Saturday, September 03, 2016
German teachers’ union urges total boycott of Israel
The teachers union in the city of Oldenburg published an article in its September paper calling for a complete boycott of the Jewish state, sparking criticism from Israel’s embassy, German teachers and pro-Israel activists, as well as the Simon Wiesenthal Center.How Jordan’s ‘sheikh of sheikhs’ negotiated with Zionists, founded a kingdom
It appears to be the first call to boycott Israel or Jews from a German organized labor group since the Holocaust. Critics accuse the union of stoking modern Jew-hatred.
The anti-Israel activist and teacher Christoph Glanz outlined the goals of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement in his two-page article in the magazine of the Education and Science Workers’ Union (GEW).
“The GEW is an important institution in Germany. That is why we are surprised and disappointed, that the Oldenburg chapter chose to re-publish the pamphlet of a BDS activist in its magazine,” the embassy told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.
On April 8, 1933, the “most powerful man” in Transjordan took a trip to the famous King David Hotel in Jerusalem. He was there to negotiate with the Zionist leadership over the sale of huge tracts of land on the east bank of the Jordan River. Among the attendees of the meeting were Chaim Weizmann, soon to be Israel’s first president, Moshe Sharett, who would become Israel’s second prime minister, and Haim Arlosoroff, the top Zionist diplomat at the time and the one who set the meeting up.Fred Maroun: Zionism belongs to Jews
This Jordanian VIP, who worked publicly with the Jewish Agency, was Mithqal Pasha al-Fayiz, the leader of the Beni Sakhr tribal confederacy who, and would, ultimately become the kingmaker of the Hashemite dynasty.
Mithqal’s life is the subject of a new book, “The Shaykh of Shaykhs: Mithqal al-Fayiz and Tribal Leadership in Modern Jordan,” by Israeli researcher Yoav Alon.
Alon, who says he was probably the first Israeli researcher to do fieldwork in the kingdom since the Israeli-Jordanian peace agreement in 1994, interviewed the direct descendants of the great sheikh in order to bring his story to life.
A shrewd diplomat, a daring warrior and wise ruler, Mithqal’s life was full of intrigue — prime material for a Hollywood movie, says Alon. He led raids, acted as a judge for thousands of tribespeople, and had to maneuver through the political swamp of British colonialism, the Zionist project and Arab nationalism while balancing local affairs.
In the end, Mithqal did not sell any land to the Zionists, though he did accept their money. And a few years later during the Arab revolt against the British in Palestine, he became the strongest supporter of Palestinian nationalism, defying Abdullah bin Hussein, whom he had helped put on the throne.
The British, the Zionists and even the Hashemites all sought to exploit Mithqal, who Alon believes commanded the most powerful army in Transjordan at the time. But the sheikh turned out to be a chess grandmaster, working with everybody while bolstering his own coffers and political power.
The Palestinian cause should belong to Palestinians, but sadly it does not, and that is one of the main reasons for its failure. In 1947, the trend was established when the Arab world pushed the Palestinians to reject the UN partition plan and to fight their Jewish neighbors instead of living at peace with them.
This trend has continued since then, with Palestinians being encouraged repeatedly by their “friends” to reject Israeli offers for peace. Today the so-called pro-Palestinian movement, including the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, is driven largely by non-Palestinians and even non-Arabs, and it is far more anti-Israel than pro-Palestinian.
These foreign parties have no interest in helping the Palestinians build a peaceful state. Their interest lies in satisfying an ideological view of what the Palestinians need, which often is very far from reality. For example, they oppose Israeli businesses in the West Bank, regardless of the consequences to the Palestinians. Five hundred Palestinians lost their jobs as a result of the closing of SodaStream which the BDS movement targeted.
Palestinian human rights activists Bassem Eid wrote, “There is no connection between the tactics and objectives of the BDS movement and the on-the-ground realities of the Middle East. Israelis continue to come to the West Bank to do business, and most Palestinians continue to buy Israeli goods. Indeed, if you ask Palestinians what they want, they’ll tell you they want jobs, secure education, and health”.
Can Israel become a maritime power?
