Thursday, January 04, 2018
IsraellyCool: The Palestinian Search for Peace
Fresh from his lung transplant in the US and follow-up treatment in Israel, Saeb “Massacre” Erekat had the chutzpah to once again rant on about supposed Israeli occupation, apartheid and heinous crimes.
Erekat slammed the American president for being unreasonable with the Palestinians and accused Trump, by his actions, of encouraging “the Israeli occupation to consolidate its occupation and apartheid regime.”
“Now, he is threatening to starve Palestinian children in refugee camps and deny their natural rights to health and education if we don’t endorse his terms and dictations,” Erekat said, referring to Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
“Instead of treating the Palestinians with fairness, President Trump has chosen a game of blame rather being an honest broker,” Erekat said. “His statements against the Palestinian people have encouraged Israel to continue its heinous crimes and violations of International Law.”
But I think fellow palestinian propagandist Hanan Ashrawi takes the cake with her response.
“President Trump has sabotaged our search for peace, freedom and justice. Now he dares to blame the Palestinians for the consequences of his own irresponsible actions!”
Yup, she really did claim that the palestinians – despite decades of rejecting peace offers and engaging in terrorism) have been searching for peace all this time.
Melanie Phillips: Our Crazy World - the Iran uprising
Please join me here as I discuss with Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network the Iran uprising, the excommunication from liberal Eden of Professor Alan Dershowitz and the inversion by the left of truth and lies.
'The Fight of Our Lives': New Documentary Examines the Threats Facing the West
The Fight of Our Lives - Defeating the Ideological War Against the West is a hard-hitting new documentary film by Gloria Z. Greenfield that examines the internal and external threats facing the West.
Among the featured commentators in the film are such luminaries as historian Niall Ferguson, anti-Islam activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, historian and political commentator Victor Davis Hanson, journalist Melanie Phillips, and many more, including Freedom Center Fellows Bruce Thornton, Raymond Ibrahim, and TruthRevolt editor Mark Tapson.
"Civilizations, empires, great powers can fall apart very fast," warns Niall Ferguson in the film's trailer. "Collapse can come quickly, like a thief in the night."
"There are two threats facing the West, and they are linked. There's the threat from within, and the threat from without," states Melanie Phillips. "And the threat from without is made much more threatening by the threat from within."
Don't miss this vitally important documentary. The 66-minute film is scheduled for release on 2/19/18, when the David Horowitz Freedom Center will be proud to host the film's world premiere at the Broad Theater in Santa Monica, California at 6:30 p.m. The premiere will feature opening remarks by Victor Davis Hanson and post-screening remarks by the film's producer/director, Gloria Greenfield.
Dore Gold: A Changed Saudi Arabia
When I wrote a book about Saudi Arabia's contribution to the rise of global terrorism after 9/11, back in 2003, the Israeli security establishment at the time estimated that between 50 and 70% of the Hamas budget came from Saudi Arabia. But something happened since then that changed this picture.
In May 2003, Riyadh was struck by a triple suicide bombing attack - 18 people were killed and Saudi Arabia shifted from being on the side of those who were launching these terrorist attacks to those who were victims of terrorism. Basically, Saudi Arabia from that point onward was on the same side as the United States and Israel.
While it was true that Wahhabi Islam was associated with the revival of jihad in the Arabian Peninsula, the ones who were really behind the ideological push towards renewed terrorism were organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood, which had sought and received sanctuary in Saudi Arabia.
So what draws Israel and Saudi Arabia to the same side of the fence today?
Over the last number of years I have met with senior officials who in the past worked for the Saudi government. I am convinced that Israel and Saudi Arabia share common concerns. I think Israel should make every effort to try and bridge the gap with Saudi Arabia, even discretely, even though there are glitches that can occur as two countries with very different backgrounds try and find common ground.
- First, there are the Sunni extremist organizations. Both al-Qaeda and ISIS have mounted a threat to both our countries.
- Second, clearly Iran looms large in the regional problems that both Israel and Saudi Arabia face. Just a few years back, the head of Israeli military intelligence, Maj.-Gen. Aharon Ze'evi-Farkash, revealed that analysis of Iranian missile tests indicated that there were two cities on the Iranian target list: one was Riyadh and the other one was Tel Aviv.
- There's a third common thread tying Israel and Saudi Arabia together. Both countries are facing Iranian efforts to destabilize our strategic environment.
