Tuesday, October 09, 2018
'UNRWA teaches children to blow themselves up'
In Jerusalem, Mayor Nir Barkat presented a plan to remove all UNRWA operations from the capital and begin providing full municipal services to the residents of Shuafat, where UNRWA operates schools and clinics without Israeli permission.
The Jerusalem move follows a decision by the US to cut aid to UNRWA because it is an organization that perpetuates the refugee problem instead of acting to solve the issue.
Arutz Sheva spoke to Bassam Eid, a human rights activist who has been studying UNRWA's schools and institutions for years, bringing the paralyzed Palestinian Arab voices that have been struggling for years under UNRWA, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.
"I have been saying for years that UNRWA has become part of the problem and not part of the solution," said Eid, "For 70 years, UNRWA has been managing the affairs of the Palestinian refugees and has not managed to reduce the problem or resolve the refugee problem within seventy years. "I am interested in continuing to manage the issue of the Palestinian refugees."
"I support Trump's decision to stop UNRWA funds," Bassem Eid said, adding that "65 percent of UNRWA funds go to salaries and the renting of buildings and offices, salaries of $25,000 a month and luxury vehicles. I want to close this organization so that its employees will be unemployed and become refugees themselves."
Eid also criticized the education provided in UNRWA schools. "I worked in several UNRWA schools in the territories and in Jordan, and children aged 9-10 want to be killed and kill Jews and to release their people. "Who taught you that?" I asked. They said that was what they were learning in schools, and I asked teachers at UNRWA schools in Jordan if children were taught to blow themselves up and be killed. They said "of course. How else will they liberate the land from the Israeli occupation? " UNRWA is aware of this, and the international community knows that all UNRWA studies are full of hate and incitement. The international community continues to inject funds because it is against Israel."
Top UNRWA official says he champions both Israel and Palestinian refugees
Just a few years ago, Peter Mulrean was defending Israel in what is arguably one of the most hostile diplomatic environments for the Jewish state.Human Rights Council Elections Set to Deliver Another Record-High Number of Rights-Abusing Members
In 2013, as the US deputy ambassador to the United Nations Humans Rights Council in Geneva, he hailed Jerusalem for its “strong commitment and track record in upholding human rights, political freedoms and civil liberties.”
Today, Mulrean is a senior official at UNRWA, the UN agency dealing with Palestinian refugees, arguably the most hated organization in Israel and one the US government recently called “irredeemably flawed.”
From his office just across from UN headquarters in Manhattan’s Turtle Bay, Mulrean promotes the agency on the world’s largest international stage.
The director of UNRWA’s Representative Office in New York decries the recent budget cuts by the US administration and passionately rejects the often-made argument that the agency perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem and stands in the way of a realistic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The U.N. holds annual “elections” for its Human Rights Council this week and, once again, none of the five regional groups are offering any competition for the vacant seats. Instead all five are putting up “closed slates” of candidates – a practice seen as one of the main reasons rights-abusing regimes are able to secure seats.
Indeed, the absence of competitive slates makes it possible to predict, three days before the U.N. General Assembly holds the exercise in New York, that next year the 47-member HRC will have 14 members – 29.7 percent – that are graded “not free” by the veteran democracy advocacy group, Freedom House.
That’s a record high for “not free” countries on the 13-year-old council, tied only with the 2018 membership.
Failing unexpected last minute developments, the 2019 HRC membership will comprise 23 “free” countries, 10 “partly free,” and 14 “not free.”
The presence on the U.N.’s top human rights body of regimes with poor human rights records was one of the main reasons cited by the Trump administration for its decision to withdraw over the summer, following what it said were unsuccessful attempts to reform it.
Anti-Zionist Conspiracy Theories Seek the Mainstream
Before Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer lent their academic credentials to a widely discredited 2007 book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, alleging an “Israel Lobby” that controls American foreign policy to the detriment of the U.S., conspiracy theories of this sort dwelt mostly within the fringe domain of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, and their ilk.Miko Peled, playing to the antisemitic crowd that adores him
These type of conspiracy theories evoked the notorious 1903 fraud, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, purporting to document a nefarious Jewish plot for global domination, manipulating economies, and fomenting war. Despite its exposure as an anti-Semitic fabrication some 20 years later, the Protocol’s bogus charges continued to serve as a staple of anti-Semitic, Nazi and ZOG (“Zionist Occupied Government”) propaganda, inciting hatred, pogroms and massacres against Jews. Hitler referred to the Protocols in his early speeches and in his autobiography, Mein Kampf. It became an integral part of his anti-Jewish ideology and Nazi propaganda. Protocols is also embraced by Holocaust deniers, by Hamas, and is a bestseller among enemies of Israel.
Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, professors of international affairs at Harvard University and University of Chicago respectively, attempted to bring new acceptance to ‘Zionist-Control-of-Government’ charges by presenting them as a scholarly study far removed from the anti-Semitic claims of the Protocols. Positioning themselves as righteous truth-tellers, Walt and Mearsheimer hastened to assure readers that the Israel lobby is “certainly not a cabal or conspiracy that ‘controls’ U.S. foreign policy” but rather “a powerful interest group, made up of both Jews and gentiles, whose acknowledged purpose is to press Israel’s case within the United States.”
Undermining this disclaimer, however, was the authors’ disturbingly vague definition of the so-called “Israel lobby” as “a loose coalition of individuals and organizations” with “unmatched” power and “the ability to manipulate the American political system” against the interests and well-being of U.S. citizens. Beyond evoking the old claims of disproportionate and undue Jewish influence, the book’s supporting “evidence” was widely dismissed by academicians, reviewers and politicians across the spectrum, who exposed its shoddy scholarship, use of falsified quotations, distortion of facts, and untrue conclusions.
I recently returned from a short vacation in Israel. Visiting Israel should be a requirement for anyone actively engaged in the fight against antisemitism. It works like receiving an antidote. Nothing places the IHRA definition of antisemitism into perspective better than witnessing first-hand the enormous gulf between the democratic reality on Israel’s streets and the non-existent demon-state that is described in anti-Israel Facebook groups. It leaves with you a lasting clarity over the absurdity of the anti-Israel arguments.Cary Nelson: Jasbir Puar Launches Women’s Studies on a Death Spiral
Last week Israeli state TV ran a documentary on BDS (in Hebrew). I had given them access to my archives and was interviewed by them for the show. The team who made the documentary had met with Miko Peled in Israel. It is worth viewing this short segment to see how nasty Peled is in real life:
Most people know Peled’s backstory and I have no interest in repeating what others have written before. I was in the room when he spoke about giving Holocaust denial a platform. What always interests me is the support network. Miko Peled is an angry outcast, that nobody should have heard of. Instead he is given top billing at BDS events internationally. We know anti-Zionist Jews are a fringe group, so the question can be asked – just who is in the audience?
As my research into the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign showed, when Jewish people stand up to claim there is no problem with antisemitism, half of the people in the room applauding are hard-core antisemites themselves (see case study on Jackie Walker event p91-110).
I argue that without this support network of antisemites, these fringe anti-Zionist Jews would not have an audience. By placing greater import on the antisemites than the few useful puppets they hide behind I also suggest that this is a more accurate way of looking at the problem. So when Miko Peled responded to my tweet of the video above, my natural instinct was to look at those people who were applauding him.
*It has to be said, that nobody is responsible for those that like, comment or share things they have written*. But that isn’t the point. I am not interested in individuals. Miko Peled is not responsible if one, two or five antisemites are in the audience, but when that level reaches 50% doesn’t it demand that we ask questions? Given the high levels of antisemitic thought present in his audience why is Miko Peled denying their existence?
The National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) has now crossed a further line in self-discreditation by honoring Jasbir Puar’s December 2017 book The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability, a publication that discards evidentiary standards and instead bases its accusations against the Jewish state on its author’s personal fantasies. In September 2018 the NWSA awarded The Right to Maimits Alison Piepmeier Book Prize, describing the book as a “major milestone.” It has now officially endorsed an irresponsible and discriminatory research agenda for feminist faculty and students.In Its Current Form, the Labor Party Threatens the Freedom and Safety of the UK’s Jews
My book in manuscript—Israel Denial: Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism, & the Faculty Campaign Against the Jewish State—devotes its longest chapter (30,000 words) to an analysis of Jasbir Puar’s publications. Most anti-Israel faculty publications focus on debatable propositions. Not Puar. You can debate the claim that Israel discriminates against its Arab citizens, but so long as there is evidence of racism among some Israelis you cannot wholly discredit the accusation. Puar, however, makes arguments that can actually be proven factually right or wrong. They are consistently false.
Take one example: she claims that Israel has been stunting the growth of Palestinian children. Stunting (below normal height) means children are at greater risk for illness, reduced cognitive capacity, and premature death. The WHO, UNICEF, and other groups publish statistical reports on this and other health concerns. So does the Palestinian Authority. There are scores of published academic papers on the subject. All come to the same conclusion: comparing stunting rates across the world proves it is not a major health problem in Gaza or the West Bank. The WHO standard for classifying stunting as a major health concern is 20%. Stunting in the West Bank Gaza runs at 7-10% of children aged 1-5 years. By comparison, Egypt’s rate is 19.8%. Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia include countries with dramatically higher stunting rates: India (38.4%), Ethiopia (38.4%), Zambia (40%), Pakistan (45%), Madagascar (49.2%), Eritrea (50.2%), and Burundi (57.5%). Puar cites none of this research. If Israel is stunting the growth of Palestinian children it is doing a very poor job indeed.
