Friday, November 17, 2017
'Watching the moon at night': The film that speaks truth to terror
A documentary about terror, especially if you have come perilously close to experiencing it in your own life or have lost people you love to it, as I have, can have you biting your lips, pressing your hand against your mouth or shutting your eyes to avoid horrific sights. None of those reactions are applicable to "Watching the Moon at Night: On terrorism and anti-Semitism," a film which instead, has you wiping unexpected tears of empathy from your eyes, feeling your heart break or taking deep breaths to overcome the despair brought on by thiinking too much about the state of the human race.Learn How to Make the Case for Israel, with Professor Alan Dershowitz
This unforgettable movie is not out to show you gory details of terror attacks, although, of course, it cannot avoid them completely. The film is meant to make you think, to stay with you after you leave the theater. And it does.
"Watching the Moon at Night" is filled with ordinary people, not terrorists, people whose world has alternated for years between shock and resignation at the senselessness, the uselessness, of what befell them on what should have been an ordinary day. Swedish filmmakers Bo Persson and Joanna Helander have, with great sensitivity, given those bereft by terror the opportunity to describe the indescribable, and the effect is much more powerful than scenes of actual terrorist attacks.
Unadorned narratives of loss and the geographic range in which it has been experienced, the cultural diversity the speakers display contrasted with the commonality of their sadness, make for a gripping way to expose the spreading scourge of terror permeating the period in which we live and the political attempts to justify it. For me, a neighbor of sunny Malki Roth whose Australian-born father Arnold speaks in the film, his words about the feeling of isolation since her murder in Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria at the age of 15, were particularly devastating.
WATCH: SJWs Protesting 'Nazi' Ben Shapiro's Speech Are Confronted By Reporter. They're Totally Clueless.
On Monday, about 200 SJW protesters took to the campus of UCLA in an attempt to silence conservative writer and commentator Ben Shapiro. The protest was unsuccessful and Shapiro gave his speech, which was, ironically, about creeping fascism on campus.Free Speech Protesters Can't Compete with Ben Shapiro Supporters at UCLA
The protesters engaging in the sort of behavior that Shapiro was warning against inside the lecture hall were confronted by right-wing journalist Austen Fletcher, known as Fleccas. They were about as incoherent and clueless as you might imagine.
Flooding the venue, protesters chanted loudly, "Nazis go home!" — (Shapiro is an Orthodox Jew) — "Right-wing bigots go away!" and "It isn't a debate when you're just spreading hate!"
"I don't think he should be able to speak. Ben Shapiro incites hate speech, he does not incite free speech," explained one clueless female protester.
"Donald Trump is worse than Hitler!" screamed another anti-free-speech college student. As noted by Fleccas, this chant, like the rest of them, seems misplaced (and insultingly inaccurate) considering Shapiro did not even vote for Trump.
"Just because somebody is wearing a suit, just because he looks like Richard Spencer, is wearing a haircut like the Hitler youth, doesn't mean they're right," said one male protester.
Yeah, apparently there's a strong stereotype that a person who has a "Hitler youth" haircut is always "right." Shapiro doesn't even have that haircut. The protester was also completely ignoring Shapiro's consistent condemnation of the alt-right, which has consistently targeted him.
"F*** Ben Shapiro and f*** Milo Yiannopoulos," screamed another protester, apparently totally ignorant of Shapiro's take on Yiannopoulos.
Other protesters trying to shut down Shapiro were confronted by pro-free-speech counter-protesters. When the protesters were asked what their beef was with Shapiro, they deflected to President Trump, gave no specific answer, and then fled the interaction.
German court rules Kuwaiti airline may ban Israeli passengers
A German court ruled on Thursday that Kuwait Airways had the right to refuse to carry an Israeli passenger due to his nationality, a verdict that Jewish groups said condones anti-Semitism.Shock as German court rules Kuwait Airways can ban Israelis
An Israeli citizen identified in court papers as Adar M., a student living in Germany, had sued Kuwait Airways after it canceled his booking for a flight from Frankfurt to Bangkok that included a stopover in Kuwait City.
