a meeting with three journalists.
As for Clinton, Graham said: “I’m not excited about a third term of Barack Obama, and I think in many ways that is what it would represent.”
i24 TV: UN's new Palestine czar Michael Lynk is not "impartial," says Hillel Neuer


Inside the BDS lions' den
Disguising herself as a fervent and devoted BDS supporter, Adi Cohen participated in rallies, speeches and panels during Israel Apartheid Week and discovered their recruitment methods and how they silence their opposition.
I sat for a full hour, tapping my foot restlessly.I was in a small East London room that serves as the offices of the Friends of Al-Aqsa. It was relatively empty and lit by an overly white fluorescent light bulb. Oil-soaked food lay on a table in the center of the room. That was the first time I felt scared.
After surreptitiously participating in BDS activities for a few of weeks, I could already identify the regulars at events, be they organized by BDS or by any of the other organizations that work alongside them. The Friends of Al-Aqsa is one of them. Last Saturday, they held a conference and called on volunteers to register. So I did just that. At this point, it seemed to me that my face had become familiar to them, as well.
We sat in a small circle. I was the only woman in the room, and also the only non-Muslim. Despite the smiles and kindness of those around me, I was, for the first time, afraid to reveal my background, even though I had declared that I shared the goals of the people around me. I was frustrated with myself for having this fear. Mostly, I was afraid that they wouldn't believe me.
BDS: Helping Palestinians or Promoting Hate?
Sadly, university students, unions, and those in show business who believe they are lending their energy in support of the Palestinian people might take a moment to understand that they are supporting politicians -- both from the Palestinian territories and from terrorist sponsors -- who are, in fact, using the Palestinian people as pawns in a game of chess where oil, money and power are the rewards.
Rather than promote boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS), well-meaning idealists might consider how best to assist the Palestinians, whose own leaders siphon off aid money they receive from other countries. Students might consider how to establish industries to improve the Palestinian job market, instead of boycotting Israeli companies that employ thousands of Palestinians. They might make an effort to understand the real situation and work towards promoting a lasting peace, instead of misguidedly worsening the plight of Palestinians.
Peace requires empathy; the BDS movement, with its secret aim of destroying a free and democratic nation, promotes nothing but resentment, division and hate.
Roseanne Barr: BDS’s fascist narrative
We want to solve the problems that we are responsible for, but that is impossible without first of all, agreeing that the larger problem is double standards. Let’s start there — and then proceed to matters of land. Without just and ethical redress of the 2,000 year old use of double standards against a victim first removed from their lands and then from the earth itself over and over and over again — the arrogant and ignorant who see themselves as righteous are just blowhards, liars, and blood thirsty bigots.
These campuses, BDS factories, are anti-truth, and the truth is they work very hard to silence their opponents’ points, rather than to engage in civil communication and argument that lead to actual redress, and the embrace of Solutions which might actually work for the everyday people at risk. Again, to absolute fascists, negotiation means losing.
Only by silencing the outraged opinion of those it wishes to exterminate can any fascist narrative continue to exist, because it is a LIE whose center cannot hold in the threatening and inevitably victorious face of Fact.
Intelligent and moral people know that Peace between Israel and her neighbors and cousins, who are ALL targets, human shields for war profiteers, such as BDS trust-funders, is not only possible, but quite probable, with the creation of the right words at the right time, and nothing more. In the Story of Esther, we learn that Power is strung together with words, and it is words which can take it all apart. Truth and Fact are the Jewish people’s ultimate weapons against liars and revisionist erasers of our history as the indigenous people of Eretz Yisroel — so, let’s consider that we are here today, in Jerusalem together, which is PROOF that we are indeed those whom we’ve always said we were.
UK Justice Minister Michael Gove: BDS Is Committing a Crime Worse Than Apartheid (VIDEO)
The British Justice Minister on Monday railed against the BDS movement, calling it the new manifestation of an old hatred that he said “all of us would have thought would have vanished from this earth forever, after the unique crime of the Holocaust.”
Addressing the third annual Algemeiner “Jewish 100 Gala” in New York, UK Secretary of State for Justice Michael Gove, a key honoree of the event, bemoaned the rise of antisemitism in Europe, referring to it as a “virus which mutates.”
“In medieval times, antisemitism was religious, and it found its manifestation in ghettoization and forced conversion,” said Gove, a conservative politician and former journalist. “In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, antisemitism, under the perverted guise of scientific racism, led to eliminationist politics in Austria, in Germany, and the greatest crime that mankind has ever witnessed.”
