Wednesday, October 11, 2017
100 Years Ago, a Jewish Heroine Became an Early Martyr for Human Rights
When I was in the fourth grade, my class went on a field trip to Zichron Ya’akov, to visit the home of a woman named Sarah Aaronsohn. She, we were told, was a great Jewish heroine, although the particulars were left deliberately vague. She was some sort of spy, our teacher told us cryptically, and she died for our country.The Jews Will Have to Wait
That she did, exactly one hundred years ago this week. But her bravery remains singular, and her story, sadly, too rarely told: Aaronsohn was a committed feminist, a proud Zionist, and a witness to genocide who refused to remain silent in the face of atrocity.
She was born in 1890 to Romanian immigrants who, as Zionism’s earliest adherents, helped found Zichron Ya’akov. Growing up, she learned how to farm, how to ride horses, and how to shoot guns. In 1914, she married a wealthy merchant named Haim Avraham and followed him to Turkey, where he did business. But, unsatisfied with merely being someone’s wife, she left him and set out to return home to her parents’ farm. What she saw on the way changed her life.
“In front of her very eyes, she saw the Armenians being tortured by the Turks,” her brother, Aaron, wrote in his diary. “She saw hundreds of dead Armenians, lying on the ground, unburied, devoured by wild dogs.”
These sights shook her to the core. She vowed to fight the Turks by whatever means necessary, and sought to aid the British in their war against the Ottoman Empire. Her timing was perfect: Her brother and his friends had just started an underground movement dedicated to this very idea. Entitled NILY—Hebrew acronyms for Netzach Israel Lo Yeshaker, or The Eternal One of Israel Will Not Lie—the group was a spy ring that collected information on Ottoman military movements in Palestine and delivered them to the Brits. At first the handoff was done by hand, with one of the group’s members swimming to a small yacht off the coast of Atlit, delivering his information, and receiving funds collected by American Jews to help the starving and embattled Jews in the Eretz Yisrael. Soon, however, the Turks began to suspect that something was afoot, and warned Palestine’s Jews not to meddle in the war lest they meet the same fate as the Armenians. Most were cowered by the threat, but not Aaronsohn and her fellow fighters. With the coastline now closely watched, they switched to homing pigeons. The system worked well, until it didn’t: In September of 1917, one of their birds was intercepted. (h/t Elder of Lobby)
On November 8, 1942, a full year-and-a-half before the Allies invaded Normandy, about 110,000 American and British troops invaded North Africa. They had set out in more than 850 ships from U.S. and British ports, sailed for up to 4,500 miles through treacherous Atlantic waters teeming with Nazi U-boats, and, once at their destination, put ashore in three landing zones spread across more than 900 miles of coastline, from south of Casablanca to east of Algiers.
This was Operation Torch, America’s first offensive operation in the European theater of war and, until Operation Overlord’s Normandy landings, the greatest amphibious attack in history. Today, it is all but forgotten. And yet, aside from rivaling Overlord in terms of its enormity, complexity, and peril, Torch was also vastly consequential, for it helped to determine the future course and ultimately successful conclusion of the war. If that weren’t significant enough, Torch also deserves to be remembered for the critical role it played in setting the terms of America’s long-term relationship with the rulers and peoples of the Middle East.
Among those peoples not least are the Jews, whose role in this story is central in more ways than one.
Yisrael Medad: Remember Article 9! Who Will Protest?
I am referring to Article 9 of the Jordan-Israel Peace Treaty.
Is that treaty not a commitment, to be honored?
Are Article 9's elements to be discarded?
Let's read the official Jordanian news agency Petra:
300 extremist settlers storm Al-Aqsa Mosque
Ramallah, Oct.10 (Petra)-- Some 300 extremist settlers early Tuesday stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque/Haram Al Sharif, according to a Palestinian source.
The General Director of the Islamic Awqaf and Al-Aqsa Affairs, Sheikh Azzam Al-Khatib, told Petra's reporter in Ramallah that Israeli settlers broke into the holy shrine from the Bab Al-Magharbeh gate under heavy protection of Israeli special forces and police.
Al-Khatib said that the settlers provocatively toured the Al-Aqsa yards.
Okay, that's Jordan's bad behavior.
But is there ever an Israeli protest?
