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Monday, December 17, 2018

12/17 Links Pt2: Horovitz: 5 surreal days in Florida with the ‘Son of Hamas’; Glick: Left Claims Jewishness While Discriminating Against Jews; The secret shame of the Women’s March

From Ian:
David Horovitz: Just trying to save lives: 5 surreal days in Florida with the ‘Son of Hamas’
The first time I see Mosab Hassan Yousef, I’m looking around for the bodyguards.

This is the eldest son of one of the co-founders of the Hamas terror group; his father has been in and out of Israeli jails for decades. And Mosab “betrayed” him and the Islamist, Israel-loathing cause: While his father’s Hamas did and does its best to kill all of us land-stealing infidels and occupiers, Mosab spent about a decade working as a Shin Bet agent to keep us alive, notably at the height of the Second Intifada suicide-bomber onslaught — as his father’s right-hand man, security chief and most trusted confidant, passing on any scrap of information and intuition to help Israel in the battle against terror.

So, yes, we might be thousands of miles away, in other-worldly, mellow south Florida, but I’m assuming Hamas hasn’t forgotten the score it has to settle, and that Mosab is protected accordingly.

Instead, I see a man in a baseball cap, wearing sunglasses and heavily bearded, walking toward me from the hotel elevators, conspicuously alone. “You don’t have security?” I ask him in surprise.

“Who’s going to pay for it?” he fires back.

Later, he’ll give me a fuller answer. He’ll point out that Hamas doesn’t have worldwide tentacles. He’ll explain that Hamas has no great interest in bringing his name back into the headlines by trying to kill him and thus reminding the world of the humiliation it suffered when it turned out that its West Bank chief’s eldest son was working for the Zionist enemy. He’ll muse that we can all die anytime, anyway; that death is nothing to be scared of; that nobody knows what death is about; that, sure, he’ll jump like anybody else if he’s startled by a loud noise or something, but that he’s certainly not living in fear.

He’ll tell me lots of things over the next five days during a surreal series of public talks and non-public conversations, against the distant background of Hamas’s latest wave of terror attacks back home, that I’d never have expected to hear from the “Son of Hamas,” as he called his autobiography.

But he starts by taking me to Whole Foods Market.


Caroline Glick: Left Claims Jewishness While Discriminating Against Jews
The Left’s identity politics are becoming curiouser and curiouser for Jews.

On the one hand, prominent leftists like Marc Lamont Hill, Tamika Mallory, and Linda Sarsour have no problem blowing on anti-Jewish dog whistles. On the other hand, some of their hard left comrades, like Representative-elect Alexandra Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) and New York state Senator-elect Julia Salazar (D-Brooklyn) are going out of their way to embrace their Jewish roots — whether real or imagined.

How can we explain these seemingly opposed phenomena? After all, these activists share the belief at the core of identity politics that people are defined by what they are, as opposed to what they do. And all of them oppose the Jewish state because the identity politics commissars have determined that Israel is irredeemably deplorable, and the vast majority of Jews are also deplorable because they support Israel.

So how can they embrace hatred of Zionist Jews and Israel, and publicize their Jewishness at the same time? What gives?

The answer is that their embrace of their Jewishness and their rejection of Jews and Israel are two sides of the same anti-Jewish coin.

The antisemitism of the likes of Mallory and Sarsour and Hill and their colleagues isn’t hard to discern, even when they deny it.

Consider Hill. On November 29, Hill gave a speech at the UN where he effectively endorsed Palestinian terrorism against Israel and called for Israel to be annihilated.

To this end, Hill used two well understood euphemisms. He called for Israel’s annihilation by ending his speech by stating the Palestine Liberation Organization’s slogan for Israel’s destruction, “Free Palestine from the river to the sea.” That is, the establishment of Palestine on all the land Israel is located on – from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

Hill endorsed Palestinian terrorism against Israelis when he said, “We must promote non-violence at every opportunity, but cannot endorse narrow politics that shames Palestinians for resisting.”