The cancellation came a few days before M.'s scheduled departure in August 2016, when he revealed he had an Israeli passport. The airline offered to book him on a nonstop flight to Bangkok with another carrier.
The man refused the offer and filed the lawsuit, seeking compensation for alleged discrimination. He also insisted the airline should have to accept him as a passenger.
In its decision, the Frankfurt state court noted that under Kuwaiti law, Kuwait Airways is not allowed to have contracts with Israelis because of the Middle Eastern country's boycott of Israel. The court said it did not evaluate whether "this law makes sense," but the airline risked repercussions that were "not reasonable" for violating it, such as fines or prison time for employees.
According to the court, Germany's anti-discrimination law applies only in cases of discrimination on the basis of race, ethnic background or religion, not citizenship.
Germany’s Central Council of Jews condemned the ruling, calling it “unbearable that a foreign company operating based on deeply anti-Semitic national laws is allowed to be active in Germany.”Germany to press Kuwait to let Israelis fly on its national airline
Frankfurt Mayor Uwe Becker expressed a similar view.
“An airline that practices discrimination and anti-Semitism by refusing to fly Israeli passengers should not be allowed to takeoff or land in Frankfurt,” Becker said.
Courts in the United States and Switzerland previously have ruled in favor of plaintiffs in comparable cases, the German news agency dpa reported.
A lawyer for the Israeli passenger called the verdict “deeply shocking.”
“This is an embarrassing ruling for democracy and for Germany,” lawyer Nathan Gelbart said. “It cannot be allowed to stand like this.”
Germany’s foreign ministry said it will press Kuwait about a law that prevented its national airline from transporting an Israeli citizen on a flight originating in Frankfurt.Melanie Phillips: Remember Baghdad
Deputy foreign minister Michael Roth told Die Welt newspaper Friday that Germany’s ambassador has been asked to raise the issue with Kuwaiti authorities.
The move follows a Frankfurt court ruling Thursday that Kuwait Airways didn’t have to transport the Israeli on a 2016 flight that included a stopover in Kuwait City because it would have faced legal repercussions at home.
The court noted the airline wasn’t allowed to have contracts with Israelis under Kuwait’s boycott of Israel.
Roth said: “It is incomprehensible to me that in today’s Germany a passenger cannot board a plane simply because of his nationality.”
In 1951, most of the Jews of Iraq were forced out of the country as part of the ethnic cleansing of some 850,000 Jews from Arab lands that took place after the State of Israel was born. Thus the Jewish community which had lived in Iraq for more than 2,600 years, which had figured in the Psalms and in which the Babylonian Talmud was written, was no more.The Priti Patel debacle brought out yet again some ripe anti-Israel and anti-Jewish prejudices
Edwin Shuker is an Iraqi Jew whose family stayed on during the fifties but was forced out in 1971 when he was 16. His main home is in London, although he has ties to Israel too. Now he has done what would once have been unthinkable: returned to the Baghdad he loved so much and bought a house there.
He and four other families tell their story in a new film called Remember Baghdad. Shuker tells the Jewish Chronicle:
“You see me on my journey to buy a house there so I can say the Jews have not all gone… there has been an earthquake change in the attitude to the displaced Jewish people. Iraqis now feel like they have lost a golden community. They recognise Jews played an important part in civilised society… I feel a responsibility to go there to maintain the Jewish connection to this land. We are not finished yet.”
This is more than just a defiant political statement. As he says, he can’t bear to abandon the country where his grandfather is buried and which he still thinks of as home.
Please join me in this video clip as I talk to Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network about the political tumult in Britain, where the Priti Patel debacle brought out yet again some ripe anti-Israel and anti-Jewish prejudices.
Antisemitism in Britain is not confined to the left, and that it has a disreputable history within the Conservative party too.
Please join me in this video clip as I observe to Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network that antisemitism in Britain is not confined to the left, and that it has a disreputable history within the Conservative party too.
Among the British cultural elites Israel is so toxic
Please join me in this video clip as I tell Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network that among the British cultural elites Israel is so toxic Priti Patel’s dealings there provoked a storm which would not have occurred had she visited any other country.
