Tuesday, July 04, 2017
UNESCO panel okays softened text blasting Israel over Jerusalem activity
The United Nations Educational, Scientific, Cultural Organization’s World Heritage Council on Tuesday evening passed a resolution denouncing Israeli activity in the Old City of Jerusalem.
Ten countries voted in favor of the text, which was significantly softer than previous resolutions. Only three member states — Jamaica, the Philippines and Burkina Faso — opposed the resolution, while eight abstained.
The Jordanian-sponsored resolution on the “Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls” called Israel “the occupying power,” and reaffirmed previous UN resolutions denying the country’s claims to East Jerusalem. Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem has never been recognized by the international community.
The body “regrets the failure of the Israeli occupying authorities to cease the persistent excavations, tunneling, works, projects and other illegal practices in East Jerusalem, particularly in and around the Old City of Jerusalem, which are illegal under international law,” the measure read.
However, Decision 41 COM 7A.36 stressed “the importance of the Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls for the three monotheistic religions,” language not found in last year’s text. It also did not refer to the Temple Mount compound solely by its Muslim names, “Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif,” as the 2016 resolution did, defining it only as “a Muslim holy site of worship.”
Despite the text lacking the bite of previous resolutions passed by the body, it was still met with angry denunciations by Israeli officials.
UN Ambassador Haley Slams Upcoming UNESCO Hebron Vote as ‘Wasted Symbolic Action,’ Urges Focus on ‘Precious Sites Under Real Threat of Destruction’
The US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, has strongly criticized the Palestinian campaign for the Tomb of the Patriarchs and the Old City in the West Bank town of Hebron to be recognized as “Endangered World Heritage Sites” by UNESCO, the UN’s global cultural agency.UNESCO’s Cave of the Patriarchs measure is latest ‘narrative warfare’ against Israel
The Palestinian proposal is scheduled to be put to a vote on Friday, during the 41st meeting of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee which began last Sunday in the Polish city of Krakow.
In a letter addressed to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova – a copy of which was seen by The Algemeiner – Haley stated the Tomb of Patriarchs, which is “sacred to three faiths, is under no immediate threat.” To designate it as an “endangered” site, Haley said, risks “undermining the seriousness such an assessment by UNESCO should have.”
“Many precious sites – from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Libya to Iraq to Syria – are under real and imminent threat of destruction today,” Haley said.”They urgently demand UNESCO’s full and immediate attention, which should not be wasted on this sort of symbolic action.”
A key holy site for the Jewish faith under Israeli control since 1967, the Tomb of the Patriarchs – known as the Machpelah Cave in Hebrew – houses the tombs of Abraham and his wife Sarah, their son Isaac, and their grandson Jacob and his wife Leah.
An upcoming vote by the United Nations cultural body UNESCO on whether to declare Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs as an endangered Palestinian heritage site is the latest example of “narrative warfare” against Israel and Jews, legal experts say.Holocaust survivors urge Polish FM: Stop UNESCO Hebron vote
As part of an ongoing Palestinian-engineered diplomatic campaign, an “emergency resolution” UNESCO presented to its World Heritage Committee claims Israel is causing “irreversible negative effect on the integrity, authenticity and/or the distinctive character of the property,” which the resolution refers to not as the Cave of the Patriarchs, but as the Ibrahimi Mosque. The Hebron site is where the Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah are believed to be buried.
The vote is tentatively scheduled to take place during UNESCO’s July 2-12 summit in Krakow, Poland.
“Anyone who comes to the Cave of the Patriarchs can see that the building is well-maintained, and open for members of all faiths to pray,” said Yishai Fleisher, international spokesman for the Jewish community of Hebron, who noted that the site’s largest room is reserved almost exclusively for use as a mosque by local Arabs.
Further, Fleisher explained that like the Western Wall, “the Cave of the Patriarchs monument was built by a Jewish king”—King Herod, more than 2,000 years ago.
“Suggesting first, that the site of the burial of the Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs is a Palestinian heritage site, and then suggesting that the site is in danger, is a fraudulent interpretation of history. It is a classic case of the narrative warfare the Palestinians are waging on the Jewish people,” Fleisher, a trained lawyer, told JNS.org.
