Sunday, July 17, 2016
Netanyahu: PA blasts ramming attacks in France, while encouraging them in Israel
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the Palestinian Authority for condemning the ramming attack in Nice on Friday, while encouraging such attacks in Israel.
“We experienced over the last few few days a shocking attack in Nice, which again shows the need for a united and aggressive position against the murderous terrorism that is striking the entire world,” Netanyahu said at the outset of the weekly cabinet meeting.
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He said that he sent a letter of condolences and support to French President Francois Hollande in the name of government and the people of Israel.
“The Palestinian Authority also sent condolences and condemnations, but with one difference,” he said. “Here not only do they not condemn ramming attacks, they encourage them. They praise the murderers and support them and their families in case the murderers are killed.”
Terrorism is terrorism whether it takes place in France, or in Israel, Netanyahu said, adding that a united approach both to condemn and battle terrorism is needed in Israel and everywhere else.
CAIR Chief’s Reflexive Terror Denial Stands Apart
Before the bodies of all the victims had been removed from the streets of Nice, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Executive Director Nihad Awad insisted that religion had nothing to do with the terrorist attack that killed at least 84 people.Daily Freier: Electronic Intifada Says Tomorrow’s Suicide Bomber “Not Even Very Religious” (satire)
A French resident of Tunisian descent rammed a truck into a crowd of revelers gathered to watch fireworks commemorating Bastille Day. The truck traveled as much as two kilometers, leaving twisted bodies in its wake.
French President Francois Hollande described the “undeniable terrorist nature” of the attack, which was further established by the presence of guns and explosives inside the killer’s truck.
“All of France is under the threat of Islamic terrorism,” Hollande said. “Our vigilance must be relentless.”
To Awad, this was reckless and inflammatory.
“French President #Hollande is pouring oil on the fire by describing the #Nice crime as Islamic terrorism and subjects France’s Muslims to danger,” Awad wrote, in Arabic, on Twitter. “What is Islamic about this crime?”
Chicago: Electronic Intifada says that they don’t have all the details about tomorrow’s suicide bomber, but they are “like totally positive” that he will definitely not commit his act in the name of a certain monotheism.
“This guy is not a Jihadist.” explained Electronic Intifada editor Ali Abunimah “C’mon, he drank in college. What kind of extremist does that? Really, I mean calling this terror is just Hate Speech.” Ali shifted in his seat slowly and looked into the distance. “I mean, like, if this thing actually goes down tomorrow”
The reporter challenged Mr. Abunimah on this premise, and he countered “The guy goes to Strip Clubs. Strip…Clubs. Please stop trying to make this into something it isn’t.”
When the Daily Freier asked Mr. Abunimah how he deals with the avalanche oftough questions about Terrorist’s motives and ideologyNeo-Con vitriol, he admitted that Electronic Intifada now utilizes a Microsoft Word template that allows it to quickly publish a proper explanation for the “context” of future attacks….like tomorrow…..or like whenever these things might happen.
Car Rammings: AFP Calls It “Terror” Everywhere Except Israel
One of the largest news agencies in the world, Agence France-Presse (AFP), published a story entitled “When vehicles become weapons.”Do Israeli Lives Matter to the Australian Daily Telegraph?
The first sentence of the article begins: “Transforming a vehicle into a simple but deadly weapon of terror…” (emphasis added) which clearly identifies these as terror attacks: not “militant,” attacks, “activist” attacks, or even “extremist” attacks: but terror, plain and simple.
The AFP went on to list a number of other examples of vehicular terrorism around the world: in Canada, England and Scotland, as well as threats of similar terrorism issued against America and France.
And what did the AFP say about Israel, the country that has experienced no less than 45 vehicular terror attacks since September 2015?
Nothing.
UPDATE
The AFP has published an update to this story including the following phrase:
In Israel and the Palestinian territories, car-ramming attacks have featured heavily in a wave of violence that has killed at least 215 Palestinians, 34 Israelis, two Americans, an Eritrean and a Sudanese since October last year.
This update is as problematic as the original article: because nowhere does it ever state that Palestinians are using their cars to ram Israelis and other innocent victims.
In fact, the total number of Israelis who have committed car ramming attacks against Palestinians is exactly zero, but a reader would have no way of knowing that. To the contrary, the AFP’s language gives the incorrect appearance that more Palestinians are targeted by car ramming attacks than Israelis.