Economy minister thanks US congressman for pushing anti-BDS legislation
Economy and Industry Minister Eli Cohen met with U.S. Congressman Peter Roskam (R-Illinois) in Washington on Wednesday, and thanked him for introducing legislation in March that would combat the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.David Collier: The antisemitism problem in the Labour party turns from bad to shameless
The Israel Anti-Boycott Act currently has the support of 268 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill would prohibit boycotting Israeli companies, specifically those active within Judea and Samaria and the Golan Heights.
The bill states that it opposes a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution that "urges countries to pressure their own companies to divest from, or break contracts with, Israel, and calls for the creation of a 'blacklist' of companies that either operate, or have business relations with entities that operate beyond Israel's 1949 Armistice lines, including east Jerusalem."
Cohen thanked Roskam for U.S. support in preventing the anti-Semitic activities of boycott organizations. BDS movement supporters will find themselves facing a joint U.S.-Israel economic front, which will stop the anti-Semitic boycott attempts, Cohen said.
Maddison’s follyHarry's Place » SOAS meeting to downplay anti-semitism sees Israel bracketed with North Korea
Yet this isn’t even the gravest error Maddison makes. For an antisemitic attack, surely the Jewish person must be known to the attacker or visibly identifiable as Jewish. So the comparison of all blacks against all Jews becomes unworkable. A Jew, fearing antisemitism, removes either his ‘kippa’, or ‘Star of David’ from his person before going out in public. The black person has no such luxury. This submissive result of high levels of antisemitism is a classic sign of a persecuted minority, and yet the good ‘Dr’ Madison, ignores it. I call this ‘Maddison’s Folly’.
Because of the ‘identity’ issue, ‘Jews’ cannot count as a whole number, the way other minority groups can. The question becomes – how many Jews amongst all the Jews are visibly Jewish – only they can be counted as the representative number of the entire community.
I am absolutely convinced that if all Jews dressed without any religious markings or dress whatsoever, then antisemitism crime levels would plummet. Black racial attacks would remain constant. Does that mean antisemitism would be over? This is the Maddison formula. Insane.
Then there is ‘Maddison’s second folly’ – take the CST. The CST secures over 1,000 communal events each year. When Jews gather as Jews, there is always a protective barrier in place around them. At the state level, my child goes to school behind an additional layer of protection. Dr Alan Maddison is either absurdly implying the levels of antisemitism would remain constant if that layer of protection was removed or all his conclusions are bunkum.
Then there is ‘hostile surveillance’. Does Dr Maddison even know what it is? What the CST does? What of those strangers that monitor Jewish sites, take photographs, are spotted, and deterred by the able defence?
Take two banks. One completely unguarded, the other guarded. The protected one holds diamonds, the unprotected one, Gold. Maddison is suggesting because the people take the Gold more than the diamonds, it means the people want the gold more. A schoolboy could do better than this.
Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) is a tiny group of Corbyn-supporting Israel-demonising anti-semitism-downplaying Jewish (they claim) Labour members, plus their supporters. See JVL Watch on Twitter. They launched in a fringe meeting at the Party Conference, notable for the anti-Zionist Miko Peled telling Labour members that they should be free to discuss the Holocaust “yes or no”. Many of their members have moved on from other similar ‘astroturf’ far left Israel-traducing organisations such as ‘Free Speech on Israel’ and ‘Jews for Justice for Palestinians’.UK's Labour readmits member accused of Holocaust revisionism, bars another
On Tuesday evening JVL held a meeting in SOAS (appropriately…..).
It was entitled On Antisemitism: Solidarity and the Struggle for Justice. Copies of a book with that title – compiled by Jewish Voice for Peace, a US anti-Israel organisation with zero connection to JVL – were on sale (published by Haymarket). The meeting wasn’t sponsored by a SOAS organisation so JVL must either have hired the room or found a supportive SOAS academic (not hard!) to book it for them.