To publish an anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic book without factual proof Puar did not have to find the long lost publisher of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. She simply gave the manuscript to Duke University Press. There it would be judged by people within the echo-chamber of anti-Zionists who don’t care about facts. Their standard for original scholarship is “Tell us something bad about Israel we don’t already know.” Duke obviously did not do any independent fact-checking. It then added the Duke University imprimatur to a book that dishonors the University and should be withdrawn from publication. Instead, The Right to Maimwill probably earn Puar a full professorship at Rutgers. After all, distinguished scholars like Judith Butler have endorsed the book on its jacket. Credulous audiences in universities across the country applaud its arguments when Puar lectures. And now the book has a national award.
Since Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the British Labor party in 2015, his indifference to anti-Semitism within his party’s ranks, friendliness with terrorists, and hostility toward Israel and Zionists have caused mounting public concern. Daniel Johnson assesses the state of affairs:'Corbyn anti-Semite who wants to return Britain to dark times'
Corbyn’s long record of support for nations and organizations that are implacably opposed to the West is unprecedented. Rightly, the public is anxious about what this might portend, were he ever to occupy Downing Street. . . . Corbyn takes cognizance only of those Jews (a vanishingly small minority) who share his loathing of Israel—not unlike the [turn-of-the-century] anti-Semitic mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger, who notoriously quipped: “I’ll decide who is a Jew.” . . .
Jeremy Corbyn is a guilty man who protests his innocence while presiding over a purge of any Labor MP who tells the truth. . . . And for what purpose? The Corbyn case is also about politics—electoral politics. In the words of Mehdi Hasan, now the political editor of the Huffington Post and a presenter for Al Jazeera, “anti-Semitism isn’t just tolerated in some sections of the British Muslim community; it’s routine and commonplace. . . . It’s our dirty little secret.” In the five years since Hasan made his confession, anti-Semitism has become the “dirty little secret” of another community: the left wing of the Labor party. And there is a connection: the left is targeting Muslim votes. No wonder Corbyn has greeted all accusations of anti-Semitism . . . with indifference or silence.
Instead of challenging this vile prejudice and demanding that Muslim community leaders address the canker in their midst, the Labor party has quietly acquiesced. It tolerates the Corbyn camp’s toadying to anti-Semitic preachers and demagogues. How different the outcome of the Corbyn case might have been if more Muslims had denounced the Labor leader to demonstrate their revulsion at anti-Semitism. . . .
Britain’s Parliament hosted Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon Tuesday.Non-Jews fight UK Labour anti-Semitism from the inside
In his address, the ambassador referred to statements made by opposition leader and Labour Party chairman Jeremy Corbyn, calling him “an anti-Semite who wants to return Britain to darker periods in its history.”
The ambassador added that “in his actions and statements, Corbyn gives oxygen to incidents of racism by embracing his terrorist friends and encouraging the activities of BDS. Israel stands by the Jewish community in England.”
Corbyn and the Labour Party have faced a string of scandals involving anti-Semitism and accusations of bigotry in recent months.
The Daily Mail has published photos of the Labour leader at a cemetery in Tunisia holding a wreath near the graves of some of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) terrorists who were responsible for the massacre of the 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Days later, a picture emerged of Corbyn apparently making a salute linked to the Muslim Brotherhood organization.
That week, the Times of London published a picture of Corbyn meeting with the leader-in-exile of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization, only weeks before its members carried out an attack on a Jerusalem synagogue in which six people were murdered.
Steeped in anti-Semitism accusations involving him and his supporters, British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has made many Jewish enemies — including inside his own party.Fliers on 4 college campuses blame Jews for Kavanaugh ruckus
But one of his most effective critics is not Jewish. He is a meteorology student at the University of Reading who describes himself as “just a kid with a laptop.”
Denny Taylor, 20, has used that laptop to keep a running tally of party members who have flouted Labour’s own guidelines against hate speech and report them to the party’s ethics review panel.
Horrified at the revelations about Corbyn’s ties to anti-Semites, Taylor set up Labour Against Anti-Semitism, or LAAS, in 2016 with a few dozen non-Jewish and Jewish volunteers. He was 18 and had voted the previous year for Corbyn.
Denny Taylor founded the group Labour Against Anti-Semitism when he was 18. (Courtesy of Taylor/via JTA)
It was LAAS that last month reported to Labour’s ethics panel on an old recording in which Corbyn declared that Zionists “don’t understand English irony.” The group has flagged 1,200 alleged members who it said have breached the party’s guidelines against hate speech and has a backlog of about 2,000 additional cases of people engaging in what LAAS considers anti-Semitic rhetoric. LAAS has not reported the latter yet, according to its spokesman, Euan Philipps, who also is not Jewish.
