Tuesday, June 28, 2016
Notes on a Gazan’s Visit to Israel
After the last war, Israel eased some of their restrictions, and hundreds of Gazans crossed every day. Most of the people who obtained permits were either businessmen or local staff members of international organizations.Report: U.S. Government Cash Funds Anti-Israel Groups
Fewer than 10 people were sitting on the chairs waiting for the soldier in the glass enclosure to call each name. Many of them were mothers with their children. Most, I assumed, were patients in need of medical treatment.
They called me a few minutes after I arrived. An Israeli soldier, sitting on a tall chair behind the glass, gave me my permit and my I.D.
It is rare that I see an Israeli in person; Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, and I was too young then to remember their presence. However, I witnessed three wars in less than six years. The last one was devastating. I remember the warplanes and F-16s and artillery shells.
At Erez, I saw members of the Israeli defense forces, but not the same ones who fought in wars that left people dead and homes destroyed. I saw Israeli soldiers working administrative jobs, soldiers who help people wanting to leave. I used English with them because I felt they wouldn’t understand me otherwise — though they speak Arabic very well. (h/t Zvi)
The U.S. government funnels millions of taxpayer dollars into groups that promote anti-Israel and anti-Semitic views, according to a forthcoming report from a watchdog for non-governmental organizations.Knesset panel approves defanged NGO bill for final votes
Determining the exact dollar amount is impossible to total due to a lack of transparency and widespread discrepancies in federal spending databases, the group NGO Monitor found in a new study that will be published later this month.
U.S. grants have gone to organizations that have called for the international community to divest from Israel, rationalized terrorist attacks against the Jewish state, and compared Israelis to Nazis.
Naftali Balanson, the chief of staff at NGO Monitor, said groups that promote policies that directly contradict U.S. government support for peace efforts should be disqualified from receiving funding.
“We encourage the end of all funding, both directly and indirectly, for NGOs that participate in the demonization and delegitimization campaigns,” Balanson said during a meeting last week on Capitol Hill.
“When you have organizations that are receiving money ostensibly for peace, human rights, and democracy but they refuse to work with Israeli partners, they refuse to meet with Israelis, and push for boycotts, those are in direct contradiction and seems to be a complete waste of taxpayer money,” he added.
The NGO Monitor report cited Jewish Voice for Peace, American Friends Service Committee, and the New York-based Rockefeller Brothers Fund as groups that engage in anti-Israel rhetoric.
The Knesset’s Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee on Monday approved a softened version of the controversial NGO transparency bill for a second and third reading.Natan Sharansky: There is no future for Jews in France
According to the final draft of the bill, representatives of organizations that receive the majority of their funding from foreign states will not be forced to wear special tags in the Knesset, as was originally stipulated, and the law will only apply to donations received from January 2017. Earlier drafts had suggested the law be applied retroactively.
The proposed legislation stipulates that the organizations will need to note their funding sources on letters to public officials and in advertisements, but omits the requirement to list their funding in appeals to Israeli courts. The organizations, before they appear in Knesset hearings, will also have to update the lawmakers on their foreign funding, but won’t need to testify to that effect during the meetings. The groups, primarily left-wing human rights groups, must report their funding sources to the national NGO registry, which, in turn, is required to make that information public.
Arab immigration to France and deep-seated anti-Semitism in that country mean French Jews have no future there, the head of the Jewish Agency for Israel said.
Natan Sharansky made this declaration on Monday in the French capital, where he was attending a Jewish Agency Board of Governors meeting, held in the city for the first time as a sign of solidarity with French Jews.
“We came here because there are historical processes here,” Sharansky said of France, which for the past two years has been Israel’s largest source of immigrants thanks to a record-setting 15,000 Jews who settled in Israel in that time.
“There is no future for the Jews in France because of the Arabs, and because of a very anti-Israel position in society, where new anti-Semitism and ancient anti-Semitism converge,” Sharansky told JTA.
Since 2012, Islamists have killed eight Jews in two shooting attacks that came amid hundreds of nonlethal violent assaults. A French citizen with alleged ties to Islamist groups is standing trial in France for a third shooting in 2014 at the Jewish Museum of Belgium, in which four people died.
