Why Does The Left Give Louis Farrakhan A Pass?
Recall Barack Obama grinning alongside Farrakhan in a photo that was intentionally suppressed so it wouldn’t harm Obama’s reelection chances.
Recall Snoop Dogg, Dave Chappelle, Puff Daddy and other celebrities at Farrakhan’s 25th anniversary of the Million Man March. Will and Jada Pinkett Smith made a $150,000 donation to the march.
Think of the leaders of the Women’s March, Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour, openly celebrating Farrakhan.
These people can’t have never heard his anti-Semitic comments. They must ultimately just not care.
In March, Rep. Danny K. Davis of Illinois said of Farrakhan, “The world is so much bigger than Farrakhan and the Jewish question and his position on that and so forth.”
The “Jewish question,” of course is what Adolf Hitler attempted to answer with the Holocaust and it didn’t get much bigger than that for Jews.
Davis’ comments prompted the New York Times to run a piece titled “Why Louis Farrakhan Is Back in the News” as if he had ever really left.
The piece quoted Farrakhan’s fans and gave them a chance to explain and repent. Mallory was quoted explaining she is warm toward Farrakhan because the Nation of Islam was there for her during difficult moments of her life.
No similar piece will ever be written about the lost boy who finds the white nationalist movement when things in his life have fallen apart, and then doesn’t abandon it after hearing the full noxiousness of the comments they make.
And that’s a good thing! It’s correct and moral not to focus on whatever good is accidentally done by hateful people like David Duke or Richard Spencer, on whatever lives they helped or communities they might have aided.
Duke and Spencer are rightly shunned by the mainstream. Why isn’t Farrakhan?
Al Dura Season II on France's Channel 2
A report broadcast on the program "Envoyé spécial" recently, is angering Israel and French Jews.
Elise Lucet, a journalist at France 2 presented "Gaza, a crippled youth," a documentary by Yvan Martinet.
Yvan Martinet is a great admirer of the propagandist Charles Enderlin, author of the Al Dura hoax, proven to have been a staged lie, and of Paul Moreira.
Paul Moreira with his anti-Israeli activist friends of the NGO Reporters Without Borders has turned to the International Criminal Court (ICC) concerning "war crimes committed by the Israeli army against Palestinian journalists", (Seen on RSF website ).
Yvan Martinet tweeted "Thanks" to Charles Enderlin who congratulated him.
On Wednesday, the eve of the broadcast, the ambassador of Israel in France Aliza Bin Noun asked the presidency of France Televisions to "reconsider the dissemination of the report," expressing concern "about the harmful and dangerous repercussions that it could engender on the Jewish community of France ".
Denouncing an "unbalanced point of view" on the situation in Gaza and the "very negative" vision of Israel, the diplomat asserts that "such content is likely to incite hatred against Israel" and by extension to the Jews of France, "because of a frequent and distressing amalgam between Jews and Israel".
Isi Leibler: A call to American Jewish leaders
Permit me to open this column by expressing my distress that for the first time, the Jewish Federations of North America are holding their General Assembly in Tel Aviv rather than Jerusalem. I doubt this was a coincidence. Israelis are delighted with the U.S. government's relocation of its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. I hope the diversion of the GA from Jerusalem does not reflect an anti-Trump paranoia.Battling Corbyn, Israel’s main British enemy
The Federations' representatives at the GA are, no doubt, better informed than the average American Jew. They are surely concerned with the loss of Jewish identity among increasing numbers of young American Jews who were not even provided with an elementary Jewish education. Lacking any foundation, many young American Jews are alienated from both their own Jewish identity and Israel, and intermarriage rates are climbing.
Some leading American Jews falsely accuse Israel of not supporting them and of conducting an extremist policy in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip. In addition, they accuse Israel of discriminating against non-Orthodox Jews as exemplified by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's retraction of an agreement to allocate an egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall. Perhaps he should have ignored haredi extortion and dissolved the government. But, rightly or wrongly, he gave precedence to the urgent security issues of the day.
Besides, American Jewish progressives, few of whom visit the Western Wall, would have been nonplussed had their rabbis not whipped up hysteria over the issue.