Several years ago, before the onset of the Arab Spring, the eminent historian Bernard Lewis suggested that Israel’s future in the Middle East was more secure than many assumed. In measurable ways, the nearer Arab and Muslim states were sinking into ever deeper political, social and economic dysfunction and despair, while Israel, for all its innate tensions and divisive culture wars, was politically and economically sound and socially cohesive.Muslim Terrorists and Jewish Anti-Semites Against Trump
It was an argument about the way these nations conduct themselves: By conscious choice, the wealthiest Middle Eastern economies rely on oil for their prosperity, whereas Israel relies on technological innovation as its single largest export. As technological advances slowly but surely sideline Middle Eastern oil as a keystone of the global economy, economies that rely on little else will sink further, he argued, while Israel, which has transformed itself into an engine for those very advances, will only rise.
The history of the past few years has largely borne out this assessment.
Israel’s strength set against an imploding Arab state system – indeed, Israel’s strangely separate life in a region that is increasingly seen as an exporter primarily of its own social and religious imbalances – is quietly but decisively transforming the Jewish state’s place in the calculations of both friend and foe.
Moderate Saudi businessmen who fund terror warn of Trump’s "extremism."Corbyn supporter to UK Jewish MP: You should hang from the gallows
“I was often the ‘designated yeller.’”
That’s how Hillary Clinton described her relationship with the Israeli prime minister. Yelling and cursing was her particular specialty.
One marathon Hillary yelling session allegedly lasted 45 minutes. Afterward the Israeli ambassador said that relations between the United States and Israel had reached their lowest point.
Her favorite name for Netanyahu was, “F____ Bibi.”
But it wasn’t just about her hatred of any particular Israeli leader. The same year that Hillary was yelling herself hoarse at a man who had fought terrorists on the battlefield, she addressed the American Task Force on Palestine, a leading terror lobby, and blasted Israel and praised Islamic terrorists.
Hillary told the terror lobby, “I may have been the first person ever associated with an American administration to call for a Palestinian state.” She praised Mahmoud Abbas, the PA terror dictator who had boasted, “There is no difference between our policies and those of Hamas.”
She celebrated Naomi Shihab Nye who had written of the Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli cities, “Oppression makes people do desperate things.” Echoing her, Hillary denounced the “indignity of occupation”. A few years later she accused Israelis of a lack of “empathy” in understanding “the pain of an oppressed people.”
Perhaps they were too busy mourning their dead to empathize with the terrorists who were killing them.
But fighting for her political life, Hillary and Huma dug through her closet and threw on a blue and white pantsuit. Her campaign placed an editorial in the Forward headlined, “How I Would Reaffirm Unbreakable Bond With Israel — and Benjamin Netanyahu.”
A British Jewish Labour MP said Friday that the leader of her party must do more to tackle anti-Semitism within its ranks, a day after she was assigned special police protection due to a sinister death threat.StandWithUs: Israel Office
UK counter-terrorism police have launched an investigation into the supporter of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn who threatened to hang lawmaker Ruth Smeeth.
According to The Sun newspaper, which said Thursday it has seen the Facebook message the unnamed man left for the parliamentarian, the threat concludes with the sentence: “Ruth Smeeth is British and from my perspective since treason is still a capital offence in Britain, the gallows would be a fine and fitting place for this Dyke piece of Yid s*** to swing from.”
Smeeth said Friday that she received more than 20,000 abusive messages from Corbyn supporters in just 12 hours, after she criticized him for not doing enough to fight anti-Semitism.
StandWithUs: Project Upload
Daphne Anson: Jewish, Joo-ish, & Shome Mishtake Shurely
"In our thousands, in our millions We are all Palestinians, We're all Palestinians now"What does the BBC News website tell audiences about the Khartoum Resolutions?
So runs a ditty composed and crooned by some chap (the name escapes me) with guitar who's become quite a feature of those little anti-Israel demos on the streets of London that typically begin with the impressive diction of our old friend Sandra intoning "We are here today outside the offices of ...".
Well, it would seem that for the purposes of demonising the Zionist Entity on a rather frightful Facebook page "We are all as-a-Jews now".