- The Iranians have been seeking to encircle Israel by supporting terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip to our south, in Lebanon to our north, and now in Syria and possibly even the West Bank in the period ahead. Today, it is the Islamic Republic of Iran that is providing the bulk of funding to the Hamas budget.
- For Saudi Arabia, it's clear that Iran has entered into Yemen through the Houthis to the south, they are trying to take over Bahrain which they regard as a province of Iran, and they have these huge Shiite militias that have been active in Iraq as well.
The new front against BDS
Two Spanish courts in provincial capitals, one in the northern city of Oviedo and the other in Barcelona, recently ruled that attempts to boycott Israel violate freedom of expression and other protected rights, and issued injunctions against small towns that decided to boycott the Jewish state in 2017. The new rulings joined over 40 previous Spanish court rulings against the boycott, forming a legal wall of steel that boycott activists will likely slam into in other regions as well.From Berkeley To Europe: The Normalization Of Anti-Semitism
The boycott movement against Israel, which is known as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, is an anti-Semitic and racist movement that must be treated accordingly – mercilessly and without silken gloves. In practice, it is terrorism against Israel, and at times even against Jews who are not Israeli citizens. Like all other types of terrorism, the primary goal is to sow fear: fear in the hearts of ignorant consumers abroad so they will not dare enter a store selling Israeli products; fear in the hearts of performing artists so they will refuse to play in Israel, publicly announcing this to replicate this fear in their fan base; and fear in the hearts of decision-makers around the world so they will pressure Israel into concessions and retreat – even knowing that the Jewish state is right, embroiled in a conflict with a barbaric and brutal enemy.
The BDS movement's second goal, the higher one, is also no different from other types of terrorism. Those who call to boycott Israel hope to see it fall. Even if their slogans are inconsequential, their real goal is the termination of the Jewish state. Terrorist boycott activists are not interested in human rights or saving human life. If they did, they would exert at least a tenth of the energy they aim at Israel to worry about those truly oppressed in Iran and Syria, or in the dozens of other places around the world. Moreover, it is clear that when signs in solidarity with the BDS movement are held on Rothschild Boulevard in central Tel Aviv, the movement to terminate Israel gets a boost, regardless of whether those waving the signs are motivated by malicious intent or simple idiocy.
When French lawyer Alexis Dubruel attempted to disqualify jurist Albert Levy, because he is a Jew, from presiding over a case, the French Bar Association came down on Dubruel’s naked anti-Semitism and disbarred him.Middle East Studies Association (as Usual) Singles Out Israel for Attack, Excuses Palestinian Perfidy
But in Berkeley, California, when Councilwoman Cheryl Davila required a litmus test on Israel from the city’s Jewish Commissioner of Transportation — which he failed and for which he claims he was subsequently fired — there were no consequences. Councilwoman Davilla made some vapid comments about support for the Palestinians and that was the end of the matter.
Given the nature of Berkeley politics, there is little doubt that her decision was cheered by the city’s progressive forces, which have discovered that cloaking themselves in the garb of anti-Zionism conveniently masks their anti-Semitism.
Just up the street on the University of California, Berkeley campus, lecturer Hatem Bazian, director of Cal’s Islamophobia Project, had been tweeting anti-Semitic tropes reminiscent of Der Stürmer.
Days later, he issued an apology that to many sounded more like a justification.
Had any faculty member disseminated similar material about any other group, he or she would be facing a rather harsh conversation with a member of the administration and reminded of the institution’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. But when it comes to anti-Semitism, such conversations seldom occur.
The Middle East Studies Association gave up all pretense of being a scholarly organization when it was taken over by the followers of Edward Said in the 1980s, and began propagating Orwellian interpretations of Middle East history and politics to advance a political agenda that promotes or rationalizes Islamism, parrots Palestinian propaganda, and engages in unbridled attacks on Israel’s legitimacy and the West.The Palestinian Center at Columbia
Nowhere was this more evident than last month’s annual conference of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) in Washington, DC, at the overflow panel, “Thinking Palestine Intersectionally,” featuring Sherene Seikaly, Noura Erekat, Samera Esmeir, Judith Butler and Angela Davis.
I don’t recall hearing the word “scholar” in the introductions and discussion, but the word “activist” was repeatedly used to describe the participants and their work. The panel was organized by Seikaly, a historian from UC Santa Barbara, who is a co-founder and co-editor of Jadaliyya, “an independent ezine produced by the Arab Studies Institute.” If you visit the site, you will be invited to sign up for a newsletter and will be requested to choose your country. It appears that every country in the world is listed except one — Israel. One country that does not exist — Palestine — is listed.