My message to American Jewish leaders is not to blame Israel for your shortcomings. Take responsibility, prioritize Jewish education and overcome Jewish illiteracy. That should be your overriding concern.
It may take Corbyn more time to gain full control of the parliamentary party as the great majority of MPs are moderates. Joan Ryan, the Chair of Labour Friends of Israel, has been deselected by her local party. The same has happened to MPs Gavin Shuker and Chris Leslie.UEFA reverses decision on broadcasting games to settlements
Yet if too many moderates are deselected by their local parties some of them may run as independents or even as members of a new party. The latter might then collaborate with the third largest party, the Liberal Democrats. In the UK’s parliamentary system, there is only one election round. The candidate who receives the most votes in any one constituency is elected. If a deselected candidate runs against an official Labour pro-Corbynite candidate, the vote is likely to be split. As a result Labour may lose a number of its current seats.
Is there anything Israel’s allies can do to make it more difficult for a Corbyn-controlled Labour to rise to power? So far, two possibilities have emerged. The first one derives from an opinion by the British law firm, WLegal. Under current US legislation, sanctions against Corbyn are possible as he is a supporter of a terror organization. Actions to achieve this would have to be taken now, as the US is unlikely to act against Corbyn if he becomes prime minister.
A second issue which can be promoted outside the UK is publicizing the fact that if Corbyn comes to power he will receive access to highly classified intelligence from the British Security Services. Furthermore, it is unlikely that all intelligence can be withheld from his extremist associates who hold key positions in his administration.
Would foreign governments be comfortable with such a situation? Would they want intelligence normally shared with allies to fall into the hands of the likes of Corbyn, McDonnell or Labour’s chief strategist, who is a supporter of the genocidal Hamas movement? What about Corbyn’s senior policy adviser, an ex-communist from whom British parliamentary security has withheld access to the Commons for a year already, or Corbyn’s private secretary, who after nine months of vetting by security services has not yet received access to the parliament? The problem already exists; whatever foreign intelligence has been shared with the UK will be accessible to Corbyn if he becomes prime minister.
Once this information is spread outside the UK, British media are likely to pick up on this issue. That will inject additional pressure into the public debate over the risks to the country if a Corbyn-led Labour Party wins the next parliamentary election.
The Union of European Football Associations has reversed its decision to disallow KAN from airing UEFA games to West Bank settlements, and will now permit the Israeli public broadcaster to transmit its games to those areas.Marc Lamont Hill Moves From Justifying Terrorism to Promoting It
Earlier this month KAN told the UEFA – which controls the media rights to many international soccer competitions – that it would not accept its demand to only broadcast to Israelis living within the Green Line.
On Tuesday KAN said that the UEFA had reversed its decision and will allow it to broadcast games featuring the Israeli national team in both Hebrew and Arabic to all citizens and residents of Israel.
“KAN works to ensure quality and equal public broadcasting on the radio, television and digital to all Israeli citizens, in all locations, regardless of their area of residence,” the public broadcaster said on Tuesday. “We’re happy to purchase the rights to air the Israel national team’s qualifying games in the Euro and the World Cup and to bring an open and free broadcast to all citizens of Israel.”
Earlier, the football association said it could not allow KAN to broadcast in West Bank settlements, since it had sold the rights for the Middle East and North Africa to a Qatari company, beIN Sports, and that those rights included the Palestinian territories.
In response, KAN said it would completely relinquish the right to air the games if it could not air them to all Israelis. But just two weeks later, the UEFA appears to have dropped its demand.
Update: Lamont Hill Defends His Close Association with Noted Anti-Semite Louis FarrakhanPaypal halts services for UK charity with alleged ties to terrorism
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan is notorious for his anti-Semitic (and anti-American) rants. He proclaimed Adolf Hitler "a very great man" while characterizing Jews as "Satanic"and most recently, compared Jews to "termites." So when Lamont Hill posted a smiling picture of him with his arm around this anti-Semite, crowing about how he was "blessed" to spend time with his hero, he was taken to task.