Simon Schama’s New History of the Jews Has Little to Say about Judaism
While praising the second volume of Simon Schama’s The Story of the Jews for its “infectious energy and its readability,” and admitting the “impossibility” of covering 408 years of the history of a people scattered across the globe in a mere 800 pages, David Abulafia finds the book’s omissions nonetheless inexcusable. In particular, he writes, the volume—which covers the years from 1492 to 1900—puts far too much emphasis on the Sephardim (descendants of those Jews who fled Spain before and after the expulsion) at the expense of the more numerous Ashkenazim, not to mention those Jews who fall into neither category.Steven Spielberg Finally Comes Clean about Munich Link to 9/11
Schama does . . . devote some space to the fascinating Jewish community of Kaifeng in China, and mentions the black and white Jews of India; but vast swathes of the Jewish world barely appear: North Africa, Iraq, Iran, Bukhara, and so on, though Yemen earns some space when a French Jew named Joseph Halévy goes out there to collect early Semitic inscriptions and comes across sword-bearing Yemenite Jews with limited knowledge of the outside world. . . .
The reason Schama says so little about these places appears to be that he considers that nothing happened in them: he talks of life in Yemen as an almost timeless history of subjugation and poverty—not that the Yemenite Jews with their silver swords quite fit that image. There were indeed cycles of persecution in Yemen, but so there were in Europe, as he shows. Meanwhile, in Baghdad, wealthy Jewish businessmen emerged, some of whom played a key role in the rise of Bombay, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
Steven Spielberg’s 2005 moral-equivalence film Munich, which accuses Israel of perpetuating a cycle of violence by hunting down and assassinating the radical Palestinian perpetrators of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, ends with an unmistakable reference to 9/11. The very last shot of the film is a lingering image of the Twin Towers, seen in the distance. The implication is obvious: 9/11 was part of the price we all had to pay for Israel’s eye-for-an-eye policy. Munich came out four years after the 9/11 attacks, when their memory was still a raw wound and any hint that America in any sense deserved what it got would have damaged the film’s Academy Award prospects.Like clouds and wind: A secret study into Mossad's failed Nazi hunt
Spielberg has for many years given vague answers or even outright denied that he intended to tie Munich to 9/11. He seemed to modify his position based on whom he was talking to. For instance, speaking to Time magazine, which is headquartered in New York City, he said something like (his remarks appear only in paraphrase), “Had to show them. They existed at a historical moment in the mid-’70s.” The author of the Time interview, Richard Schickel, reflected, “Maybe there is, as Spielberg insists, no resonance between the fate of the Towers’ victims and the fate of a few athletes.”
The implication that the lingering appearance of the Twin Towers in the very last image of the film is a coincidence is absurd. To Der Spiegel at the time of the film’s release Spielberg gave what appeared to be a ringing denial of any linkage: “I don’t think that these acts can be compared in terms of their perpetrators. There is no connection between the Palestinian terror of that time and the al-Qaida terror of today. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Jihadism have nothing to do with each other.” Yet to the the leftist paper The Guardian, one of the few outlets where alluding to American or Israeli complicity in the causes of 9/11 wouldn’t have been seen as beyond the pale, he gave a somewhat less unequivocal answer: ‘I don’t think you can look at the Palestinian desire for a homeland in the same way you can look at [al-Qaeda's] desire for an Islamic world and their attack on the Twin Towers. You can’t speak of them in the same breath. But terrorism informs terrorism, and certainly the planners of the 9/11 attacks had to be aware of Munich when they plotted their arrival on the world stage. So if there’s any linkage at all it’s the way terrorism is demonstrated before the cameras.”
The study reveals that the spy agency did not do enough. Also, for 12 years after the killing of Cukurs, the Mossad suspended the manhunt. The topic was not really a high priority for the Mossad directors who have drawn praise for other accomplishments: Isser Harel, Meir Amit and Zvi Zamir. The Israeli prime ministers of the 1960s and ’70s, David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol and Golda Meir, also showed little sign of caring – except for Ben-Gurion’s celebrating the capture of Eichmann. The only one who showed real interest in hunting Nazis was Menachem Begin, who considered himself an adamant Jewish nationalist standing up for his people.Sen. Gillibrand to Keynote Social Justice Conference Featuring Supporters of Israel Boycott
This internal Mossad study smashes a myth rooted in the public and media perception of Israeli spies as omniscient and omnipotent. But even more profoundly, as the world marveled and still marvels at the capture of Eichmann – “the Man in the Glass Booth” who was put on trial in Jerusalem, with sensational testimony by Holocaust victims, before he was hanged in 1961 – the universal assumption was that the Mossad would do everything in its power to trace, follow and then capture or kill Nazis.