Fliers blaming Jews for the sexual assault allegations against newly sworn-in Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh were posted on two University of California campuses, Berkeley and Davis, as well as at Vassar and Marist colleges, both located in the same city in New York state.
“Every time some Anti-White, Anti-American, Anti-freedom event takes place, you look at it, and it’s Jews behind it,” the fliers discovered Monday read.
The flier shows an image of Kavanaugh surrounded by caricatures of Jewish members of the US Senate with Stars of David drawn on their foreheads, as well as the Jewish billionaire George Soros, who has been accused of funding opposition to Kavanaugh. One of Kavanaugh’s accusers, Christine Blasey Ford, and the attorney for two others, Michael Avenatti, also are depicted with the words “Good Goy” written on their foreheads.
The fliers say they are “Brought to you by your local Stormer book club.”
According to the ADL, the Daily Stormer Book Club chapters, or SBCs, are “small crews of young white men who follow and support Andrew Anglin and his neo-Nazi website, the Daily Stormer.”
Petition Denouncing Upcoming Anti-Zionist Conference at UCLA Passes 2,000 Signatures
A petition urging the University of California, Los Angeles to reconsider hosting an upcoming anti-Zionist conference surpassed 2,000 signatories on Friday, amid a continuing outcry against the event.New York City's Islamist Grant
The online petition — launched by the campus branch of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) — says the eighth annual National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP), which was first announced in August, “is designed to instill hatred towards and intolerance while proliferating lies about Israel.”
The event marks the largest annual gathering of NSJP activists, who help promote the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel on North American university campuses — a campaign denounced by major Jewish organizations, and opposed by both UCLA and UC regents.
The conference will seek to remind students “that Zionism … can be destroyed,” according to its organizers, who define Zionism — the movement that supports the Jewish people’s right to national self-determination — as “ethnic cleansing, destruction, mass expulsion, apartheid, and death.”
These objectives have drawn criticism from the UCLA branch of Students Supporting Israel (SSI), as well as the groups Alums for Campus Fairness at UCLA and StandWithUs, all of which oppose the BDS campaign.
On August 21, the New York City Council announced $250,000 in grants made to 14 Muslim community organizations, in collaboration with the New York Immigration Coalition. Alarmingly, three of the grant recipients are linked to Islamic extremism -- the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim American Society (MAS) and the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA).Amazon Funnelled Cash to Salafist Org Founded by ‘Extremist’ UK-Based Saudi Scholar
Worse, it seems that ICNA, in particular, plans to use the money not for civic improvement but for religious proselytizing.
The grant announcement was made at ICNA's headquarters in Jamaica, Queens, after the jumu'ah prayer service. Present were the young speaker of the city council, Corey Johnson, and Councilman Daneek Miller, the sole Muslim member of the council.
Councilman Miller is no stranger to ICNA; his campaign website prominently features a photo of him speaking at the ICNA mosque.
ICNA was established in 1971, ostensibly as a "non-ethnic, non-sectarian" grassroots organization, with the aim of seeking the "establishment of the Islamic system of life as spelled out in the Qur'an."
In fact, it functions as the American arm of the Pakistani Islamist group Jamaat e-Islami (JI). Indeed, ICNA's international charity, Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD), works closely with JI in Pakistan. Worse, in 2017 HHRD openly worked with the "political" wing of the murderous terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Amazon has been funnelling cash to a Salafist ‘charity’ led by an Islamic scholar described as “one of the most dangerous men in Britain” by counter-extremists, a British newspaper has claimed.Bennett protests to University of Michigan over Netanyahu-Hitler comparison
The Jeff Bezos-led retail giant allowed the Muslim Research and Development Foundation (MRDF) founded by Saudi-born Haitham al-Haddad into its Amazon Smile programme, which allows customers to donate a percentage of their purchases to charity, according to a Times investigation.
Al-Haddad has been branded “dangerous” by the Quilliam counter-extremism think tank, and as “misogynistic, racist, and homophobic” by UK Government counter-extremism commissioner Sara Khan.
A series of controversial statements by the Salafist scholar — a graduate in Islamic law from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) — have been compiled by The Times, advancing a range of hardline views.
These include claims that adulterous women should be stoned to death, and that he has, in fact, received “many requests from Western women… begging me to help them to find their way to a Muslim country to be stoned to death” so they could “avoid punishment in the afterlife” — although it is not revealed whether he actually did facilitate any voluntary executions of this kind.
