Alan Dershowitz: Are Jews Who Refuse to Renounce Israel Being Excluded From ‘Progressive’ Groups?
Last year, Rabbi Susan Talve, a longtime activist on race issues in the St. Louis area was told that her advocacy for Israel was incompatible with the objectives of Black Lives Matter: “Solidarity from Ferguson to Palestine has become a central tenet of the movement,” she was informed, because “Israeli and U.S. state oppression are deeply interconnected.” Similarly, a student who attended a Black Lives Matter rally at Northwestern University last year was told, “you support Israel, so you cannot also support us.”
Recently, that seems to be the response of many of the hard Left activists who dominate so-called “progressive” social justice movements.
Over the past several years, progressive Jews and supporters of Israel have had to come to terms with the reality that those who do not reject Israel and accept the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement’s unique brand of bigotry are no longer welcome in some progressive circles. And while both the Democratic and Republican parties have embraced the importance of the U.S. alliance with Israel, that dynamic is under threat more so than at any point in my lifetime.
The self-described “progressive wing” of the Democratic Party — represented by radical and often repressive organizations such as MoveOn, CodePink, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter (BLM) — has become openly opposed to the nation state of the Jewish people. Increasingly, these organizations demand that their members and “allies” renounce support for Israel and for Zionism in order to belong. Using the pretext of intersectionality — a pseudo-academic theory which insists that all social justice movements, except those supportive of Jews or Israel, are inexorably linked — anti-Israel activists have successfully made opposition to Israel and support for BDS a litmus test, especially for Jews, to belong to “progressive” movements focused on a wide range of issues.
Earlier this year, supporters of the LGBTQ community in Israel learned this lesson the hard way. BDS activists together with a local Black Lives Matter chapter broke up a gay pride event, because it featured a presentation by an Israeli group. The protestors claimed that the event organizers had engaged in “pinkwashing” the Israeli occupation by showing solidarity with the Israeli LGBTQ community.
UN wants Israel to free staffer accused of aiding Hamas
The United Nation’s legal department “demanded” Israel release an employee of the international organization on Thursday, who has been accused of aiding the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip, according to Israel’s ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.After World Vision Scandal, Palestinian Aid Groups Face New Scrutiny
Waheed Abd Allah Bossh, 38, an engineer in the UN’s Development Program, was arrested by the Shin Bet security service in July. He is suspected of funneling resources to the terrorist group.
According to the international organization, all UN employees are entitled to diplomatic immunity. The group’s legal department also demanded that UN officials have access to Bossh while he is being held in a Beersheba jail.
The letter, which referred to Beersheba by its Arabic name Bi’ir as-Sab, was sent to the Israeli UN delegation this week.
Danon refused the UN’s request. “We do not grant immunity to terrorists trying to harm our citizens,” he said, according to a statement released Thursday by his office.
The case of World Vision isn’t an isolated incident, said Yona Schiffmiller, director of the NGO Monitor’s North America office. “There is an ongoing fundamental problem that exists in the NGO/humanitarian aid community. It doesn’t want to take security concerns to heart.”
There are similar cases of financing terrorism under the guise of charity, dating back to the 1970s, said Colin P. Clarke, a RAND Corp. political scientist and international security expert.
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Provisional Irish Republican Army are just two examples of groups that have used the scam, he said.
In Bosnia, Algeria, and Afghanistan, insurgents benefitted from considerable support provided through religious charities, whose donations increased in the wake of publicized insurgent military success or media-focused campaigns depicting civilians suffering in these countries.
While Clarke contends that donors, and the NGOs that administer the funds, are probably unaware of where the money goes and assume it helps provide medical, legal and other types of aid to suffering civilians in war torn countries.
But groups like Hamas set up a social service wing, called Dawah, along with its military arm, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.
“You cannot separate between them,” Darshan-Leitner said. “You cannot designate money to benevolence and think it will not get to the military. That’s just how it is.”
Comment: Does the UN facilitate crimes against humanity?
Five years after a cholera epidemic broke out in Haiti the United Nations admitted it played a role in causing the deaths of 10,000 and infecting 770,000. The disease “would not have broken out but for the actions of the United Nations,” a report said according to The New York Times.A New Group Shows That Israel Is the Most Moral Army in the World
There hadn’t been a case of cholera in Haiti for 100 years when the outbreak took place in the wake of the devastating 2010 earthquake. The Haitians suspected it was connected to sick Nepalese at a UN base of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti. But officials from the UN and other international bodies resisted attempts to investigate the source, as thousands died. One official said they didn’t want “finger pointing.”