Or "Khazarians" as this fragrant female member of the group might say:
The Facebook group is called the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network. Its banner profile picture is despicable, for they have appropriated to their vile cause the photo of three Jewish heroine, young Jewish fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto pictured straight after their surrender to Nazi devils.
What obscene chutzpah for the IJAZN to make propaganda use of these heroines of the Shoah in this way.
And how very curious to find, in a group ostensibly composed of anti-Israel Jews, people who, unless they have had a sudden conversion, are not Jews, and indeed in a number of cases have displayed raw antisemitic views.
Thus, in addition to usual Jewish suspects such as Jeff Halper and Mondoweiss's Adam Horowitz, there are usual suspects such as Darlene Jones-Owen and the fragrant female in the above video, Pam Arnold (aka Pam Hardyment), as well as the occasional individual who falls, as it were, between two stools, such as Miranda Pinch, an Anglican anti-Zionist whose mother happened to be Jewish.
There are also many Muslims.
For years the BBC has cited the Six Day War as the central factor in its portrayal of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the broader Arab-Israeli conflict and even beyond. In 2007 the corporation’s Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen told radio audiences that:After Contact by CAMERA, The Washington Post Corrects on Israel Annexing Area C
“The legacy of 1967, military occupation and violent resistance, the unresolved refugee crisis and the competition for control of land and water…lies behind most of the shameful brutal and tragic events I have witnessed in 16 years of covering the Arab Israeli conflict for the BBC.”
“It would be bad enough if the misery of the past 40 years was confined to the Palestinians and the Israelis. But now at the start of the 21st century, their war affects all of us.. It’s at the center of the conflict between the West and the Islamic world… Ignoring the legacy of 1967 is not an option.” [emphasis added]
One might therefore expect that audiences would be able to find information concerning the Khartoum Resolutions on the BBC News website but a search for that term yields no results whatsoever.
The website’s current profile of the Arab League offers no information on that subject either and neither does its predecessor which is still available online. An old ‘timeline’ of the Arab League dating from 2011 includes the following entry for 1967 and a subsequent ‘timeline’ from 2013 offers the same information.
Next year will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Six Day War and no doubt the BBC’s coverage of the topic will be extensive. Whether or not that coverage will finally include the provision of BBC audiences with information concerning the Arab League’s rejection of peace after losing that war remains to be seen.
Yet, as CAMERA noted in correspondence to Post editors and staff on August 30, the Israeli government does not want to formally annex Area C in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria). No Israeli government has ever stated as policy the formal annexation of Area C. Arguably the closest to such an instance would be proposals by Israeli politician Naftali Bennett, but none of these were adopted and as such cannot be said to be “Israeli government” policy.IDF Blog: Get in on the action: add “IDFofficial” on Snapchat
In their Sept. 2, 2016 print edition, The Washington Post corrected:
“An Aug. 29 Page One article about a Palestinian village that Israel deems illegal incorrectly said that the Israeli government wants to formally annex Area C in the West Bank, where 200 Jewish settlements are located. Some members of the Israeli right want to annex the area.”
An online version of the Post article (“Israel wants to bulldoze this ramshackle village, but Europe is providing life support,” Aug. 28, 2016) initially mirrored the print version's language. However, on Aug. 29, 2016 the article was changed to read “The Israeli right now wants to formally annex Area C in the West Bank,” deleting the word “government.” This correction was not formally noted in the online version.
CAMERA has asked that the online version notate that this change was made. Stay tuned for updates.
Throughout their compulsory military service, 18-21 year old Israelis have always been able to share their experiences with visiting tourists. Now, the IDF is sharing their stories directly with Snapchat users all over the world by launching both a “Story” on Snapchat and an “Instagram Story.”IDF training troops in non-lethal measures against Palestinian attackers
As the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, we operate social media accounts in multiple languages on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, and Google+ as a part of our effort to communicate breaking stories and to increase transparency with as many different audiences as possible. Today, we’re excited to announce that we will be joining the world of Snapchat with the debut of the Israel Defense Forces Story.