“It is the Islamic punishment. What does the UK government want? Do they want Muslims to change their beliefs?” he demanded.
Education Minister Naftali Bennett sent a letter to the University of Michigan’s President Mark Schlissel, urging him to oppose anti-Israel hatred on campus after a lecturer compared Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler, claiming both are guilty of genocide.Pamela Geller: Brown University Celebrates 'Palestinians' on 'Indigenous Peoples’ Day'
Bennett also raised a previous case of a University of Michigan professor who would not write a letter of recommendation for a student who wanted to study abroad in Israel, a spokesperson for the minister said in a statement Tuesday.
“The time has come for you as head of the university to make a strong stand against what has clearly become a trend of vitriolic hatred against the Jewish state on your campus,” Bennett wrote to the university president.
During a compulsory lecturer, speaker Emory Douglas, part of the “Penny Stamps Speakers Series Presentation” of the Stamps School of Art & Design, displayed a slide that showed a picture of Netanyahu and Hitler with the words “Guilty Of Genocide” written across their faces.
Below the photo was a definition of genocide as “The deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular nation or ethnic group.”
Last week, Brown University’s Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs sent out greeting for “Indigenous Peoples’ Day Weekend,” which has replaced Fall Weekend — Columbus Day weekend — in the uber-politically correct academic environment. Brown’s action is part of the larger effort by the academic left to cast Columbus as a villain and focus on Native Americans as sainted martyrs.Boycott's new target: Bulldozer companies
But as if this celebration weren’t politicized enough, Brown made it poisonously so by including the “Palestinians” among the “indigenous people” whose plight was being observed. But what makes this story extra insidious is the fact that the school took this anti-American movement and attempted to turn it into an anti-Israel day as well. The left is so desperate to attack Israel that they twisted their own attack on the U.S. to do so.
“Indigenous Peoples’ Day (IPD),” explained the Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs, “celebrates the resilience and accomplishments of Indigenous people and acknowledges the contemporary struggles indigenous communities face today. Further, IPD is an intervention against erasure, a principle barrier to the improvement of indigenous sovereignty and health status.”
The struggling indigenous people in question, according to the Diversity Office, included “567 Federally Recognized tribes, 61 State Recognized tribes,” as well as “Hawaiians and the people indigenous to its territories in the Caribbean and Pacific Oceans.” Many of these groups, the announcement went on, “experience profound disparities in health care access and health status compared to the general population, resulting in elevated rates of diabetes, liver disease, and other chronic diseases,” which are “exacerbated by a significant shortage of primary care physicians in Indigenous communities and a long-standing mistrust of the American health care system rooted in a history of genocide and forced assimilation.”
Anti-Israel boycott (BDS) organizations recently identified a new target. Following the planned evacuation of Khan al-Ahmar, BDS is looking to boycott the bulldozers used to demolish the illegal structures.Minister: If US student held at airport renounces BDS views, we might let her in
Strategic application of measured violence and international sympathy have protected the Bedouins of Khan al-Ahmar from expulsion, and "stopped bulldozers, produced by international corporations to demolish homes and schools," a BDS statement said.
"The strategic BDS campaign is critical, as the Supreme Court approved demolition of Khan al-Ahmar to make way for illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land, including corporations that manufacture and sell the bulldozers involved in the this destruction by Israel: JCB (UK), Caterpillar (USA), Volvo (Sweden), Hyundai (South Korea), Hitachi (Japan) and Liogong (China)."
Another organization involved in the planned boycott is "Who Profits", which tracks companies that are "commercially involved in Israeli and international companies in the continued Israeli control over Palestinian and Syrian land." The same organization sent boycott warning letters to bulldozer manufacturers. The organization's website also stated that the bulldozers of these companies are used for constructing Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria as another reason for the boycott.
Lev HaOlam organization founder Attorney Nati Rom, who fights the global boycott and BDS organizations, said: "The BDS organization appears to be boycotting itself, and their steps become more and more ridiculous, as they spread their frustration to giant corporations." Lev HaOlam sends thousands of product packages from Judea and Samaria to Israeli supporters all over the world and is in contact with thousands of foreign citizens.
Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud) on Tuesday said a US student of Palestinian descent, who has been held at Ben Gurion Airport for a week and faces deportation for allegedly supporting an Israel boycott, can leave Israel whenever she wants.Government said to use Canary Mission blacklist to bar visitors
Erdan, whose ministry is responsible for countering the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement against Israel, known as BDS, also said that if Lara Alqasem were to renounce her past activities and publicly declare that boycott efforts are not legitimate, he would reconsider her case.
Alqasem, 22, who has Palestinian grandparents, was prevented from entering the country after arriving at Ben Gurion Airport last Tuesday, despite having received a student visa from the Israeli Consulate in Miami to study in a masters program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has been held in a airport detention facility ever since.
