Thursday, September 27, 2018
Melanie Phillips: The destruction of Israel the signature cause of the British Labour party
The leader of Britain’s Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, has told his party’s annual conference that if he becomes Prime Minister he will immediately recognise a Palestinian state. Immediately. Why? What kind of priority is this for a British Prime Minister?UK: Labour loves Palestinians more than British citizens
Labour delegates also voted to condemn Israel’s use of force against violent riots on the Gaza border, urge more UK funding for UNWRA, the UN agency for Palestinians, and back a freeze on British arms sales to Israel. And in a veritable sea of hatred of the Jewish state, they waved Palestinian flags provided for them by the conference organisers as they debated “Palestine”, which delegates had voted was a priority issue ahead of the NHS, Brexit, social care and welfare.
How come that’s such a priority?
At a fringe meeting Len McCluskey, the Unite trade union leader who previously dismissed the party’s antisemitism scandal as “mood music”, spat his venom against Israel.
Unite represents mainly low-paid British workers in the service sector. Unite is obsessed by hatred of Israel. Why? What possible reason can there be for this? What impact does Israel have on the lives of such workers? None.
All this has made one thing crystal clear. Palestinianism is now the signature cause of the Labour party. Members don’t wave the flag of the potential state of Kurdistan, or Tibet, or identify any other foreign cause to be more important than British domestic issues.
So why has Palestinianism become the cause of causes? The answer is that the obsession is not with the fate of the “Palestinians”, whose lives in fact have been made wretched by their own leaders and the Arab world in general. The obsession is with the Jews.
IsraellyCool: What Do Palestinian Propagandists Actually Mean by “Peace”?
I saw this video on Twitter: a palestinian schoolgirlis talking about what they teach them in schools and what they mean by “peace” – and they don’t seem to mean that they want peace with others based on mutual understanding and co-operation. The girl is describing themselves taking everything and having “peace” between themselves, not with others.
A Palestinian girl's vision of peace. This is 13 year old Iman Zaher, from the village of Luban a-Sharqiya. pic.twitter.com/vV9zNSiUoI
— Imshin 💙 (@imshin) September 25, 2018
This kind of explains why those paraded as “peace activists” (like ‘Shirley Temper‘) don’t seem “peaceful” at all.
If that’s their definition of “peace”, this mindset sounds a lot like that of Islamists from the time of the Arab conquests in the Middle Ages (after they expelled non-Muslims from Arabia and later started expanding outside of Arabia and they even went to Spain). They declared areas that they didn’t rule “Dar Al-Harb” (translation: House of War), and started waging war on those around them and after violently subjugating, enslaving and expelling others, declared areas they conquered “Dar Al-Salam” (translation: House of Peace), even though they weren’t “peaceful” at all.
They seem to just redefine words to have some other meaning. For instance, they have tried to redefine the word “refugee” to have some other meaning that only applies to them and that no other country uses. Or how some propagandists try to redefine the word “coexistence” when referring to Spain under Islamic rule, even though historians criticize calling that “coexistence.”
At UN, Netanyahu reveals Iranian nuclear warehouse, urges IAEA to go inspect it
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday revealed what he said was a previously unknown Iranian nuclear site, accusing the International Atomic Energy Agency of failing to investigate findings that he presented earlier this year about Iran’s nuclear program.
Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly, Netanyahu also revealed what he said were Hezbollah precision missile sites hidden in Beirut, warned that Israel would act against Iran “wherever and whenever,” praised US President Donald Trump for defunding the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, and attacked the Palestinian Authority for paying monthly salaries to convicted terrorists.
The prime minister said the IAEA, the UN’s nuclear agency, had failed to take any action after he revealed in April a nuclear archive that Israeli spies managed to spirit out of Iran, and so he was now revealing what he said was a “secret atomic warehouse” in the Turquzabad district of Tehran.
Netanyahu claimed it was used for “storing massive amounts of equipment and material from Iran’s secret weapons program,” which was quickly being moved to other parts of the city.
He claimed some 15 kilograms (33 pounds) of radioactive material had been squirreled away around Tehran, endangering the capital’s residents.
The site may contain as much as 300 tons of nuclear material in 15 shipping containers, he added.
He did not specify what nuclear material was contained at the site.
‘What Iran hides, Israel will find’: Full text of Netanyahu’s UN speech
More details revealed about Mossad operation in Tehran
The Mossad began preparations for the burglary in the Iranian archives in early 2017. During what was dubbed 'Operation Ocean-11,' the Israeli team was in constant contact with the head of Israel's secret service Yossi Cohen while the burglary itself was carried out by a few dozen Mossad agents.IDF releases photos of alleged Hezbollah missile sites near Beirut airport
The team did not know that the archive also contained disks about Iran's subversive nuclear activities and Cohen, who was watching the operation in Israel, personally instructed that this part of the archive should also be taken to Israel.