In June, the IDF made history as one of the first militaries to open an account on the platform. Starting today, our “Stories” will follow a group of parachuters as they train for their first jump from an airplane in two weeks.
To tune in, find the IDF on Snapchat by clicking here, adding “IDFofficial” as a friend, or by scanning the snapcode above.
The Israel Defense Forces this week rolled out a new training program aimed at equipping soldiers deployed in the West Bank with non-lethal measures to combat Palestinian attackers and terrorists.
“Not every attack carried out by a young girl with scissors needs to end in a fatal shooting,” combat instructor Lt. Col. Itamar Kolehli told Channel 2, recalling the off-duty police officer who fatally shot one of two Palestinian teenage girls attempting to carry out a stabbing attack in Jerusalem last year.
Kolehli said the new training program was introduced in response to the months-long wave of Palestinian violence in which many young assailants have been killed by security forces while carrying out attacks.
“What we are striving to do is connect the training with what is happening on the ground, to fit the changing nature of the threats facing the troops,” Kolehli said.
A video showed the soldiers being trained in various Krav Maga techniques to neutralize attackers without using their weapons.
Syria Circulates Polished Tourism Videos as Civil War Rages On
An account connected to Syria’s Tourism Ministry has released a dozen promotional videos over the past three weeks showing scenic shots of its beaches and ancient sites in an effort to spur tourism in the war-torn country, the Washington Post reported Friday.Trump, Clinton talk tough on Iran following controversial report
One of the videos, titled “Syria Always Beatiful” in misspelled English, was shot with a drone hovering over the turquoise sea while hundreds of people wade in the water, ride jet skis, or relax on the beach. Upbeat electronic music plays in the background.
Another video shows a shot of the UNESCO World Heritage site in the city of Palmyra that was liberated from the Islamic State in March after the terrorist group destroyed ancient artifacts and landmarks there.
The videos uploaded to YouTube by Syria Tourism make no reference to the government’s onslaught against rebel forces opposing President Bashar al Assad’s regime, which has killed most of the estimated 400,000 people who have died during the country’s five-year cvil war while millions more have been displaced. They also make no mention of Assad’s chemical weapons attacks against his own people, or of ISIS’s footprint in the country.
In 2011, as the Syrian civil war was just beginning, some 8.5 million tourists traveled to the country, generating nearly $8.3 billion in tourism revenue, according to the Syrian Ministry of Tourism. The tourism industry constituted roughly 13.5 percent of Syria’s GDP in 2011 and made up about 13 percent of all jobs in the country, the ministry told the Post.
The Trump and Clinton campaigns issued tough-on-Iran statements in the wake of a report that alleges that negotiators allowed Iran secret loopholes in the nuclear agreement.Missing in Iran
The Institute for Science and International Affairs, a think tank founded by a former United Nations nuclear weapons inspector, David Albright, said in a report released this week that Iran complied with most of the sanctions relief for the nuclear rollback deal when it was implemented in January, but it said, citing anonymous sources, that there were a number of exemptions.
The Obama administration strongly denied the thrust of the report, saying the deal was being implemented according to the letter. Parties to the deal were Iran, the United States, Germany, France, Britain, China and Russia.
The campaign of Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, pounced on Thursday, taking a shot at Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, who as secretary of state in President Barack Obama’s first term helped set the stage for the deal.
“The deeply flawed nuclear deal Hillary Clinton secretly spearheaded with Iran looks worse and worse by the day,” said a statement by the campaign attributed to Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency who is now advising Trump.
“It’s now clear President Obama gave away the store to secure a weak agreement that is full of loopholes, never ultimately blocks Iran from nuclear weapons, emboldens our enemies and funds terrorism,” he said.
The world is full of amateurs and fools, bumbling their way into dim alleys or falling off the docks into dark water. But maybe the saddest cases are found among the people who actually have some skill: the people who flourish in a profession, productively filling a career, and then decide that their success in one field equips them for success in another.Prominent German neo-Nazi convicted of Holocaust denial
The problem, I think, is that competent people often think of competence as a general kind of talent, applicable to anything to which they might turn their hand. Unfortunately, competence often proves less fungible and more particular than we like to imagine. To have done one job well doesn’t guarantee an ability to do some other job just as well.