The Population Immigration and Border Authority has said the decision to stop Alqasem at the airport was due to her “boycott activity,” while Strategic Affairs Ministry officials said she was a member of the National Students for Justice in Palestine, a campus group that calls for boycotting Israel over its policies toward the Palestinians.
“They make a show as if Israel is imprisoning a student,” Erdan, who is also public security minister, told Army Radio on Tuesday morning. “She can go home to her country whenever she wants. This student stood at the head of a branch of an extreme organization, and it is not reasonable that she can come here and enjoy Israel’s academic benefits while she is trying to harm Israeli citizens.”
Reports by a secretive right-wing website that collects and publishes information about anti-Israel activity of university students and others are being used by Israeli authorities to question or ban people attempting to enter the country, according to a report Thursday.HRC Counterpoint In Chronicle Herald: Ben-Gurion Bashed Unfairly
Documents submitted by the Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy Ministry on Thursday show that an American student was barred from entering Israel because of “suspicion of boycott activity” based on four Facebook posts and information on the Canary Mission website, the Haaretz daily reported.
Canary Mission is an anonymous website that aims to name and shame anti-Israel activists on campus.
The site “documents individuals and organizations that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses,” according to its “About us” page.
Critics have accused it of seeking to intimidate pro-Palestinian college students and stifle their activism with the threat of a blacklist.
In August, the Forward newspaper reported that a number of activists believed their Canary Mission profiles were being used by border authorities when they were questioned while trying to enter Israel.
Leech attacked Ben-Gurion as a Zionist terrorist and a promoter of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Israel territory. He cited Ilan Pappe’s writings to support his own position. It would have been advisable for the Herald to have enlarged on Leech’s background: he’s a left-wing, vehement opponent of Israel and strong advocate of the BDS movement (Boycott, Divest, Sanction of Israeli goods and of Israel) — as is Pappe.
Leech is the editor of the on-line publication Palestine Journal which includes verbal attacks on Israel, and on Canada for supporting the latter. Among his articles, Leech has written, “Why Israel Should Not Exist” (2015), “Fighting Colonialism in Palestine and Canada” (2015) and “Canada’s support for Israel is a ‘hate crime’” (2015).
Palestine Journal, under Leech’s editorship, has links listed to several groups that are defined as terrorist groups by the Canadian government, as well as links to armed groups.
One questions why the Herald did not offer disclosure about Leech, why CBU proudly employs him to teach young college students, or why Leech’s use of settler colonialism (a deeply flawed historiographic and sociological paradigm) goes unanswered by Nova Scotia academics.
One is better served on the topic of Ben-Gurion and Israel by such books as Walter Laqueur’s A History of Zionism. Settler colonialism advocates among Canadian historians need to reappraise their stance, for this interpretative approach too readily lends itself to anti-Israeli treatises.
Imagine a country in which "Curse the Jews" appears on public university IDs. You actually don't have to, because we live in that world. This is the sort of Jew hate that's so insane, people have trouble processing it and often just look the other way. Don't. https://t.co/oqxromFme7
— (((Yair Rosenberg))) (@Yair_Rosenberg) October 9, 2018
EU Civil Servant Convicted of Antisemitic Assault by Belgian Court Says He Will Appeal
The European Union civil servant found guilty last week of a vicious antisemitic assault in 2015 has said he will appeal the sentence handed down by a Belgian court.Time's up - but no sign that the archive is moving
Stefan Grech, a 49-year-old Maltese citizen, was convicted of incitement to hate or violence toward people of Jewish faith, violation of anti-racism laws, and assault aggravated by racial hatred following a violent altercation in a Brussels cafe in July 2015 — during which he violently attacked an Italian colleague, called her a “dirty Jewess,” and shouted that “the Jews are doing to the Palestinians what Hitler did to the Jews.”
On Oct. 2, Grech was given a three-year suspended sentence and ordered to pay his victim 500 euros in compensation by a court in Brussels. But over the weekend, the Times of Malta reported that Grech would appeal the sentence, accusing the Brussels-based Belgian League Against Antisemitism (LBCA) of launching a “witch-hunt” against him.
Prior to sentencing Grech — who holds a previous conviction for possession of child pornography — the court heard that on July 16, 2015, he had been celebrating his 10th anniversary as an employee of the European Commission with friends at L’Italiano cafe in the Belgian capital. After drinking heavily throughout the evening, Grech, who had been clutching a metal plaque commemorating the fascist leader Benito Mussolini, embarked on a tirade in praise of the late Italian dictator.