On the chairs was a flyer from ‘Free Speech on Israel’ quoting the finding from the flawed Yachad survey that ‘more than 40 percent of British Jews do not identify as Zionist’. Of course it failed to quote the finding from the same survey that 93% see Israel as part of their identity as Jews. And it cites the Tomlinson critical opinion on the IHRA Definition without disclosing that his opinion was commissioned by four anti-Israel organisations: Free Speech on Israel, Independent Jewish Voices, Jews for Justice for Palestinians and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
The British Labour Party punished an activist for making an anti-Semitic remark about Adolf Hitler after reinstating a member accused of Holocaust revisionism.Former IDF Commander Says Anti-Israel Activists Laughed As He Described Coming Out
Labour activist Nasreen Khan was passed over this week from representing Labour at a municipal election over her 2012 Facebook post about Jews in which she said teachers are “brainwashing us and our children into thinking the bad guy was Hitler,” according to the Jewish News. Khan said she regretted the text, which also read, “What have the Jews done good in this world?”
Separately, philosopher Moshe Machover was readmitted after writing that Nazism and Zionism had a “basic agreement.”
The developments are the latest in a two-year saga involving anti-Semitism in Labour under Jeremy Corbyn, who was elected party leader in 2015 and this year led his opposition movement to a major electoral feat despite accusations by British Jewish groups that he is responsible for whitewashing and tolerating the hatred of Jews.
A former Israel Defense Forces commander told the Washington Free Beacon anti-Israel activists at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) laughed at him as he gave a talk describing coming out of the closet as gay.University of Maryland student government scraps BDS bill before vote
Hen Mazzig, who has been on the pro-Israel campus speaking circuit for seven years, said Monday was the first time he has ever been mocked while revealing "my very personal story to a room of strangers."
"One student told me I'm ‘pinkwashing,'" said Mazzig, a term referring to Israelis hiding behind the country's equal rights for LGBTQ individuals to redirect attention from human rights violations. "They told me that I'm pushing propaganda, because I'm not talking about the conflict, but about my personal life. So, I can't talk about being gay because I'm Israeli."
The student activists were affiliated with the UIUC chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), said Mazzig.
SJP UIUC is currently holding "Trans Awareness Week," and on Wednesday hosted a talk with the far-left Jewish Voice for Peace purporting to explain the face of modern day anti-Semitism, and how Israel is divorced form that issue.
Mazzig often faces protesters, but he said he has rarely faced the level of "disrespect and hatred" that he found at UIUC.
"I talk about how my grandfather was killed in Iraq in 1951 after being accused of being a Zionist spy, just because he was Jewish. My grandmother found the body," said Mazzig. "While I was telling the story, SJP was laughing."
Members of the University of Maryland student government nixed a bill to boycott Israel before it could be brought to a vote.Swastika Found at University of Michigan Hours After Divestment Vote Against Israel
After two hours of debate Wednesday, the student affairs committee put forward an unfavorable report on the bill by a vote of 21-1 with three abstentions, according to the university’s Diamondback newspaper. Student legislators then voted 23-13 against overturning the report, with one abstention.
Of the 61 students that spoke during the debates, 45 opposed the bill, according to student legislator David Rekhtman.
“BDS does nothing to facilitate that change [of status quo in Israel], nor does it help to promote dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians or students on campus,” said one speaker, Talya Gordon, a sophomore psychology major. “What BDS does is shut down the conversation before it can ever be had.”
The bill would have called on the University of Maryland to divest from companies that supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel say enable and profit from human rights violations in the Palestinian territories.
A swastika was found at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (U-M) on Wednesday afternoon, hours after the school’s student government called on university leaders to divest from companies that do business with Israel.J Street U to Show ‘Propaganda’ Film on Israeli Strategy to Win American ‘Minds and Tax Dollars’
The swastika — found in a men’s bathroom stall — was discovered by Sammy Lawrence, a Jewish senior at U-M who reported the antisemitic mark to the Division of Public Safety and Security, The Michigan Daily reported. A follow Jewish senior, Ryan Scheidt, also saw the swastika.
The university was contacted about the incident shortly before 3 p.m. — some twelve hours after the Central Student Government (CSG) voted to endorse a divestment resolution that accused Israel of practicing “apartheid” against Palestinians.
A spokesperson for the school to The Algemeiner that they “do not have any suspects in the incident nor do we know an approximate time during which it occurred.”