After all, the Mossad is not just another intelligence agency like the CIA or MI6. It prides itself as the protector of Jews wherever they are, serving as the long arm of the Jewish people’s cry for justice. The Mossad represents and fights for the State of Israel – the homeland of Holocaust survivors. Every stone should have been turned over, every tiny clue pursued to the ends of the earth. But the Mossad study honestly admits that this didn’t happen.
All in all, the Nazi manhunt resulted in one war criminal (Eichmann) captured, one (Cukurs) assassinated and one (Brunner) injured. That is only three out of the 12 most wanted Nazis, and 25 percent is a very low success rate.
The author of the study, Yossi Chen, does not conceal his bitter disappointment at the spotty record of his otherwise beloved agency. The hunt for Nazi war criminals ended in 1991. Chen sums it up by using that Biblical phrase: “Clouds and wind, but no rain.”
Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is scheduled to give the keynote address at an upcoming social justice conference at the Brooklyn Museum, funded by and featuring high profile supporters of the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement.Reem’s Oakland Bakery Drops Lawsuit Seeking to Silence Protests Against Mural of Terrorist Rasmea Odeh
"The Brooklyn Conference," set to run from the evening of Oct. 19 through Oct. 21, is described as "three days of dynamic programming exploring the intersections of art and social justice," a "full schedule of … inspiration," with lectures and "thinkshops."
The conference is co-sponsored by JPMorgan Chase and the Open Society Foundations, founded and funded by prominent left-wing billionaire George Soros. One of the organization's objectives is to erode Israel's status as a democracy on the world stage, according to internal emails leaked last year.
Senior program officer for Open Society, Alvin Starks, is slated to speak at the event, as will the head of the Center for American Progress, another Soros project.
As part of our work around the world, the Open Society Foundations also support a range of groups that work to protect the human rights of all in Israel and Palestine.
Black Live Matter co-founders Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi will both be giving speeches. Garza has defended the Movement for Black Lives platform‘s inclusion of a pro-BDS policy, and both women have been outspoken about their condemnation of Israel on social media.
Reem’s bakery in Oakland, CA, prominently displays a full-wall mural of Rasmea Odeh, who recently was deported for immigration fraud.Michael Lumish: Lumish on Nothing Left Radio
Rasmea is the former military member of the terrorist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who was convicted in Israel in 1970 of the 1969 supermarket bombing that killed two Hebrew University students, Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner. She also was convicted of the attempted bombing of the British Consulate. Rasmea and her supporters have concocted a phony claim that Rasmea only was convicted because of a false confession extracted after 25 days of sexual torture.
That claim is demonstrably false, yet the claim is repeated non-stop to this day, as I discuss in The Lies of Rasmea Odeh and Her Supporters Exposed.
Prof. Miriam Elman extensively profiled the background of the protests outside the bakery, and the attempts of the bakery owner to prevent the protests by asking the shopping center to remove them (which likely would violate California’s free speech protections).
Prof. Elman’s post includes images and video, as well as background on the bakery owner, Reem Asil, Anti-Israel activists try to shut down protests over California bakery honoring Palestinian terrorist.
Offended by the local café’s glorification of violence, for the past several months a small group of Oakland residents have been organizing protests, trying to educate the local community about Odeh’s past terror activities and the two young men whose lives she snuffed out in February 1969.
At one of the vigils, the small group of protesters—including elderly people—were physically attacked. Even when there haven’t been assaults, anti-Israel activists have tried to disrupt the protests.
They’ve also been trying to shut them down altogether. (h/t MtTB)
I had the privilege of speaking with my friend Michael Burd of the Nothing Left show on J-AIR radio out of Melbourne, Australia, yesterday and our conversation is available here at the 3:50 mark and is about ten minutes long.Cornell Prof Dissects the Many Lies of Rasmieh Odeh
We discussed the Reem's case.
As I continue to ponder this thing, the question that keeps coming into my head is how it is that a young Palestinian-Arab woman, Rasmea Odeh, goes from being a genocidal Jew killer in 1969 to a feminist leader in the United States in 2016?
Now, I understand obviously that Rasmea's friends do not consider her a "genocidal Jew killer"... despite the fact that she is unquestionably a genocidal Jew killer.
Her admirers and supporters consider her a fighter for social justice.
They believe that she is innocent of the brutal slaughter of Edward Joffee and Leon Kanner and that the confession was raped out of her after 25 days in an Israeli prison.
Professor William Jacobson of the Cornell University of Law is probably the top expert on this matter and in the twenty-five minutes below he lays out the case for why Rasmea Odeh is unquestionably guilty of murder.