This is the cover of Saturday’s print edition of Australia’s Daily Telegraph following the horrific terror attack in Nice, France.The Erdoğan-Did-It Conspiracy
Guess whose terror victims are not included in this apparently comprehensive list.
Since June alone, six Israelis have been murdered in Palestinian terror attacks. Since 13 September 2015, 40 people have been killed.
Do Israeli lives not matter to the Daily Telegraph?
While on its face, the notion that elements in the Turkish military loyal to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan deliberately launched a “fake coup” to justify a crackdown on Erdoğan’s enemies sounds farfetched, the belief is taking hold not only among Turkey’s staunch secularist minority and followers of Pennsylvania-based cleric Fethullah Gülen, but also among those who know the Turkish military well.Turkey rounds up generals, judges after failed coup
I asked people who firmly believe that the coup was not what it appeared to explain why they cannot take the notion that what occurred on Friday was a genuine military coup seeking to oust the president. Here is what they said:
- The military would never start a coup at 10 pm on a Friday. In 1980, the coup began on a Sunday at five in the morning.
- The military—if it had been a true coup—would have immediately shut down airspace, borders, the internet, and all media outlets.
- The first move would have been to go after the leaders, not to block bridges in Istanbul when it was known that the president was in Marmaris.
- The military would have informed allied commands and NATO as soon as the operation was underway.
- To arrest hundreds if not thousands of officers and judges would have required putting together a list and, again given past precedent, that would have taken at least two days.
- The notion that the president could get on CNN-Türk through FaceTime without prior coordination, and then have other channels on air soon after would have required pre-arrangement.
Turkish authorities were on Sunday rounding up dozens of generals as well as senior judges and prosecutors accused of supporting a failed military coup aimed at ousting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.Turkey Warns America: Hand Over Exiled Cleric OR ELSE
The government has already said that almost 3,000 soldiers had been detained on suspicion of involvement in the putsch which began on Friday night but faltered already in the early hours of Saturday.
NTV television said that 34 generals of various grades had been detained so far. They include senior figures like Erdal Ozturk, commander of the third army and commander of the Malatya-based second army Adem Huduti.
The authorities have been carrying out raids at military bases across Turkey in search of those suspected of supporting the coup, which has claimed at least 265 lives.
In an operation early Sunday, at the garrison in the western town of Denizli, its commander Ozhan Ozbakir was detained along with 51 other soldiers, the state-run Anatolia news agency said.
The crackdown is, however, not restricted to the military and Anadolu said that prosecutors have issued arrest warrants for a total of 2,745 judges and prosecutors across Turkey.
Turkey’s president and its prime minister issued thinly-veiled threats to the U.S. on Saturday if it does not extradite an Islamic cleric living in the mountains of Pennsylvania.Egypt Blocks UN Text Backing Turkish Government: Diplomats
“Any country that protects Fethullah Gulen will be an enemy to Turkey,” Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Saturday, naming the imam who Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan asserts is the mastermind behind Friday’s failed coup.
“This is not a country that can be run from Pennsylvania,” Erdoğan said in reference to Gulen as the attempted overthrow was still underway.
“Dear Mr. President: I told you this before,” Erdoğan said in a direct address to Obama later on Saturday. “Either arrest Fethullah Gulen or return him to Turkey. You didn’t listen. I call on you again, after there was a coup attempt, extradite this man in Pennsylvania to Turkey. If we are strategic partners or model partners, do what is necessary.”
Egypt on Saturday blocked a United Nations Security Council resolution backed by the United States condemning the attempted coup in Turkey, diplomats said, though Cairo denied the move.VP Pick Mike Pence Says Support for Israel Rooted in Christian Faith
The United States, following consultations with officials from key NATO ally Turkey, had proposed a draft statement calling on “all parties in Turkey to respect the democratically elected government of Turkey.”
But Egypt, currently a non-permanent member of the Security Council, objected, according diplomats. An Egyptian diplomatic source, however, denied that Cairo had blocked the resolution.
“This is a process that requires consensus,” he said, adding that Egypt agreed to the “overall objective of the statement” that condemned the violence and called for restraint.
“We proposed to call on all parties to respect the democratic and constitutional principles and rule of law,” he said, rather than the initial wording calling for respect for the “democratically elected government.”
Egypt’s relations with the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have been particularly tense.