Scheidt — one of the students who saw the swastika — spoke to the Daily about a possible connection between the appearance of the mark and the CSG vote.
“I think if it did happen after this morning’s vote, I think that’s possible,” Scheidt told the paper. “I was fearful last night of the passing of the vote.”
According to the Daily, “Scheidt said he had felt he had a safe space on campus as a Jewish student until now, and he worried the #UMDivest vote would cause more anti-Semitic acts on campus like in the past.”
The student group J Street U is co-hosting a screening at Macalester College on Thursday evening of a film that has been criticized for demonizing Israel and whitewashing Palestinian terrorism, and features leading proponents of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign.Terrorist-sympathizer speaks at George Washington University, calls Zionists 'McCarthyites'
“The Occupation of the American Mind” — narrated by former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters — includes contributions from Amira Hass, Stephen Walt, Noam Chomsky, Max Blumenthal, Rashid Khalidi, Yousef Munayyer, Sut Jhally and Norman Finkelstein — a cast of characters well-known for their controversial criticisms of Israel and, in many cases, support for the hardline BDS movement.
J Street U — the campus arm of the lobbying group J Street, which describes itself as “the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans” — organized the 8 p.m. showing for Macalester students in conjunction with Macalester Students United for Palestinian Equal Rights, a group that seeks “to educate on all Palestinian activism, non-violent and otherwise.”
The documentary purports to show how Israel manipulates public opinion in the United States to cover-up alleged human rights violations against Palestinians, as part of its “decades-long battle for the hearts, minds, and tax dollars of the American people.”
Israelis, Munayyer claims in the film, “have for a very long time been able to effectively defend the indefensible to the American public through miseducation and misinformation campaigns, through effective talking points.”
The Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at George Washington University hosted terrorist-sympathizer Rabab Abdulhadi on Tuesday.Revisiting a five year-old BBC story
Abdulhadi, an ethnic studies professor at San Francisco State University — which was accused in a lawsuit earlier this year of being a hotbed of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel sentiment (the case was dismissed last week) — is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign against Israel.
She began her lecture by stating she was on “indigenous-toiled people’s land” and asking if anyone is an “[agent] of the government or security agency,” or if there were any people representing the Lawfare Project, which filed the lawsuit against SFSU.
She continued, “AMCHA, Zionist Organization of America, Brandeis Center [for Human Rights Under Law], the David Project, David Horowitz Freedom Center … CampusWatch.” All organizations which Abdulhadi and her followers despise.
On the Facebook event for the speech, Students for Justice in Palestine chapter of George Washington University posted, “They seek to smear Dr. Abdulhadi’s reputation and damage her standing as a scholar, teacher, and public intellectual and destroy the AMED Studies program in the process.”
During her lecture, which was typically inconsistent — switching between the founding of what became Israel and today’s left-wing issues in the United States, such as police brutality — Abdulhadi compared Zionists to followers of McCarthyism, labeling them as “oppressors” and “settlers” in “Palestine.”
Four months later, in March 2013, a report issued by the UN HRC stated its investigation had found that Omar Masharawi’s tragic death had in fact been caused by “a Palestinian rocket that fell short”.CAMERA: Jewish Progressive Journalism: Focus on The Forward
The corporation’s first response to that finding came five days after the UN report was issued when the BBC News website published a ‘damage control’ article by Jon Donnison which did nothing to address the real problem underlying the story: the fact that the BBC knowingly published and extensively promoted a story for which it had absolutely no proven evidence, purely because it fit in with its chosen political narrative.
Six days after the publication of the UN report, the BBC added footnotes to two of its original reports – both of which are still available online.
However, some of the media outlets that amplified the BBC’s original story blaming Israel for the infant’s death failed to subsequently add clarification and so some reports – for example from the Guardian, the Huffington Post and the Sun – still remain online in their original form.
Obviously no footnote can erase that inaccurate BBC story from the internet or from the memories of the countless people who read it or heard it at the time. Significantly, however, the BBC has never offered its funding public a satisfactory explanation as to why that unverified story was not only allowed to run but deliberately given exceptionally extensive coverage and how the editorial standards of accuracy and impartiality to which the BBC professes to adhere were so egregiously breached.