MEMRI: Coptic Activist Medhat Kelada: Egyptians Accuse Israel Of Racism While Their Own Country Is Rife With It
On June 2, 2016, the liberal website Elaph posted an article titled "Racism on Egyptian Soil." The article, by Medhat Kelada, a Coptic Egyptian human rights and minority rights activist and head of the European Coptic Organizations Union, accuses Egyptian society of employing a double standard when it comes to racism. Kelada writes that Egyptians accuse Israel of being racist towards the Palestinians and of oppressing them, while Egypt itself is rife with racism, oppression and religious extremism. Noting that Egypt's revolutions sought to bring justice, freedom and equality in Egypt, but actually failed to do so, he states that Egypt's institutions, and especially the religious establishment, need to be "revolutionized". He calls to create a "new religion" in Egypt that can "produce people with values of love, loyalty and devotion to the homeland and to others."40 years later, youngest Entebbe survivors tearfully recall hijacking, rescue
The following are excerpts from the article:
"In our wretched region, we are not amazed to see a thief standing and preaching morality to people, or prostitutes preaching morality to virtuous women. Nor are we amazed to see a senior official cursing Israel for its racism against the Palestinians. We [Arab] peoples believe that we are the best in the world, that we possess the [best] moral values, religion and culture, and that we have a monopoly on the truth. We live in complete denial of the bleak reality and the even bleaker future.
"In our religious universities, students are [metaphorically] taught to eat human flesh, [yet] our clerics strive to outdo one another in giving speeches that announce to the world that these universities have never produced a single terrorist!... Our glorious nation is the perfect embodiment of the religious schizophrenia that typifies our entire region: everyone speaks of morality but does not implement it, speaks of nationality but does not understand it, speaks of honesty but does not know what it is, and speaks of manliness but does not actually live by this [principle]. We curse Israel's racism towards the Palestinians, while we [Egyptians] behave in a worse and more disgraceful [manner]."
For decades, the daring Israeli military rescue operation at Entebbe has overshadowed the men, women and children who endured the week of captivity that prompted the raid.To the UN and UNESCO: Don't Try to Fence Us In!
Two hundred and forty-six people were taken hostage by Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorists on June 27, 1976, on an Air France flight from Israel to Paris. The plane was diverted first to Athens — where another 58 people were brought aboard, along with four more hijackers — and finally landed in Entebbe Airport in Uganda.
In the days that followed, almost all of the non-Israeli and non-Jewish passengers were released, save for the French flight crew, who volunteered to stay behind with the Jewish hostages.
On July 4, 1976, a group of approximately 100 Israeli commandos, led by future Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Dan Shomron, Maj. Gen. Yekutiel Adam, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Peled and Lt. Col. Yonatan (Yoni) Netanyahu, launched one of the most daring rescue operations ever conducted, which resulted in 103 out of the 106 hostages being brought back alive and only one fatality among the Israeli forces — Yonatan Netanyahu.
The rescue operation goes by many names: Operation Thunderbolt, its official code name; Operation Yonatan, after the fallen officer; Operation Entebbe, for the locale; and the Raid on Entebbe, for the movie of the same name made just a year after the event.
Forty years later, the bravado of the IDF, the over-the-top personality of Ugandan leader Idi Amin — whose full honorific includes “Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas” — and the action movie quality of the rescue operation are still regularly discussed, taking center stage in discussions of the incident. Often forgotten are the hostages, the 106 men, women and children who were held at gunpoint for a full week.
A majority of the members of the UN and the UNESCO which is part of it are states that cannot be regarded as lovers of press freedom, to say the least.Shmuley Boteach: No holds barred: Obama’s immoral Syria policy fueled Brexit
There is also talk of stopping "hate speech". But hate, like love, is hard to define and the UN has offered no definition of it. Thus anyone could use it as an excuse for "stopping" or restricting freedom of expression.
As for "combating Islamophobia", those who unfurl that banner ignore the fact that it could mean creating a special category for Islam to shield it against any form of criticism, precisely at a time that Islam could benefit from serious critical scrutiny.
At a time that freedom of expression is under attack by a variety of groups from all parts of the political spectrum, the last thing we should wish for is a UN stamp of approval for censorship in any form. What we need is a free flow of information that cannot be subjected to bureaucratic rules and regulations.
The US could have supported moderate rebel troops before Islamic State (ISIS) began to conquer large swaths of the country and after Syrian President Bashar Assad used poison gas on children, as the president himself had promised.Brexit: So is it ‘good for the Jews’?