At five o'clock in the morning, the team left the warehouse in Tehran and smuggled the archives via two different routes to Azerbaijan. From there, the archive was flown to Israel.
The burglary was discovered by the Iranians shortly after the Mossad team left the building. The Iranian regime used 12,000 members of various security services to pursue the burglars.
We will probably never find out how the Mossad team managed to stay out of the hands of the Iranians during the trip to Azerbaijan, 500 kilometers from Tehran.
The seized documents were translated and reviewed by a large team of experts and Farsi-speakers from the IDF's 8200 cyber spy unit.
The countries which signed the nuclear agreement with Iran were subsequently given access to the documents stolen by the Mossad, but except for the United States, none of them decided to leave the JCPOA.
"Nuclear experts who examined the documents say that the infrastructure in Iran is far more extensive than that needed to produce five 'only' bombs," Bergman reported referring to media reports about Iran’s initial plan to produce five nuclear bombs of 10 kilotons each.
The Israeli military on Thursday released satellite images of three sites in Beirut that it says are being used by the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group to hide underground precision missile production facilities.
The sites, located within close proximity of Beirut’s international airport, were first revealed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday night, during his speech at the United Nations General Assembly.
The factories, which are meant to convert regular missiles into more accurate precision ones, are not believed to be up and running. The Israel Defense Forces said they are currently being constructed with Iranian assistance.
The target of the Israeli airstrike last week, in which a Russian spy plane was inadvertently shot down by Syrian air defenses, was machinery used in the production of precision missiles, which was en route to Hezbollah, The Times of Israel has learned.
According to Netanyahu, these precision missiles are capable of striking with 10 meters (32 feet) of their given target. Hezbollah is believed to have an arsenal of between 100,000 and 150,000 rockets and missiles, though the vast majority are thought to lack precision technology.
When Experts Ignore the Truth About Israel and the Palestinians
When New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman offers up a Middle East peace plan, the world stops and listens. Or at least it used to. The three-time Pulitzer Prize winner has been opining about the region for decades, and the shopworn feel to his advice is beginning to feel about as tired as a prose style that remains as awash in clichés today as it ever was.Intersectionalism, antisemitism and anti-Israel propaganda
In 2002, when Friedman sought to play midwife to a peace initiative from Saudi Arabia, the result was a public-relations coup for the columnist/author, even if it turned out that there was less to the idea than met the eye. But it isn’t likely that his latest set of suggestions for Middle East peace — in which he offers the Palestinians a plan for putting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a pickle — will cause much of a splash. Friedman still writes as if he was uniquely positioned to speak truth to both sides and the world is hanging on his every word.
It isn’t. But that doesn’t mean that his writing is insignificant, not only because he retains his influential perch at the Times. Friedman has evolved over the years into a pitch-perfect indicator of conventional wisdom. If you want to know what is wrong with the thinking that dominated US foreign policy until the Trump administration — and what the people who believe they will run things again after they hope Donald Trump is swept out of Washington — then you should read Friedman’s columns.
That’s why his latest contribution to the ever-growing pile of schemes to fix the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is worth a look, even if it is as much of a non-starter as the rest of the genre. It also demonstrates anew that although Friedman has almost certainly forgotten more about the Middle East than Trump has ever learned, the administration for which he has so much contempt may actually have a better handle on the conflict than the veteran commentator.
The anti-Israel propagandists did not get the warmest welcome, but neither were they ousted. The sad truth is that they are becoming more and more at home in Jewish areas and centers. Their demonstration was peaceful and they had the right to speak their minds and disseminate their material – even if it is lies.What American Jews don’t understand about Israel
The most concerning issue is that these haters of Israel have an advantage in today’s market of ideas – and that is because Jews in general and Israel in particular are perceived as oppressors.
In concrete terms, it is hard to imagine how Jews and Israel can be seen as oppressors. The Jew is the greatest victim in all of history. The word “scapegoat” comes from the Bible and was brought into language as a way to describe Jewish existence. The word “ghetto” was created to describe the place where Jews were forced to live. The concept of racism was created to justify the modern hatred of Jews and it is those racists who created the word “antisemite.”
Even the word “Holocaust” was created in order to describe the greatest organized murder of a people in all of history. The world is a different place today because of the Holocaust – when the unfathomable became a reality. A plan was set into action to murder an entire people and before they were stopped, the Nazis succeeded in murdering six million Jews.