When the UN report had finally admitted the organization’s role, it still didn’t take responsibility. The UN mission that was supposed to “stabilize” Haiti had actually destabilized the country, which provided an excuse for the UN to maintain its mission there and keep paying its well-heeled foreign hires. Now the UN is trying to raise $2 billion to “help” Haiti “eradicate cholera.”
It’s alarming to imagine being a poor person in a struggling country with a UN base next to your house. As a citizen of the country you have no say over the UN and your laws do not apply to it. If UN workers rape you, they will not be arrested. That happened in more than 100 cases in the Central African Republic. The perpetrators were members of the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic. “At the last UN checkpoint, there were four peacekeepers,” the victims told Al-Jazeera. “They called me – but I was reluctant to go, then one pointed a gun at me. They pushed me into a thicket and raped me.”
Colonel Richard Kemp, a retired British army officer, famously said that Israel has the most moral army in the world. He based his opinion on the measures taken by the Israel Defense Forces to minimize wartime civilian casualties. But the IDF’s unique attention to at-risk civilians isn’t limited to warning Gazan citizens about incoming attacks.Isi Leibler: Exposing the criminal society and the culture of death
The IDF goes above and beyond when it comes to supporting soldiers with physical, developmental and intellectual disabilities who enlist or are injured on duty. Israel’s Special in Uniform (SIU) program, in partnership with the Jewish National Fund, offers young Israelis with intellectual and developmental disabilities the skills and training necessary to thrive in the IDF, live independently, and integrate into Israeli society. The program is designed to plant the seeds for a more inclusive and compassionate army, society, and nation. Lieutenant Colonel Tiran Attia, who heads the program, says that his vision for the soldiers with disabilities is 100 percent integration into society.
Currently, there are 256 people in SIU, but according to Attia, they hope to have 1,000 initiates into the army by 2020. It is an expensive program, Attia acknowledges, but Israel, the Israeli Army and the Jewish people are all part of the system that must make a better community and society. He explains, “the Israeli army is a huge chain and we are obliged and committed to take care of the units of those chains which are not strong like the others. The army is a melting pot for all the people of Israel. We are one.”
We are losing the battle in the war of ideas for the simple reason that we are continuously on the defensive while those seeking our destruction actively and relentlessly demonize us.Ben-Dror Yemini: How I found myself at the top of the list of 'inciters'
Ever since the Oslo Accords, successive Israeli governments have felt obliged to understate and even dismiss Palestinian terrorism and hatred in order to maintain domestic public support for policies that, with the benefit of hindsight, were doomed to fail.
In the very early stages, Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat told his people that the ultimate goal was the end of Jewish sovereignty – and we dismissed such outbursts as empty words designed merely to placate his radical domestic opponents.
But as the government falsely praised our peace partner, many Israelis deluded themselves into believing that the terrorism we faced was an extremist aberration and that the Palestinians were committed to ending the conflict on the basis of a two-state solution. Likewise, most of the world accepted at face value our repeated praise of Arafat and his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, as moderates and genuine peace partners.
This suited the long-term Palestinian policy of destroying us in stages. They readily accepted concessions and withdrawals but without compromising one iota, and they continue to demonize us and challenge our legitimacy.
Last weekend, I found myself the star of a report on Palestinian news agency Wafa, the Palestinian Authority's official news site. It turns out I have been bestowed with the dubious honor of being at the top of a list of "inciters" among Israeli journalists.The real ‘intersectionality’ – European and Arab oppression and persecution of Jews and Africans
I couldn't believe my eyes. I'm used to hearing such accusations from the delusional left-wing, but from the Palestinian Authority? Normally, if I may, the PA, despite everything, is saner than the delusional left. I have ties with some of its senior officials. We disagree and argue, but we still talk to each other.
The problem is that despite the ties some Israelis have with senior officials in the PA, its campaign of incitement continues unabated. The PA glorifies Jew killers, nurtures the fantasy of the "right of return" and Greater Palestine, and portrays the Jews as Nazis. Instead of putting a stop to incitement, the PA prefers making up claims against Israel. So they searched high and low, and it appears that the greatest inciter has now been caught.