Airbnb backtracks on decision to remove settlement listings — report
Israel’s tourism minister reportedly says vacation rental website Airbnb has decided not to enact rules which would have removed listings from the settlements.

The statement, carried by several Hebrew media outlets, comes after Tourism Minister Yariv Levin held talks with Airbnb management in Jerusalem earlier Monday.

“Airbnb has informed us that its decision not to list homes in the West Bank will not be enacted,” Levin says in a statement.

He calls it an “important step in the right direction.”

There is no immediate statement from Airbnb.
Airbnb may have sent contradictory statements in Hebrew and English
Airbnb says reports it is not implementing settlement ban 'inaccurate'



The New York Times Just Published an Unqualified Recommendation for an Insanely Anti-Semitic Book
Over the weekend, the New York Times Book Review published a full-length interview with Alice Walker, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Color Purple. The very first question: “What books are on your nightstand?” Walker replied with four, the second of which was:
“And the Truth Shall Set You Free,” by David Icke. In Icke’s books there is the whole of existence, on this planet and several others, to think about. A curious person’s dream come true.

This passed without comment from the New York Times interviewer, and the publication passed it on to the readers without qualification. This is rather remarkable because the book is an unhinged anti-Semitic conspiracy tract written by one of Britain’s most notorious anti-Semites.

A former soccer player turned professional hate peddler, Icke is one of the most influential conspiracy theorists in Europe, and certainly in Britain. Today, he has over 777,000 followers on Facebook, and speaks to audiences around the world. Like many conspiracy theorists, Icke claims that a secret conspiracy controls the world. And like many conspiracy theorists, Icke claims that this secret conspiracy happens to be Jewish. In And The Truth Shall You Free, the word “Jewish” appears 241 times, and the name “Rothschild” is mentioned 374 times. These references are not compliments. Indeed, the book was so obviously anti-Semitic that Icke’s publisher refused to publish it, and he had to print it himself.

In the book and elsewhere, Icke draws liberally upon the infamous anti-Semitic pamphlet, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion—a Russian forgery about an alleged global Jewish cabal that is widely considered one of the most influential anti-Semitic works in history. Magnanimously, Icke calls the hate tract by a different name.
NY Post Editorial: The secret shame of the Women’s March
As the movement grew, so did the involvement of more figures and groups linked to Farrakhan, whose Nation of Islam even provided security at events. Yet the public faces like Mallory, Perez and anti-Israel activist Linda Sarsour weren’t the people who were “actually doing the work” of organizing female-centric voting blocs, Tablet reports.

Only after the new leaders faced public criticism from within did they begin to partially disassociate themselves from Farrakhan’s orbit.

Extremism and anti-Semitism, in other words, are no recent development — they’ve been an integral part of the Women’s March since the outset.

Moreover, there are growing and still-unresolved questions about the movement’s multimillion-dollar finances, padded by revenue from merchandising deals and claims of “wildly inflated” expenses.

What’s clear, reports Tablet, is that there are multiple interlocking entities with money flowing in different directions intended for the Women’s March — but with precious little transparency.

The Women’s March seems ripe for investigation by officials whose job it is to keep an eye on ostensible charities.

Meanwhile, Democrats like Gillibrand face their own challenge: Will they keep on supporting a movement deeply tarred by hateful bigotry?
Washington Women’s March group disbands amid anti-Semitism controversy at national level
Statewide organizers operating under the Women’s March banner announced this week that they are dissolving their group in protest of national leaders’ association with speakers seen as anti-Semitic.

The decision won’t affect plans for a third annual downtown march in Spokane next month, local organizers stressed Friday.

Angie Beem, a Spokane Valley resident who served as board president of Women’s March Washington, announced the dissolution of the state group on Facebook on Thursday, citing the national organization’s ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Beem, who helped organize the march in Spokane in 2017 and made an unsuccessful bid for Spokane Valley City Council that fall, said in an interview Friday the decision to disband wasn’t easy.