But time marches on and memories fade – even global memory. As of late, ideas and thinking have shifted. Past realities are less important. A new way of thinking has emerged and today Jews are perceived as oppressors. This new perspective is called inter-sectionalism. The idea is extremely powerful among young people specifically at university and college campuses and among liberals. Even among Jewish liberals on the West Side of Manhattan.
Inter-sectionalism is based on the view that all the abused share a common abuser.
It’s a game of connect the dots and that explains how Jews were transformed from victim to oppressor. Israel is oppressing the Palestinians. Israel is the Jewish state. All Jews are oppressors. Add to that the fact that Jews are almost exclusively white and the dots are all lined up and the link is secure.
Just as the oppressors are all linked, so too are the oppressed all linked. So Palestinians are directly linked to Black Lives Matter – even though there is no connection at all between the groups. Not demographically, not ideologically, not at all.
It is almost impossible to convince intersectionalists of Israel’s rights or that Jews are actually victims. They cling steadfastly to their belief and will find satisfaction only if more Jews die.
Israel is the ultimate football in the political and cultural life of American Jews, but it is increasingly clear that those same American Jews do not understand the most important rules of the game.Does Corbyn know who wrote this about Jerusalem?
Israel has never played such a central – and polarizing – role in Jewish American life and politics. On both the Right and the Left, Israel is treated as a symbol and abstraction, and is fashioned to reflect the highest hopes or darkest fears of whoever happens to be singing its praises or decrying its faults. From former president Barack Obama to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to President Donald Trump, the Jewish American center is not holding.
Both sides are guilty of the same analytic mistake. They treat Israel as a monolithic entity and overlook the single most important factor in understanding where Israel is and where it might be going; its fragmented political system. If you want to change or save Israel, this is the place to start. Just as it is impossible to understand American politics without accounting for structural factors like constitutional constraints and an ineffectual Congress, so too, Israel’s most vexing controversies will remain frustrating mysteries if its fans and foes do not take its political ground-rules into account.
The first thing to understand about the Israeli political system today is that its parliamentary system results in fragile governing coalitions, as small parties with niche agendas often act as king makers with outsized sway. To form a government, a prime minister must establish and maintain a majority of at least 61 seats (out of 120) in the Israeli parliament-the “Knesset.” While this was never an easy feat, it has grown increasingly harder in recent years as ruling parties’ electoral power have shrunk.
In the main Labour Party conference hall in Liverpool on Wednesday there were more Palestinian flags being waved than at a Hamas rally in Gaza, or at the opening session of the Palestinian Parliament at Ramallah.Corbyn’s Labour, which may soon govern UK, is now an anti-Israel protest group
The vote by party members to debate Palestine was the fourth most popular after housing, schools, and justice for the Windrush generation. The subject of “Palestine” gained more votes (188,000) than Brexit and the National Health Service.
The chanting by Labour activists included the Hamas and Islamic Jihad slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free” (i.e. from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean sea, including Tel Aviv, all of Israel should be destroyed).
One of the many lies told about Israel among left-wing Labour activists is that there were almost no Jews there before the Holocaust.
But I wonder how many of them (including Jeremy Corbyn) know who wrote the following in 1854?
“The sedentary population of Jerusalem numbers about 15,500 souls, of whom 4,000 are Mussulmans [Muslims] and 8,000 Jews. The Mussulmans, forming about a fourth part of the whole, and consisting of Turks, Arabs and Moors, are, of course, the masters in every respect, as they are in no way affected with the weakness of their Government at Constantinople.
“Nothing equals the misery and the sufferings of the Jews at Jerusalem, inhabiting the most filthy quarter of the town, called hareth-el-yahoud, the quarter of dirt, between the Zion and the Moriah, where their synagogues are situated – the constant objects of Mussulman oppression and intolerance, insulted by the Greeks, persecuted by the Latins, and living only upon the scanty alms transmitted by their European brethren.”
That was Karl Marx, writing in the New York Daily Tribune, in 1854.
Does Corbyn know this? Does he care?
Anyone who questions whether Britain’s Labour party might have emerged from a summer of revelations about anti-Semitism a little chastened or contrite had their answer from its annual conference this week.The Lynching: The anti-Israel herd at the Labour Conference yesterday
Not at all.
Nothing better illustrates Labour’s journey from credible party of government to a bastion of hard left activism than the image of Luciana Berger, a Jewish MP who has led the effort to call out anti-Semitism in its ranks, accompanied by a policeman as she walked around the Liverpool conference.
For the avoidance of doubt: this is not normal. With Britain’s relatively open, violence-free political system, only a few senior Cabinet ministers have bodyguards; backbench MPs, such as Berger, do not.
The police, however, clearly judged that the Jewish MP was a potential target — in the city she represents in parliament, and at a gathering of the party of which she is a member.