What did I do? What sins have I committed? The PA found two reasons. The first was an article I wrote against the leaders of the Joint Arab List over their objection to the integration of Israeli Arabs into Israeli society. The second was the fact I featured in my writings a report presenting the series of comments made by Jibril Rajoub in support of terrorism.
Intersecting Arab Hate for Jews and Indigenous Africans ContinuesOnce Again, J Street and NIF Give a Platform to Israel’s Enemies
In the 21st Century, almost 1000 years after Ibn Sina claimed all indigenous African men should be slaves; the Arabic word for slave “abeed” is still used interchangeably by Arabs in most Arab countries to refer to indigenous Africans. There is a reason that in modern Arabic parlance the word for a slave and for an indigenous African has remained almost synonymous. That reason is that after 1400 years of Arab colonialism, oppression and slavery of indigenous peoples throughout the Middle East and Africa, Arab supremacism is still at least as rampant as White supremacism was in America during the Jim Crow era. That is why in Sudan and Mauritania today Arabs still have African slaves. It is why Hamas has been engaged in human trafficking of indigenous Africans in the Sinai. It is why in just five years (between 2003 and 2008), over 300,000 Sudanese Africans were killed, 100,000 were abducted and 2.7 million were forced to become refugees, with their land appropriated for Arabs, and it is why Palestinian Authority dictator Mahmoud Abbas only a few weeks ago had no problem embracing and expressing solidarity with an (actually) genocidal ruler, the “Butcher of Darfur” Sudan’s dictator, Omar al-Bashir. When it comes to Abbas and his fellow Arab dictators like al-Bashir, African and Jewish lives have never mattered … for 1400 years and counting.
Which brings us to the most head scratching aspect of the BLM alliance with the advocates for the continuation of the Arab occupation, colonization and oppression of Jews in Judea; the ability of the BLM leadership to completely disregard the link (or enormous intersection) between the historical and present day Arab disregard and outright hostility to Jewish civil rights in the Jews’ indigenous homeland and the Arab world’s historical and present day hostility and disregard for the rights of indigenous Africans.
Sadly, that is an intersection the BLM movement apparently cannot recognize, let alone cross. Instead, in order to rationalize their unholy alliance with those that seek to deprive the Jewish people of their right to self-determination in their indigenous homeland, they libel and defame the only Jewish state and ignore the Grand Canyon sized “overlaps and intersections” between the European and Arab oppression and persecution of indigenous Africans and Jews.
There is no ambiguity when a group asks Senator Bernie Sanders to speak; it expects to hear the denunciation of capitalism, support for socialism and an attack on DC insiders. When someone has Glenn Beck speak, he expects to hear invectives of all kinds. So why would groups like the New Israel Fund (NIF) and J Street try to convince anyone that their speakers have any other agenda than what they are known for?Why opposition to Israel has nothing to do with Israel.
These groups continue to sponsor lectures by outspoken anti-Zionists and Hamas sympathizers, under the guise of what they call “progressive Zionism.” They market these events as pro-Israel discussions, targeting young American Jews who they say have not been exposed to all sides.
On Wednesday, August 24, J Street and the NIF were supposed to host Matthew Duss at an event at Seattle’s flagship reform congregation, Temple de Hirsch Sinai. The location was changed at the last minute — to the Kavana Cooperative/Queen Anne Christian Church in Seattle — with no explanation.
Duss is the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, which publishes content that supports NIF grantees like B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence in their missions to vilify Israel as a corrupt and murderous military state; both organizations accuse Israel of committing war crimes.
Supporting « Palestine » or opposing Israel has nothing to do with « Palestine » or Israel and is actually only a reflection of local politics.Daughter of Strasbourg Stabbing Victim: My Father Is Traumatized, But We Won’t Live in Fear (INTERVIEW)
Take the case - already exposed - of the designation by the US administration of Israel’s presence in Samaria and Judea as «occupation» and it’s presented meaning in local US politics, a meaning quite disconnected from any reality on the ground.