Confronted by a 50-year-old Italian woman who also works in a senior position at the European Commission, Grech attacked her when she pointed out to him that Mussolini had murdered thousands of Jews. Witnesses said that when she told Grech that she “could be Jewish,” he then struck her across the head with the metal plaque and attempted to strangle her. Throughout the assault, he yelled antisemitic epithets including, “dirty Jewess,” and, “You should have all been killed.”
The deadline for the return of the Iraqi-Jewish archive - September 2018 - has come and gone, but there is still no sign of any movement on this issue.
Eylon Aslan-Levy has filed this report for i24 News: he interviews Harold Rhode, the man who found the archive in the flooded basement of the secret police headquarters in Baghdad in 2003.
The US shipped the random collection of documents, books and Torah scrolls - stolen by Saddam's regime - to the US to be restored, but promised to send it back to Iraq.
Rhode believes that to return the archive would be like returning stolen Jewish property to the Nazis. Iraqi-Jewish groups have been campaigning for the archive - which represents their community's history and heritage - to remain in the US. Four US senators have introduced a bill to this effect.
Inside Iron Dome's secret manufacturing plant
"Globes" visits the complex of bunkers where Rafael produces Israel's short range missile interceptors.Sonia Orbuch, Who Fought the Nazis as a Teenager, Has Died at 93
The complex of bunkers in which Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. is producing the Iron Dome missile interceptors looks just like you would imagine: it is well protected and guarded, the safety procedures in it are rigorous, and access to it is strictly limited to people with authorization. Those entering are received at a locked iron gate opened only by arrangement after being properly identified, even if the person involved is the head of the project himself. There are illuminated signs on the high fences enclosing the secret bunkers reading, "Work with explosives is taking place in this compound."
The condition for entering the bunker in which final assembly of the missile takes place is leaving behind any device capable of broadcasting or creating static electricity. Cameras, telephones, and recording devices are out of bounds. A heavy door opens, showing long white corridor leading to workspace whose purpose is unmistakable: Tamir Iron Dome interceptor missiles that Rafael employees have been manufacturing for the past seven years are piled on a cart in the center of the room.
Only a few people working at Rafael and the Ministry of Defense know just how many of these missiles have been produced to date. They are keeping this number secret; they merely give a wink to the curious, as if to say, "Don't worry; we've got enough."
The well-built Tamir is colored in glittering silver and gold, weighing 90 kilograms with a three-meter length. It has earned great praise with 1,800 interceptions of rockets fired against vulnerable human and property targets in populous areas in southern and northern Israel.
"Every missile leaving here gets a pat and a kiss"
As a teenager, Sonia Orbuch joined a group of partisans fighting the Nazis in Eastern Europe. She survived the war and settled in America. At 93, Orbuch died last Sunday at her home in Corte Madera, California.Childhood friends separated by Holocaust reunite 75 years later
In 1941 Orbuch was 16 years old and still known by her given name as Sarah Shainwald, when the Nazis occupied her hometown in eastern Poland and began killing Jews in Luboml’s ghetto. Shainwald and her family fled for the forests and after surviving the frozen winter, joined a band of Soviet partisans to fight back against the Nazis. Her fellow resistance fighters changed her name to Sonia because it sounded less Jewish.
The profile of Orbuch on The Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation (JPEF—a group Orbuch helped to found) website describes her actions as a Partisan and her family’s eventual decision to break with the resistance.
Sonia began her new life in the forest encampment that served as a base for missions of sabotage and resistance. Early on, Sonia was assigned to guard duty and providing first-aid on missions to mine enemy train tracks. With little training, Sonia learned the skills of a field-hospital aide, treating the wounds of injured partisans, using whatever makeshift supplies were available. To avoid possible torture and interrogation in the event of capture, Sonia carried two hand grenades: “One for the enemy, and one for myself.”
… In 1944, Sonia and her parents faced the decision of either leaving the partisans or joining the Red Army. They decided to leave the partisans and took refuge in an abandoned house infected with typhus, a condition they were unaware of at the time. The typhus soon claimed Sonia’s mother, leaving only Sonia and her father.
Towards the end of the war, as German forces retreated, Orbuch and her family returned to Luboml and found that of the 8,000 Jews who had lived there before the war, 50 remained.
"Estike," Chaya Levy called out as her childhood friend Esther Sheinberg walked in through the door to her apartment and the two met in person for the first time in 75 years.France Awards Top Honours to Nazi Hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld
After greeting one another with warm embraces and kisses, the two sat down to reminisce about what it was like growing up in the Transylvanian village of Beclean, in what is now Romania.
Up until Sunday, neither of the childhood friends could ever have imagined the other had survived the Holocaust.
Both Levy, 91, and Sheinberg, 88, were deported to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. At the end of the war, they both made the decision to move to Israel, where they unknowingly lived adjacent to one another in the central Israeli city of Bnei Brak for a short time.