But, he asserted, “Antisemitism has changed. And now, it finds its expression in opposition to the Jewish people’s collective identity and the existence of the state of Israel.”


U.S. Ambassador: We “Vigorously Oppose” Boycotts of Israel
The United States “vigorously opposes efforts to isolate or boycott Israel,” Ambassador Dan Shapiro told an anti-boycott conference on Monday.
“We have demonstrated this commitment for decades and continue to devote substantial resources in our government to this fight,” he added. “We consider it an extension of our longstanding commitment to fight any effort to delegitimize Israel.
Shapiro, who spoke at the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronoth’s conference against the anti-Israel boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, observed that “the BDS movement is not disconnected from the pernicious and persistent evil of anti-Semitism, which continues to rear its ugly head and is on the rise in too many parts of the world.” He quoted Vice President Joe Biden’s speech at the AIPAC Policy Conference last week: “When swastikas are painted on synagogues, when Jewish people are targeted in terrorist attacks, when thousands of European Jews immigrate to Israel out of fear when a seemingly organized effort to discredit, delegitimize and isolate Israel persists on the international stage, it’s dangerous, it’s wrong and every time we encounter it, we have an obligation to speak out against it.”
Israel is a blind spot for Western liberals
The Muslim- Arab world is abusive towards Christians, Jews and other religious minorities. They are either forced to convert, deported or murdered.
In Israel, the Muslim community is ever-growing, the Bahá'í build temples, and places sacred to Christians are protected and visited by millions of pilgrims.
Israelis enjoy freedom of speech and academic freedom. Seven Israelis have won the Nobel Prize in scientific fields since 2002, and Israel is a world-leading hub of science and high-tech industry. None of that exists in Muslim countries.
Israel may have its share of problems, and some of the criticism against it is justified, but it most certainly is one of the world’s most humane, most advanced countries, miles ahead of the Arab World and other places as well.
Putin acts against the LGBT community, the Chinese oppress millions of Tibetans, Erdoğan imprisons journalists and builds palaces, In France, Muslim women are not allowed to wear a burqa, and Switzerland voted to ban Mosque minarets.
So those who boycott Israel and cite liberal values as their reasoning have either been fooled or are themselves fools.
Nick Cohen: Farewell, George Galloway
It takes an achingly long time for the British to see a lickspittle of mass murderers for what he is. For years, you jump up and down shouting ‘look at what he’s done!’ All but a handful ignore you. But he’s a character, the rest cry. He’s not like those poll-driven, focus-group–tested on-message politicians, who speak in soundbites. He is passionate about his beliefs.
So he is, you reply, and that’s the problem. Since the marches against the Iraq war of 2003, I have written against George Galloway. He has supported Baathist regimes it is fair to describe as fascist: Saddam Hussein’s Sunni Arab dictatorship in Iraq after it had gassed the Kurdish ethnic minority, and Bashar al-Assad‘s Shia Arab dictatorship as his terror provoked revolution.
This is the leader of the British anti-war movement, is it? A man whose commitment to pacifism in no way inhibits him from endorsing the practitioners of genocide? This is the tribune British Muslims elected first in the East End of London and then in Bradford, is it? A man who has supported regimes that have murdered more Muslims than NATO and Israel have ever managed? This is the inspiration left-wing journalists lauded as the model for all their comrades to follow, is it? A man who must treat accusations of rape apology and Jew baiting as a habitual part of his political life.
Apparently so. For years, Galloway was treated with an indulgence that, like a cardiogram, revealed the sicknesses at the heart of the liberal-left.
Austrian bank engulfed in anti-Semitism dispute over BDS account
The Vienna-based Erste Group bank—a financial giant in Central and Eastern Europe—has become embroiled in an anti-Semitism row because its provides an account to a Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) group in Austria.
“The bank should tell BDS Austria to take its business elsewhere, ” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday. He said the account could give Erste Group “a black eye because of anti-Semitism.”
The BDS campaign targets the Jewish state with economic pressure to advance Palestinian interests. The General Secretary of Vienna’s Jewish community, Raimund Fastenbauer, told the Post last week that Erste Group should close the account of BDS Austria.
“Our president [Oskar Deutsch] said at a rally that the BDS campaign is anti-Semitic,” added Fastenbauer.
Cooper praised the leadership of the more than 7,000 Jews in Vienna for “standing up to an anti-peace movement [BDS] that has elements of anti-Semitism.”