After a selection process that more closely resembled a reality television show than the usual political appointments, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Friday tweeted that his choice for vice president is Indiana Governor Mike Pence, who beat out flashier contenders such as former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.Legislative candidate targeted over Jewish faith
For the pro-Israel community, Pence is viewed as a strong advocate for the Jewish state who can bolster Trump’s sometimes shaky relationship with Jewish leaders. Although he has taken on a strongly pro-Israel tone in recent months, Trump had previously raised concern in pro-Israel circles by saying he would take a “neutral” approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Pence, an evangelical Christian, has noted that his strong support for Israel is rooted in his faith.
“Let me say emphatically, like the overwhelming majority of my constituents, my Christian faith compels me to cherish the state of Israel,” Pence said in an address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in 2009, while he was serving in Congress.
A legislative candidate woke up this morning to an anti-Semitic hate message and a pair of swastikas spray-painted on his driveway and on a campaign sign in his yard.6 things to know about Jill Stein, Israel-bashing last Jewish candidate standing
Republican Arizona House candidate Adam Stevens was leaving his house this morning when he noticed something spray-painted on his home driveway.
“I had an appointment, nothing about the campaign, and I opened up my garage door and it all kind of went south from there,” he said.
On his driveway were the words “Go Home Jew” along with a swastika. The vandal or vandals also painted a swastika onto a campaign sign in Stevens’ yard. Stevens said he was shocked to see the graffiti, and has never experienced any discrimination due to his religion in his neighborhood before.
“You see it in the news that people have to deal with this kind of issue, not just anti-Semitism, but the gay community, the Hispanic community, the black community, our law enforcement. But when it’s literally at your front door, it’s a different process of taking it all in,” he said. (h/t YOSEF22ADAR)
Voters who have their hearts set on supporting a left-wing secular Jew running an insurgent campaign still have a candidate.Where is the feminist outcry?
Jill Stein, the 2012 Green Party candidate, is making another run.
And this year, with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both earning historically low popularity ratings, she hopes she can attract at least some of Bernie Sanders’ 13 million Democratic primary voters.
With a far-left platform, Stein advocates government-guaranteed full employment, a national mobilization on the order of World War II to fight climate change and an initiative to cut military spending by at least 50 percent.
Here are six things you need to know about the one Jewish candidate left in the race.
She wants to end foreign aid to Israel, and supports BDS
One of the biggest differences Stein notes between herself and Sanders involves their respective positions on Israel. Sanders described himself as “100 percent pro-Israel” while advocating Palestinian rights, but Stein has had some harsh words for the Jewish state. Her campaign calls for ending all aid to Israel, and she has accused it of committing war crimes.
Like the Green Party as a whole, Stein supports the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel, or BDS. She places Israel in the company of non-democratic American allies Saudi Arabia and Egypt. In tweets, she’s accused Israel of “the pillage of Palestine,” and written that Israel’s “war crimes & human rights violations are off the charts.”
The recently appointed head of Israel's Shin Bet internal security agency gave his first presentation on Tuesday to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Knesset. As part of his overview of the country's current situation, Nadav Argaman addressed the role of Arab women in the terror wave against Israelis that began last September.Israel claims partial victory as UNESCO delays vote to erase Jewish ties to Temple Mount
More specifically, he talked about the way in which Palestinian girls and women are being forced by the norms of their society to become cannon fodder in the "lone-wolf intifada," characterized by stabbings, car-rammings, Molotov cocktail-hurling, pipe-bombing and rock-throwing.
According to Argaman, so far more than 40 girls and women have been wounded, killed or arrested for committing -- or attempting to commit -- terrorist attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians. These acts are both homicidal and suicidal in nature: geared toward murder, on the one hand, but usually involve or result in self-sacrifice. Indeed, a teenage girl who runs up to a group of IDF soldiers while flailing a knife and shouting "Allahu akbar" knows she is not long for this world. Even those who go after unarmed passersby are aware that they are likely to be shot in the process.
The Shin Bet chief explained that in the vast majority of such cases, the girls or women had more pressing things on their minds than the politics of resistance that their leaders declare will bring about the elimination of the Jewish state, and that their imams say is a Muslim duty.
The failed Turkish coup over the weekend delayed until October a UNESCO vote on Jerusalem that ignores Jewish ties to the Temple Mount.UNESCO head backs Israel: Ignoring Jewish, Christian ties to Jerusalem harms its cultural status
The 21-members of the World Heritage Committee had been scheduled to vote on the matter in the coming days as it wrapped up its 40th session in Istanbul which had been scheduled to run from July 10 to July 20.