Lamont Hill expressed outrage that he was criticized for embracing the infamous racist, although he felt compelled to somewhat distance himself from Farrakhan's flagrant anti-Semitism (read from bottom up):
While Lamont Hill claims not to share Farrakhan's radical anti-Semitic, pro-Hitler views, he does support Palestinian terrorism against Israeli Jews and denies Jews the right of self-determination in their historic homeland. It is apparently just a question of degree.
PayPal stopped providing services to War on Want, a UN NGO, after UK Lawyers for Israel, a pro-Israel consortium of lawyers, provided evidence to PayPal claiming to show that the charity had ties with terrorist organizations.Hebrew University students protest arrival of US ex-activist held at airport
UK Lawyers for Israel and The Lawfare Project, an organization that provides legal services to fight antisemitism, had attacked War on Want before for the organization's supposed links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). They filed a complaint to the Charity Commission alleging misuse of charitable funds "for the production and dissemination of political propaganda and its publication of false and misleading allegations likely to result in racial hatred of Jews and Israel," UK Lawyers for Israel wrote on their website.
“I am pleased that PayPal has responded to the evidence it has now seen regarding War on Want’s association with groups linked to terrorism, and has ceased to assist War on Want in obtaining donations," Caroline Turner, director of UK Lawyers for Israel said. "I hope that the Charity Commission will now look carefully at War on Want’s activities and associations.”
PayPal also recently stopped providing services to International Alliance, a German charity that also has alleged links to the PFLP.
While many German banks have terminated accounts with organizations that boycott Israel or support Palestinian terror organizations such as Hamas and the PFLP, PayPal’s closure of International Alliance is believed to be the first shut down of an online payment service account in Germany for a group involved in BDS and with links to PFLP supporters.
War on Want describes its mission as fighting "poverty and human rights violation, as part of the worldwide movement for global justice," according to its website.
A Hebrew University student on Tuesday protested against the arrival on campus of a US woman accused of boycott activities against the country, comparing her to notorious terrorists.Dershowitz on Lara Alqasem: ‘Israel Never Should Have Detained Her’
It was the second protest at the university’s Mount Scopus campus in Jerusalem since Lara Alqasem began her post-graduate studies there this week, after the Supreme Court overturned her deportation from the country for allegedly supporting the pro-Palestinian boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, known as BDS.
The student, Daniel Tzuri, put up two posters — one at the entrance to the Law Faculty on campus — lambasting the Supreme Court, “with the cooperation of the Hebrew University,” for allowing Alqasem in, and comparing her to a series of terrorists and other bad actors, whom it envisioned as “students,” each linked to a different discipline.
Among the “students” displayed on the poster were the late al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden depicted as a graduate of building engineering studies, the head of the Islamic State terror group as a tutor of theology, a Hamas spokesman as a media student, and Syrian President Bashar Assad as a student of chemistry.
The reactions of Jewish individuals and Israel-related groups are mixed over Israel’s Supreme Court allowing entry on Thursday to 22-year-old American BDS activist Lara Alqasem after Israel initially refused to let her enter the country earlier this month.The Washington Post Soft-Pedals the BDS Movement
“I strongly support the decision,” Alan Dershowitz, constitutional law scholar and professor of law emeritus at Harvard University Law School, told JNS. “Israel never should have detained her.”
Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum, said that the case is a “lose-lose” situation for Israel regardless.
“Only take such a step when confident of strategic and tactical success. Even if Alqasem had been excluded, an obscure anti-Zionist would have been turned into a heroic figure,” he said. “But the failure to exclude her enhances her yet further. What a fiasco.”
Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Mort Klein, on the other hand, slammed the decision.
“ZOA opposes the Israeli Supreme Court’s decision allowing Lara Alqasem, the terrorist and BDS-supporting president of the terrorist affiliated SJP, to enter Israel and study at Hebrew University. … Alqasem and her SJP chapter has held a ‘national day of action’ supporting Rasmea Odeh — the convicted terrorist who masterminded the murder of two American Jewish college students at Hebrew University in Israel, and a key military operative of designated foreign terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.”