But this blog is not about this absurd Israel-demonising motion. It is about the PSC’s manipulation of the delegates who voted for it and their willingness to be manipulated. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign has hijacked the Labour Party and the TUC. Its Chair, Hugh Lanning, was Deputy General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), one of the largest trade unions. With many Jewish members having quit Labour and many who remain choosing to stay away from Conference, there was no-one to speak yesterday to expose the lies. Israel hate has become the glue that keeps the Corbynite left together, the totem pole around which it rallies, orchestrated by 50+ year olds who remember the campaign against apartheid and make entirely false comparisons with it.Michael Lumish: The Labour Betrayal
If you want to see this manipulation illustrated, look no further than the two photos below.
The first one shows the Israel lynching sessions yesterday (well done to Paul Wilkinson who pointed out from the podium that it was against the rules to bring the flags into the hall, especially when he wasn’t allowed to unfurl an EU flag earlier in the day). Contrast it with the second one, which shows the attendance at the International Briefing on Monday morning, with at least two Shadow Cabinet members on the podium to answer questions (Emily Thornberry and Kate Osamor – does anyone know who the other two are? Nia Griffith?). The hall is virtually empty.
If delegates were really interested in the Middle East, would they not have gone to the International Briefing to increase their knowledge and ask relevant questions of the Shadow Ministers responsible? They could for example have asked Ms Thornberry about Labour’s policy towards Christians in the Middle East who are persecuted by Islamists, or about the genocide of the Yazidi on Mount Sinjar, or about the persecution of the Druze in Iraq and Syria, or about the demonisation of the Kurds by President Erdogan of Turkey. They could have enquired about Labour’s policy towards all these persecuted minorities in the Middle East. She might even have responded that the safest place for minorities in the region is …………….. Israel (I hear you laughing cynically – but miracles do sometimes happen, even for Labour Shadow Ministers). If those who waved Palestinian flags yesterday were genuinely interested in the Middle East, that is what they might have done, isn’t it?
But no. The plain fact is that the delegates who voted for the anti-Israel motion yesterday were a lynch-mob, a flock of sheep cynically manipulated by the PSC, waving the £6000 worth of flags they were given and voting to lynch Israel because either (a) they lacked the guts not to follow the herd or (b) they could not be bothered to learn the facts.
It is astonishing. There is all sorts of footage of violence and chaos and mayhem and blood coming from Arabs who live on Jewish land directed toward Jews, yet the progressive-left and the Labour Party honestly believe that we deserve whatever beating that we get.Ha'aretz: UK Labour Party Vote on Israel and Palestinians Is an Empty Gesture
I believe that this needs to be understood within the context of the long-standing European and Arab abhorrence to Jewish self-defense. For millennia the very notion of a Jew punching back was anathema within Europe and throughout the lands conquered via Arab and Muslim imperialism.
What is ironic and sad is Labour honestly does not recognize Judea as Jewish land.
They seem to believe that Israel is somehow part of the Arabian Peninsula and that, therefore, Jews need to be confronted for our usurpation of the land of others and the persecution of the innocent, bunny-like "indigenous Arab" population.
They do not recognize the indigeneity of the Jewish people to Israel even as they claim to stand for the rights of other indigenous peoples.
In 1190 there was the massacre of the Jews at York which took 150 of us, some taking their own lives during the bloody chaos and others burned in the tower.
In the year 1290 King Edward the First issued the Edict of Expulsion to the Jewish people living within England. The edict remained in force until Oliver Cromwell dropped by the British political scene in 1657.
There is even a delightful 2011 story from the BBC of all places that notes:
The remains of 17 bodies found at the bottom of a medieval well in England could have been victims of persecution, new evidence has suggested.
The most likely explanation is that those down the well were Jewish and were probably murdered or forced to commit suicide, according to scientists who used a combination of DNA analysis, carbon dating and bone chemical studies in their investigation.
Is there an actual difference between being murdered versus forced to commit suicide?
At the debate at the UK Labour party's annual conference in Liverpool on Tuesday, the entire hall was waving Palestinian flags. A motion to condemn Israeli policies passed in a near-unanimous show of hands.Jewish National Fund closes account with antisemitic German bank
Not only was this the only foreign policy issue debated at any length, but in a preliminary vote by party members on their agenda priorities, Palestine came fourth - outstripping issues of far greater relevance to British citizens such as the Brexit process and the crisis in the National Health Service. It certainly didn't reflect the priorities of the British public, and not even Labour voters.
The Palestine debate was an exercise in virtue signaling by the party's ascendant hard left. Anyway, it was hardly a debate. There were no dissenting voices or anyone trying to present Israel's position.