A firestorm of protest recently erupted over an article that ascribed sexual assaults on women by Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein to the perpetrator's Jewishness, invoking the type of racial characterization that was a staple of Hitler's Jew‑demonizing propaganda. The piece, however, was not from The Daily Stormer, National Vanguard, or any other such neo‑Nazi publications. It was from Tablet Magazine, which describes itself as "a daily online magazine of Jewish news and ideas," and was penned by its Jewish editor‑at‑large, Mark Oppenheimer. The article, entitled “The Specifically Jewy Perviness of Harvey Weinstein,” was a boon to white supremacists who gleefully cited it in their own postings. Elsewhere, however, the article was harshly denounced, forcing Oppenheimer to append a published “apology” even as the article remained on Tablet's website.“Game over” as Manchester United cancels event with modern-day antisemitic hate preacher David Icke at Old Trafford this evening following letter from CAA
Those who are shocked that a Jewish publication would engage in such appalling racial stereotyping and bigotry should not be. There is a disturbing trend within certain Jewish journalistic circles to conform to the extreme, supposedly “progressive” zeitgeist in which religious values, Jewish leaders, and most of all the Jewish state and its supporters are consistently condemned.
Nowhere is this trend as pronounced as at The Forward under the helm of editor‑in‑chief Jane Eisner. That publication touts itself as “the most influential nationwide Jewish media outlet today,” providing “incisive coverage of the issues, ideas and institutions that matter to American Jews.”
The question is what does The Forward consider to be of matter to American Jews?
It is “game over” for modern-day antisemitic hate preacher David Icke, as Manchester United has confirmed to Campaign Against Antisemitism that it has decided to cancel his event at Old Trafford this evening.Central Saint Martins removes imitation Nazi banner “art” hung by student in defiance of teaching staff
The venue of “An evening with David Icke” had been a closely guarded secret until two tickets with a face value of £85 each were spotted on eBay and reported to Campaign Against Antisemitism by actor Marlon Solomon and Sussex Friends of Israel.
We immediately wrote to the club alerting them to Mr Icke’s views, following which they cancelled the booking.
A reporter for the Jewish Telegraph learned that the event had been booked through an agency without mentioning that Mr Icke would be speaking, but as soon as management received the information that Mr Icke was the speaker, they stopped the event. This was then confirmed to us directly by a source at the football club, followed by an official statement that “The booking was made by a junior member of staff who was unaware of Icke and his objectionable views. The event has been cancelled.”
Mr Icke is a modern-day antisemitic hate preacher who uses social media, his books and his stage performances to incite hatred towards Jewish people. His preaching is so absurd that since the 1990s he has been dismissed as a crank, but because he is dismissed there has been no major opposition to him and he has built up a following of thousands upon thousands of disciples whom he has persuaded to adamantly believe that the world is in the grip of a conspiracy run by the “Rothschild Zionists”.
Central Saint Martins, a college of the University of the Arts London, has apologised after a red banner featuring swastikas was hung from its central hall. A student reportedly proposed the banner as a piece of “art” about prohibition, and was told not to go ahead on ethical grounds, but proceeded nonetheless.In talk featuring Jew-bashing, Farrakhan tells Trump: Repent for America's sins
Professor Jeremy Till, principal of the college, said: “As soon as we became aware of this, the work was removed. The installation of the banner was proposed by a student yesterday, and immediately and emphatically rejected.” He added that the university was “deeply sorry for the offence caused to our Jewish community and will be pursuing the matter…Central Saint Martins is committed to providing a supportive and inclusive environment for our diverse students, and we are aghast that the banner was installed against our specific instructions.”
According to one report, there was no explanation around the banner and students were simply laughing about it. However when the banner was removed, Alex Schady, Programme Director for the Arts, said that students cheered: “The student proposed the piece of work to me, which was to be part of an exhibition about prohibition. I immediately said no. But then the student arrived on the day with his work. He showed it to me and I said we are not comfortable with it. He then hung it without permission. As soon as I saw it I took it down and the students watching cheered as it came down. When putting any work in public spaces you have to consider the ethics. It is important that as a university we put on work that is ethically sound.”