Washington Post coverage of the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement is, with growing frequency, violating the newspaper’s own policies and standards. US-designated terrorist groups support BDS and its supporters openly call for the end of the Jewish state. Yet, these facts cannot be found in The Post’s pages.The New York Times Again Whitewashes BDS
Instead, the paper has decided to whitewash BDS.
Take, for example, a recent Washington Post op-ed by Stanford University Professor David Palumbo-Liu, a BDS advocate. Palumbo-Liu defended the decision of a University of Michigan professor and fellow BDS supporter, John Cheney-Lippold, to refuse to write a letter of recommendation for a student’s study-abroad program in Israel.
On October 3, the University of Michigan sent Cheney-Lippold a disciplinary letter, characterizing his actions as falling “far short of the University’s and College’s expectations,” and noting that the professor had “used the student’s request as a platform to express your own personal views.”
“A student’s academic merit should be the primary guide for determining whether to write a letter,” the university explained.
Palumbo-Liu defended Cheney-Lippold, but omitted key components of the university’s decision. In fact, as the university explained in its letter, Cheney-Lippold had previously written letters of recommendation for study in Israel for two other students, admitting that at the time, “I wrote letters for them because I did not have tenure.” Additionally, the professor used “class time for both courses” he teaches to discuss his “views on the BDS movement.”
The New York Times has a particular, and partisan, definition of “Palestinian rights.” Those rights, the newspaper suggests, include the right to wipe Israel off the map and the right to force minority status upon the country’s Jews.Illinois’ Anti-BDS Efforts in Jeopardy as Key Opponent Leads Polls in Attorney General Race
Case in point is the newspaper’s Oct. 18 story about the Israeli Supreme Court’s decision to allow activist Lara Alqasem to enter the country. Or in the words of the article’s opening sentence: “Israel’s Supreme Court ordered the government on Thursday to admit an American woman on her student visa, overruling the Interior Ministry, which pushed to deport her over a stint as an advocate for Palestinian rights while she was an undergraduate at the University of Florida.”
What is true is that Alqasem was temporarily barred from the country because, as an undergraduate she led her school’s branch of the extremist anti-Israel group Students for Justice in Palestine, and advocated for the anti-Israel boycott movement known as BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions).
On Thursday, Oct. 18, Israel’s High Court criticized and overturned the controversial decision by Israeli authorities to prevent Al Qasem from entering Israel. The High court’s ruling in favor of Alqasem was based on her lawyers’ arguments that she had already ceased her boycott activism in April 2017 and was accepted by the Hebrew University to an international graduate program when she arrived in Israel. That ruling, unlike the New York Times lede, did not minimize the threat of the anti-Israel boycott movement or make any arguments about the validity of Israel’s Law of Entry under which she was initially barred from entering the country. But the judges concluded that she had ceased BDS activity and did not currently pose a threat.
A chief opponent of the one of the nation's first bill barring boycotts of Israel is vying to become Illinois' next attorney general, a post that would allow the candidate to weaken the legislation, according to those who are raising concerns in the state's pro-Israel community.U.S. Ambassador To Germany Responds To Ocasio-Cortez Comparing Nazis To Global Warming
Kwame Raoul, a veteran Illinois state legislator who replaced President Barack Obama in the legislative body when he moved into the Senate, is running to become the next Illinois attorney general, a position that would give him leverage to weaken the state's landmark legislation blocking partnerships with any company that supports the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.
Raoul was a chief opponent of the legislation, which was enacted in 2015, and has come under fire from the pro-Israel community for anti-Israel remarks, which include comparing the Holocaust to slavery in America.
While Raoul maintains a lead in polls, the race between him and Republican candidate Erika Harold is tightening ahead of next month's elections. Some are raising concerns about Raoul's opposition to the anti-BDS legislation and what his appointment could mean for its future.
U.S. Ambassador To Germany Richard Grenell slammed Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Monday after she compared Nazi Germany to global warming in a recent speech.WATCH: Things Get Heated When Journalist Asks If Alyssa Milano Will Disavow Linda Sarsour
Grenell's comments on Fox News' "FOX & Friends" came after Ocasio-Cortez said at a campaign event on Friday that the blueprint the United States used to defeat Nazi Germany is the same blueprint that needs to be used to defeat global warming.