Palestinian terrorist Rasmieh Odeh is expected to be deported shortly after her sentencing hearing Thursday in Detroit. After years of fighting, Odeh agreed to plead guilty to immigration fraud last April and be deported from the United States. Cornell University law professor William Jacobson, editor of the "Legal Insurrection" blog, has closely followed the case and analyzed Odeh's many defenses. He sat down with the Investigative Project on Terrorism to explain, point-by-point, how none of it withstands scrutiny.
CAA contacts Reading International Solidarity Centre over charity’s planned book launch for notorious antisemite Gilad Atzmon
The Reading International Solidarity Centre will be hosting a the launch of notorious antisemite Gilad Atzmon’s new book, Being in Time — A Post-Political Manifesto. Organised by Reading Friends of Palestine, the event is part of the Reading International Festival and will take place at 7:30pm on 22nd October.Leading New York City Jewish Historical Center Nixes Events Co-Sponsored by Anti-Zionist Group
Campaign Against Antisemitism has written to the Reading International Solidarity Centre to alert them that Gilad Atzmon is a notorious antisemite who has, for a number of years, used social media as a vehicle to harass and bait Jewish people. If they insist on holding the event, we will contact organisations which donate to the Centre, as well as the Charity Commission.
In March this year, Mr Atzmon attended a talk at the London School of Economics with Richard Falk, the discredited and disgraced fringe antisemitic conspiracy theorist and the former UN envoy, where he reportedly told those around him that “the Jews were expelled from Germany for misbehaving.” Stunned audience members asked him to repeat what he had said and he did. Mr Atzmon also was heard recommending the works of disgraced historian David Irving, who in 2000 was proven in court to be an antisemite, a Holocaust denier and an admirer of Hitler. It is also reported that Mr Atzmon later said, “Jews are always expelled for a reason.”
In December 2014, he told a Jewish Twitter user, “I am not a Jew any more. I indeed despise the Jew in me (whatever is left). I absolutely detest the Jew in you.”
Another of his books, The Wandering Who, was described in 2011 as “quite probably the most antisemitic book published in this country in recent years.”
The New York City-based American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS) has announced the cancellation of two upcoming events that were to have been staged in partnership with “Jewish Voice for Peace” — an extreme anti-Zionist group with no formal affiliation to the US Jewish community whose campaigns are generously supported by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.SodaStream opens temporary production line for PA workers
In a statement issued on Monday, Rachel Lithgow — the executive director of the AJHS — said the society was pulling the plug on “the Balfour Program scheduled for October 26th and the dramatic reading of ‘Rubble, Rubble,’ scheduled for December 14th.”
“While the programs themselves may have merit, they do not align with the mission of the AJHS,” Lithgow went on to say.
The “Balfour Program” refers to an October 26 event that would have featured Palestinian lawyer Jonathan Kuttab and American Jewish anti-Zionist Robert Herbst. Despite the cancellation, JVP is still promoting the event, which it bills as a discussion of the “ramifications” of the 1917 Balfour Declaration — in which British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour confirmed his government’s support for the establishment of a “Jewish national homeland in Palestine” — “for Palestinians and Jews living in Israel-Palestine today.”
SodaStream opened a temporary production line in the Jordan Valley community of Maaleh Efraim to aid Palestinian Arab workers who are temporarily barred from entering pre-1967 Israel following the Har Adar terror attackBavarian Green Party compares anti-Israel BDS boycott to Nazi-era “Don’t Buy From Jews”
On September 29, 37-year-old Palestinian Arab terrorist Nimer Mahmoud Ahmed Aljamal murdered three people and wounded a fourth. while waiting to pass through the checkpoint at the back gate to the town of Har Adar near Jerusalem through which Palestinian Authority workers entered the community daily. Aljamal trained extensively prior to the terror attack. Israeli security forces, in response, are currently not allowing residents of Palestinian Authority towns to enter pre-1967 Israel.
Palestinian Arabs residing in Judea and Samaria who wish to cross into pre-1967 Israel must apply for entry permits. The reason is usually in order to work, but since criminals and terrorists seeking to carry out attacks can join them, there is a need for permits. Applicants are vetted and records kept.
According to Channel 2, the security policy following the Har Adar attack does not allow SodaStream's PA workers to reach the Negev desert factory. The company therefore decided to open a temporary factory in Maaleh Efraim, allowing the PA employees to continue working without interruption.
SodaStream is an Israeli company which produces and markets its products globally. Some of its managers and many of its employees are Palestinian Arabs. In 2014, of its 1,300 strong workforce, 350 were Israeli Jews, 450 were Israeli Arabs and 500 were West Bank Palestinians.