Take also for example the Celtics for Palestine, recently come in the news for waving the so-called « Palestinian » flag (which in reality is the flag of the Hejaz province in Arabia, but more on this in a separate text). On their Facebook page, they openly express the intrinsically local nature of the political statement of « supporting Palestine ». They say:
« Celtic fans have always had a radical history with support for Irish resistance to British rule and it is from there that support for Palestine stems. »
Likewise, opposition to Israel and downright boycott of its products or cultural institutions has nothing to do with what actually takes place on the ground: a significant amount of the produce is actually economically supporting Arab communities and the academia in Israel is possibly the left-most radical bunch of Israelis. To boycott these makes no sense to furthering the interest of Arab rights in Israel.
The Jewish man who was stabbed last Friday by a knife-wielding Muslim assailant shouting “Allahu Akbar” in the northeastern French city of Strasbourg is home from the hospital, doing fine physically, but emotionally traumatized, his daughter told The Algemeiner on Wednesday.Scottish Jewish Community Feels ‘More Vulnerable’ to Antisemitism Under New National Police Force
Sterna Moyal said that despite the attack on her 62-year-old father Shalom Dovber Levy, members of Strasbourg’s Jewish community would continue to live their lives without fear.
“I don’t think people will be scared, because we have no choice,” she said.
Moyal recounted in detail to The Algemeiner the terrifying experience her father survived.
“It was a Friday morning and my father was at home,” Moyal said. “He doesn’t work anymore, so he was studying. And my mother needed some stuff for Shabbat. We have a kosher shop close to the house. So my father went there to buy something and on his way back home a guy came up behind him. My father didn’t see him coming. The guy put his arm around my father’s head. My father saw only the eyes of the guy, who screamed ‘Allahu Akbar’ as he put his knife inside my father’s stomach.”
The Jewish community in Scotland feels “more vulnerable” and less protected against antisemitic attacks since the formation of the country’s national police force, The Scotsman reported on Tuesday.Greens attacking Israel? Hardly a big surprise
According to the report, the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities (SCoJeC) — an umbrella organization representing Scottish Jewry — said that Jews believe their safety is “not a priority” of Police Scotland and that collaboration with the force has become “less effective” since its founding in 2013.
Following what SCoJeC called an “upsurge” in antisemitic incidents in 2014 — which occurred around the time Israel and Gaza were at war — the group had remarkable close contact with senior police officers amid an “unprecedented level of fear and apprehension.” However, this relationship has since deteriorated, SCoJeC said.
SCoJeC said that Jewish leaders of Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow have all raised concerns that Police Scotland has detrimentally replaced the work of local, known police officers ensuring the safety of their communities.
Many Scottish Jews, SCoJeC said, now feel “more anxious.”
This isn’t surprising.UK Jewish leaders slam Corbyn's support for 'targeted boycotts'
First, small political parties are always vulnerable to being taken over on policy issues by special interests with their own agenda.
Second, many Greens are hard leftists for whom hatred of Israel goes hand in hand and hand with hatred of the United States, Israel being, in their view, the “Little Satan” of the Mideast, doing the bidding of the U.S., the “Great Satan”.
Indeed, significant support for the Greens internationally, particularly in Europe, comes from Marxists, who had to give up the ghost on touting the Soviet Union when it collapsed in the early 1990s.
Many easily shifted their political allegiance to the anti-Western, anti-U.S., anti-capitalist and anti-development rhetoric of radical environmentalism.
For such ideologues, hating Israel comes as easily as water sliding off a duck’s back, and is often a false flag operation for their real agenda, which is hating Jews.
None of this applies to May.
Indeed some Jewish groups praised her successful effort to water down another resolution passed at the Green convention that voted in favour of BDS, which originally targeted for condemnation one Jewish charity.
But that said, once again, let’s not kid the troops about the Greens.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews emphasized its strong opposition to boycotts, in response to Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn’s reiteration of his support for boycotting settlements in the West Bank.Anti-Israel Activist Found Guilty of Assaulting Jewish Student During Violent King’s College Protest
“Boycotts are deeply divisive, serve only to import international conflict into our shops, theaters and communities and provoke intransigence from both sides. None of this is at all helpful in the pursuit of peace,” the board said in a statement to The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.
The comment came after both Corbyn and his Labour leadership rival Owen Smith responded to the board’s request that they clarify their views on issues of concern for the UK Jewish community.
The organization stressed that it is not political and does now wish to appear partisan, but feels obliged to speak out against boycotts.