“It’s heartbreaking. Whenever you create something that literally changed your life, it’s really hard to walk away from it,” Beem said.

Local organizers knew the state organization was considering disbanding after planned marches in January, said Lori Feagan, an organizer with Spokane Women’s March. But they were unaware a public announcement would be made this week, she said.

“We are independent,” Feagan said. “We don’t have any financial backing (from) the state or national organization.”

In November, the local group put out a statement denouncing anti-Semitism, transphobia and any groups supporting those prejudices.


Louis Farrakhan: America’s Foremost Antisemite
In his November 2018 visit to Iran, Farrakhan addressed law students at Tehran University. At the end of his talk, Farrakhan and the students joined together to chant, “Death to Israel,” and, “Death to America.” Farrakhan also took the opportunity to declare the establishment of the State of Israel an “outlaw act” and accused the Jewish state of “thievery, lying, and deceit.”

One would have expected that within his movement, voices of protest would have been heard over the years against their leader’s extreme antisemitism. This has not occurred.

Alan Dershowitz has pointed out that while mainstream American figures generally keep their distance from notorious antisemites — none of them would sit down, for example, with white supremacist and antisemite David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan — many of them are perfectly willing to meet Farrakhan. A photo recently emerged of Barack Obama smiling beside Farrakhan at a 2005 meeting that had been arranged by the Black Caucus. Also, at the funeral of singer Aretha Franklin in August 2018, Farrakhan enjoyed celebrity-like status, sitting only two seats away from former president Bill Clinton.

Linda Sarsour, the Palestinian-American national co-chair of the Women’s March, has been a strong supporter of Farrakhan for years. In February 2018, another national co-chair of the Women’s March, Tamika D. Mallory, attended the Nation of Islam’s annual Saviours’ Day event in Chicago. There, Farrakhan delivered an inflammatory keynote speech that included statements about “powerful Jews” whom he considers his enemies. While Mallory and Sarsour have condemned antisemitism, homophobia, and other forms of hatred, they have not renounced Farrakhan, which has prompted calls for them to resign.

The Republican Jewish Coalition has similarly called on seven Democratic law makers who sat down with Farrakhan for personal meetings while in office to resign: Andre Carson (D-Ind.), Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Danny Davis (D-Ill.), Al Green (D-Tex.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Gregory Meeks (D-NY), and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.). There have also been condemnations of these meetings by other Democratic representatives.

In a democratic country, a man who is such a regular source of major hate speech should be brought before a court and condemned to jail. However, this is not possible in the US. But the truth remains that Farrakhan is the leading purveyor of antisemitism in the United States.
Oh, Eno! The Folly of Boycotts
Eno, then, prefers the horizontal to the vertical — the act of debating and collaborating, rather than simply receiving instructions from a man wielding a baton. Elsewhere in the same interview, he described his own role as helping “people communicate with each other in one way or another.” All well and good, but utterly incompatible with support for the BDS movement!

BDS, after all, is a pyramid, with its anti-Zionist, eliminationist id program set by a handful of ideologues who then transmit talking points and other instructions to the activist base. Rather than encouraging people to communicate with each other, the BDS movement bullies musicians and artists into treating Israelis as the only human beings in the world who should be denied the opportunity to hear a piece of music, read a particular book or view a specific painting. And of all people, Brian Eno — an artist who has delighted in smashing conventions through experimentation — has turned into a cultural policeman, ready to fire off an insulting missive to any fellow musician who dares to contemplate contact with Israelis.

Eno’s position — and I take no pleasure in saying this — is eerily reminiscent of the antisemitic German composer Richard Wagner’s comment that music produced by Jews is sterile because “the Jew has stood outside the pale of any such community, stood solitarily with his Jehovah in a splintered, soilless stock, to which all self-sprung evolution must stay denied, just as even the peculiar Hebraic language of that stock has been preserved for him merely as a thing defunct.” Today’s boycott advocates perceive Israel in much the same way; the illegitimate state of an anachronistic nation whose chief priority is to maintain itself aloof and apart from the other peoples of the world, while punishing the indigenous Arab inhabitants of the land they “occupy.”