The reunion between the two friends came about by accident when their daughters were introduced through a mutual friend and ended up spending the Sukkot holiday together in Safed. While there, they were surprised to discover that both their mothers had grown up in the same village in what was then Hungary. When the daughters later told their mothers about the other girl who had grown up in Beclean, Levy and Sheinberg immediately recognized the other's name and remembered their childhood friend.
France’s most famous Nazi hunters, Serge Klarsfeld and his German wife Beate, received top honours in a ceremony led by French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday.During visit to Israel, actor Gerard Butler says 'may decide to stay'
Serge Klarsfeld, 83, received the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, France’s highest award, while the 79-year-old Beate Klarsfeld received the National Order of Merit, having already been decorated with the Legion of Honour in 2014, with the rank of Grand Officer.
The Chief Rabbi of France Haim Korsia was among those who attended the ceremony at the Elysee Palace limited to family and close friends and associates.
Born September 17, 1935, in the Romanian capital Bucharest, Serge Klarsfeld escaped the Holocaust after his family moved to France but saw his father taken away to die in the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp.
He was naturalised in 1950, and 10 years later, while studying at the prestigious Science-Po university in Paris, Klarsfled met Beate Kuenzel, the daughter of a former German soldier, on a metro platform.
The two, who married three years later, decided to bring fugitive Nazis to justice, a mission they pursued for more than half a century.
Gerard Butler's irresistible smile and hypnotizing blue eyes can almost convince anyone that he really is capable of saving the world, the way the Scottish actor often does in the movies ("Olympus Has Fallen"; "London Has Fallen") and that's precisely what he does in his latest film, "Hunter Killer," which will hit theaters on October 25.Jewish Actor William Shatner Talks About Facing a ‘Great Deal’ of Antisemitism as a Child
On the occasion of the Israeli premiere of the film, Butler, 48, has arrived in Israel to attend the glamorous event. This is quite unusual, as Hollywood actors seldom attend premieres in Israel, but the film's Israeli producer, Avi Lerner, may have had a hand in convincing the Hollywood star to come this time.
"It is very challenging to bring an artist of this caliber to Israel," Lerner said. "He only came because I'm Israeli. I asked him to come. This is our sixth movie together, and I'm very pleased that he came."
In the film, which Butler also co-produced, Joe Glass, played by Butler, is the captain of an American submarine on a rescue mission. On the way to rescue a submarine in distress, Glass and his crew come across a Russian coup and must rescue the kidnapped Russian president from rebels who are threatening the world order. The film takes place almost entirely in the submarine.
When asked about the political undertones of the film, which are particularly relevant in the current climate, he says, "I am interested in politics, but I didn't come to Israel to talk about politics."
Jewish Canadian actor William Shatner opened up in a recent interview about being the target of antisemites during his childhood.
The 87-year-old, who is best known for his role as Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek, told The Sydney Morning Herald that he experienced “a great deal” of antisemitism growing up in Montreal, a city that was mostly Catholic. Shatner said the discrimination that he faced for being Jewish was “very difficult” for him to deal with.
“I’m shaped by a lot of battles from six years old up until now,” he explained before revealing the kind of antisemitism he regularly faced. “Fights, every day, with one or more kids my size or bigger. Somebody recently showed me a high school graduation book. There I was — a nice-looking boy — and my nickname was ‘Toughie’ because I was always fighting and being attacked. Kids would all crowd around, yelling, ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’”
During his time at McGill University in Montreal the antisemitism continued, he told The Sydney Morning Herald. He said, “The university I went to had a quota. How I made it through the quota, I don’t know. There was a limit to the number of Jewish kids who could go to that university, no matter how qualified they were.”
Israeli band ORPHANED LAND wins ‘Video Of The Year’ At Progressive Music Awards 2018 for video showing religious Jews, Muslims rocking to their songs https://t.co/KTG9ybK5OG
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) October 9, 2018
Archaeologists unearth 2000-year-old Hebrew 'Jerusalem' inscription
The earliest written inscription of the word Jerusalem written in Hebrew on a 2,000 year old column drum was unveiled on Tuesday at a press conference at The Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
The limestone column drum that dates back to the Second Temple period, was discovered 10 months ago on an excavation site near the International Convention Center in Jerusalem.
The words: “Hanania son of Dudolos from Jerusalem” was etched on the column which was part of a building that stood in a Jewish potters village near the entrance of the Jerusalem some 2,000 years ago.
Prior to this discovery, the city's name was written as Yerushalem or Shalem in Hebrew, this inscription was the first time the city was written as Yerushalayim in Hebrew characters.
The word Jerusalem was found on silver coins dating before the time of this column, but they were written in Aramaic.
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