But in the aftermath of the failed coup, the body is cutting the session short and is debating only a limited number of items before concluding the Istanbul meeting later today.
The Palestine along with Lebanon and Peru pushed for the resolution to be heard on Sunday in spite of the condensed agenda.
But the European Union, which has four member states on the World Heritage Committee backed Israel’s request for a delay.
Attempts by member states to erase Jewish and Christian ties to Jerusalem’s Old City harms its cultural status as a site that is sacred to the three monotheistic religions, warned UNESCO’s Director-General Irina Bokova on Friday.PMW: Netanyahu cites PMW findings in video message to Abbas
“To deny or conceal any of the Jewish, Christian or Muslim traditions undermines the integrity of the site, and runs counter to the reasons that justified its inscription in 1981,” Bokova wrote in a message she posted on the organization’s website.
She made the statement as Israel is in the midst of a pitched battle to prevent the World Heritage Committee’s 21-member states from passing a resolution on Jerusalem that references the Temple Mount solely by its Muslim name of Al-Haram/Al-Sharif.
The World Heritage Committee is likely to vote on a Jerusalem resolution on Sunday, when it wraps up its 40th session which began on July 10 in Istanbul. The session had been expected to last until July 20th, but the failed coup over the weekend forced the committee to cut its agenda short.
Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu made a public video appeal to PA Chairman Abbas to join Netanyahu's efforts to achieve peace. The short video cited four examples of terror support by PA and Fatah leaders, as examples of PA impediments to peace, all of which were exposed and publicized by Palestinian Media Watch.
The following is the transcript of Netanyahu's appeal to Abbas, with links to the PMW bulletins that exposed the PA's and Fatah's terror promotion:
Prime Minister Netanyahu: "President Abbas,
Since over the past several years, you refused to meet me and sit down and negotiate peace, I hope you'll hear this message.
First, your advisor, Sultan Abu al Einein recently called to slit the throat of every Israeli.
PMW bulletin, June 27, 2016 Abbas' advisor: "Every place you find an Israeli - cut off his head"
Palestinian carrying bombs tries to board light rail in Jerusalem
Police in downtown Jerusalem on Sunday morning arrested a Palestinian man who was found to be carrying explosives and knives in his backpack.2 IDF soldiers die in accidental grenade blast on Golan Heights
The suspect, identified as a West Bank resident, was detained near the light rail stop on Jaffa Road after he raised the suspicions of a security guard.
Police said the man was standing “behind the stop, with a bag in his hand.” When the guard asked to examine the contents of the bag, he noticed a bomb and called police.
Sappers were promptly deployed to the scene and the road was closed off, along with the adjacent King George Street.
Police said the man was found to be carrying “a number of pipe bombs” and had been arrested and taken in for questioning. A later police statement said that sappers disarmed “three pipe bombs wired together.” Mobile phones and knives were also in the backpack.
Two Israeli soldiers were killed and three others were wounded Sunday morning when a grenade accidentally exploded near an army post on the Golan Heights, the IDF said in a statement.Israel fires at, misses Syrian drone in its airspace
The IDF named the two casualties as lone soldier Sgt. Shlomo Rindenow, 20, originally from the US but living in Sde Yoav, and Staff Sgt. Hussam Tafesh, 24, from Beit Jann.
The incident occurred at around 7 a.m., when Tafesh drove an army jeep up to a military outpost at the entrance to the northern Druze village of Majdal Shams.
Tafesh then exited the vehicle while holding a grenade, the army said, and went to talk to Rindenow who was standing at the entrance to the post. The grenade suddenly exploded, killing both Tafesh and Rindenow.
Rindenow’s family lives in New Jersey, according to the IDF. The army said both families have been informed.
The IDF said it was not yet clear why Tafesh was holding the grenade, and has launched an investigation into the incident.
Israel fired anti-aircraft missiles at an unmanned aerial vehicle that crossed into its airspace from Syria on Sunday afternoon, but failed to bring down the intruding aircraft.PreOccupiedTerritory: Death Creeped Out By Hamas Worshiping It (satire)
The IDF said in a statement that neither of the two Patriot missiles launched managed to hit the drone, which returned to Syrian airspace.
The Israeli Air Force scrambled fighter jets in the Golan Heights following the launch, the Ynet news website reported.
The launches triggered air raid alarms across northern Israel. No rockets were known to have been fired into Israeli territory, however.