"It's never okay, it's never acceptable to minimize the Holocaust and the murder of six million Jews," Grenell said. "Just note to anyone who is speaking publicly — never compare it to anything because nothing can be as horrific as 11 million people, six million Jews murdered."
Grenell has a strong record of fighting against Nazism as he played a key role in the Trump administration’s deportation of "95-year-old Jakiw Palij — the last known Nazi collaborator living in the United States — at his home in Queens, New York," over the summer.
Things got heated at Politicon on Sunday when actress and #MeToo darling Alyssa Milano was confronted by freelance journalist Laura Loomer about her support for controversial Women's March leader and Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour.George Mason University Students Condemn Antisemitism After Local JCC Vandalized
"My question is for you, Alyssa Milano. You are friends with Linda Sarsour, and both of you ladies have positioned yourselves as speakers and representatives of the #MeToo movement," started Loomer.
The journalist was quickly swarmed by women manning the Politicon event, two of whom physically grabbed the mic from Loomer.
"Let me ask my question," insisted Loomer.
"I want to ask you right now to disavow Linda Sarsour because she is a supporter of Sharia law. And under Sharia law, women are oppressed, women are forced to wear a hijab," she said. "My question is, will you please disavow her because she is advocating for Sharia law?"
Milano, unsurprisingly, elected not to disavow Sarsour.
"She's not" advocating for Sharia law, replied the actress. "She’s not. But thank you so much for your question."
Student leaders at George Mason University in Virginia condemned antisemitism on Thursday, after a nearby Jewish community center was vandalized with 19 swastikas earlier this month.Mussolini’s granddaughter under fire from Italian Jews for tweeted threat
The measure — passed by the school’s Student Senate — came some 18 months after the same JCC was defaced with the symbol of the SS Nazi military unit and the words, “Hitler was right.”
It embraced the Jewish community as “a vital part of the Mason community,” and pledged not to “stand for hatred and acts of malice.”
The resolution was sponsored by student senator Max Kim, and co-sponsored by Amir Mahmoud, chairman of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs Committee.
McKenna Bates, speaker pro tempore of the Student Senate, said following the resolution’s passage that her school “does have an antisemitism problem,” though she and many of her friends are working to address the issue.
“Tuesday afternoon, before I attended a private event with Ron Dermer, my other club (the Israel Student Association) hosted a kiosk in the university’s main food court,” she explained on social media on Thursday. “Our kiosk was centered around media bias, which is something that I’ve been focused on since this summer.”
“During this kiosk, I was told that Palestinian lives matter more than Jewish lives, and that the murder of Jews is justified because Palestinians are at the bottom of the oppression system and thus any expressions of resistance are ultimately justified,” she added. “Unfortunately, I hear these kinds of remarks so often that not only am I desensitized — I subconsciously normalize these statements.”
The granddaughter of Benito Mussolini unleashed a storm of protest from the Jewish community after she tweeted a threat to sue anyone who posted “pictures or phrases” that were “offensive” regarding her grandfather, Italy’s Nazi ally fascist dictator.SodaStream Cleans Up Massive Trash Collection Off the Coast of Honduras
Alessandra Mussolini, a longtime right-wing politician and currently an Italian member of the European Parliament, posted the tweet on October 17.
Italian Jews and others took to social media to protest.
An article in the financial newspaper, Il Sole 24 Ore, called it a “surreal tweet” that forgot “the ban on apology for fascism enshrined in our legal system.”
One of the Italian Jews whose response was most shared was the Florence-based actor and musician Enrico Fink, who wrote an open letter to Mussolini on his Facebook page and posted a photo of his grandfather.