The motion freezing British arms sales to Israel is largely declarative, as Israel does not acquire any major weapons systems from Britain - just a few things that could easily be bought elsewhere. In fact, as far as arms sales go, British acquisitions of Israeli drones, missiles and airborne systems crucial to British operations - as well as most British military-flight training - is more than tenfold the value of British arms bought by Israel.
The German branch of the Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael – Jewish National Fund (JNF-KKL) announced on Thursday that it plans to shut down its account with the Bank for Social Economy because of the financial institution’s support for the antisemitic boycott campaign targeting the Jewish state.BBC News continues to mainstream BDS and the ‘apartheid’ smear
The JNF-KKL closure is the third organization to cut ties with the Cologne-based bank for its energetic support of an extremist Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions organization – Jewish Voice for Peace in the Middle East – which seeks to dismantle Israel via economic warfare.
“The JNF is aware of the ongoing support of the goals of the antisemitic BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment and Sanction) by the association Jewish Voice. We regret that the Bank for Social Economy has not drawn the necessary conclusions despite the public pressure to finally close the account of Jewish Voice.”
The JNF-KKL added, “It is unmistakably clear that the JNF-KKL entirely rejects BDS and supports the fight against this antisemitic movement and JNF-KKL will not maintain a work relationship with a bank that also provides financial services to BDS groups.”
The Jerusalem Post first exposed the pro-BDS activity of the Bank for Social Economy in 2016.
Jewish Voice uses its account to raise funds for boycott activities, including targeting JNF-KKL with boycott actions.
Critically, BBC audiences were not however informed that one of the BDS campaign’s declared aims is the so-called ‘right of return’ to Israel for millions of Palestinians: a policy intended to eliminate Jewish self-determination. The denial of the right of Jews to self-determination is included in the IHRA definition of antisemitism.UC Irvine Preparing to Refer Anti-Israel Disrupters to Prosecution
Readers were informed that the Michigan University professor had “told the BBC”:
“I reject any attack of anti-Semitism,” […]
“The boycott of state institutions of Israel has nothing to do with the people – it has everything to do with not normalising a system that is apartheid-like.”
Apparently not content with that second-hand amplification of the ‘apartheid’ smear, the report went on to tell readers in the BBC’s own words that:
“Israel is accused by some critics of practising a form of apartheid – the state-sanctioned racial discrimination of black people during white-minority rule in South Africa – against Israeli Arabs and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Israel has vehemently rejected this allegation.”
Readers also found an embedded video captioned “BDS’ Michael Deas explains the thinking behind the boycott” in which they were told that:
“The international community consistently fails to hold Israel to account for its violations of international law. So given this failure, ten years ago – in July 2005 – Palestinian organisations came together to issue an appeal for a campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions similar to the boycott campaign that helped end apartheid in South Africa. And the boycott calls for non-violent pressure against Israel until it complies with international law.
Campus police at University of California, Irvine will in the near future refer anti-Israeli event disruptors of a May 3, 2018 pro-Israel event to Orange County prosecutors, according to a UCI spokesperson. Referral will occur, says the spokesperson, as soon as the campus police investigation concludes.Shaked calls Haaretz article 'anti-Semitic disgrace'
If so, UCI will be the second UC campus, after UCLA, to refer loud and raucous anti-Israel disruptors to prosecutors for violation of California’s statutes prohibiting disruption of public meetings, disturbing the peace, and conspiracy to do either.
After the police referral, it will be up to District Attorney Tony Rackauckas to decide whether actual prosecution should ensue. Rackauckas previously made history with the 2011 prosecution and conviction of the famous “Irvine 11,” who disrupted Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren in 2010, when he spoke at UCI. Rackauckas is considered one the state’s most seasoned, no-nonsense DAs.
The new UCI case arises from a May 3, 2018 effort by UCI’s College Republicans to host a panel with Israeli Reservists on Duty. After about 40 minutes, a parade of anti-Israel agitators filed in to stage a well-orchestrated and unruly disruption, using a bullhorn and shouting derogatory chants. The disruption was documented by at least two dozen videos, reviewed by this writer, including this long video at minute 42:00. After the disruptors were ushered out, the boisterous disorder continued to disrupt from the corridor under police protection, according to the videos.
Three statutes pertain. Title 11, Sec. 403 concerns meeting disruption. “Every person who … willfully disturbs or breaks up any assembly or meeting … is guilty of a misdemeanor.” This was the very statute Rackauckas used to successfully prosecute and convict the “Irvine 11.”
Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked (Jewish Home) sharply attacked an article published by journalist Yossi Klein in Haaretz, in which Klein claims a national religious judge cannot judge Arabs fairly.Haaretz English Edition Corrects on Gaza Unemployment
"Another antisemitic article from the school of Yossi Klein, which presents an imaginary dilemma of religious judges' 'dual loyalties'. Just as generations accused Jews in the Diaspora. Disgrace," Shaked said.
In Klein's article he wrote, "The dilemma of religious judges is who are they most committed to: their faith, or the laws of their country? The question is whether a religious judge can honestly judge the law of work on the Sabbath, and if a judge who is both religious and national can fairly judge settlers and Arabs. The answer is: No. They cannot.
"Faith can not and should not be taken from them, nor the ideology derived from that belief. Most of them are fair and honest. Most of them will rule only according to the laws of the State and won't try to sneak in the laws of the Torah. But what will they do when the laws of the State contradict those of the Torah?" he asks.
CAMERA’s Israel office today prompted corrections after Haaretz‘s English edition inflated the Gaza Strip unemployment rate cited in a World Bank report released today. In print (page 3 today) and online (here), Haaretz’s English edition claimed that the World Bank put that figure at 70 percent.Qatar’s cynical PR strategy: AJ+
The print edition headline was “World Bank: Gaza economy in ‘free fall,’ 70% are jobless; foreign aid won’t help.” Similarly, the digital subheading originally stated: “The Strip’s economic deterioration is accelerating, the report says: Every second Gazan lives in poverty and unemployment tops 70 percent.”
The English edition article itself repeated the incorrect figure of 70 percent unemployment. It had stated: “According to the report, unemployment in the Strip has topped 70 percent.”
But this is incorrect. The report states that 70 percent figure refers to the unemployment rate among youth. The World Bank report cites “an unemployment rate of 53 percent (over 70 percent for youth)” (Executive Summary, page 5).
Strikingly, the Hebrew edition does not contain this error. The digital subheadline accurately reports (CAMERA’s translations): “According to the report, one of every two residents lives in poverty and the unemployment rate among the youth rises to 70 percent.”
Al Jazeera’s progressive themed platform, AJ+, has built an impressive social media presence in the last few years, boasting hundreds of millions of video views with “relevant, engaging content.” It has become a social media news source appealing to left-wing progressive activists in the West, criticizing the status quo on issues like income inequality, police brutality, racial injustice, feminism, and LGBTQ rights.Al Jazeera Video Attacks White Feminists As Racists
There’s just one problem: Al Jazeera is a mouthpiece for the state of Qatar, a state which stands diametrically opposed to all the values AJ+ pretends to care about.
Upon closer examination of its content, the reason behind this facade of liberal values to the Western world becomes clearer: to demonize Israel.
While Al Jazeera Arabic doesn’t mince words when it comes to supporting terrorism (they literally threw a party on-air for Hezbollah terrorist leader Samir Kuntar), AJ+ constantly tries to paint acts of violence and extremist acts of terrorism as legitimate “freedom fighting.” Qatar’s agenda is obvious with Al Jazeera and all their platforms. The efforts to whitewash terrorism and minimize (even promote in Arabic) antisemitism, are not only disingenuous, but dangerous.
AJ+ has repeatedly used its platform to spread content inciting anger against Israel. Their videos related to Israel are often riddled with false information and with loaded, virtue-signaling language.
But even when the issues aren’t related to Israel, they make every effort to somehow tie Israel in to the debate at hand.
Every now and again we get one of these glorious stories of left-wing cannibalism. With so many chips on their shoulders, it’s inevitable for lefties to take a bite out of their own posteriors from time to time. Case in point: Al Jazeera is setting their sights on women of the caucasian variety.George Marshall Foresaw Holocaust Deniers After Liberating the First Camp
For being a bunch of vagina-having racists. For reals:
We need to talk about the problem with white feminism. Although there are different definitions, basically we’re talking about white, CIS, able-bodied women not acknowledging the struggles of women of color, people with disabilities and LGBT communities.
Uh, that’s kinda what the NAACP and GLAAD are for. There’s an alphabet soup organization out there to protect the rights of every demographic.
Want an example? How about the actor Gal Gadot, who constantly talks about feminism and equality? She played Wonder Woman and is also a “feminist” ambassador for Revlon. But, the actor also supports the Israeli army, which oppresses Palestinian women on a daily basis.
That’s funny. You know who’s an even bigger threat to Palestinian women? Palestinian men. As if the hijabs, black eyes, and the mutilation of lady parts wasn’t indication enough.