A group of 12 Holocaust survivors, who were born in Poland and now live in Israel, have sent an urgent letter to the Polish foreign minister, asking him to call on his government to thwart the UNESCO resolution seeking to declare Hebron's Old City as a Palestinian World Heritage Site.
Poland will host the 41st gathering of the World Heritage Committee in Kraków this week. During the gathering, the committee is expected to vote on the Palestinian draft resolution that would recognize the Cave of the Patriarchs—where the Biblical fathers and mothers of the Jewish nation are buried according to tradition—as a Muslim site.
A similar UNESCO resolution passed in 2015 recognizing Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem as a Muslim site under the sovereignty of the Palestinian Authority, while ignoring Jewish claims to the site. That resolution was followed by protests and strong condemnations from the State of Israel and the Jewish community worldwide.
Shurat HaDin, a legal NGO accompanying the survivors in their plea to Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski, described the move at the UN's Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization as a "pitiful resolution that creates a Palestinian narrative that is a complete lie."
Shurat HaDin founder Nitsana Darshan-Leitner went on to say, "If this decision passes, it would be another desecration of the memory of the millions of Jews murdered on Polish soil, and I expect the government of Poland to prevent the vote."
U.N. Hosts Forum Openly Advocating the Economic Devastation of the Jewish State
Participants in an Israel-bashing U.N.-sponsored forum, held in New York on June 29-30, 2017, used the globally webcast opportunity to make numerous calls to boycott, divest, and sanction (BDS) the Jewish state. BDS seeks to accomplish through economic warfare what Arab armies and terrorists have failed to accomplish after seven decades.Sir Tim Rice criticises teachers for changing 'Israel' lyrics in Joseph musical
The calls were made at the U.N. "Forum to Mark Fifty Years of Occupation," organized by the U.N.'s Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, a body created in 1975 to implement the infamous General Assembly resolution declaring Zionism to be a form of racism. The Forum saw numerous instances of antisemitism and calls for violence, and comparisons of Israel to ISIS.
Among the BDS calls:
Jody Williams, UN invited keynote speaker "No state likes to be a pariah; look at South Africa. Now we're told that the BDS movement won't work, won't do anything. Well, it helped in South Africa."
Mustafa Barghouti, UN invited panelist, Member of the PLO Central Council, the Palestinian Legislative Council, and General Secretary of Palestinian political party the Palestinian National Initiative
"The entry point is to change the balance of power, and that can be achieved, in my humble opinion, through five ways, or five pillars, the first of which is resistance...The second pillar is boycott, divestment, sanctions: BDS. The Israelis don't like it. It's their problem. They will fight against it. It's their problem. But it is the one of the most effective methods because it first of all allows Palestinians in the diaspora to participate in the Palestinian struggle..."
"Second, definitely put every effort you can in contribution to the strengthening of the Boycott Divestment Sanctions. BDS is the most powerful instrument, and it should be used, and it is effective, and that's why the Israeli government is so crazy and mad about it..."
"But to be frank with you, it has to be a complete boycott of Israel as a government..."
He said: "They were doing the Joseph songs and they changed Close Every Door, the last line 'Children of Israel are never alone', they changed it to 'children of kindness are never alone', which was obviously being politically correct or something.MEMRI: NYC Quds Day Rally: Hitler-Like Zionists Help ISIS and Killed JFK; Al-Baghdadi Is Israeli; U.S. #1 Terrorist
"[They] interpreted the song completely wrongly, and what a rotten thing. And I only heard about it because someone tweeted me and said 'did you approve this change?'
"I said I did not approve it and I hadn't heard about it. It was quite a big thing, it was for all schools in the Wellington area in New Zealand."
He added: "We came down on them like a ton of bricks and they said [...] we wanted to make it easier for the children. I thought the point of teaching was to teach children to cope with hard things in life. This was moronic."
He added: "I mean Joseph is an innocent story straight from the Bible and these people in New Zealand thought we were making statements about Israel and Palestine - bonkers."
The local council in the area later apologised saying a "community coordinator made an error in judgment", and the songs would be performed in their original versions in the show. The coordinator of the New Zealand arts festival where the song will be performed in September said: “Action has been taken over the weekend to ensure that the original song words are all reinstated, with immediate effect.”