Noura Erekat, a co-editor of Jadaliyya, is a law professor who admits that she is an activist. A gifted speaker, Erekat rattled off the standard leftist clichés about Israeli occupation, militarism, racism and settler colonialism. She displayed her ignorance of basic history by claiming armed groups took control of the PLO in 1968.
If Columbia University’s Center for Palestine Studies gets any more anti-Israel than it already is, it will have to register as a foreign agent.Keith Ellison Donor: ‘Israelis Have to be Bombed,’ Only Understand ‘Resistance’
“In 2015 and 2016, of the 44 Israel-related events sponsored by the Center for Palestine Studies, 41 included anti-Israel, pro-BDS speakers,” Leila Beckwith and Tammi Rossman-Benjamin write in an op-ed which appeared in The New York Daily News. “During the same two-year period, Israel-related events sponsored by Columbia University’s other two Middle East studies departments — the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African studies department and the Middle East Institute — also overwhelmingly included anti-Israel, pro-BDS speakers.”
“Columbia’s three Middle East studies departments hosted 46 events with pro-BDS speakers in 2015 and 2016, more than double any other U.S. school.” Benjamin and Beckwith are co-founders of the AMCHA Initiative, “which combats anti-Semitism in higher education.”
“Not coincidentally, academic boycotters constitute two-thirds of the Center for Palestine Studies’ core faculty, and both of its directors have endorsed an academic boycott of Israel. About half of the tenure-track faculty in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies are academic boycotters. And the Middle East Institute’s director and the majority of its executive committee have endorsed an academic boycott of Israel.”
The founder and current director of CPS at Columbia is Rashid Khalidi, who is a friend of former president Barack Obama but not of Israel.
An official at the anti-Israel American Muslims for Palestine group who openly advocates for violence against the Jewish state contributed $2,500 to Democratic Party leader Rep. Keith Ellison (Minn.) last year, according to campaign disclosure documents.Ellison Posts Photo of Himself Posing With ‘Antifa’ Handbook, Says It Will ‘Strike Fear’ in Trump
The contribution from Taher Herzallah, AMP's associate director of outreach and grassroots organizing, came in March 2017 shortly after Ellison was named the Democratic National Committee's deputy chairman.
Herzallah is best known as one of the "Irvine 11," a group of students who were sentenced to three years probation for actions taken to disrupt a 2010 speech by then-Israeli ambassador Michael Oren. He more recently—just a few weeks before his contribution to Ellison—was arrested for disrupting confirmation hearings for U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman.
Herzallah has in recent years openly advocated for using violence to destroy Israel, saying in 2014 that "the State of Israel is a lie" and "Israelis have to be bombed."
"Israelis have to be bombed, they are a threat to the legitimacy of Palestine, and it is wrong to maintain the State of Israel," Herzallah said, according to the Anti-Defamation League. "It is an illegitimate creation born from colonialism and racism."
Herzallah backs up his calls for violence by arguing "the only language that the state of Israel understands is that of resistance."
Herzallah has also proposed establishing "an Islamic State" to "use violent means to resist occupation."
Democratic National Committee deputy chairman Keith Ellison (Minn.) on Wednesday tweeted a photo of himself posing with a copy of the radical left-wing book Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.How Israel Is Perceived in South Africa
"At @MoonPalaceBooks and I just found the book that strike fear in the heart of @realDonaldTrump," he wrote.
Antifa is a far-left organization that uses violence in the name of progressive goals and against perceived enemies. It came to attention this year for its thuggish tactics at Berkeley, when it attacked and assaulted right-wing protesters on the liberal college campus.
The book is by Mark Bray, an Occupy Wall Street organizer and Dartmouth professor who earlier this year defended violence against white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
"Fascism cannot be defeated through speech," Bray said in August.
According to the book, "militant anti-fascism is a reasonable, historically informed response to the fascist threat that persisted after 1945 and that has become especially menacing in recent years" and antifa members must be ready to physically confront fascists when necessary.
Howard Feldman from Chai FM, Johannesberg, South Africa joins HR’s Managing Editor Simon Plosker in discussion: What’s it like to be Jewish in South Africa? How is Israel seen? How does the history of apartheid affect life today? The answers may surprise you.