President Obama’s sin may be the greater of the two. He had far more international popularity that president Bush and could have put together an international coalition to take action to stop the mass slaughter in Syria. But in seeing American power as fundamentally disruptive, and in seeing military intervention as quagmire, the president allowed millions to lose their homes and seek refuge in Europe, provoking the kind of backlash we are now witnessing in Europe in general and Britain in particular.
Let me be clear: I do not condone bigotry or xenophobia of any stripe and have spoken out publicly against any attempt to ban Muslims from entering the US, an act that would fundamentally violate foundational American values and principles. But I equally understand the sentiment that a mass migration of peoples who may contain ISIS terrorists is something that will be opposed by most nations, who will legitimately demand that there be the most basic of vetting.
I have earlier written that the foreign policy of President Obama is fatally flawed by the president’s seeming absence of hatred of evil. It’s one thing to reopen diplomatic relations with Cuba. It’s another thing to eat hot dogs at a baseball game with dictator Raul Castro. It’s one thing to negotiate a catastrophic deal with Iran to allow that terrorist regime to be a nuclear power. It’s quite another to slant power in the Middle East toward Iranian dominance, as Obama’s senior adviser Ben Rhodes has revealed was the president’s intent from the beginning.
But perhaps the greatest stain on the Obama legacy will be the Syrian slaughter and how our president watched hundreds of thousands of innocent Arabs die, including untold numbers of children, and did absolutely nothing.
Stupid stuff indeed.
As a shocked world reacted to England’s unexpected exit from the European Union, Palestinian President Abbas delivered a speech to the European Parliament.Labour Leader Corbyn Faces Revolt After Brexit Vote
Abbas, now in the 11th year of his four-year term, accused Israel of becoming a fascist country.
Then he updated a vicious medieval anti-Semitic canard by charging that (non-existent) rabbis are urging Jews to poison the Palestinian water supply.
The response by representatives of the 28 European nations whose own histories are littered with the terrible consequences of such anti-Semitic blood libels? A thunderous 30-second standing ovation.
So forgive us if while everyone else analyzes the economic impact of the UK exit, and pundits parse the generational and social divide of British voters, we dare to ask a parochial question: is a weakened EU good or bad for the Jews? First, there is the geopolitical calculus of a triple pincer movement to consider: Russian President Vladimir Putin’s troublemaking from the East, the massive migrant-refugee influx into Europe from the South, and now the UK’s secession from the West with unforeseen implications for global economies and politics.
The motion of no confidence against Jeremy Corbyn has passed, but the Labour Party leader refuses to resign:Lee, Scarborough Rip Critics of ‘Brexit’ as Hypocrites
The 172-40 vote, which is not binding, follows resignations from the shadow cabinet and calls on Mr Corbyn to quit.
Mr Corbyn said the ballot had “no constitutional legitimacy” and said he would not “betray” the members who voted for him by resigning.
The leader’s allies have told his critics to trigger a formal leadership contest if they want to challenge him.
Scarborough noted in the midst of his interview on Morning Joe that Lee was one of the few public American supporters of the vote to leave the EU.How the Dutch government subsidizes BDS supporters - heavily
“What they’ve experienced in the past few years that convinced them to make this change last week was the fact that they were subject to a large, distant, centralized power,” Lee said. “A centralized power that was becoming increasingly intrusive and increasingly bureaucratic. Bureaucratic in the sense that there were laws that were foisted upon the people that were developed by unelected, unaccountable, distant bureaucrats.”
Scarborough agreed, saying the situation with the EU had “just kept getting worse.” He painted a comparison with what he said the U.S. had done in the past to Israel, forcing them into deals “that we would never take in a billion years.”
“But presidents force Israel into deals because they want to win a Nobel Prize for peace,” Scarborough said. “We would no more subject ourselves to distant regulations from Brussels then we would turn Texas over to Mexico City. I mean, isn’t it outrageous how hypocritical Americans are judging the British for doing what we would have never allowed ourselves to get into in the first place?”
“Absolutely,” Lee said.