Quiet Campus Watchdog Group Releases Report on ‘Antisemitic, Anti-Israel Activity’ at U of South Florida
A group that quietly documents antisemitic and anti-Israel activity on campuses released a new report on Monday, The Algemeiner has learned.
Canary Mission released its findings on the University of South Florida (USF).
“Every word in the report is accurate,” Sylvie Feinsmith, the program director at USF Hillel, told The Algemeiner. “And in fact it’s only the tip of the iceberg of what’s gone on here.”
Canary Mission’s attention was drawn to USF, according to the report, because “divestment resolutions … are a warning sign for us that the safety of Jewish and pro-Israel students and faculty is under threat,” and they had learned in January that a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) resolution was being presented to USF’s student government by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).
Haaretz Again Corrects on Mohammed Al Dura
For the second time, CAMERA prompts correction of a Haaretz English edition translation "error" which blamed Israel for Mohammed Al Dura's death. Both times, the English edition, but not the original Hebrew, attributed the September 2000 shooting to Israel.
Most recently, Haaretz's English edition last Friday reported that the Israeli army killed Mohammed Al Dura. The original Hebrew article by Gidon Levy and Alex Levac did not hold Israel responsible for the September 2000 shooting of Al Dura. It stated (CAMERA's translation): "The image recalls that of Mohammed Al Dura, who was shot and killed in Gaza while his father tried to protect him, but this time the ending was better."
The English version of the article, in contrast, originally referred to "Mohameed al-Dura, the boy who was shot and killed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip in September 2000."
BBC’s Knell amplifies Hamas PR while sidestepping ISIS-Hamas collaboration
Knell continues:
“Palestinians are also alleged to have treated injured IS fighters. I cross into Gaza where Hamas officials strongly deny the claims.”
Viewers then hear once again from Ghazi Hamad.
“We will not allow for anyone from Gaza now to do anything against or to damage or to harm the national security of Egypt and we will not allow for anyone from Sinai to come to use Gaza as a shelter.”
Sharp-eared viewers may have noted Hamad’s use of the future tense and the word “now”. That may well be linked to the fact that a senior Hamas delegation visited Cairo earlier in the month to try to defuse tensions with Egypt. The BBC did not report that visit, so viewers will naturally be unaware of that crucial context to Hamad’s words.
In this report Yolande Knell has once again avoided providing audiences with any serious, objective reporting on the topic of Hamas’ long-standing collaboration with ISIS in Sinai whilst at the same time yet again providing amplification for Hamas’ public relations messaging. She has also misled viewers with regard to the Egyptian allegations concerning Hamas’ collaboration with the Muslim Brotherhood in the murder of an Egyptian official.
So much for the BBC’s claim to be the “standard-setter for international journalism”.
‘Tell The Truth’, Auschwitz Survivor Urges Accused In Nazi Trials
A Holocaust survivor said on Tuesday that four suspects accused by German prosecutors of being accessory to murder at Auschwitz must have known of the mass killings taking place at the camp because of the “unbearable stench” of burning bodies.
Germany is holding what are likely to be its last trials linked to the Holocaust, in which more than six million people, mostly Jews, were killed by the Nazis.
Three men and one woman in their 90s are accused of being an accessory to the murder of hundreds of thousands of people at the Auschwitz death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.
“I want to know what their motivation was, why so many joined in killing millions of people,” 95-year-old Leon Schwarzbaum, a state witness at the trial of two of the suspects, told Reuters in an interview.
“I just hope they all talk eventually. I want to hear it out of their mouths, what they did and why. I want them to tell the truth,” he said.
Uber drops Michigan driver accused of anti-Semitism
Uber has dropped a driver accused by a Jewish University of Michigan student of making anti-Semitic remarks, precipitating a profanity-laced tirade by the would-be customer.
The cab company told student publication the Michigan Review this week that it was investigating the incident between driver Artur Zawada and student Jake Croman.
A video of Croman screaming a torrent of profanities at Zawada has gone viral since it was posted on March 23, three days after the incident.
Croman said he was responding to anti-Semitic remarks.
Israel, China announce NIS 260 million academic cooperation
Israel and China have signed seven academic cooperation agreements with Chinese universities, it was announced Tuesday.
The announcement comes as Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong is visiting Israel to co-host the second meeting of the China-Israel Joint Committee on Innovation Cooperation.
The agreements include the establishment of joint Israeli-Chinese study institutes, as well as investments in student exchange programs.
According to Israel Radio, the program is expected to cost some NIS 260 million ($68 million) over nine years.