In a strongly worded resolution passed by the Green Party in the southern German state of Bavaria, the state unit of the party has rejected the anti-Israel boycott campaign, or the BDS Movement as antisemitic.Georgetown University Stumps for the Muslim Brotherhood
The resolution titled “No to Antisemitism, no to BDS” (embedded and translated below) declared the Bavarian Green Party’s intention to actively challenge the BDS activism in the state.
Eva Lettenbauer, a spokeswoman for the Green Youth organization, told the Israeli newspaper Jerusalem Post that the BDS campaign “”does not recognize Israel’s right to exist” and aggressively attempts to damage Israel via boycotts.”
The resolution, passed last month, also compared the calls to boycott Israel to the Nazi “Don’t Buy From Jews” slogan. Here is a translated version of the resolution:
Recently, there have been campaign events of the “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions” [BDS-Movement] in Germany and Bavaria. The BDS Campaign is, it its totality, antisemitic, hostile to Israel, reactionary and anti-enlightenment. The positions represented and the demands made by [the BDS-Movement] delegitimize and demonize Israel, and put the blame entirely on the Jews for all the ills of the region — despite the fact that Israel is the only democracy with the rule of the law [in the region]. At the same time, double standards are applied when, for example, crimes of Hamas a ignored or downplayed. The boycott call recycles the famous “Don’t Buy From Jews” slogan of the National Socialist [era].
Therefore the Bavaria [unit of] the Alliance 90/The Greens, in keeping with its commitment to an open society and against every [form of] Antisemitism, will position itself against all efforts undertaken by the BDS Campaign, inform and educate [people], and prevent the enforcement of call for Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions to the best of its abilities. [Translation by the author]
Another campus buries its head in the desert sand.Convicted Tube Bomb Terrorist Accomplice Hired as Labour Council ‘Poster Girl’
The Muslim “Brotherhood [MB] is traditionally a reformist, gradualist movement [which] is working on social change,” stated the Egyptian MB member Amr Darrag at a Georgetown University panel last month. With that, Darrag and his fellow speaker, the British-Iraqi MB operative Anas Altikriti, added to Georgetown’s longstanding history of enabling the MB’s deceitful use of liberal language to mask totalitarian goals.
Georgetown’s Saudi-funded Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU) hosted the event, which was titled: “Post-Arab Spring Middle East: Political Islam and Democracy.” A pro-Islamist bent was inevitable given that the moderator was ACMCU director Jonathan Brown. This professor has his own professional links to MB groups and is the son-in-law of convicted terrorist Sami Al Arian. In February, Brown was widely criticized after he gave a speech at a MB think tank justifying the practice of slavery within Islam.
Before the event, MB expert Eric Trager warned against Darrag’s visit to America: “The Muslim Brotherhood is an international hate group that seeks” to establish a “global Islamic state or neo-caliphate.” Speaking at the event, Altikriti, whom the Hudson Institute describes as “one of the shrewdest UK-based Brotherhood activists and the son of the leader of Iraq’s Muslim Brotherhood,” dismissed Trager’s article as “hilarious.”
Despite Altikriti’s insistence elsewhere that he has no connection to the Muslim Brotherhood, he describes the movement as “the most important democratic voice that espouses multiculturalism, human rights and basic freedoms.” He also maintains that, while indeed part of the “spectrum” of “political Islam”, groups such as Al-Qaeda and Islamic State are “abnormal phenomena” and not ideologically related to the Brotherhood. By contrast, Lebanese-American Middle East expert Walid Phares has identified the MB as the “mothership for the jihadi ideologies.”
A Muslim woman jailed over the 2008 London tube bomb plot was subsequently given a high-flying job with a local council and even featured on the authority’s magazine front cover.OFCOM on ‘The Lobby’: A wrong decision & a profound disservice to the Jewish Community
Mulumebet Girma, 33, rose through the ranks of the Southwark Council, despite being convicted of hiding a terrorist, after failing to disclose her criminal past when applying for the position.
The Ethiopian origin former model was jailed for 10 years in 2008 for helping her brother-in-law Hussain Osman escape after his plot to kill Tube passengers.
The plot failed because the attackers did not mix their chemicals properly, and was attempted just two weeks after the 7/7 attacks that killed 52 people.
Mrs. Girma hid the terrorist at her home in Brighton before he fled the country, and did not report the plot to the police.