Long before “fake news” became a popular term, the fakiest of news, as Stephen Colbert might say, was the denial of the Holocaust. Despite its absurdity, Holocaust denial is as resistant to facts as cockroaches are to insecticide. According to the ADL’s 2015 global survey, nearly one-third of people around the world have heard of the Holocaust, but believe that it has been “greatly exaggerated” or a “myth.”Toulouse imam probed for anti-Semitic sermon
The Internet and social media, of course, have helped spread the pernicious lies suggesting that the Holocaust was a hoax or a conspiracy invented by the Jews; that there were no gas chambers; and that if any Jews were killed, it was a tiny fraction of the six million claimed.
I remember in the early days of Google, when it was popular to Google oneself, I was curious what I would find. Thousands of pages came up under my name. Curious what was being cited or said about me, I started going through the links and discovered that almost every one was a site that contained the same article written by a Holocaust denier who, for some reason, mentioned a totally unrelated article that I had written in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Several years ago, a man named Bradley Smith decided that the best way to perpetuate the myths about the Holocaust was to target the next generation. He tried to place a series of ads questioning the veracity of the Holocaust in student newspapers. One, for example, suggested there had been no gas chambers because they were not mentioned in Dwight Eisenhower’s book about the war: “Do you think maybe it slipped his mind?” The ad also addressed professors and asked if any of them could provide proof that one person had been killed in a gas chamber at Auschwitz.
Prosecutors in France opened an investigation for incitement against a senior Muslim cleric from Toulouse who recited anti-Semitic religious passages and predicted Israel’s destruction.Former SS guard to stand trial over deaths at Stutthof
On Tuesday, the Toulouse Prosecutor’s Office opened a probe for alleged incitement to hate or violence against Mohamed Tatai, the imam of the newly inaugurated Grand Mosque of Toulouse and the leader of an interfaith dialogue group, the Sud Ouest daily reported.
In a sermon delivered on Dec. 15, 2017, Tatai recited a Muslim text, called a Hadith, stating that on Judgment Day, the Muslims will kill the Jews.
In June, the France chapter of the B’nai B’rith group condemned on Twitter the statements by Tatai, who told listeners that The Prophet Mohammed “told us about the final and decisive battle: ‘Judgement Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews. The Jews will hide behind the stones and the trees, and the stones and the trees will say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him – except for the Gharqad tree, which is one of the trees of the Jews.’”
He added that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said he was “afraid that Israel would not live longer than 76 years – as is written in the prophecies.” He then said that an Israeli journalist, whom he did not name, said the 2016 funeral of Israeli President Shimon Peres was “the funeral of Israel.’”
A former SS guard, now 94, will go on trial on charges of complicity in the mass murders of several hundred prisoners at the Stutthof Nazi concentration camp, JTA reported on Tuesday.German bookstore: 'Abortion will set you free'
According to the report, the regional court of Muenster in western Germany on Friday ordered the unnamed man to be tried before a juvenile court beginning on November 6. He was not yet 21 at the time of the murders.
The man is accused of complicity in the murders of several hundred camp prisoners between 1942 and 1945.
This includes more than 100 Polish prisoners gassed to death on June 21 and 22, 1944, and “probably several hundred” Jewish prisoners between August and December 1944.
Prosecutors say that the man knew about the murders at the Nazi camp the camp and that the guards were essential to the killings.
He must still be determined to be fit to stand trial, according to the report.
A Cologne politician has filed a lawsuit against a local Christian bookstore over a window display that compares abortion with the Holocaust.Digital glasses offer hope of sight for vision-impaired
Specifically, the shop window of the Marienbuchhandlung book store features a photo of a cemetery in Wiesbaden under the title kindermord.org, or “child-killer.org,” followed by “Abtreiben macht frei,” which translates to “abortion will set you free,” in a mock-up of the Nazi slogan over the gates of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp which reads “Arbeit macht frei,” or “work will set you free.”
Sven Lehmann of Germany’s Green Party has filed a criminal complaint against the bookstore.
“Equating abortion with the Holocaust is thoroughly disgusting,” he wrote in a post on Facebook. “It relativizes the crimes the Nazis committed against millions of people.”
So far there has been no public response from the store owners.
Israeli company ICI Vision has developed digital eyewear with the potential to give millions of legally blind people the ability to see.Delek-Noble Energy announces $500m deal to allow Israeli gas exports to Egypt
The company’s Orama high-tech glasses are the brainchild of Haim Chayet, an Israeli optic physicist who was originally creating augmented-reality goggles for motorcyclists.
Working alongside a friend who had damaged vision due to a scar on his eye, Chayet realized the technology would have greater impact as an assistive device for many people experiencing vision impairment. Joining forces with two partners in the field and top Israeli eye doctors in an advisory capacity, he launched ICI Vision in 2014.