Campaign Against Antisemitism commends Central Saint Martins for its swift action in removing this imitation Nazi banner and calls for strong disciplinary action to be taken.
Minister Louis Farrakhan, the anti-Semitic leader of the Nation of Islam, on Thursday called on US President Donald Trump to repent for America’s sins and chastised Americans who are upset with Trump’s image, saying “he’s your reflection.”American white nationalists lose Twitter verification under new guidelines
Farrakhan, in a wide-ranging, two-hour speech at the Watergate Hotel in the capital, touched on issues as varied as North Korea, race relations and relations between Muslims in the Middle East in what he billed as an address to Trump.
“Mr. President, you won’t make America great again, not in our time,” said Farrakhan, 84, referring to the president’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan. “She became great killing Native Americans. She became great enslaving us, bringing us from Africa into America to work the cotton fields. You’re not going to get that opportunity back anymore.”
The Nation of Islam, formed in Detroit in the 1930s, in part aims to free blacks from “servitude” to Western civilization — white society. It has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for positions against Jews, gays and others.
Farrakhan called on Trump to “repent for all of the evils that America has done to us, to the peoples of the world.”
The new guidelines are a result of criticism leveled at Twitter when Jason Kessler received verification after achieving over 15,000 followers. Twitter was falsely accused of endorsing him and his views.Hoops in the Holy Land: African-American basketball players embrace Israel
The Twitter verification has been a source of criticism and confusion. Twitter invented the verification to protect against fraud accounts for notable users, not to endorse the contents of the account.
Of all the major social media companies (Facebook, Google+ and Twitter), Twitter gained fame for the least amount of censorship.
The company claimed to be a platform for free speech so the program gained popularity with people who normally would have been banned on other social media.
The company is in a process of changing the policy on censorship to avoid being associated with racist views.
If you're a Raptors fan, you may remember a 2005 exhibition game in which Toronto became the first NBA team in 27 years to lose to Israeli powerhouse Maccabi Tel Aviv.Anne Frank foundation buys her family home in Amsterdam
Star guard Anthony Parker nailed the go-ahead jumper with less than a second remaining, and the two-time EuroLeague MVP later parlayed that performance into a multi-year contract with the Raptors.
Around this time, Toronto resident David Goldstein visited Israel, where his mother holds citizenship. The Goldstein family went to see David's grandparents at their seniors' living complex.
"My grandparents had some friends over who heard that I was from Toronto and they just started going bananas over Anthony Parker," says Goldstein. "I thought, it's really interesting how passionate they are, these 80-something-year-old women who I never would have guessed would be sports fans, and I was curious to know more."
A decade later, Goldstein has turned that curiosity into a book. Alley-Oop to Aliyah was published Nov. 7.
In the last 40 years, more than 800 African-Americans have relocated to Israel to play in the Israeli Basketball Premier League. The book focuses on those players, but rarely delves into strategy or statistics.
"It's really about identity, race, religion," says Goldstein, who's now the chief operating officer for USports, the governing body for university sports in Canada. "To me, basketball's an interesting way of learning about that because you might not want to read about it on its own, but in a basketball context you might be taken by it."
The foundation maintaining the Amsterdam house where Jewish diarist Anne Frank hid from Nazis during World War II said Thursday they had bought another property where her family lived in the 1930s.What was for dinner in Jerusalem 1,100 years ago? A massive refuse pit tells us
But the Anne Frank Stichting said it had no plans to use the “other home” as a museum, like the one in Amsterdam’s famous canal belt which draws thousands of visitors every year.
“It’s important for the foundation that the home where Anne Frank lived in the 1930s remains intact and is looked after in a proper way,” spokeswoman Annemarie Bekker said.
“It has a very special character… the home situated at the Merwedeplein (square) is inextricably linked to Anne Frank,” Bekker added.
The home in southern Amsterdam formerly belonged to a housing corporation but it said it could no longer take responsibility for its upkeep.
The Frank family lived in the modest brick building from 1934 until they went into hiding in 1942.