On 9 October OFCOM published its long-awaited decision on complaints about the four-part Al Jazeera series ‘The Lobby’ which was broadcast from 11th-14th January 2017 on Al Jazeera’s English speaking satellite channel.BBC News coverage of terrorism in Israel – September 2017
I was a complainant and here is my own Q+A on the decision:
Q: What is the fatal flaw in the OFCOM decision?
A: The opinion that the programme was ‘in the public interest’. This is crucial. The decision accepts that Ella Rose, Director of the Jewish Labour Movement and who was filmed surreptitiously in the programme, had a ‘legitimate expectation of privacy with regard to the inclusion of the footage which showed her having private conversations.’
But that expectation had to be balanced against the ‘public interest’ in the matters being investigated. In OFCOM’s view, ‘public interest’ (along with ‘freedom of expression’) trumped ‘privacy’. But the plain fact is, the ‘investigation’ found nothing untoward. In the blog I wrote back in January, I noted the comment from Andrew Billen in The Times:
“For the life of me I could not see what Israel was doing wrong here. The Lobby sensationally exposed the existence of, well, a lobby.”
How can an investigation which comes up with precisely nothing, possibly be ‘in the public interest’?
Al Jazeera (through Carter-Ruck) claimed that there was prima facie evidence of the existence of a story that was in the public interest, namely, ‘the efforts of a foreign state covertly to influence and interfere with British democracy and the operation of the political system.’
Guess what…Israel’s diplomats do their job, just like British diplomats: to get the best deal for their country. How can the revelation of such an obvious fact possibly be ‘in the public interest’? In fact the programmes were AGAINST the public interest. Under the cover of an investigation of the so-called ‘Lobby’, this series purposefully fuelled prejudice against Jews. (For the evidence see my blog again).
The Israel Security Agency’s report on terror attacks (Hebrew) during September 2017 shows that throughout the month a total of 103 incidents took place: 74 in Judea & Samaria and 29 in Jerusalem.Antisemitic, racist flyers dropped in Jacksonville, Florida neighborhoods
In Judea & Samaria and Jerusalem the agency recorded 85 attacks with petrol bombs, 17 attacks using explosive devices and one shooting attack.
Two civilians and one member of the security forces were murdered and an additional civilian was wounded during September.
The BBC News website reported the fatal attack in Har Adar on September 26th without identifying the victims. None of the additional attacks received any BBC coverage.
During the first nine months of 2017 the BBC News website has reported 0.7% of the total terror attacks that took place and 93.75% of the resulting fatalities.
Anti-Semitic and racist flyers produced by the Ku Klux Klan have been dropped in neighborhoods in Jacksonville, Florida in recent days.Anti-Semitic graffiti scrawled in Leeds
The flyers contain a phone number linked to a recording that attempts to recruit new members.
The KKK has dropped flyers in Jacksonville neighborhoods in recent weeks, ABC-First Coast News reported Tuesday, but the content has increased in vitriol, including specific threats.
One flyer reads: “He who fights the Jew fights the Devil,” citing the Nazi children’s book publisher Julius Streicher, and shows a good Jew as one with a bullet in his forehead. Another says “Smash Jew Communism.” The racist flyers threaten African-Americans who are caught “making eyes” at white women.
Police are investigating after anti-semitic graffiti was found scrawled in Leeds, England.Brazilian restaurant apologizes over anti-Israel signs
Vandals scrawled a Swastika and wrote "kikes" outside the Eitz Chaim Synagogue. West Yorkshire Police put out a statement saying that “At 8:41 am today, police received a report of anti-Semitic graffiti at the Etz Chaim Synagogue, in Harrogate Road, Leeds."
“Officers attended the scene and a hate crime has been recorded and is under investigation."
“Officers from the Inner North East Neighbourhood Policing Team are aware of the incident and are increasing their patrols of the area to reassure the community and are liaising with key representatives.”
Local Jewish officials spoke out against the incident, and said they were cooperating with police to prevent it from reoccurring. "The incident at Etz Chaim is obviously very upsetting but thankfully not a common occurrence, but we understand the synagogue and police are working together to avoid it happening again” Leeds Jewish Representative Susie Gordon told The Jewish Chronicle.
A Brazilian Arab food restaurant apologized for placing anti-Israel signs at its entrance after a massive boycott campaign on social media.Cannabis-derived drug shows promise for cognitive decline
One of the owners of Papaya Verde restaurant, in Recife, sent a note to the Pernambuco Jewish Federation stressing that the big and colorful “Free Palestine! It’s not war, it’s genocide” and “Boycott Israel!” stickers on its front window had been removed, reported Folha de Pernambuco newspaper on Tuesday.