Israeli startup superstar and home-based soda-device-maker SodaStream announced on Monday that it has sent a delegation to the coast of Honduras to clean up a massive collection of floating trash off of Roatán.New Jersey, Israel sign accord to boost tech, economic cooperation
CEO Daniel Birnbaum said the “Holy Turtle”—a 1,000-foot-long device towed by ship and purchased from an American company—has already been dispatched off the Roatán coast along with 150 SodaStream executives from 45 countries. Cleanup procedures will be witnessed by local Honduran officials, schoolchildren and officials from the Plastic Soup Foundation, which works to clean plastics out of the world’s oceans.
“We can’t clean up all the plastic waste on the planet, but we each need to do whatever we can,” Birnbaum said in a statement.
According to SodaStream, the project was inspired by a 2017 BBC documentary about the trash off of the coast of Honduras.
Junk cleaned from the water will be turned into an art installation dedicated to “reducing consumption of single use plastic in all forms, including plastic cups, straws, bags and bottles.”
In the past, SodaStream has partnered with the Israel Union for Environmental Defense to raise awareness and combat plastic pollution, and joined with an organization called Trees for the Future to plant thousands of trees in Brazil.
The New Jersey Economic Development Authority (EDA) and the Israel Innovation Authority (IIA) have signed an accord aimed at strengthening economic ties and bilateral technology partnerships between the so-called Garden State and the Startup Nation.In Israel, Parkland official thanks US Jews for support after school shooting
The memorandum of understanding signed in Israel over the weekend seeks to further develop and strengthen economic, technological and commercial cooperation and help identify opportunities for growth in the innovation economy by generating more partnerships, the two entities said in a statement.
EDA chief executive officer Tim Sullivan and IIA chairman Amiram Appelbaum, who also serves as the Chief Scientist for the Israeli Ministry of Economy and Industry, signed the memorandum in the presence of New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and Israeli Consul General in New York Dani Dayan. This is Murphy’s first trade mission abroad, in his bid to create international investment opportunities in order to increase New Jersey’s global competitiveness and attract foreign direct investment, the statement said.
“The Garden State and Israel both have economies deeply rooted in innovation as well as brilliant scientists, researchers, and academic minds doing ground-breaking work across a broad spectrum of high-growth sectors,” Murphy said in the statement. “The New Jersey-Israel relationship already generates more than $1 billion in annual shared economic activity and we hope that, as a result of this MOU, that number will double, if not triple, in the years ahead.”
Stacy Kagan, the vice mayor of Parkland, Florida, thanked American Jews meeting in Israel for their support after the February school shooting that devastated her community.US museum says 5 fragments in Dead Sea Scroll collection are fake
The emotional presentation took place Tuesday at the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America, which is convening this week in Tel Aviv. Jewish federations act as central fundraising bodies for Jewish causes and institutions in metropolitan areas throughout the United States and Canada.
Kagan presented the key to the city of Parkland to Gail Norry, chair of JFNA’s Emergency Response Committee.
In the wake of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February, experts from the Israeli Trauma Coalition, which aids trauma victims in Israel, came to Parkland to provide support and counseling to victims and their families. Jewish federations have provided funding to the coalition.
“I stand before you not only as an elected official but as a Jewish woman who has always wanted to visit Israel. I dreamed of this but never made it until now,” Kagan said. “I never could have imagined I would be here under these circumstances… This was our time of need. You showed up. You gave us strength and you taught us how to be resilient. As a wife, a mother and a consoler to those families and children that were taken from this horrible tragedy, I am here to say toda, toda, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart.”
Following her speech, Isaac Herzog, the new chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, called on the Israeli government to fund Hebrew classes for Jews around the world.
A US museum announced Monday that five artifacts it had said were fragments of the ancient manuscripts known as the Dead Sea Scrolls are in fact fake, and will no longer be displayed.Five proven Dead Sea Scroll forgeries only the tip of the iceberg, scholars say
Washington’s Museum of the Bible — which stirred controversy last year for its financial backing from a billionaire evangelical Christian — removed the pieces from exhibition after a German research institution concluded they weren’t old enough.
“Though we had hoped the testing would render different results, this is an opportunity to educate the public on the importance of verifying the authenticity of rare biblical artifacts, the elaborate testing process undertaken and our commitment to transparency,” the museum’s chief curator Jeffrey Kloha said in a statement.