Are you excited for another Women’s March on January 21?
Contrary to proclamations of universal women’s rights, organizers of the Women’s March are only interested in rights for women who are politically aligned with their social justice causes.Radio 5 live item promotes apartheid analogy, breaches style guide
Prior to the 2017 march, an anti-Trump pro-life women’s group was banned from marching while simultaneously embracing convicted cop killers and anti-semites.
Touted as a grassroots movement, the Women’s March is anything but, with their 2017 march having more than 50 partners and PACs supporting their fun, most of which were bankrolled by Soros groups.
And then there’s Linda Sarsour, Women’s March organizer who publicly castigates victims of female genital mutilation and is currently facing accusations she helped cover up sex abuse.
New year, new march, same ol’ women-hating, anti-Israel harpies running the show.
As regular readers will be aware, the editorial approach taken by the BBC when reporting stories relating to the BDS campaign against Israel is to avoid informing audiences exactly what that campaign is really all about and in particular, that it seeks to bring about an end to Jewish self-determination by means of delegitimisation. In the past the BBC has claimed that, notwithstanding its frequent amplification of the campaign, it is not its job to provide audiences with that information and has taken to bizarrely describing that campaign to eradicate the Jewish state as a “human rights group”.French Jews protest reprint of antisemitic essays from Holocaust era
It therefore did not come as much of a surprise to see that an item broadcast on January 1st on BBC Radio 5 live adopted the same editorial approach. However, the item – aired on a show called ‘Phil Williams’ – also included additional issues.
In a slot (from 01:37:17 here) relating to the “top arts, entertainment and culture stories of the week”, presenter Adrian Goldberg discussed the cancellation of a concert in Tel Aviv by the New Zealand singer Lorde following pressure from anti-Israel activists – and one reaction to her decision in particular – with guests Emma Bullimore and entertainment journalist Alex James.
Goldberg: “…we’re going to talk about Lorde tonight as well because she’s become the subject of a full-page advert in the Washington Post. A celebrity rabbi in the United States has taken her to task for cancelling a gig in Israel and called her a bigot. And there’s been quite a lot of pressure on artists who’ve chosen to play gigs in Israel over the last few years to pull out of them. Some have given way to pressure like Lorde has. Others have refused to give way.”
Alex James then told listeners that the twenty-one year-old singer – whom he described as “such a young artist” – “has admitted at this point to not making the right call”. He went on:
James: “…the decision was made just a week after it [the concert] was announced that the right decision was to cancel the show. She said ‘I’m not too proud to admit that I didn’t make the right call on this one’.”
In other words, listeners were told three times in a matter of minutes that the “right” decision was not to appear in Israel.
France’s best-known hunter of Nazis, Serge Klarsfeld, and the country’s main umbrella of Jewish groups protested a publisher’s plan to print antisemitic essays by the author Louis-Ferdinand Destouches, also known as Celine.Neo-Nazi who co-runs Daily Stormer has Jewish relatives on both sides of family
Klarsfeld, a historian and vice president of the Foundation for the Memory of the Holocaust, told Le Parisien that it would be “unbearable” to find at a French library the essays by the celebrated novelist, which he published under the pseudonym Louis-Ferdinand Celine between 1937 and 1941, the paper reported last week.
And CRIF, the umbrella group, said in a statement that it opposes the plan by Editions Gallimard to publish later this year the three “racist, antisemitic and pro-Hitler” essays titled “A bagatelle for a massacre,” “The school of corpses” and “Beautiful sheets.”
The plans to publish the essays were made known in November but formally announced only in recent days. A spokesman for Editions Gallimard, one of France’s most prominent publishing houses, told L’Express the essays would be edited “in a scientific style” that would expose and explain their antisemitic content.
The mother of a neo-Nazi who co-runs the white supremacist website Daily Stormer and said Jewish children “deserve to die” has Jewish relatives on both sides of his family.UK right-wing activist: Britain 'took the wrong side' in World War II
Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer’s mother, Alyse, confirmed to Newsweek magazine in an article published Wednesday that her son comes from a “large, mixed race family” with Native American heritage, and that he has Jewish lineage “on both sides of his family.” His Jewish heritage was first reported by Gawker in 2012 when he volunteered the information to a reporter, but this is the first time a family member has confirmed his background.