“My sincere apologies to all who were offended. The power of written words does not convey my true feeling, which is to always work for the culture of peace among the peoples who have a great example in Brazil. I never intended to spread hatred or any other negative sentiment towards the Jewish community,” read the note from restaurateur Antônio Siqueira Campos.
The message from Campos was “peaceful and purposeful,” the Jewish federation’s president Sonia Sette told JTA.
“We’re perplexed, the material exhibited is extremely offensive towards the State of Israel. The images provoked outrage to the members of our community and beyond. We consider it fundamental that the serious issues involving Israel and Palestinians be treated with responsibility, respect and in a peace-seeking manner,” read a statement from the Jewish Federation.
New pre-clinical data shows that a low dose of a proprietary tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) drug candidate developed by Israel’s Therapix Biosciences significantly reversed age-related cognitive impairment in old mice.US-Israeli cybersecurity firm ForeScout files for Nasdaq IPO
Therapix focuses on the development of cannabinoid-based drugs. The candidate dubbed THX-ULD01 is intended for the treatment of mild cognitive impairment (MCI).
MCI is an intermediate stage between the expected cognitive decline of normal aging and the more serious decline of dementia. It can involve problems with memory, language, thinking and judgment that are greater than normal age-related changes but are not severe enough to interfere with daily life or independent function.
The pre-clinical animal study was designed and conducted by Prof. Yosef Sarne of the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University.
“The data from this pre-clinical animal study suggest that extremely low doses of THC, which are devoid of any psychotropic effect and do not induce desensitization, could potentially provide a safe and effective treatment for cognitive decline in aging humans,” said Sarne.
Tel Aviv- and California-based ForeScout Technologies, Inc., a cybersecurity firm, has filed a prospectus with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to hold an initial public offering of shares on the Nasdaq exchange.Welcome to Israel’s water revolution
The company filed a prospectus on October 2, and said it hopes to hold a share sale to the public, raising up to $100 million. The figure released in the filings is generally a ballpark figure that could be updated in later filings. Calcalist news website said the offering would lead the company to a valuation of around $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion.
Last year, ForeScout said it had raised $76 million in additional financing, bringing it to a reported valuation of $1 billion.
With R&D based in central Tel Aviv, Silicon Valley-based ForeScout has become a world leader in network access control – preventing any internet-connected device, such as computers or phones, from joining a network unless it has the right credentials. It also offers enterprises and government organizations the ability to view devices when they connect to the network. The firm serves customers of all sizes across a variety of industries, the prospectus said.
When it comes to water, Israel is up against some serious challenges. The country is nearly two-thirds desert, and even those places where water exists, such as Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee) and the headwaters of the Hermon River, are overtaxed, which could lead to a breakdown of what is known as Israel’s “water economy.”Mexican president thanks Israel for quick help in the wake of earthquake
Needless to say, water is at the center of many disputes in the region with Israel and its neighboring countries.
Israel has accomplished a great deal in the areas of desalination and reuse (or “reclamation”) of this precious resource. The country reuses more than 80 percent of its wastewater for irrigation – the highest percentage in the world by far (the United States, for the record, reuses about one percent).
But the company Mekorot is aiming even higher. Desalination, though long known as a vexingly expensive prospect, is now cheaper, cleaner, and more energy efficient, and it may offer one solution to Israel’s, and perhaps the world’s, water crisis.
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto thanked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a telephone call on Tuesday for the Israeli search and rescue team sent to Mexico City last month following a devastating earthquake there.Adelsons and Sands Corp. create $4 million Las Vegas relief fund
According to a statement put out by the Prime Minister’s Office, Nieto expressed appreciation for the way in which Israel quickly mobilized and sent the team to help deal with the aftereffects of the 7.1 magnitude earthquake that killed more than 300 people.
The earthquake hit on September 19 and the Israeli team was the first foreign group to give assistance, arriving on the scene just two days later.
The team was made up of some 71 soldiers from the army’s Home Front Command.
Billionaire casino magnate and philanthropist Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam and Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corporation have established a $4 million relief fund in memory of the victims of the mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip.Daniel Radcliffe takes on the Israeli accent
Half the money will come from the Sands Cares corporate giving program and the other half from the Adelson Family Foundation. The money will be contributed to organizations providing aid to victims and their families, and to support crisis and disaster response, the Adelson-owned daily Las Vegas Review Journal reported. The fund was announced on Thursday.