A letter penned by the board’s chief executive Gillian Merron to both candidates in next month’s Labour leadership election raised concerns regarding the Chakrabarti Report on anti-Semitism within the party, and asked that Corbyn and Smith pledge to honor the board’s “Ten Commitments.”
An anti-Israel demonstrator who took part in a violent protest at a London university in January was found guilty of assault, the UK’s Evening Standard reported on Wednesday.Brussels Airlines denies boycott as minister fumes over sweets retreat
According to the report, 25-year-old Ivana Bevilaqua stood trial in a Westminster Magistrates Court for her participation in a King’s College, London demonstration against Ami Ayalon — the ex-commander of the Israeli Navy and former head of the Shin Bet — who had been invited to speak on campus by the university’s Israel Society.
Bevilaqua was one of some 200 demonstrators who stormed the room where Ayalon was scheduled to speak.
Esther Endfield brought charges against Bevilaqua, who struck Endfield and knocked her phone out of her hand as she was attempting to film the violent protest, the report said. According to testimony by Endfield, protesters prevented security guards from gaining access to the building.
Brussels Airlines on Wednesday denied reports in Israeli media that the Belgian carrier was boycotting Israeli products made in the West Bank from its flights, as Israel’s tourism minister called to have the carrier banned from the country.Richard Millett: Guardian writer claims Google excluding Palestine to please customers.
A report in the Hebrew-language Ynet news site earlier on Wednesday claimed Brussels had stopped serving halva sesame snacks made by the Israeli food company Achva to appease pro-Palestinian activists.
The report sparked outrage in Israel, with Tourism Minister Yariv Levin calling for the Belgian airline to be banned from the country.
Achva’s factory is headquartered in the Barkan Industrial Park, in the West Bank, near the city of Ariel.
Airline spokeswoman Kim Daenen said the decision to pull the halva snacks from its flights was not politically motivated.
The Guardian’s weapon of choice on Monday against the Jewish state was maps with Petter Hellström, a PhD candidate at the Department of History of Science and Ideas, Uppsala University, claiming, in the Science section, that Google “chose not to mark Palestine on their maps…to stay impartial in the eyes of customers and the surrounding society…their fellow westerners.”Guardian again whitewashes the extremism of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)
Once again this article would have been more at home in the opinion section.
Hellström complains that Google’s Map of Israel shows Israeli population centre Ma’ale Adumin on the West Bank but not “not even major (Palestinian) ones like Gaza City, Khan Yunis or Nablus”.
He then reproduces two maps of North America from 1614 and 1729 which he claims “made the colonists visible at the expense of the indigenous population” and which he calls “instruments of colonial legitimisation”, the obvious inference being that Google is doing the same to the Palestinians.
He also reproduces an Israeli government map which doesn’t delineate the West Bank and Gaza as separate from Israel while accepting that the Palestinians do the same with their maps but giving the Palestinian action a more innocent gloss:
“Palestinian maps often label the whole country as Palestine – effectively a refusal to acknowledge the development since 1948.”
Hellström then invokes anti-Zionist Israeli historian Meron Benvenisti who “described the process with which the Israeli state Hebraized the place-names of the country they had conquered”.
For the second time in little over a year, the Guardian has managed to portray the radical, regressive anti-Zionist group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) in a sympathetic light. The latest article, which appeared in the Guardian on Aug. 24th and is titled ‘GOP mega-donor funds group calling pro-Palestine US students ‘Jew haters‘, reports on a Sheldon Adelson funded group which targets BDS and accuses some individual pro-Palestinian students of supporting terrorism and promoting antisemitism.BBC News reframes and politicises an animal welfare story
Whilst the article correctly suggests that the group, Stop the Jew Hatred on Campus (SJHC), is quite extreme in some of its rhetoric, the Guardian journalist, Sam Levin, grossly misleads readers by suggesting that SJP in particular is being smeared with the ‘false’ charges of being pro-terror and engaging in Jew hatred.
The inversion of reality by Levin is extraordinary – suggesting that SJP members are the ones being targeted, intimidated and harassed by aggressive and threatening tactics.
A filmed report which appeared on the BBC News website’s homepage as well as on its ‘World’ and ‘Middle East’ pages on August 24th revisited the location of a previous BBC report from April 2012.The Guardian Downplays Detainee’s Terror Ties
Back then, the report titled “Gaza zoo resorts to displaying stuffed animals” told audiences that:
“A zoo owner in Gaza has had to resort to displaying stuffed animals, because of a shortage of live ones.