Eno is not the only great artist to have crossed swords with the “Jews” as a collective. That long list includes Chopin, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and many other poets, painters and musicians whose output leaves you contemplating how such profound beauty and insight can co-exist with the crude, paranoid fantasies of the antisemite. Eno, doubtless, would angrily deny that antisemitism has anything to do with his loathing of Israel, which is the standard response of the boycott movement. Yet from someone with his intellect, we are entitled to expect much more.

So, Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno, if you happen to read this, please know that any explanation you provide on this point will be read, considered and argued over avidly, especially by those of us who love your music. We may decry your views, but we’re not going to boycott you.
Defeating BDS one dance move at a time
"I have no explanation as to how it happened," Yair Vardi, the director of the Suzanne Dellal Center for Dance and Theater, says as he tried to describe what he saw transpire before his eyes. One hundred and eighty representatives from the world of dance arrived in Israel for the center's 24th annual showcase of Israeli contemporary dance last week. For 20 years, the event has drawn festival directors and producers from around the world who seem to want to book ever more Israeli dance troupes with which to fill their calendars with blue and white performances.

From the four corners of the earth, they arrive, all trying to find available dates on which they can book dance troupes like the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company and the Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak Dance Company.

"Maybe it's due to the fact that I live this on a daily basis, I didn't notice the tremendous change that took place," Vardi says.

"I can only recall that we set out on our path soon after [late Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin's murder. And I contemplated whether we should open the festival and if it was appropriate and if anyone would come. But you see, it is happening. How it happened and what happened, I can't really say exactly. I can say that we worked very hard for this, but that goes without saying. One way or another, it warms my heart when I see and hear the response."

So with the help of guests from five different troupes who attended the festival, we at Israel Hayom tried to figure out how Israel, a country with a small yet strong dance came to dominate modern dance in recent years, years in which BDS [the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement], that same anti-Semitic and Israel-hating organization, has grown in strength, and how Israeli dance came to develop its own DNA, the standard quality and character typical of larger and older nations of dance.
Hen Mazzig found guilty of living rent-free in The Forward’s head for 2 months (satire)
A Manhattan judge handed down a stern ruling today, ordering that one Hen Mazzig pay restitution to the The Forward after living in their collective heads since September without paying rent or utilities. Since The Forward’s bombshell article in October alleging that Hen might be gay was a paid agent of the Mossad or something, it has become increasingly obvious that Mr. Mazzig had renovated a nice loft with skylights, hardwood floors, and granite countertops somewhere in the collective cerebral cortex of the Forward’s writing staff.

“Clearly the defendant has occupied prime real estate in each of the plaintiffs’ minds.” stated the Judge’s ruling. “After Aidan Pink’s article asserting that Mr. Mazzig was a paid agent of the Israeli Government because, umm, he once served in the Israeli Army, like, umm, almost every other Jewish, Circassian, and Druze Israeli man, the Court had no choice but to award the plaintiff’s claim in full.”

As the Judge’s ruling was read in the packed courtroom, The Forward’s editorial staff and writers erupted in cheers. “This is truly a vindication.” explained reporter Josh Nathan-Kazis. Now I know that I didn’t accuse Hen of ‘literally calling me a Nazi’ in vain, even though he didn’t actually, like, call me a Nazi. Now I can get back to my important work of digging up dirt on Jewish charities that aren’t as Woke as I am. But to be honest, I really didn’t appreciate it when the Judge held me in Contempt of Court for not actually knowing what the word ‘literally’ means. It made me really angry… Literally!”
Haaretz Corrects Again About Nakba Law
For the third time, CAMERA has prompted a Haaretz correction on Israel’s so-called “Nakba Law,” which enables the state’s Finance Minister to withhold funding from state-funded bodies which commemorate the founding of Israel as a catastrophe, or Nakba.