Auernheimer, who runs the technical side of the Daily Stormer, with its more well-known editor Andrew Anglin, is believed to be in Ukraine, where he has lived since serving jail time in the United States on a computer hacking charge. He has been estranged from his mother for over a decade, she told Newsweek.
Auernheimer, 32, on the podcast Radical Agenda last month said Jews were to blame for the Daily Stormer website losing its dot-com status, causing it to jump from domain to domain in recent months.
A self-proclaimed Nazi told gatherings of far-right audiences that Jews are parasites who should be eradicated, a UK court heard on Tuesday.Italy's Jews want fascist-era king's name removed from public sphere
The prosecuting attorney at the Preston Crown Court, Mathew Brooks, commented that the defendant from Lancashire, who can’t be named for legal reasons, wanted "other people to hate the Jews in the same way that he does."
According to the BBC, The 22-year-old denies the two counts of stirring up racial hatred, but a video was shown in court of the defendant stating Jews are a "disease" to a right-wing audience.
Brooks claims the defendant has “far right-wing views” and the jurors were told that the trial is about remarks that are "threatening and abusive comments about the Jewish race."
"You can call me Nazi, you can call me fascist. That is what I am," he is shown saying in the video.
Tweets written by the defendant were also used as evidence in court. One tweet, which included a picture of Hitler said, "[Winston] Churchill was a warmonger who took us to war against those we should have called comrades."
Another tweet said, “The United Kingdom is dead and only held in place by a Jewish monarchy."
Italy's Jewish community is asking that the government remove from schools, libraries and other public buildings the name of King Victor Emanuel III, who approved Italy's racial laws and reigned during Italy's fascist regime.Aharon Appelfeld, literary giant who gave vivid voice to Holocaust, dies
The request follows dismay by some in Italy's Jewish community over the return to Italy of the king's remains last month, 71 years after Italians rejected the monarchy and the royals went into exile.
Community leader Noemi Di Segni wrote Culture Minister Dario Franceschini asking that he change the names of schools and libraries bearing the name of the king who "abandoned Italians to their destiny."
In the message Wednesday on the Jewish community's blog, she complained about a campaign by the House of Savoy to rehabilitate the king's image by bringing his remains back.
Aharon Appelfeld, one of Israel’s most prolific and talented writers, who brought forth a rich library of Holocaust fiction, memoirs and essays in 47 books, died Thursday. He was 85.Japan’s ‘Schindler’: A genuine hero tangled in a web of myth
His most recent book, the romance “Perplexity,” was published just three months ago, in September 2017.
A winner of multiple literary awards, Appelfeld was the recipient of the 1983 Israel Prize for literature and the 1989 National Jewish Book Award for fiction, and in 1997 was appointed a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Appelfeld wrote his fiction in Hebrew, a language he didn’t learn until he was 13 and had arrived in pre-state Israel, following harrowing escapes and painful experiences in Ukraine, Russia and Europe during and after the Holocaust.
Much of Appelfeld’s fiction was based on his own life, transforming memory into fiction, as he told The Independent in a 2012 interview.
“I’m not writing memoirs — I’m using pieces of my own experience,” he said.
In September 2017, the Tokyo Weekender asked 500 residents of Japan’s capital to nominate their candidates for the “Greatest Japanese Person Ever.”In rural Japan, a pilgrimage site is now a Holocaust museum, with complications
Beating out revolutionaries, monarchs, and even baseball stars for the top spot was Chiune Sugihara, Japan’s World War II ambassador to Kovno, Lithuania.
In the article, he is hailed as “a man who defied the Japanese government and risked his career to save the lives of thousands of Jewish people.” The piece in the Tokyo Weekender, distributed monthly in embassies, hotels, airports and other tourist locations, is just one of many heralding the former diplomat’s good deeds.
Sugihara is now a symbol of humanitarianism during a dark period of Japanese history. There is a recent media awareness of the Righteous Among the Nations, which drastically increased his national and international profiles.
However, even as Sugihara’s courageous acts are amplified on the world stage, there is concern that this story of a long-dead former diplomat now has currency in contemporary Japan for reasons far beyond his humanitarian legacy.
It is not easy to visit Yaotsu. There is no real public transportation, nor is there English-language signage pointing to the mountainous town of 11,000 in the land-locked Gifu Prefecture. Bordered by the Hida River to the north and the Kiso River to the south, the town is sleepy and best known for its small sake industry — and Chiune Sugihara.13 of the biggest health breakthroughs in Israel in 2017
Hailed as a native son in Yaotsu, Sugihara, Japan’s World War II ambassador to Lithuania, is credited with saving the lives of some 10,000 Jewish refugees in 1940.