Mohamed Owaida from the Khan Younis Zoo says it is proving too costly to feed his living animals, and he can not always get live specimens through the Israeli blockade of the Gaza strip.”
Failing to make any mention of the very relevant context of the Hamas terrorism which has brought about “border restrictions”, a succession of conflicts and the delay in reconstruction of civilian structures in the Gaza Strip, Knell turned to another unrelated topic:
“Across Gaza people are still having their homes rebuilt after long delays. The last conflict caused massive destruction and killed more than two thousand Palestinians and over seventy Israelis.”
Knell ended her politicised report as follows:
“Then, just after dawn, the animals leave Gaza. Their suffering will soon be over but they leave behind Palestinians who continue to feel trapped.”
Clearly telling BBC audiences the story of the relocation of abused animals from the Khan Younis zoo was of much less interest to Yolande Knell than the opportunistic promotion of her long apparent political agenda.
A Guardian report on a Palestinian detained for his involvement in terrorism attempts to portray him as just an innocent “journalist.”Report: London Jewish Family Targeted by Antisemitic Abuse, Told to ‘F*** Off Back to Isra-Hell’ (VIDEO)
In fact Omar Nazzal is linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terror group responsible for attacks on Israel including suicide bombings, the 1972 Lod Airport Massacre, and the 2014 Jerusalem synagogue massacre, in which terrorists attacked worshipers with a gun and butcher knives, ultimately taking eight lives. Just this week the PFLP claimed responsibility for firing a rocket from Gaza into Israel. Nazzal also headed an Islamic Jihad TV station, Palestine Today, for five months until he resigned shortly before Israel shut it down in March.
Nazzal was due to be released this week but Israel has extended his detention, leading to a condemnation from the International Federation of Journalists. Their statement reads:
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today joined its affiliate, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), in condemning the 3-month extension of the detention without trial of Palestinian journalist and member of the PJS board. Omar Nazzal (54), who had been due for release today, was arrested without any reason being given on 23 April… “This arrest clearly reveals the level of targeting and persecution of journalists and their union by the Israeli authorities”, said the PJS in a statement at the time.
Later on in the statement the IFJ does mention that Israel accuses him of participation in a terrorist organization, but that this is “based solely on evidence which they refuse to divulge.”
A Jewish family in east London was reportedly the target of a shocking antisemitic tirade in which they were told to “f*** off back to Isra-hell,” the UK’s Evening Standard reported on Wednesday.Jewish center slated for Polish town whose Jews died in Holocaust
According to the report, the 32-year-old father — who asked to remain anonymous — said he and his family were verbally attacked by a stranger during an outing to the London Docklands.
A video taken by the father shows the attacker shouting antisemitic slurs at the family, and telling them, “Don’t come round here, go to Stamford Hill,” a London neighborhood with a large Jewish community. “You’re not welcome.”
The father described the attacker as a “black male walking with two young children and a woman.” He said the “abuse” began as he, his wife and six children — who range in age from a nine-week old baby to a 10-year-old — were exiting the family car.
“He came up behind us and started shouting at us to ‘f*** off back to Isra-hell’ and ‘go back to Stamford Hill.’ He was saying over and over again that we ‘weren’t welcome,’” the father told the Evening Standard.
“He was using the same words over and over again. I took my phone out and filmed it so I could show the police,” he added.
A Jewish center will be built in a central Poland town that has been empty of Jews since the Holocaust.Jewish spiritual leader, Holocaust survivor Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis dies at 80
The foundation stone for the center in Radomsko, a town of about 48,000 approximately 115 miles from Warsaw, was laid Monday. It is being built to host the hundreds of Hasidic visitors to the cemetery who each year make pilgrimages to the grave of Shlomo Chanoch Hakohen Rabinowicz, the fourth and last rebbe of the Radomsk Hasidic dynasty.
Funded by the Polish Jewish community, the center will rise next to the Jewish cemetery. It will include a room of memory dedicated to the history of Radomsko Jews. Some 7,500 Jews lived there prior to the Holocaust.
Town officials expect the center, the first such facility in the Lodz region, to attract tourists and investors.