Fossilized remnants from a 1,100-year-old refuse pit recently discovered near Jerusalem’s Old City provide a veritable smorgasbord of culinary delights. According to well-preserved seeds, bones and other refuse, ancient city dwellers feasted on beef, fish and fowl, with sides of veggies and lentils. And for dessert? How about cake, or a fruit salad of figs, grapes and black mulberries.162 'Lost' Indian Jews Arrive in Israel
The fossilized refuse provides physical evidence of the urban diet of the Early Islamic period in Israel. Also on the menu, said Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologists, were eggs, fish, different possibly medicinal grasses — and the first proof of locally grown eggplant.
“Just like we bake a cake and throw the egg shells into the garbage, that’s exactly the form in which we found the eggs. We have scales and jaws of fish and small rodents,” said archaeologist Oriya Amichay in a press release. (The rodents were presumably not served.)
The refuse pit was uncovered in an IAA excavation, in collaboration with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and funded by the City of David Foundation, on the terraced Second Temple Period Pilgrimage Road in the City of David.
A total of 162 members from the Bnei Menashe Jewish community of northeast India arrived in Israel this week, marking the latest wave of so-called “lost” Jews to immigrate to the Jewish state.Hidden gems of Jerusalem
The new immigrants arrived at Israel’s Ben-Gurion International Airport in two groups and were greeted by jubilant family members and supporters, who danced, sang and waved Israeli flags.
The latest aliyah of Bnei Menashe members follows a group of 102 Indian Jews who arrived in Israel in February.
Members of the Bnei Menashe community claim to descend from Jews banished from ancient Israel to India in the 8th century B.C. Their immigration is organized by Shavei Israel, a Jerusalem-based nonprofit that calls itself “the only Jewish organization today that is actively reaching out to ‘lost Jews’ in an effort to facilitate their return [to Israel].”
In 2005, then-Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel Shlomo Amar officially recognized the Bnei Menashe as a lost tribe, and about 1,700 Bnei Menashe members moved to Israel before the Israeli government stopped giving them visas. The government later reversed that policy, enabling Bnei Menashe immigration to resume.
We all know that each city we visit has its “must-see” sites and attractions. First-time visitors to Jerusalem usually go to the Western Wall, the Old City market and the Tower of David, to name a few of the city’s most famous landmarks.Miss Iraq defends her joint pic with Miss Israel as a message of peace
But a city that dates back thousands of years, with rich history unlike any other on earth, has much more than meets the eye. So much so that even its own residents are sometimes not aware of what lies nearby, above their heads or beneath their feet.
I have spent many years photographing Jerusalem, and I have seen its many sides. Almost every time I went back to the city, there was something new I hadn’t seen before.
I recently teamed up with local tour guide Jacob Bildner, an expert in tours of the city, and together we set out on a special mission to uncover the hidden world of Jerusalem. Jacob was instrumental in helping me discover some of the city’s most fascinating secrets, from sites that are not accessible to the public to places that are literally hidden from sight. The rapport he has built with the communities connected to each site was invaluable in securing private access to many of those that we visited.
Exploring these sites was a mind-blowing and unforgettable trip to the past, unveiling even more layers of the holy city.
I have gathered eight of these hidden gems to show you a side of Jerusalem that you might not have seen:
Facing criticism at home, an Iraqi beauty queen on Wednesday defended her decision to pose for a photo with her Israeli counterpart and to post the joint selfie online, saying it was an expression of a desire for peace and not a show of support for the government of Israel.Stand With Us: Celebrate 70 Years of Israel with StandWithUs!
“I want to stress that the purpose of the picture was only to express hope and desire for peace between the two countries,” wrote Miss Iraq Sarah Idan (in Arabic) in her latest Instagram post.
She added that the photo of the two Miss Universe contestants, which she did not remove from her Instagram account, “does not signal support for the government of Israel and does not mean I agree or accept its policies in the Arab homeland.”
Idan, whose website indicates she now lives in the US, went on to apologize “to all those who consider [the picture] harmful to the Palestinian cause.”
Idan explained that Miss Israel, Adar Gandelsman, initiated the photo, saying she hoped there would be peace between Jews and Muslims and that neither side would have to send their children to the military.