Israel has shot down drone and fighter aircraft that have flown near the border with Syria in the Golan Heights several times in recent years. The IDF downed a drone in August 2014 and a Syrian fighter aircraft in September of the same year.
The Grim Reaper voiced dismay this morning at rhetoric of the militant Islamist group Hamas to the effect that Israel must fear them because they worship death, saying that such talk makes him feel discomfited, to put it mildly.'Nothing like having a nice Jewish professor attack Israel'
The personification of death, taking a break from a recent visit to Turkey, told reporters at a press conference that frankly, he found it more than a little bit creepy to be the object of Hamas’s worship, not to mention inappropriate.
“My role, by nature, is meant to instill fear, dread, and perhaps regret,” said the being also known as the Angel of Death. “Veneration is out of the question. There is something clearly wrong with the attitude of people who worship me. Is it psychological? An educational problem? This is definitely going to come up at the next annual meeting of divine agents.”
Hamas has repeatedly sought to intimidate Israelis by claiming that not only does the movement and its fighters not fear death, they love it or worship it, depending on the iteration of the bombast. In contrast to pagan societies that viewed Death as a force to be reckoned with and perhaps appeased, the Palestinian Islamist organization appears to have taken the utilitarian approach to Death far beyond mere appeasement and into the unsettling realm of fetish, a phenomenon that disgusts and alarms the entity charged with removing souls from the corporeal realm and transferring them to the Afterlife.
“I’ve never had a stalker, online or otherwise, but I imagine this is what it’s like,” continued Death. “It would make my skin crawl, if I had any skin – so thank God for small mercies, I guess. I’m beginning to think what I mete out might not be the most dreadful experience mortals can have. This makes me feel just… unclean. More than usual, I mean.”
Rather than re-branding itself as a land of beautiful beaches and great food, Israel can improve its position on US campuses by recasting itself, reconstructing the framework through which the country is seen, said Mervin Verbit, president of a new organization aiming to build a better appreciation of Israel among professors.Israel Advocates Slam UCLA, BDS-Supporting Campus Groups Over Leaked Report Condemning Student Leader for Neutrality on Palestinian Conflict
The moral framework on American campuses about Israel used to be – up until the 1990s – that Israel was a great, gritty little country, and that Israelis were “our kinds of folks,” said Verbit, whose organization is called the Academic Council for Israel.
“If that is the attitude, then people understand what happens within that general framework,” he explained during a visit to Israel last week. “If that framework weakens, then slowly people can come to see things in a negative light.”
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, he said, is pernicious not because it poses an economic threat to Israel.
It is dangerous, because “even when they lose, they win – they open up things for discussion and generate debate topics, which are then an important first step to undermining Israel’s legitimacy,” he asserted.
Pro-Israel advocacy groups expressed their outrage this week over a leaked confidential University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) report condemning a student government leader for his attempt to remain neutral on matters concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.Oh, those silly BDS holes and their silly BS antics.
The American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the Israeli-American Nexus (IAX) said that the UCLA Discrimination Prevention Office (DPO) report is indicative of a larger anti-Israel atmosphere at the university. The report claimed that former Graduate Student Association (GSA) president Milan Chatterjee violated university policy on “viewpoint-neutral funding” in 2015, for initially refusing to fund any program organized by or featuring a pro-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) group.
According to a statement released by AJC Los Angeles Regional Director Janna Weinstein Smith, “The confidential DPO report, and its apparent leaking to the media, is really an indictment of UCLA’s DPO, not Milan Chatterjee. The fact that a student official would be sanctioned for seeking to avoid embroiling the UCLA GSA in the fraught politics of the Middle East tells you all you need to know about the political agenda of his detractors and the cowardice of those that enable them.”
Smith said the leaking of the sealed report is “in clear violation of the Federal Educational Records Privacy Act” and highlights “that the anti-Israel crowd at UCLA is willing to play dirty, and even break the law, to demean the Jewish state and those who stand by it.”
So, JVP and Code Pink. Were you lying then or are you lying now?BBC News amplifies a false story of the ‘dark Israel’ genre
If on June 27, JVP shill Liza Behrendt announced that Re/Max was no longer "profiting" from Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria,
then why is Code Pink still protesting them on July 14?
I sense a BDS hoax in the making.