During a debate in late May on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Dutch parliament, Foreign Minister Bert Koenders said: “Statements or meetings concerning BDS are protected by freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, as enshrined in the Dutch Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights.” Hypocritically, thereafter Koenders, a member of the Labor party, PvdA, informed the Israeli government that his government opposes BDS.Add New Jersey to list of states boycotting the anti-Israel boycotters
What Koenders did not say was that the Dutch government heavily subsidizes Dutch organizations for development cooperation which support BDS. The government uses the simplest trick in the book to juggle the truth, earmarking its subsidy to these bodies for other purposes. Thus the Dutch government, despite its official claims to the contrary, de facto financially strengthens and legitimizes BDS promoters.
One of several pro-BDS organizations greatly subsidized by the Dutch government is Cordaid, a Catholic development cooperation body. According to NGO Monitor it received 491 million Euros from the Dutch government from 2007 to 2011. Since then the amount has increased further.
Cordaid has a long history of hate promotion against Israel. Jitschak Santis, formerly with NGO Monitor said: “Cordaid’s biased activities are illustrated by their funding decisions, publications and political positions…Cordaid Director René Grotenhuis, argued during a 2011 panel in the Dutch parliament, that BDS is a defensible tactic because, ‘it is important that people in Palestine look for ways to resist occupation, and this is a non-violent way to do so.’
Just over a week ago I reported how Rhode Island legislature passes anti-BDS law, becoming the 10th state to pass legislation exercising the state’s right not to subsidize the discriminatory Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).Presbyterian Church Passes Resolutions Supporting BDS, Slamming Israeli Settlements
The forms of such legislation in various states focus on pension investments by and/or contracting with state agencies. None of these recent laws, or NY Governor Cuomo’s Executive Order, criminalize or prohibit such boycotts, though some states have longstanding anti-discrimination laws barring boycotts based on national origin, race and other factors.
In May, the New Jersey Senate passed a bill barring pension investments in companies engaging in BDS, and as it moved on to the state Assembly, BDS forces mounted a counter attack, but to no avail.
An overwhelming bipartisan majority in the Assembly passed the law:
The New Jersey Legislature passed legislation that prohibits the state from investing pension and annuity funds in companies that boycott Israel or Israeli businesses.
The bipartisan bill in response to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS, movement against Israel passed the state’s General Assembly on Monday by a vote of 69-3 with 2 abstentions. It unanimously passed the state Senate in May.
Gov. Chris Christie is expected to sign the bill into law.
Presbyterian Church USA passed a series of resolutions at its general assembly in support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, while calling on Israel to leave the disputed territories.Jewish groups decry fresh Presbyterian divestment efforts
Among the measures passed by the Presbyterian Church includes the approval of a report, in a 429-129 vote, that seeks to examine the two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and possible alternatives “including but not limited to that of two sovereign states — Israel and Palestine.” The report says that Israel’s “policy trajectory of continued settlements and brutal occupation” is “deeply troubling.”
“Not only does it make a two-state solution increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to achieve, but the emerging, de facto single state’s systematic violation of Palestinian rights and democratic values is eroding Israel’s moral legitimacy,” the report adds.
Additionally, the Presbyterian Church passed a resolution calling for “prayerful study” of both the church’s support for the BDS movement and opposition to that movement. A third resolution urged the real estate company RE/MAX to stop sales of property within Israeli settlements in the disputed territories. At its previous general assembly in 2014, the Presbyterian Church narrowly passed a resolution calling for divestment from companies doing business in Israel.
Two major US Jewish groups have expressed disappointment at the American Presbyterian Church for endorsing a series of resolutions aimed at intensifying pressure against Israel over its West Bank policies at their biennial General Assembly last week.Presbyterian Church USA’s General Assembly Assails Israel and Abandons Christians in Middle East
The Anti-Defamation League and B’nai B’rith International in a statement Monday both charged the measures voted in by an overwhelming majority at the June 24 meeting served to “demonize” the Jewish state.
The new resolutions come two years after the Presbyterian Church USA ordered denominational divestment from three major US companies it said had profited from Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.
Among the Israel-centered measures passed at the biennial assembly was a report titled “Israel-Palestine: For Human Values in the Absence of a Just Peace,” that suggested the church consider alternatives to the two-state solution given “Israel’s policy trajectory of continued settlements and brutal occupation,” which it blamed for the stalemate in peace talks with the Palestinians.