Israel’s Council for Higher Education hopes to raise the number of Chinese students studying in Israel from the current figure of some 800 to 3,000 in five years’ time.
Jean-Claude Van Damme does battle with anti-Israel trolls during Jerusalem visit
Sure, Jean-Claude Van Damme can dismantle world-class tough guys with a swift roundhouse kick to the head or shattering punch to the jaw, but “The Muscles from Brussels” learned the hard way in Jerusalem that fighting anti-Israel Internet trolls is a different story.
On Tuesday, during his five-day sojourn in the country, the legendary action star posed for a seemingly innocuous picture outside the Old City wearing a Israel cap, which he captioned “Shalom from Jerusalem, Israel!” on his Facebook page.
That’s when the trouble started.
Within minutes, a torrent of angry postings flooded the page denouncing Israel, and Van Damme for referring to its capital as Jerusalem.
IsraellyCool: Pegasus: On a Wing and a Prayer – Horse and Donkey Rescue in Israel
There are so many reasons to love Israel and the people and here are just another one – Pegasus Animal Rescue, specializing in the rescue of Donkeys and Horses in Israel, founded by Zvika Tamuz.
The Story of Pegasus
The webpage states:
“The Pegasus Society was founded by Zvika Tamuz of “Moked Hai” (“Living Hotline”), who has been rescuing animals since 1993. Zvika has raised horses for more than twenty years. In 2004 he became aware of the phenomenon of horse and donkey abuse in Israel, ever since different animal welfare organizations began referring him cases involving these animals, knowing that he had the know-how and the place to care for them, since he kept horses of his own.
News that somebody takes care of horses and donkeys spread quickly. The National Traffic Police, the National Roads Association and municipal vets, who did not know what to do with these animals, also took the opportunity to call Zvika every time they encountered a stray horse or donkey wandering alone in traffic.”
Charles Krauthammer – At Last, Zion
As part of the Tikvah Fund and Hertog Foundation’s Advanced Institute, “Is Israel Alone?,” Roger Hertog sat down with syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer to revisit Dr. Krauthammer’s legendary article for the fiftieth anniversary of Israeli independence. Published in The Weekly Standard, “At Last, Zion,” described the achievement of Israel’s founders within the full scope of Jewish history, arguing that the Jews had traded the vulnerabilities of Diaspora life—assimilation and discrimination—for new vulnerabilities, namely that the security threats arrayed against the new nation state risked a new kind of extermination. Though much has changed in the nearly two decades since Dr. Krauthammer’s essay, Israel still faces extraordinary security risks. Its demise would constitute the greatest tragedy yet in Jewish history.
In this conversation, Dr. Krauthammer surveys Israel’s many threats, from Iran’s nuclear program to the European embrace of BDS. With his characteristic wit, Dr. Krauthammer analyzes the strategic choices for the United States, Israel, and the American Jewish community. In particular, Dr. Krauthammer devotes much of the discussion to the unique forces in the politics of American Judaism: Jewish leftism, pro-Israel evangelicals, charges of dual loyalty, intermarriage, and the like. The discussion ends on a theological note, as Dr. Krauthammer reflects on the moral obligations of Zionism and on his own theology of trembling doubt.
The full video, which was recorded before a small group of Americans and Israelis on December 18, 2015, is below. It can be watched in full or in thematic chapters that are linked below.
Charles Krauthammer - At Last, Zion


The Top 100 People Positively Influencing Jewish Life, 2015 (INTRODUCTION)
In honor of The Algemeiner’s 3rd annual JEWISH 100 Gala, we are delighted to unveil the third Algemeiner Jewish 100 list of the top one hundred individuals who have positively influenced Jewish life this past year. Before you work your way through this exciting list, we wanted to first share some of the thoughts that we discussed as we developed this endeavor. If we could group these ideas together, the first would be about creating lists, in general; then, what’s unique about lists and Judaism; some finer points differentiating our honorees from the organizations they lead; and some important reflections on all those every day and anonymous-to-us heroes we also want to celebrate without ever knowing their names. And, of course, to thank everyone involved with the creating of the list and who worked hard to put together our gala this year.
In the spirit of The Algemeiner, we want this list to lift the quality of our discourse and our standards in seeking out the best within and amongst us. We hope you enjoy reviewing and studying this list, and we welcome all your feedback, critique and suggestions to be included next year, in what has become our annual tradition at our gala event. Thank you for supporting this great institution and, ultimately, our readers, the Jewish people and friends of the Jewish people whom we serve.
To see the full list, click here


We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.