A review by Naama Riba about a Haifa art exhibit erred both in print on Dec. 14 and online here (“In controversial new exhibit ‘1948,’ fusing Palestinian and Jewish narratives,”) stating: “Israeli law forbids discussion of the Palestinian catastrophe as such in public instutions [sic].”

The law does not forbid discussion of the Nakba in public institutions. Rather, it narrowly enables Israel’s Finance Minister to withhold government funding from state-funded bodies engaged in activities which reject the existence of the state of Israel as a Jewish state. The law does not prohibit bodies which do receive government funds from marking the Nakba. It merely gives the government the right to withhold funding if the state-funded body does mark the Nakba. (Indeed, the Finance Minister is not required to withhold funding under these circumstances. As Haaretz has reported: “Treasury Rejects All 98 Appeals to Enforce the ‘Nakba Law.“)

Notably, the Hebrew edition’s version of the same article did not include this misinformation.
Mishal Husain does ‘life in Gaza’ for BBC One TV
Making no effort to clarify to BBC viewers that the counter-terrorism measures are not a “siege” and that they were implemented because of Hamas’ terror attacks against Israeli civilians, Husain closed her report with a brief and opaque tick of the ‘impartiality’ box.

Husain: “But as well as the blockade incomes here have been affected in the last year by Palestinian divisions; sanctions imposed on Hamas by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Maher’s family like many others here say they have little real hope of a better future.”

On the day that the BBC aired this report Hamas staged a rally in Gaza to mark 31 years since its founding. According to documents obtained by Israeli journalists, the cost of that rally amounted to over half a million dollars. BBC audiences of course heard nothing about that or about the highly relevant topic of Hamas’ long-standing diversion of funds and resources for the purpose of terror at the expense of the Gaza Strip’s civilian population.

Instead – and notwithstanding Husain’s few half-hearted ticks of the ‘impartiality’ box’ – BBC audiences were once again steered towards the view that the root cause of the problems faced by civilians in the Gaza Strip is the counter-terrorism measures that had to be implemented due to Hamas terrorism – the “blockade” – rather than Hamas terrorism itself.
More than just a bad headline: Guardian morally blurs victim and perpetrator
Though Guardian reports on violence in the region typically won’t explicitly defend Palestinian terror attacks, the language employed in headlines and text often convey the message that Jewish victims – especially those beyond the green line – are not victims of violent extremism, but represent the fall-out from a political dynamic to which Israelis bear most of the blame.

Within the Guardian’s intersectional calculus – a rock, paper, scissors-like game of competitive victimhood – Palestinians score higher than Israeli Jews nearly every time, often regardless of the circumstances.

This is why, more likely than not, the Guardian often ignores straight-forward stories involving Palestinian attacks on Israelis, such as the September attack which claimed the life of Ari Fuld – a story they still haven’t noted, even in passing. It also helps explain why the Guardian initially ignored the drive-by attack on Dec. 9th at a bus stop in the West Bank community of Ofra that injured seven, even after a baby – delivered by emergency C-section after his 30 week pregnant mother, Shira Ish-Ran, was shot in the stomach by the gunman – tragically died three days later.

In fact, the first mention of the Ofra attack at the Guardian was in relation to another attack which took place a day after the baby, named Amiad Yisrael, had passed. In the Thursday incident, two Israeli soldiers, Yossi Cohen and Yovel Mor Yosef, were killed – and two others severely injured – in a Palestinian shooting attack near the Givat Assaf outpost. The IDF believes Hamas was behind both the Ofra and Givat Assaf attacks.
Police Detain Suspect After Man Wearing Keffiyeh Photographed Waving Machete Outside Los Angeles Synagogue
A suspect was arrested by North Hollywood police on Saturday after a man in a keffiyeh was photographed waving a machete in front of a sign outside a synagogue in the Los Angeles district on Friday.

The police are now seeking a warrant to search the man’s residence for any further information, a source within the community, who did not wish to be named due to the nature of the threat, told The Algemeiner. In the meantime, the suspect will remain in custody for 72 hours.