Some church delegates critical of the “pugnaciously flawed” report argued at the meeting its language questioned the right of Israel’s existence as a Jewish homeland, and urged officials to “add content that acknowledges and offers a corrective to the ways anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism complicate global discourse about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
Last week, the Presbyterian Church USA, a liberal Protestant denomination with approximately 1.5 million members, held its General Assembly in Portland, Oregon. The assembly, which takes place every even-numbered year, is a regular scene of controversy over the church’s stance on the Arab-Israeli conflict. The fighting began in 2004 when the GA voted to divest from companies that did business with Israel’s defense establishment. In 2006, opponents of divestment were able to convince the GA to reverse its decision to single Israel out for divestment, but the anti-Zionists kept at it until 2014, when the GA voted to divest from three companies that do business with the Israeli government: Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola. This year, there was yet another round of proposals targeting Israel for condemnation.One Month Later, UK’s National Union of Students Still Mum in Response to Open Call to Combat Antisemitism
Israel-Palestine Mission Network (IPMN)
On the anti-Israel side of the controversy is the Israel-Palestine Mission Network (IPMN), a church-sponsored group with a long history of broadcasting anti-Zionist and in some instances antisemitic propaganda. For example, the group’s leader, PCUSA “peace” activist Noushin Framke, has declared that Israeli soldiers “are not human beings.”
In one Facebook Post, IPMN leader Noushin Framke stated Israeli soldiers are “not human beings.”
The United Kingdom’s largest and most influential student organization has yet to respond to an open call issued over a month ago by the Cambridge University Students’ Union (CUSU) demanding answers on how it will tackle antisemitism, Varsity reported.Guardian: Raid on Entebbe sowed seeds of right-wing Israeli militarism
The National Union of Students (NUS) — which boasts of representing 600 student organizations and more than 7 million student voices — has been at the center of controversy in recent months following the election of its newest president, Malia Bouattia, who has been accused of antisemitism and support of violence against Israel. In past remarks, Bouattia praised violent “resistance” against Israel and referred to the University of Birmingham as a “Zionist outpost” because of its large Jewish population.
Last month, a CUSU referendum calling to break ties with the NUS over Bouattia’s antisemitic past was narrowly defeated. Leading up to the referendum, a motion mandated CUSU send a letter to the NUS, calling on the organization to address accusations of antisemitism and its response to combating Jew hatred.
More recently, Jonathan Freedland, in a 4500 word reflection on the 4oth anniversary of the raid (‘We thought this would be the end of us’: the raid on Entebbe 40 years on, Guardian, June 25th), raised similar concerns:Facebook Suspiciously Suspends Pro-Israel Page After Anti-Israel Activists Launch ‘Coordinated’ Attack
There is perhaps a more subtle legacy [of the raid], too. A year after Entebbe, Israel took the diplomatic path, engaging in direct negotiations – which led to an eventual peace treaty – with Egypt. Even so, the outrageous success of Operation Thunderbolt planted a thought among some on the Israeli right that proved hard to shift: the belief that there were few problems to which there was not a military solution, that the unglamorous business of compromise could be avoided, so long as the men in uniform were sufficiently creative, courageous or crazy to think of an alternative. Few Israeli politicians would admit they might be prone to an Entebbe syndrome, but that is often how it looks.
Ok, so let’s briefly examine the suggestion that the success of the raid made Israeli leaders less likely to make compromises for peace.
The arguments offered by David, Shephard and Freedland on the political aftermath of Entebbe clearly do not hold up to critical scrutiny.
- Shimon Peres, Rabin’s Defense Minister at the time, was the strongest supporter within his cabinet of a military solution to the hostage crisis. Yet, Peres became the most vocal advocate for the peace process.
- As Freedland himself admits, a year after the raid, a diplomatic process began which led to a peace treaty with Egypt, signed by the right-wing Menachem Begin, and Israel’s relinquishing of Sinai.
- Yitzhak Rabin, who ordered the Entebbe raid, signed the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993, and reached a peace agreement with Jordan a year later.
- The right-wing Binyamin Netanyahu, whose brother Yoni was killed in the raid, signed the Wye River Memorandum in 1988 which reinstated implementation of the Oslo II Agreement and set in motion a staged Israeli withdrawal from additional West Bank territory.
- Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, in a move initiated by right-wing Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon.
- Two Israeli leaders since Entebbe (including Ehud Barak, who helped plan the raid) entered into final status negotiations and offered Palestinians an independent state, in 2000 and 2008 – offers which included painful Israeli compromises for the sake of peace.