Rabinowicz built a network of 36 yeshivas across Poland and Galicia that enrolled over 4,000 students by 1939. He and his entire family were killed in the Warsaw Ghetto in August 1942.
Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis, an icon of the Jewish community in the US and Israel, passed away on Tuesday evening at the age of 80.Russian Jews posthumously honor Elie Wiesel
Jungreis is well known for founding New-York-based Jewish outreach organization Hineni along with her late husband. She was an author of four books on the subjects of spirituality and relationships and was a frequent lecturer well into her later years.
Hineni posted a notice of her passing on their website, writing "[o]ur crown has departed. Our glory is gone."
She was born in 1936 in Szeged, Hungary, the daughter of the city's Chief Rabbi Avroham Halevi Jungreis. After surviving Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, the surviving members of the Jungreis family eventually settled in New York in 1947.
Along with her husband Rabbi Meshuelem Halevi Jungreis, the pair became spiritual leaders in the New York Jewish community. They founded Hineni in an attempt to quell growing assimilation that they saw throughout American Jewry.
A Jewish organization working in the former Soviet Union inaugurated an exhibition in Moscow on the life of Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel.Stand With Us: 87 Years Later: The Hebron Massacre
Also in the Russian capital, some 500 Chabad rabbis from across Europe gathered this week for a conference that may be the largest rabbinical gathering ever held there, according to the Chabad movement.
The exhibition, titled “Elie Wiesel, from Sighet to Moscow via France and Israel,” was launched Wednesday by Limmud FSU, which organizes Jewish learning conferences in over a dozen countries with large populations of Russian-speaking Jews.
Prominent figures from Russian Jewry, including the country’s two chief rabbis, Berel Lazar and Avraham Shayevich, attended the opening at the Israeli Cultural Center. The display features dozens of photos from important stations in the life of Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and prolific writer who died last month in New York at 87.
His 1966 book “The Jews of Silence” looked at Jews living in repression beyond the Iron Curtain under communism and served as a catalyst for the Soviet Jewry movement.
WATCH: Rare White Rhino Calf Born in Israeli Zoo
The Zoological Center of Tel Aviv-Ramat Gan is celebrating the addition of a new baby white rhino to its growing 28-strong rhinoceros herd.Israel Launches First Ever TV Tourism Campaign in India
Tanda, a 23-year-old mare, gave birth to the healthy male calf this week. It’s her fourth birth since arriving at the Israeli zoo 13 years ago.
“She is nursing him and taking very good care of him,” Gali Berkovich, an animal trainer at the park, told Reuters. “Rhinos are highly endangered animals … so this is why every birth is very important not just to us but for the entire species.”
Israeli zookeepers at the Safari say that days before she gave birth, Tanda’s teats began to swell and fill up and she drove away her two-year-old daughter, Teshi.
The Safari zookeepers separated Tanda from the rest of the herd in an open area “maternity ward.”
Israel’s Ministry of Tourism launched its first ever television advertising campaign in India, specifically targeting potential tourists to Israel.Matisyahu sings at his kids’ Jewish summer camp
“Breaking into the large Asian market, in particular China and India, is one of the main objectives set by the Tourism Ministry,” Tourism Minister Yariv Levin said in a prepared statement. “The experiential campaign… has been adapted to the particular characteristics and taste of the Indian market.”
Israel will spend $1.62 million, three times its normal budget, over a two-month period promoting Israeli tourism using the slogan, “On most vacations, you take a trip. But in Israel, you take a journey.”
Last year, about 40,000 Indian tourists visited Israel, a 13 percent jump from 2014. That growth is expected to continue and by 2018, Israeli officials see the number reaching 100,000.
Matisyahu gave a surprise concert to campers and staff at a modern Orthodox summer camp in Pennsylvania.
On Monday, the reggae star showed up at Camp Moshava in Honesdale, where his children are campers, the Israel National News website reported. He performed his hits “One Day,” “Sunshine” and “Jerusalem,” among other songs.
Before Matisyahu sang “Jerusalem,” which he performed in Spain last year while facing down anti-Israel protesters, one of the camp officials gave the campers a lesson in Zionism, according to the news website. The official broke down when announcing Matisyahu would perform the song and was embraced by the formerly Hasidic musician.
Camp Moshava is part of the Bnei Akiva religious Zionist youth movement.
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