Images of the incident, which took place outside the Chabad of North Hollywood center, were circulated widely on social media over the weekend, leading to widespread concern.

“Obviously the image is very disturbing,” Rabbi Nachman Abend, the congregation’s spiritual leader, told KCAL 9. “A man with a sword standing in front of a synagogue with his face wrapped the way it was, is very concerning.”

The eerie photos, reminiscent of Islamic State propaganda videos, were captured by a local resident who caught sight of the man while on his way home from work at about 2:50 pm on Friday afternoon. The police arrived at the scene about 15 minutes later, the community source, who also witnessed the incident, told The Algemeiner, and used surveillance footage from the Chabad center to identify a vehicle used by the suspect and track him down.

“It looked like he was trying to make a public display, ‘let’s come after the Jewish people,’ very openly stating his hatred towards the Jews,” the witness said. “I was in total shock.”
Kentucky governor denies anti-Semitism in his attack on media’s Jewish donors
Kentucky’s governor denied his attack on a collaboration between a local newspaper and investigative journalism project ProPublica was anti-Semitic because he singled out Jewish funders of ProPublica.

Among the funders Republican Gov. Matt Bevin named are the founders of ProPublica, Herbert and Marion Sandler, who have given over a billion dollars to largely progressive philanthropic causes, and billionaire George Soros, a frequent target of anti-Semitic, right-wing conspiracy theories.

Bevin called him “George (I Hate America) Soros” in a video posted to YouTube on Wednesday blasting the partnership shortly after it was announced.

“This is the sad reality of the Courier-Journal, which pretends that it’s an actual news organization or a publication, is so remarkably biased they are now full in bed with this particular organization,” Bevin said in the video.

In a tweet in which he included the video, Bevin wrote: “OUTRAGEOUS. ProPublica, a left-wing activist group funded by the likes of George Soros, is now funding . . . ‘investigative reporting’ at the @courierjournal. Is this the future of journalism?”

ProPublica’s director, Richard Tofel, on Twitter suggested Bevin’s attack was “dog whistling anti-Semitism in which he can’t manage to use the word ‘Jewish.’”
Kindertransport survivors to receive compensation for 80th anniversary
An agreement has been negotiated between the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and the German government for child survivors to receive compensation payments for the 80th anniversary of the Kindertransport.

“Our team has never given up hope that the moment would come when we could make this historic announcement,” Julius Berman, president of the Claims Conference, announced on Monday.

The Kindertransport (German for “children’s transport”) was a rescue operation that brought to Great Britain more than 10,000 children Jewish children under the age of 17 from Nazi Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Free City of Danzig between December 1938 and the outbreak of World War II on September 1, 1939.

Following Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938, the situation of Jews in throughout the Third Reich worsened. An appeal was made to the prime minister of the United Kingdom, Neville Chamberlain, to allow unaccompanied Jewish children, without their parents, into Great Britain. Almost all of them – who were placed throughout Britain in homes, schools, and farms – were the only members of their families to survive the Holocaust.

“This payment comes at a time when we are commemorating 80 years since these children took their fateful journey from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to Great Britain,” said Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat, Claims Conference special negotiator. “After having to endure a life forever severed from their parents and families, no one can ever profess to make them whole; they are receiving a small measure of justice.”
Rona Ramon, widow of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, passes away at 54
Rona Ramon, widow of late Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon and the mother of late IAF pilot Assaf Ramon, passed away on Monday.

Ramon was married to the first Israeli astronaut who was killed in 2003 in the fatal Columbia mission alongside six other crew members.

Their son Assaf Ramon, who was a fighter pilot in the IAF, died in 2009 in a training accident.

Ramon passed away at age 54 after struggling with cancer.

President Reuven Rivlin honored her memory by saying "Ilan and Assaf touched the heavens, Rona touched our hearts."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed the deep sorrow he and his wife Sara felt at her passing, "Rona withstood heroically the death of her husband and her son Assaf, of blessed memory," he said.