At a rally held in Times Square, N.Y., to mark International Quds Day, activists chanted anti-U.S. and anti-Israel slogans. One activist shouted that “the Zionist state has been helping ISIS since its creation” and that ISIS stood for “Israeli Secret Intelligence Service.” He further said that Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was a Mossad agent and that the Zionists had assassinated John F. Kennedy because he opposed Israel's obtaining nuclear weapons. Nerdeen Kiswani of the NYC Students for Justice in Palestine led chants of “We don’t want two states, we want ’48!” and “U.S. imperialist, number one terrorist!” and Joe Catron of the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network shouted: “Intifada, revolution!” and “Israel, go to Hell!” American-Filipino activist Mike Legaspi, of the “Bayan USA” alliance of Filipino organizations, accused the U.S. of “bombing the crap out of the Middle East” and demanded that “U.S. imperialism stop funding Israel.” Quds Day is an annual Iranian-led event, declared by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979 and held on the last Friday of the month of Ramadhan.
Speaker: "There was an agreement between Hitler and the Zionist movement in 1934. It is called the Hasbara [sic] Agreement. The Zionist movement was the only movement that cooperated with Hitler in order to get the Jews out of Europe into Palestine. The Jews who wanted to go to Palestine were spared, but the Jews who didn't want to go to Palestine – the true Jews – were killed and butchered. Ask the other side about the Hasbara Agreement. Ask them! Do they know anything? No. Why? Because the media puts it under the blanket. In addition, I would like to add this. ISIS – how did ISIS come to be? Israel, the state, the Zionist state, has been helping ISIS since its creation. They have been helping terrorists in Syria, killing Syrians, killing Iraqis, killing Palestinians. These people don't just want Palestine – they want from the Nile River to the Euphrates River. They are like Hitler. They are like Nazis, the Zionist movement. I call on Donald Trump supporters, please. Do your research about the USS Liberty – the American soldiers that were killed, our troops, our troops who were killed. Let's talk about John F. Kennedy. Why was John F. Kennedy assassinated? Because he wanted to stop Israel from getting nuclear weapons. They killed JFK so that they
could get nuclear weapons.
Responding to Gordis: argue for Jewish pluralism in Israel but don’t punish the Israeli people
What leverage, then, do American Jews have if they can’t use the power of the purse; or threaten Israel with a loss of American Jewish support so that Jews will visit Israel less or no longer lobby for Israel in the halls of American government?Washington Post Book Review Eviscerates Anti-Israel Writers
The only appropriate leverage American Jewry rightly has is the power of the argument. In the long run, it is the Jewish righteousness of the argument that must persuade the Israeli people to take action.
If the Israeli people are not moved to care enough to demand change, American Jews will simply need to articulate their case better.
Finally, the way in which the problem of Orthodox monopoly in Israel is portrayed by Jewish leadership impacts American Jews who have never visited Israel in ways that are neither fair nor honest to Israeli life. Reading Gordis’ essay, many non-Orthodox American Jews will imagine Israel as a place where non-Orthodox Jews are regularly mistreated. They will imagine being uncomfortable anywhere they travel should they visit Israel.
Every Jewish leader – in America and in Israel – must make clear that when a non-Orthodox Jew steps foot in the State of Israel, that Jew will enjoy a wonderful experience anywhere throughout the Jewish state without ever experiencing a moment of discomfort.
This is the larger reality which must be the context in which this valid philosophical and practical issue must be discussed and confronted. (h/t Elder of Lobby)
A Washington Post book review by journalist, author and former IDF soldier Matti Friedman highlighted the inaccuracy and the absurdity of a recently published anti-Israel collection of essays.European Medical Society Recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital
The Post, to its credit, published Friedman’s “What happens when famous novelists ‘confront the Occupation’ in the West Bank,” which examined an anthology called Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation. This book features contributions by novelists such as Michael Chabon, Ayelet Waldman, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Dave Eggers, among others.
Friedman noted that the group of novelists were “shown around by anti-occupation activists and wrote about their experiences.” Yet, as a reading of the book makes clear, “the visiting writers aren’t experts,” nor are they seeking a balanced or accurate portrayal of Israel. Friedman points out that the essays get basic facts, such as when the Oslo Accords were signed, wrong.