“As an educational institution entrusted with cultural heritage, the museum upholds and adheres to all museum and ethical guidelines on collection care, research and display.”
The Dead Sea Scrolls, which include the oldest known manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, date from the 3rd century BC to the 1st century AD.
Numbering around 900, they were discovered between 1947 and 1956 in the Qumran caves above the Dead Sea.
The Museum of the Bible announced on Monday that five Dead Sea Scroll fragments from its collection were proven forgeries. Removed from display, these fragments may prove to be the bellwether of the Washington, DC, institution’s entire 16-piece fragment collection, and beyond.Film on forgotten Holocaust resistance fighter rocks the box office in Holland
In the wake of similar accusations, other global institutions and private collectors are now likewise struggling with how to address their own questionable fragments.
The clock is ticking as potential forgeries’ content increasingly skews and pollutes scholarly research. As the corpus of Dead Sea Scrolls material is dissected with surgical precision, any and all information from the presumed scribes is included in numerous scholarly articles, data banks and dictionaries. Correcting these statistical and contextual fallacies could take generations.
In the spring of 2017, five of the Museum of the Bible’s 16 Dead Sea Scroll pieces were sent to Prof. Ira Rabin at Germany’s Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) for “a battery of tests,” according to a museum press release. The tests “concluded that the five fragments show characteristics inconsistent with ancient origin,” and are therefore modern forgeries.
This is merely a first batch of forgery results for the museum, said paleographer Dr. Kipp Davis, a research fellow at Trinity Western University and associate of the Dead Sea Scrolls Institute at TWU, who initially questioned their authenticity.
Opposite the Dutch national bank lies one of Europe’s least conspicuous monuments to a war hero.‘Witnesses in uniform’: Israeli Police on Holocaust memorial visit in Poland
Titled “Fallen Tree,” the metal statue for resistance fighter Walraven van Hall looks so realistic that for months after its unveiling in 2010, the Amsterdam municipality would receive calls reporting the artwork, whose brown-painted branches are strewn over a small square, as storm debris in need of removal.
A departure from the bombastic reliefs commemorating other European World War II heroes, it’s a fitting tribute to van Hall. For decades he had gone unrecognized even in his own country, despite the fact that he used cunning and courage to save hundreds of Jews from the Holocaust while inflicting painful damage on the Nazi war machine before his execution by German soldiers in 1945.
This year, however, van Hall’s bravery for the first time has moved from obscurity to the mainstream thanks to the production of a multimillion-dollar feature film titled “The Resistance Banker,” which won the Netherlands’ national award for best film in 2018 and is the country’s submission to the Oscars.
The film, where the persecution of Jews plays a central role, is the first treatment of its kind of the actions of van Hall and his brother, Gijsbert — members of a prominent banking family who for three years bankrolled the Dutch resistance, supplying it with the equivalent of $500 million.
It’s a surprisingly long delay considering the scale of van Hall’s actions, which historians say helped make the Dutch resistance one of Europe’s fiercest and most effective. There are also powerful dramatic elements in the van Hall story, a tale full of valor, betrayal, death, devotion — and even a bank robbery of unprecedented proportions.
A delegation of 180 Israeli policemen is currently in Poland, visiting WWII memorial sites and Nazi concentration camps under the banner “witnesses in uniform,” accompanied by Holocaust survivor Shela Altaraz and her granddaughter.
On Monday, on the second day of their visit, the officers visited the Treblinka death camp, where the Jewish community of Štip, Macedonia, formerly Yugoslavia, where Altaraz was born, was murdered. According to Yad Vashem, Altaraz is the sole survivor of that Jewish community.
The police officer formed a human Star of David to honor the memory of the victims, and standing in the middle of them, Altaraz shared her testimony.
The delegation includes officers, commanders, non-commissioned officers, representatives of bereaved families, and police officers who were wounded in the line of duty from various districts, divisions and ranks.
Very moving! Group of Holocaust survivors sing the Hatikvah (#Israel’s anthem) at #JFNAGA. pic.twitter.com/miWvIFPROK
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) October 22, 2018