A popular pro-Israel Facebook page was abruptly shut down on Monday by the social media giant hours after anti-Israel activists launched a targeted attack on the page, the forum’s administrator told The Algemeiner.Toronto Star Demonizes Israel with False Moral Equivalence
Uri Silberman — who runs The Israel Network page and lives in Israel — said on Monday that after a photo he posted showing Israeli soldiers helping a lost Palestinian child started gaining popularity, anti-Israel activists began posting hateful and antisemitic comments.
“Early Sunday morning, I posted a photo that was circulating on Facebook of Israeli soldiers helping a lost Palestinian boy. In the photo, you see them feeding the child. I wrote up a small story on how they contacted his parents, cared for the child while he waited to be picked up and how everything ended up fine,” Silberman said.
Within minutes, anti-Israel activists began posting threats and aggressive comments many of them antisemitic. Things quickly spiraled out of control, Silberman said.
“There were around 150 comments on this one post alone, with about 99 percent of them anti-Israel. Then they began to comment on other posts as well. Some of the comments called Israel child killers, rapists, murderers, and kidnappers. Other comments said Hitler didn’t finish his job and they would like to do things to Jews that were worse than Hitler,” Silberman told The Algemeiner.
In what can only be described as a false moral equivalence that served to demonize Israel, on Sunday June 26, the Toronto Star published a lengthy Washington Post article entitled “One murder, two families fractured”.Missing Context: HonestReporting's 8 Categories of Media Bias, Video#4 of 8
The article, by reporters William Booth and Ruth Eglash, described the brutal terror attack where Israeli mother of six children, Dafna Meir – wife to Natan, was stabbed to death by a 15-year-old Palestinian teenage terrorist named Mourad Adais in her home in Otniel in the west bank.
(The print-only version of the article was seen by over 315,000 people and it can be read in full as appended below or online by clicking here.)
As the Star’s sub-headline proclaimed: “Husband of slaying victim, father of teenage attacker, both struggle to rebuild lives.”
The Star chose a provocative photo of the Palestinian terrorist’s mother holding her hands up in the air in despair with a caption reading: “The mother of Palestinian teenager Mourad Adais looks to the heavens after Israeli security forces demolished the family home in the West Bank village of Beit Amra. Her son confessed to killing a Jewish settler, his lawyer said.” No photo was printed by the Star to memorialize Daphna Meir.
Canada: Imam commends preacher calling for annihilation of Jews, “enemies of humanity”
Mazin AbdulAdhim, a prominent Imam of Iraqi descent in London, Ontario who is affiliated with the radical Islamic global movement of Hizb ut-Tahrir, commends a young Jordanian child preacher who called on the Muslim nation to launch jihad to liberate Palestine and prayed to Allah to annihilate the Jews the “enemies of humanity.”Jordanian Mosque-Goers Divided over Antisemitic, Jihadi Tirades of Self-Proclaimed Child Preacher
The child preacher Abd Al-Aziz Al-Sayifi takes over the pulpit of mosques in Jordan and recites standard antisemitic and Jihadi texts, criticizing Arab rulers for not liberating the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The following are excerpts from Al-Sayifi’s sermons as documented by MemriTV:
“[The Jews] sometimes claim that they are searching for their temple. They are plundering a land that is not theirs. Worse still, the extremest Zionists are now openly speaking about dividing rh Al-Aqsa Mosque in terms of space and times of prayer.
“Jerusalem is crying for help: Oh Arabs! Oh Muslim!”… We expect the Arabs and Muslims to adopt a more powerful stand in defence of Jerusalem and to devise a strategic plan to resist Zionist policies. We must preserve the resources of the Islamic nation, its ideology, its ulema [scholars]…
“[Those who do not like] to climb mountains will forever live in pits, but the Arabs and Islamic peoples like to climb mountains and refuse to live in pits. I’m telling you, brothers, Palestine will not be liberated through negotiations but through jihad and struggle. Jerusalem lives on in the hearts of every Jordanian man and woman, and in the hearts of every Muslim man and woman.