If you ever need an example, you’ll find it in Robert Levinson, the American spy who has been missing in Iran for almost a decade. As recounted by the New York Times reporter Barry Meier in his book Missing Man, Levinson’s tale is by turns shocking, infuriating, and insanely weird—populated with Mafia figures, Russian oligarchs, Columbian drug smugglers, reckless spymasters, and lying diplomats.
But at the same time, Levinson’s story seems almost like a fugue, heading toward its predictable conclusion from the moment the former FBI agent decided to supplement his retirement pension by trying his hand at international intrigue. Once Levinson began contracting part-time with the CIA, he was stumbling toward the end of the dock, where the water is always dark and deep.
A prominent German neo-Nazi has again been convicted of Holocaust denial and sentenced to eight months in prison.German Jewish leader: Rise of populist AfD ‘frightening’
The Detmold state court said Friday that 87-year-old Ursula Haverbeck said she plans to appeal the decision.
Haverbeck wrote a February letter to the mayor of Detmold when a former Auschwitz guard was going on trial there, claiming the notorious Nazi death camp was only a labor camp, and called survivors “alleged witnesses.”
Haverbeck was most recently convicted of Holocaust denial in 2015 for a similar statement in an interview outside the trial of another former Auschwitz guard in Lueneburg.
She was sentenced to 10 months imprisonment in that case but remains free as her appeal is heard.
Both guards were convicted of multiple counts of accessory to murder and are appealing.
The head of the German Jewish community said Friday that the rise of the right-wing populist and anti-migrant AfD party was “frightening,” as a key state election looms.Mobileye-Delphi to produce self-driving system by 2019
The Alternative for Germany party is polling above 20 percent in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where Chancellor Angela Merkel has her electoral seat and which goes to the polls Sunday.
Support for the AfD in the state is at a similar level to Merkel’s conservative CDU and just behind the center-left Social Democrats.
“The voters aren’t realizing they are voting for a party that doesn’t want to distance itself from the far-right spectrum,” said Yosef Schuster.
Mobileye and Delphi Automotive have announced a partnership to jointly develop a complete SAE Level 4/5 automated driving solution. The new technology partnership between these two top auto suppliers is meant to put self-driving cars on the roads by 2019.delphiDoD Approves Israeli Radar for US Iron Curtain Testing
“The Mobileye and Delphi relationship started in 2002 with the implementation of what was one of the most advanced active safety systems of the time. Our long history together is key to the success of this ambitious endeavor,” said Professor Amnon Shashua, Mobileye Chairman and Chief Technology Officer. “Our partnership with Delphi will accelerate the time to market and enable customers to adopt Level 4/5 automation without the need for huge capital investments, thereby creating a formidable advantage for them.”
Earlier reports by other automakers and suppliers highlighted 2020-2021 for initial deployment of self-driving cars.
“This partnership will allow us to give our customers an increased level of automated capabilities faster and more cost effectively,” said Kevin Clark, Delphi President and Chief Executive Officer. “The collective expertise of our two organizations will accelerate the creation of new approaches and capabilities that would likely not have been possible working alone. This is a win-win for both companies and our customers.”
The Pentagon has given Herndon, Virginia-based defense solutions company Artis the green light to integrate Israeli radars from Rada Electronic Industries Ltd. into its Iron Curtain close-in active protection system (APS).Report: Seeking to Bolster Military Prowess, Philippine Navy Looks to Purchase Israeli Fast Patrol Boats
“We have received approval from the US government to import two Rada radar units for purposes of testing and evaluating them with our Iron Curtain active protection system,” Artis executive Brian Detter told Defense News.
On Monday, Netanya, Israel-based Rada announced it would provide its Compact Hemispheric Radar-based RPS-10 radar to support Artis’ active protection against rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) and other shoulder-launched threats.
Optimized to detect fire from RPGs and anti-tank, guided missiles, the compact, multimission Rada radar has been validated dozens of times in live-fire tests of another hard kill system, the Israeli-developed Iron Fist by state-owned IMI Systems.