The essays are also plagued with poor sourcing, as Friedman notes:
“The writers interview the same people who are always interviewed in the West Bank, thinking it’s all new, and believe what they’re told Chabon, for example, waxes sarcastic that in the West Bank you can spend months in administrative detention if you forget your I.D. card at home. But that isn’t true.”
Indeed, the writers don’t ask—nor do they tell readers—who financed their anti-Israel excursion: Breaking the Silence (BtS). As CAMERA has pointed out, BtS is one of several largely foreign-funded organizations that seek to delegitimize the Jewish state via anonymous testimonials.
The Israel Heart Society (IHS) has successfully petitioned the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.Was Shurat Hadin the catalyst for reining in incitement on social media?
The recognition came through ESC’s approval of an official document that also included an apology from the organization for previously referring to Tel Aviv as the capital of Israel.
At an ESC conference next month in Barcelona, the medical association will acknowledge its recognition of Jerusalem in the “parade of capitals” of its member states, and will also designate one of the conference’s lecture venues as “Jerusalem Hall.” About 30,000 people are expected to participate in the event.
“We are happy that we succeeded in raising the prestige of Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, in the minds of the ESC and correcting this ‘political’ injustice that has no place in medicine or any other international arena,” said IHS President Prof. Ran Kornowski, Yedioth Ahronoth reported.
The medical society’s move comes as a growing number of nations are recognizing Jerusalem, which Israel reunified during the 1967 Six-Day War, as the Jewish state’s capital. Recent recognitions of Jerusalem’s capital status have been made by the government of Vanuatu, the Czech Parliament and the Russian Foreign Ministry. Russia’s move only applied to western Jerusalem, rather than the portion of the city Israel captured in 1967. The US does not recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.
Was Shurat Hadin’s courts and legislation campaign against social-media incitement a key catalyst on the eventual path to Google, Facebook and co. finally taking policing their content seriously? According to Shurat Hadin director Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, “Our law group played a key role in identifying...the issue, as well as drawing public attention to it.”Harvard Crimson: Radical Ignorance
On June 18, Google’s general counsel announced that the company is implementing new methods of cracking down on extremist content uploaded to YouTube.
Darshan-Leitner said the crackdown meant Google is utilizing its existing technology to “filter out the terrorist videos and messages of incitement to violence that had previously enjoyed the free run of its platform, as well desisting from commercializing these dangerous presentations.”
The legal group said that “social-media platforms are brazenly utilized by all of the terrorist organizations to recruit for members, organize their violent operations, raise funds and disseminate their extremist incitement and messages.
“In recent years the social-media services have become a requisite component of international terrorism just as weapons, training, funding, safe houses and explosives are,” it added.
“We believe our groundbreaking lawsuits filed a year and half ago and still being filed, both for injunctions and compensation under the US Anti-Terrorism Act...put Paolo Alto on the defensive and compelled elected officials to start to think about widespread regulations.
We were out there way before anyone else,” Darshan-Leitner stated.
If the BDS movement is keen on boycotting apartheid states, they should start with Iran or Saudi Arabia. There are oppressed women and LGBTQ+ people who would love to explain what a real apartheid state looks like. Sadly they’re unavailable at the moment, as they are currently imprisoned by their apartheid states.Platform Pieties, Safe Spaces, and Palestine Expo
Despite all of this, the extreme lengths to which Israel has gone to defend itself from perennial rocket fire, exploding school busses, and terrorist massacres may cause Americans to recoil at the limitations placed on the civil liberties of Palestinians and Arab-Israelis. We can still side with liberty over security, as I do, but let’s not pretend these security measures are in place to intentionally hold back the vast majority of peaceful Palestinians. They are to hold back those who would drive the Jews into the sea, given the chance.
Many BDS activists have gone to the Holy Land and returned sages with a simple solution: Israel is the racist, apartheid state. I went to the region and returned with more questions than answers, more assured of the humanity of people on both sides. The only thing of which I am sure on this issue is that so many on the left drastically oversimplify the conflict by lionizing the Palestinians and demonizing Israel.