Lviv Ghetto memorial vandalized in anti-Semitic attack
A monument to the victims of the Holocaust-era ghetto of Lviv in western Ukraine was vandalized in what police suspect is an anti-Semitic incident.Prominent Poland politician honors victims of synagogue burning
Unidentified vandals on Friday threw several gallons of green paint on the memorial, which was erected in 1992 in memory of tens of thousands of Jews who were kept in the ghetto after the German invasion of Ukraine in 1941.
“We called law enforcement officers, and later maintenance services in the Shevchenko district to wash away the paint,” Lviv City Council spokesman Roman Dach told the news website Fakty.
In 1939, approximately 110,000 Jews lived in Lviv, where they constituted one-third of the city's total population, according to the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. Nearly all of them were murdered by German soldiers and local collaborators.
Throughout the summer of 1942, 50,000 Jews were sent to Belzec and Janowska, a camp within the city. In September, the remaining Jews were moved into a smaller ghetto, and in November of that year, "unproductive" Jews were either sent to Janowska or other camps to be murdered.
The leader of the largest political party in Poland took part in ceremonies commemorating the burning of a synagogue in Bialystok during the Holocaust.Netflix has begun adding Hebrew subtitles
In his speech at the Great Synagogue of Bialystok on Monday, Jaroslaw Kaczynski stressed German responsibility for the Holocaust, the dangers of anti-Semitism, and the need for cooperation with Israel.
“The Holocaust was the fault of the German state and the German people who supported Adolf Hitler,” said Kaczynski during the ceremony. “German elite were unable to get into any real opposition.”
On June 27, 1941, German troops marched into Bialystok murdering some 2,500 Jews. About one thousand Jews were burned alive in the city’s synagogue.
Kaczynski, who is a leader of the Law and Justice Party, stressed that the representatives of the other nations of Europe, including Poles, also committed crimes during the war, but it would not have been possible without the aggression of Germany. He also stressed that in Europe today there is a new anti-Semitism directed against Israel.
Since having announced in January its entry into the Israeli market, the management at Netflix has received multiple requests from Israeli consumers for Hebrew subtitles for programs offered in the country. Netflix has replied that it was merely a matter of time and that the process, though incremental, will result in translated subtitles for media offered in Israel.Ex-Smiths frontman Morrissey returning to Israel in August
On Sunday, 36 films' Hebrew subtitles were released, including Fincher's Seven, Kubrick's The Shining, the Wachowskis' Matrix trilogy, and Nolan's Batman Begins.
At the January CES convention in Las Vegas, Netflix employees promised that Hebrew subtitles would be added in stages and clarified that the matter would be tested in the Israeli market according to the breadth of its requirements.
The iconic, charismatic Morrissey, originally of Manchester indie band The Smiths, now a solo artist, announced his return to Israel with two concerts, on August 22 in Tel Aviv’s Heichal HaTarbut and August 24 in the Caesarea ampitheater.Quentin Tarantino tops the guest list at the 33rd Jerusalem Film Fest
Celebrating 30 years since the release of the famed Smiths album, “The Queen is Dead,” Morrissey’s concerts are expected to sell out, as they did in 2012, the last time he performed in Israel.
The quirky lyricist, known for his strong views on politics, vegetarianism and human sexuality, is expected to sing several fan favorites, including “There is a Light that Never Goes Out,” “Every Day is Like Sunday,” “I Know It’s Over,” “How Soon is Now” and “Suedehead.”
Since performing here in 2012, Morrissey released his tenth studio album, “World Peace is None of Your Business” and his first novel, “List of the Lost,” which received mostly bad reviews.
The 33rd Jerusalem Film Festival, which will take place from July 7-17 at the Jerusalem Cinematheque, will welcome the Oscar-winning director Quentin Tarantino, who will attend the opening ceremony at the Sultan’s Pool amphitheater, where he will receive an award for his contribution to cinema. He will be present on July 8 at a screening of his Oscar-winning classic, Pulp Fiction, in a newly restored 35 millimeter print that comes from the director’s own archive.A Conversation With Mel Brooks
Tarantino, who last visited Israel to promote his 2009 film, Inglourious Basterds, is one of a great number of exciting guests who will take part in this year’s festival.
Laurie Anderson, the legendary avant-garde musician/artist/filmmaker will attend the festival with her latest movie, Heart of a Dog, a meditation on her relationship with her dog.
Whit Stillman, whose latest film is Love & Friendship, the Jane Austen adaptation starring Kate Beckinsale, will be among the guests. Stillman’s early films, among them Metropolitan and The Last Days of Disco, helped start the US indie film movement.