Seeking to bolster its military prowess, the Philippine Navy is looking to purchase six Israeli fast patrol boats, the MaxDefense blog has reported.Israeli designer's glass bridge in China so popular it closes due to overcrowding
According to the report, the potential acquisition of the Shaldag-class vessels, built by Haifa-based Israel Shipyards, is part of an upgrade program currently being expedited, due to new Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s goal of “beefing up the capabilities to fight internal threats like insurgency, terrorism and drug shipments.”
With its eyes on using the Shaldag MK V for such missions, the Philippine Navy reportedly submitted a Request for Information to Israel Shipyards. The Shaldag MK V is said to be faster and able to carry more weapons than the nearly three-decade-old US-made Jose Andrada-class patrol boats currently in use by the Philippine Navy.
Regarding the weaponry expected to be installed by the Philippine Navy on the Shaldag MK Vs, the report said the boats will likely “be armed with a stabilized remote weapons station for a 25mm gun and small surface-to-surface [Spike] missiles” — missiles which are produced by Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.
Nearly shy of two weeks after China opened the world's longest and highest glass-bottom bridge designed by Israeli architect Haim Dotan, the suspended structure closed on Friday.Israel Daily Picture: Who Was the 19th Century American Preacher Mendenhall John Dennis? Actually, He Was a Jerusalem Watchmaker Named Mendel Deniss, Jerusalem's First Photographer
The 430-meter-long skywalk suspended across Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon in Hunan Province's scenic Zhangjiajie National Park temporarily closed after opening to the public on August 20.
"We're overwhelmed by the volume of visitors," CNN quoted a spokesperson from the Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon operations as saying.
The spokesperson acknowledged that there had been no accidents or cracks in the infrastructure.
While a reopen date has not yet been announced, CNN reported that the attraction's management said Thursday on its website that the closure had been taken due to the "urgency to improve and update" the structure.
In 1988, John Barnier visited a garage sale in St. Paul, Minnesota. There he found and purchased eight boxes of old photographic glass plates. Fortunately, Barnier is an expert in the history of photographic printing.
He had little idea that he had uncovered a historic treasure. Later, he viewed the plates and saw that they included old pictures of Jerusalem. He contacted the Harvard Semitic Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, known for its large collection of old photographs from the Middle East.
On some of the plates they found the initials MJD. Until then the name Mendel Diness was barely known by scholars. It was assumed that with the exception of one or two photos his collection ....
Thank you for your interest in Mendel Diness. The full article is available in the forthcoming book.
An Early Taste of Zionism
“What shall I cook? This problem, the concern of housewives the world over, is particularly acute in our country. The differences in climate and the necessary adjustments arising out of these differences compel the European housewife to make many drastic changes, particularly in her cooking.”
With these words, Dr. Erna Meyer introduced her cookbook, How to Cook in Palestine, which was published in Palestine in the mid-1930s in Hebrew, English, and German. “We housewives must take an attempt to free our kitchens from European customs which are not applicable to Palestine. We should wholeheartedly stand in favor of healthy Palestine cooking,” writes Meyer, urging new Jewish immigrants to Palestine to shed their European identity and reinvent themselves according to the Zionist ideology. “We should foster these ideas not merely because we are compelled to do so, but because we realize that this will help us more than anything else in becoming acclimatized to our old-new homeland.”
Meyer’s book is widely considered the first Jewish cookbook printed in Palestine during the British Mandate. Although the publication year isn’t printed inside the book, by most accounts How to Cook in Palestine came out in 1936, exactly 80 years ago (although some accounts claim 1934 or 1937). It was published in Tel Aviv by the Histadruth Nashim Zionioth, the Palestine Federation of the Women’s International Zionist Organization. Meyer was assisted by Milka Saphir, who was a nutrition and cooking teacher at the WIZO domestic-science school in Nahalat Yitzhak.
In Israel today, How to Cook in Palestine is a coveted collector’s item that does not stay long on the shelves of second-hand bookshops. It was no less popular when it was originally published: Because few cookbooks came out in Palestine in those days, this book was considered a bible to Jewish immigrant women, and Meyer was regarded their guru.
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.