“No amount of financial resources will erase this terrible tragedy or bring back those who lost their lives because of it. To honor the memories of those lost, we must help rebuild the lives of people impacted and provide much-needed support to the organizations helping in that effort,” said a statement from the Adelsons.
“Las Vegas is our home and on behalf of every single Las Vegas Sands team member and the Adelson family, we pledge to do everything we can to bring our community together, provide support for the victims and their families, and ensure Las Vegas remains the strong and vibrant city it has always been,” the statement also said.
Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe is taking on a new, less-magical role: Israeli adventurer Yossi Ghinsberg, who had to fight his way out of the jungles of Bolivia.Sammy Davis Jr. documentary turns into crowd favorite at the Haifa Film Festival
Radcliffe took on the role of Ghinsberg, who at age 21, after finishing his IDF service, decided to delve into an uncharted area in the Amazon jungle in Peru. While he began his trek with three friends, Ghinsberg was separated from them, and forced to fight for weeks for his survival on his own.
The film screened at the Haifa International Film Festival on Sunday, and will have another showing on Thursday night.
But, of course, the real question is: how is Radcliffe at an Israeli accent?
According to Variety, the actor's accent was "acceptable," while the Hollywood Reporter called it "creditable."
In an interview with Channel 2's Elad Simchayoff which aired this week, Radcliffe was thrilled with the reporter's compliment on his accent.
"Honestly you guys have - as an English person - it's a very tricky accent to get, I think."
‘Sammy Davis isn’t sure if he wants to be the black Sinatra or the Jewish Sinatra,” is a memorable line from the documentary, Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me, which was one of the most enjoyable movies at the 33rd Haifa International Film Festival. The festival runs until October 14 at the Haifa Cinematheque.More Than 1 Million Jews Expected to Take Part in Global Shabbat Observance Oct. 27-28
Directed by Samuel D. Pollard, who attended the festival and gave a master class, this delightful and entertaining documentary looks at the life and career of a musical star you thought you knew. It portrays a complex, unique and very talented man who courted controversy his whole life. Best known as a member of the Rat Pack with such stars as Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra in the 1960s, Davis broke barriers by performing with these white stars, but was also accused of forgetting his people.
He faced racism in the army and later, when he fell in love with the movie star, Kim Novak.
His marriage to the Swedish actress May Britt so outraged many that he received death threats.
Part of the unusual reality of his life is that he converted to Judaism following a car crash in which he lost his eye and found comfort studying the religion with a rabbi he met. He later visited Jerusalem and prayed at the Western Wall.
He literally and figuratively embraced US president Richard Nixon and was the first African American to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom at the White House.
A global observance of Shabbat with hundreds of special events being held in local Jewish communities around the world — including new events in Togo, Mozambique and Venezuela — is slated for Oct. 27-28.Over 60 thousand participate in Jerusalem annual march
The worldwide observance day, started by The Shabbat Project, brings Jews together to keep a single Shabbat. It began as a local South African event in 2013, initiated by South African Chief Rabbi Dr. Warren Goldstein, who proposed the idea of hosting a communal Shabbat experience.
“Over the past few years, it has been nothing short of thrilling and deeply inspiring to witness Jews come together across every conceivable divide — language, culture, ethnicity, geography, observance,” Goldstein said in a statement.
For the first time this year, the cities of Lome (Togo) and Maputo (Mozambique) are hosting Shabbat Project events, as are Larnaca (Cyprus), Asuncion (Paraguay) and Venezuela. They are joined by nearly 160 cities in Israel and more than 500 cities in the US. A combined 1 million Jews in 1,152 cities in 95 countries are expected to take part in events this year, according to The Shabbat Project.
Sydney, Australia, will usher in Shabbat at an open-air musical event overlooking the Sydney Harbour Bridge. In Brazil, Recife’s Kahal Zur Israel synagogue — the oldest synagogue in the Americas, erected in 1636 — is opening its doors for a series of events. The South African cities of Cape Town and Johannesburg are hosting “dark tisch,” a Friday night celebration held in total darkness.
Over 60,000 people attended the annual Jerusalem March on Tuesday. Delegates from organizations and countries from all over the world participated in the 3-km. walk.
The first groups marching represented large organizations such as the Israel Electric Corporation, El Al, military and police platoons, and several NGOs.
Following them was the delegation of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, composed of Christian pilgrims – the largest group, consisting of participants from more than 90 nations.
The pilgrims, visiting the capital to celebrate Sukkot and attend the Feast of Tabernacles celebration, were waving flags, chanting “we love Israel,” calling out “shalom,” and holding signs expressing support for the State of Israel.
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