On July 12th the BBC News website’s Middle East page ran an article headlined “Israel army names new chief rabbi criticised over rape comments” which opened by informing readers that:Paraguayan President, a rare ally in South America, arrives for visit
“Israel’s military has nominated a new chief rabbi criticised for remarks he made in the past that seemed to condone the rape of non-Jewish women in war.
In an answer to a religious website in 2002, Rabbi Colonel Eyal Karim implied that such an act was permissible.”
The link in that second paragraph directs BBC audiences to the English language version of an article published by Yediot Aharonot in Hebrew on its Ynet website, as well as in print, on the day that this BBC News article appeared.
As the respected media watchdog website ‘The Seventh Eye’ showed on the same day, Yediot Aharonot’s story – including the alleged ‘quotes’ it promotes – is false.
Paraguayan President Horacio Cartes, the leader of a country considered – along with Colombia – among Israel's best friends in South America, arrived Sunday for a three day trip.Q&A: CUFI’s Pastor Dumisani Washington on new Mizrahi Project launch
Cartes won the election in 2013, and soon after his elections told then deputy foreign minister Ze’ev Elkin, who attended his inauguration, that he was interested in strengthening bilateral relations with Israel as well as pursuing an “independent” policy of supporting Israel in international forums, as opposed to the voting patterns of the vast majority of Latin American states.
In 2012, even before the election, Paraguay – along with Colombia – were the only South American countries that did not vote for granting the Palestinians non-member statehood status in the UN General Assembly.
And after the election, Paraguay's vote is one that Israel knows will in most cases not be used against it.
For instance, in the UNESCO vote in April that effectively denied any Jewish connection to Jerusalem, Paraguay was one of 17 countries that abstained. It also voted for Israel at a very significant vote in the IAEA last September that would have forced Israel to open its nuclear facilities to international inspectors. And In 2015 it was not present for a vote on a UN resolution that mandated raising of the Palestinian flag at the world body.
Also, in 2014 Cartes stood by Israel during the Operation Protective Edge, and did not condemn Israel even though some other Latin American states were extremely critical, and some - such as Brazil, Peru, Chile, El Salvador and Ecuador - recalled their ambassadors in protest at Israel's actions.
It’s not often that non-Jewish groups show any serious interest in forming friendship with or have any desire to learn about the Iranian Jewish community in Southern California. Such was the case earlier when the “Christians United For Israel” (CUFI) organization’s leadership recently outreached to Los Angeles area Iranian Jews.Watch Gal Gadot’s salute to awesome Israeli women
We as Iranian Jews are a minority within the larger Jewish community. We can trace back our ancestry to the Babylonian exile in 586 B.C. after the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the Jewish temple and took the Jews captive to what is now modern day Iraq and Iran. Earlier this year I had the unique opportunity to interview Pastor Dumisani Washington, the national diversity outreach coordinator for CUFI after he meet with Iranian Jewish community activists at the Iranian American Jewish Federation’s synagogue in West Hollywood. CUFI’s new “Mizrahi Project” was the primary reason Washington has sought help from Southern California’s Iranian Jews in an effort to educate Christians about the more than 850,000 Jews who during the 20th century were either expelled or forced into exile from Arab countries and Iran. CUFI’s goal with this new project is to have Iranian Jews and other Mizrahi Jews tell their own stories via online films about their exile and escape from Islamic lands in order to show the importance of Israel’s existence as a home to Jewish refugees from North Africa and the Middle East.
Indeed many Iranian Jewish leaders and activists I have spoken to regarding the Mizrahi Project are optimistic that perhaps their experiences shared online with the help of CUFI, the largest pro-Israel group in America, will gradually transform the dialogue in the U.S. and worldwide regarding the complexities of the Israeli-Arab conflict. Coming across non-Jewish groups that share the same strong sense of Zionism that the vast majority of Iranian Jews in Southern California, has most likely drawn Iranian American Jews to support CUFI.
Israeli-born “Wonder Woman” Gal Gadot lent her star power to a short video clip celebrating accomplished young Israeli women: an air force pilot, a marketing manager, a physician and a medal-winning kite- and sup-surfer.
The former Miss Israel, who has made it big in Hollywood for her role in feature films including “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” readily agreed to take part in the feel-good film conceived by three female Israeli media students who told Ynet that they “wished to show the world and various audiences a different side of Israel, instead of focusing on its landscapes or the Tel Aviv nightlife.”
Gadot was an IDF combat trainer before going on to her career as a model and actress.
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.