Sugihara helped the Jews flee war-torn Europe prior to the Final Solution through a complex arrangement of mocked-up visas to Holland’s Caribbean Curacao Island, which did not actually require them, but whose bearers could be issued transit visas to Japan. That meant Soviet Russia would allow them passage via the Trans-Siberian Railroad to the Vladivostok port.
Multilingual literature given out at in Yaotsu, Japan, at the Chiune Sugihara Memorial Hall museum (Amanda Borschel-Dan/Times of Israel)
For his deeds in securing a ticket out for these thousands of Jews, Israel bestowed upon Sugihara the honor of Righteous Among the Nations in 1984. Here in backwater, rural Japan, things moved more slowly and he was largely unheralded during his life.
Today, however, Sugihara is the main event in Yaotsu.
The day before our trip to isolated Yaotsu, we paid a formal, televised visit to Gifu Governor Hajime Furuta, who explained that the town hosts an annual day in memorial of Sugihara’s death. His life is dramatized in school plays — and even an opera.
In many ways, Yaotsu has become a one-stop shop for the now-honored diplomat. It even has its own Sugihara-branded sake.
1. Compound kills energy generating system of cancerEl Al Will Now Fly Direct From Tel Aviv To Silicon Valley
An Israeli researcher devised a synthetic compound to disable the enzymes that allow cancer cells to metastasize.
When cancer cells leave the primary tumor and spread to other organs, they reprogram their energy-generating system in order to survive in harsh conditions with a shortage of nutrients like glucose.
Prof. Uri Nir of Bar-Ilan University identified an enzyme called FerT in the energy-generating mitochondria of metastatic cancer cells – an enzyme normally only found in sperm cells (which need to function outside the body they came from). When he targeted FerT in lab mice, the malignant cells soon died.
Using advanced chemical and robotic approaches, Nir’s lab team developed a synthetic compound, E260, which can be administered orally or by injection, causing a complete collapse of the entire mitochondria “power station.”
“We have treated mice with metastatic cancer and this compound completely cured them with no adverse or toxic affect that we can see,” reported Nir, adding that normal cells were not affected.
El Al Airlines announced on Wednesday that it would begin direct flights between Tel Aviv and San Francisco later this year, according to Reuters. Flying three times per week, the airline will compete with United for passengers shuttling between Silicon Valley and Israel for business in the high-tech sector.Sir Ringo Starr Outclasses Lorde And BDS Movement, Schedules Two Concerts In Israel
The irony of this migraine of an airline becoming the connector between two of the biggest tech capitals in the world is certainly fun. But there’s also an opportunity here–an opportunity for disruption, if you will.
El Al needs to shake things up, no doubt about it. The past year came with delays caused by mixed gender seating, a 30% drop in Q3 profits, and, of course, its ignominious title as the world’s least dependable airline.
Unlike New Zealand singer Lorde, who capitulated to pressure from the anti-Israel BDS movement and cancelled her concert scheduled for Tel Aviv, living legend and former Beatle, Sir Ringo Starr, defied the BDS movement and announced the tour with his band will include two concerts in Tel Aviv’s Menorah Mivtahim Arena on June 23 and 24.
On his website, Starr wrote:
Ringo Starr announces the 13th iteration of his All Starr Band and new tour dates through Europe and Israel. After six years with the same band, Ringo welcomes Colin Hay back to the group and as well as new member Graham Gouldman of 10cc (I’m Not In Love, Things We Do For Love, Dreadlock Holiday, Wall Street Shuffle). Hay and Gouldman join existing All Starrs Steve Lukather, Gregg Rolie, Warren Ham and Gregg Bissonette.
In June, the All Starrs embark on a 21 date tour that will kick off in Paris France and includes shows in Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Monaco, Netherlands and Israel, concluding in Italy. The last time the All Starrs toured Europe was 2011.
As far back as 1964, Starr was mistakenly identified as Jewish. When the Beatles arrived in Montreal on September 8, 1964, local media informed them that anti-Semites had made death threats against Starr, forcing the band to hire extra security, including a plainclothes policeman behind a drum riser.
Starr recalled in The Beatles Anthology, “Some people decided to make an example of me as an English Jew. … The one major fault is I’m not Jewish.”