“We approached the technology from the perspective of helping the millions of people with vision problems enjoy a new lease on life and maintain their independence,” CEO Tal Lotan tells ISRAEL21c.
Globally, 340 million people have impaired or complete loss of vision due to macular degeneration (AMD), diabetic retinopathy and other retinal diseases, resulting in direct annual treatment costs of $157 billion in the US last year.
A US-Israeli consortium leading the development of Israel’s offshore gas reserves announced Thursday a deal that would enable the export of natural gas to Egypt.400,000 Iraqis visit Israeli Facebook page
Noble Energy and its Israeli partner Delek, along with Egyptian East Gas Company, bought 39 percent of a disused pipeline connecting the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon with the north Sinai.
The consortium paid $518 million for the interest in the East Mediterranean Gas Company pipeline.
The mainly undersea pipeline will be used to transport natural gas from the Tamar and Leviathan reservoirs to Egypt from as early as 2019, allowing a 10-year $15 billion deal signed in February with Egypt’s Dolphinus to move forward, Delek said in a statement.
It will be the first time Egypt, which in 1979 became the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel, imports gas from its neighbor.
Israel had bought gas from Egypt but land sections of the pipeline were repeatedly targeted by Sinai jihadists in 2011 and 2012, and soaring demand meant Egypt could use the gas domestically.
About seven years ago, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs launched a Facebook page titled “Israel Speaks Arabic,” which aims to expose the Arab world to information about Israel that is not frequently reported in traditional Arab media outlets. Surprisingly enough, the page, which has over 1.5 million Arabic-speaking followers, turned out to be particularly popular in Iraq. In 2017, around 400,000 Iraqis followed Israel Speaks Arabic, making them the second largest group among the page’s followers. Moreover, that same year, Iraqis viewed the page’s content over 50 million times. These numbers led the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs to open a new Facebook page – “Israel in the Iraqi Dialect,” which is specifically tailored to Iraqi audience.Clara Kramer, who survived Holocaust hidden in an underground bunker, dies at 91
But while the willingness of Iraqis to engage with Israel may be encouraging, it is also somewhat baffling. Although Jews had been living in Iraq for more than two thousand and five hundred years, the twentieth century saw the rise of extreme anti-Semitism in the country. Between 1948 and 1951, following the foundation of Israel, Iraq deported and revoked the citizenship of many of its 150,000 Jews, while also freezing their assets. The rise in violence towards Jews in Iraq had begun roughly a decade earlier, as Nazi propaganda and the anti-Semitic messages of Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, gained traction among the Iraqi public. Indeed, by 1941 Iraqi Jews already came under fire: In June of that year, the Jewish population of Baghdad fell prey to the Farhud – a pogrom that resulted in 179 deaths and more than 2,000 injuries.
And as time went on, Iraqi policies continued to put Jewish lives at risk. In 1969, nine Iraqi Jews were executed in Baghdad’s Liberation Square after being falsely accused of spying for foreign entities, and the government declared a national holiday on the execution day. Moreover, during that period, merely uttering the word “Israel” was sufficient grounds for detention.
In light of this history, the apparent open mindedness of Iraqi social media users’ toward Israel is a phenomenon worth exploring.
Clara Schwarz Kramer, whose 2009 memoir “Clara’s War” recounted the 20 months she spent hiding in a bunker beneath a house in the Polish town of Zolkiew during the Holocaust, has died.Hussein Abubakr
Kramer died on September 11 at the age of 91.
Longtime residents of Elizabeth, New Jersey, Kramer and her husband Sol, who died in 2011, were active in numerous causes and communal organizations and took leadership roles at the Jewish Educational Center, Elizabeth; the former Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey; State of Israel Bonds; YM-YWHA of Union County, Union; Jewish Family Service of Central NJ; Central NJ Jewish Home for the Aged; and Trinitas Regional Healthcare Foundation.
Clara Schwarz was born in Zolkiew, Poland, in 1927. When the Germans invaded her town in 1942, 18 people, including Clara and her family, went into hiding in a crawl space they dug under one of their homes. They were hidden underground for almost two years by Valentin Beck and his family. While in hiding, Clara kept a diary, which is now held at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. On March 25, 1943, 3,500 Jews from Zolkiew were marched to a clearing and shot.
After the war, she met her husband Sol in the displaced persons camps in Austria and they were married in 1949. They made aliyah to Israel, where their children Philip and Eli were born. They came to America in 1957 and settled in Elizabeth in 1965. Drawn to Elizabeth by its community of Holocaust survivors, Sol established a prominent real estate business and they became active members of that community.
From Egyptian Antisemite to pro-Israel public speaker. Learn more about his journey and support StandWithUs at our 7th annual Leaders of Tomorrow Gala on October 14.