Defend HomophobesHaaretz's Rogel Alpher, The Maccabiah Games and Fake News
Speaking of homosexuality, that “perversion” which many people “abhor”, spare a thought for poor Ismail Menk. All the preacher said was that homosexuals are worse than animals. And then his UK university lecture tour was cancelled by the tour organisers.
And this is actually what happens sometimes with regard to people who do not understand their rights, who are not confident with regard to going out there, into the open, and being able to argue what you stand for, and yet not be looked upon as someone who is extreme.
Stand up for hatred!
Disbelievers Are Stupid
Don’t be too proud of your degrees if you are a disbeliever. Actually, you’re an idiot:
The learned are those who fear Allah the most. They are in reality learned. Otherwise, you can have a whole host of degrees, a whole host of Ph.Ds. But if it does not bring you closer towards Allah, you might have those degrees, but in the words of the Qur’an and hadith, you are an informed illiterate. You might be informed, but you are illiterate.
Otherwise, how can you answer, that a person is supposed to be a Ph.D, he has all the things, and you ask him what is his religion, and he will say “I am an agnostic. I do not believe in anything”. Is that person intelligent? Can you call him an intelligent person no matter how much Ph.Ds he has? He is an informed illiterate. He is not intelligent in the least.
A man of no intelligence
Who Said That?
So, who made these remarks? Ah, none other than Ebrahim Bham in his sermons. He is a scheduled speaker at Ismail Patel’s “Palestine Expo” at the QE II Centre in Westminster on July 8 and 9.
And who will be sharing that very space and platform with him? Malia Bouattia. With the backing of the NUS.
LSE is keen too.
If you like hypocrisy as well as deranged hatred of Israel, the QE II Centre will be a very safe space indeed next weekend.
"The 20th Maccabiah Games, which opens July 4, is a racist and ultranationalist event," Rogel Alpher began his June 24 column in Haaretz ("Boycott the Maccabiah Games"). He continued thatNew Film Unites Anti-Semites in Hatred of Israel
the condition for participation in the "Jewish Olympics" is racist. Only Jews take part in the Maccabiah. . . . In an Israeli championship, the participants include Israeli citizens of all races. In the Maccabiah, the participants are from many states but all belong to a single, supreme race.
But Alpher did not stop there; rather, he further embellished his charge with a slew of Nazi comparisons. He determined that Israel "makes the 1936 Berlin Olympics seem liberal." He added that the Maccabiah Games are "a victory of the Aryan race theory." Alpher moreover ventured:
Nazi Germany barred Gretel Bermann, a Jews who set the German high-jump record in 1936, from participating in that year's Olympic Games in Berlin. A similar fate awaits an Israeli-Arab track and field record holder, merely because she is not Jewish.
It's hardly surprising, then, that the article's headline is "Boycott the Maccabiah Games."
“Hitler was used as a tool. It was Zionism that wanted the Holocaust,” stated an Iraqi audience member at a June 5 pre-release film screening of 1948: Creation and Catastrophe at Washington, DC’s anti-Israel Jerusalem Fund. Despite protests from a small audience of about 30, his statement paralleled the radicalism of 1948, a movie shown in a Jerusalem Fund film series cosponsored by Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS).Practicing anti-Semitism is stressful! “Dyke March Chicago” fundraising for “self-care retreat”
Director Andy Trimlett and his co-producer Ahlam Muhtaseb, a communications professor at California State University-San Bernardino, led the screening of their film concerning Israel’s 1948 independence war. In this Jerusalem Fund-funded film, Trimlett narrates an anti-Zionist screed describing how Arabs were “replaced by outsiders from Europe and Russia” as Jews resettled their ancestral homeland in the Holy Land. For him, the Jewish national movement is merely another Western imperialism: “Europeans had been colonizing land across the globe for centuries and Zionism would follow in that tradition.”
1948 is effectively a video vision of the revisionist thesis promulgated by Israel’s “New Historians” and others that the fledgling state of Israel engaged in pre-planned ethnic cleansing of Arabs during the 1948 war. Trimlett introduces the theme of Arab displacement by Zionists early in the film by stating that “in the 1920s thousands of Arabs became homeless after Zionists purchased their land from out under them by making deals with wealthy landlords.” This misleading statement overlooks that Zionist settlement with its economic capital and modern technology actually stimulated the Palestine Mandate’s Arab population growth through immigration and health improvements.