Anthony Bregman, one of the most important producers of American independent cinema, will present James Schamus’ Indignation, an adaption of a Philip Roth novel about a Jewish boy attending a college in Ohio in the 1950s. Bregman has produced a long list of prestigious films, among them Foxcatcher, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Synecdoche, New York and The Ice Storm.
Pushing 90, Melvin James Kaminisky bounced on stage as though he had been shot out of a cannon: He was neat, a little round and casual-smart in slightly baggy creased cream slacks, an open-neck sky-blue shirt, and a red handkerchief peeping out the top pocket of his navy blue blazer. A wide grin ran from ear to ear. The packed house at the Thousand Oaks Civic Auditorium in Southern California on a recent night gave him the kind of welcome usually reserved for rock stars: shrieking, yells, and thunderous applause at the first sight of their icon.Israel leading a ‘water revolution’ in arid California
Kaminsky—better known as director, producer, writer, actor, and stand-up comic Mel Brooks—had come to the theater as part of an intermittently year-long U.S. whistle-stop tour on the 42nd anniversary of the release of his 1974 film Blazing Saddles, which late critic Roger Ebert first described as “a crazed grab-bag of a movie that does everything to keep us laughing except hit us over the head with a rubber chicken.”
Since last October Brooks has been on the road and done a dozen personal appearances around the country. They screen his film, and then up pops Mel, who got his start as a teenage tummeler at Borscht Belt resorts in the Catskills and then turned out a series of comedic screen spoofs that have skewered every cinematic genre and topic known to man: Westerns, Horror films (Young Frankenstein, 1974), and sci-fi movies (Spaceballs, 1987). Hitler got the Mel Brooks treatment in The Producers—the 1967 film that was resurrected as a Broadway musical in 2002 and went on to win 12 Tonys. Alfred Hitchcock got the Brooks treatment in the 1977 film High Anxiety. And in 1981 Brooks took on the rest of human history with The History of the World Part 1, in which he played five roles—in addition to writing, producing, and directing.
Having made the desert bloom and become the world leader in water management, Israel is now helping parched California solve its water problems.IsraelDailyPicture: The U.S. Navy Evacuated 6,000 Jews from Jaffa in 1914/1915
The Israel-California Water Conference, taking place Wednesday at Los Angeles’s Marina Del Rey, with an additional event on Thursday in San Diego, is the brainchild of the Economy Ministry’s Israel NewTech program, the Israel Economic Mission to the West Coast, and the Israel Export Institute. The conference will introduce Californian public officials, business leaders, policy makers and researchers to 24 Israeli companies that offer water storage, management, treatment, recycling and leak detection solutions.
Oded Distel, who heads Israel NewTech, expressed hopes that the partnerships and joint projects that will come out of the conference will “lead a revolution in water conservation.”
Speaking to The Jerusalem Post on Sunday, he said that Israel is the world’s shining example of smart water technology.
“We are no longer dependent on nature to get our water.” More than 50 percent of Israel’s water come from desalination and water recycling. (h/t Yenta Press)
The book is moving forward, so we cannot publish new pictures and essays at this time.
But, here are two never-before-seen pictures from the book showing Jews boarding and disembarking from the USS Tennessee after their expulsion by the Turks in 1915.
Stay tuned for information on the book's publication.
Israel's new pioneers look to the Negev and Galilee
The Israeli Ministry for the Development of the Negev and Galilee did not yet exist in 1998 when four childhood friends from Petah Tikva finished the army and decided to dedicate themselves to building up those southern and northern periphery areas of Israel.
With the enthusiastic support of the Ministry of Infrastructure, the friends broke ground in April 1999 for Sansana, the first new community in the Negev in more than 20 years. They moved in, studied the challenges of local life, and identified officials and philanthropists who could help them overcome those challenges.
“In 2002 we established our organization, the OR Movement, as a platform to do much more,” says Ofir Fisher, now 40.
Or means “light” in Hebrew. The nonprofit sees its mission as lighting up the darkness – the underdevelopment — of the Negev and Galilee. Although these regions comprise three-quarters of Israel’s land mass, only one-quarter of approximately 8 million Israelis choose to live in them. The Negev, four times larger than the Galilee, is especially sparse in terms of habitation.
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.
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