1948 uncritically presents New Historian Ilan Pappé, author of the book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, the film thesis’ locus classicus. Yet his fellow New Historian Benny Morris and film expert has previously documented that “[a]t best, Ilan Pappe must be one of the world’s sloppiest historians; at worst, one of the most dishonest.” He is in particular not above the fabrication of historical “evidence,” either by himself or his ideological acolytes.
Here is the explanation at the fundraising page, Fund Chicago Dyke March Self-Care Retreat:
The Chicago Dyke March Collective has requested community support for a self-care retreat.
The organizers and supporters, mostly queer and trans folks of color, have received countless threats of violence and aggression. Every year the organizers work tirelessly and intentionally to create spaces that are celebratory of queer and trans people, centering queer and trans people of color.
The Chicago Dyke March has been an organization for many years that shows us a glimpse of a world that is possible. The CDM Collective creates a space, even if for just one gorgeous day, where people are seen, loved and celebrated for being queer, trans, gender nonconforming, nonbinary, intersex, black, brown, fat, kinky, undocumented, disabled.
Chicago Dyke March has always been and will always continue to fight for liberation for all, especially queer and trans folks who face further marginalization and discrimination based on their race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age, size, gender identity, gender expression, sexuality, culture, immigrant status, spirituality, and ability.
If you’re able, please consider contributing and sharing so that the Chicago Dyke March Collective can take a much needed retreat to rest, re-energize & be in a space of pure love.
As of this writing, $1,740 of the $5,000 goal has been raised.
Several people have donated a dollar so they could get their thoughts against the Chicago Dyke March Collective posted in the donation section:
British Protests, Violence Mark 241 Years Since Expulsion from American Colonies (Satire)
As Americans celebrate the 241st anniversary of its independence with barbeques, parties and fireworks, rage in the United Kingdom set in as the British mark what they called the “Proper Mess,” British for ‘catastrophe‘. Peaceful protests against the United States’ independence turned violent, as clashes broke out between NATO troops and protesters demanding a “right of return” to the U.S. mainland.Superficial BBC WS report on PA’s latest UNESCO stunt
Riots were held in London, Manchester and other major cities, as British citizens protested their expulsion from what they termed “Occupied Western England.” Many of the protesters consider themselves refugees, as their ancestors were British officials forcibly expelled from the colonies nearly 250 years ago.
“My parents, grandparents, and great-great-great grandparents may have lived in London, but my heart will always be in Philadelphia,” said Rupert Chesselwit, whose ancestors were expelled in 1776. “Baltimore and Charleston are as much a part of England as Birmingham, Leeds, and Northern Ireland.”
Though there were injuries reported in several of the riots, violence did not reach the level of previous years. In 2011, four Britons were killed by the U.S. Coast Guard after storming across the Atlantic Ocean and trying to enter Virginia.
So although BBC audiences around the world do get to hear references to “violent settlers” who are supposedly “occupying and stealing […] Palestinian land” (despite their presence in Hebron being part of an agreement willingly signed by the Palestinian Authority), they do not actually get to hear anything about the substance of the PA’s latest UNESCO bid.BBC’s ‘Newsnight’ report on extremist group ignores its own role
They are not, for example informed that on the PA’s list of complaints:
“…was the placement of security barriers by the Tomb of the Patriarchs and in Hebron’s Old City, as well as an attempt by Jewish residents of the city to purchase property. The Palestinian delegation also protested the use of tear gas in the Old City.”
Neither are they told that Hamas has a major foothold in Hebron, that the city has a new mayor who is a convicted terrorist or that dozens of terror attacks against Israelis have been carried out in the city: a fact obviously relevant to some of those factors claimed by the PA to be ‘endangering’ Hebron.
And of course, as usual in BBC coverage of such stories, the all-important context of the Palestinian Authority’s repeated attempts to delegitimise Israel and erase Jewish history and heritage at the UNESCO forum is glaringly absent from this BBC World Service report.
However, one topic completely absent from both Richard Watson’s reports is that of the UK media’s frequent provision of a stage for the man who was for many years the face of that network in its assorted forms – Anjem Choudary – as the Telegraph reported last year:Firebomb hurled at Ukrainian synagogue
“The BBC and other broadcasters have come under fire for regularly offering Anjem Choudary a platform to air his controversial views.
Ignoring warnings about offering the firebrand cleric the “oxygen of publicity” Choudary became a regular on many of the corporation’s flagship news programmes including Newsnight and Radio 4’s Today.
During his trial Choudary described how he would “bait” the media with controversial statements and relished appearing on air.
The court heard how he had hundreds of media contacts who he would tip off before high profile demonstrations and stunts, including 31 journalists from the BBC.”
As was noted here three and a half years ago:
“…the BBC has been wheeling out Choudary and his template propaganda for over a decade, including a ‘Hardtalk’ interview from 2003 in which he refused to condemn the Mike’s Place suicide bombers, another ‘Hardtalk’ interview from 2005 in which he likewise refused to condemn the London terror attacks, participation in ‘The Big Questions’ and ‘Newsnight’ and an appearance on ‘Newsnight’ in May 2013 (also promoted on the BBC News website) in which his stance on the brutal murder of Lee Rigby was made amply clear.”
Especially given that ‘Newsnight‘ was one of Choudary’s regular spots, one would have expected to see in Watson’s reports some acknowledgement – and explanation – of the editorial decisions that lay behind over a decade of facilitation of Choudary’s PR efforts, despite recognition of the fact that his various networks were “a gateway to terror”.
Unidentified individuals hurled a firebomb at a synagogue in Lviv and, in a separate incident, wrote anti-Semitic slogans on another Jewish community building in the western Ukrainian city.UK man arrested for anti-Jewish rhetoric
The incident involving a firebomb occurred on June 30 but was discovered only Monday, according to the Strana news site. The perpetrators may have aimed the firebomb at a window of the synagogue on Mikhovsky Street but missed it, hitting the building facade, the director of the Chesed-Arieh Jewish group, Ada Dianova, told Strana.
The contents of the firebomb fell to the foot of the building and burned there, resulting in no damage to the interior, she added. No one was hurt in the incident.
The anti-Semitic slogans painted on a former building of the community on Sholem Aleichem Street included the words” “Down with Jewish power” and: “Jews, remember July 1,” an apparent reference to a pogrom that took place in Lviv on that date in 1941.
A 22-year-old man arrested by counter-terror police has been charged with stirring up racial hatred.Germany seeking applicants for Shimon Peres Prize
Jack Renshaw, of Bearncroft, Skelmersdale, Lancashire, is accused of two public order offences after allegedly using threatening, abusive and insulting words aimed at Jewish people.
The offences relate to comments allegedly made in February and March last year at events in Blackpool and Yorkshire believed to have been organised by far-right political groups.
Renshaw was arrested by officers from the North West Counter Terrorism Unit in January.
A new prize will recognize individual’s contributions to the shaping of German-Israeli relations.Britney Spears gives 55,000 fans a ‘crazy’ show in Israel
The German-Israeli Future Forum and Germany’s Foreign Ministry are calling for applications from young professionals ages 18-45 from both Germany and Israel for the “Shimon Peres Prize” to be given in October in Berlin.
Two awards will be given – one to an Israeli and another to a German. It comes with a cash prize of 10,000 euro, or more than $11,000.
Deadline for applications is July 31. Details can be found on the foundation’s website.
Peres, who served as prime minister and later as president of Israel, died in September 2016.
US pop princess Britney Spears on Monday night gave her first-ever concert in Israel, performing in Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park at the end of a sweltering day.4th of July - What IDF Soldiers love about the USA
Spears, 35, and her team of dancers put on their show in front of some 55,000 people as part of her world tour.
At the open-air venue, Spears ran through a list of her hits while gyrating to the beat in temperatures of around 28° Celsius (82.4°F)
The music star arrived in Israel on Sunday, heading straight for the Western Wall in Jerusalem where she was mobbed by fans, leading her to reportedly skip a planned dinner with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli child cancer patients.
On Saturday, she tweeted her excitement at her upcoming concert in Israel