"She fought cancer with the same heroism, we will always remember her and her amazing family," Netanyahu said.
Bon Jovi to ‘Post’ ahead of TA show: I wish I told my younger self to slow down
If Jon Bon Jovi could do it all over again, he’d slow things down a little bit.

But now, at age 56, the rocker is still operating at full speed, and just announced that Bon Jovi will be ending its “This House is Not For Sale Tour” with a concert in Tel Aviv’s Hayarkon Park on July 25.

“We toured relentlessly early in our career because we didn’t know any better,” Bon Jovi told The Jerusalem Post in a short email interview. “It really took its toll on all of us, and I wish someone had told us to slow down just a little bit. We’re older now and back to having fun on the road, so we made it out OK, but slowing down is something I’d encourage younger Jon to do.”

Two months after news of the band’s return to Israel leaked in the Hebrew media, the group has officially announced its return to Tel Aviv – three years after its first show there.

“Guess what? We’re coming back,” Bon Jovi said in a video announcing the upcoming show. “Looking forward to ending the tour in Israel, and celebrating the end of a wonderful tour. Get ready, we’ll see you July 25.”
Heavy metal group Mastodon announces concert in Israel
The Grammy-Award winning heavy metal band Mastodon will perform in Israel for the first time in February.

The group, made up of four members from Atlanta, Georgia, will take the stage at the Expo Tel Aviv Convention Center on February 20.

Mastodon has released seven studio albums and has been nominated for five Grammys, including Best Metal Performance for “Sultan’s Curse,” which it won earlier this year. The group’s best known songs include “Oblivion,” “The Motherload,” “Show Yourself” and “High Road.”

Israeli metal group Cain & Abel 90210 will open for Mastodon in Tel Aviv. The group is stopping in Israel after tour dates in the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Norway and more.
When James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke Saved a Life
Part of my former job as one of the producers for Carpool Karaoke was to drive behind James and communicate with the staff over a walkie-talkie. When we had the Red Hot Chili Peppers in the car with James, I told our staff to turn down a specific street in order to avoid some paparazzi. We typically use the same route each time, but this time I detoured us into a neighborhood called Hancock Park, a predominantly religious Jewish neighborhood in LA.

James wanted a quiet street so that he and the band members could get out and have a “dance battle.” As James and the band members got out to dance on the sidewalk, I noticed a religious Jewish woman come out from across the street yelling. She was panicking. I rolled down my window and heard her scream, “Please help! My baby can’t breathe! Someone please help!”

In a split second, James and the entire Red Hot Chili Peppers band ran across the street to the woman’s home. I told our camera crew to turn off the cameras because it was inappropriate to film. The woman was holding her baby who looked lifeless. The baby wasn’t breathing. James was calling 911 from his cell phone. Anthony Kiedis, one of the band members, told the woman that he could perform CPR on the baby. Kiedis wasn’t wearing a shirt and is covered in tattoos. I remember thinking to myself, “This Jewish woman has no idea who these celebrities are. Is this woman really going to hand over her baby?”

She didn’t even hesitate. She handed over her baby and Kiedis started performing CPR. He was rubbing the baby’s belly and eventually bubbles started coming out of the mouth. The baby started breathing! By that time, the ambulance had arrived and the paramedics took the baby and the mother with them. Our Carpool Karaoke crew drove away, stunned by what had just happened.

When I shared this story with my rabbi, Rabbi Yisroel Majeski, he was in shock. “Look how God runs the world! Carpool Karaoke is a huge a phenomenon and I bet God designed this entire show just to save this one baby’s life.”

That day while filming Carpool Karaoke, James Corden and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, specifically Anthony Kiedis, saved an entire world.
Patriots owner Robert Kraft attends Tree of Life services before game
New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft traveled to Pittsburgh ahead of his team’s game against the Steelers to visit the Tree of Life synagogue building and attend Shabbat services.

On Saturday morning Kraft visited the building in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood where 11 worshippers were killed in a shooting attack, called the deadliest attack on Jews in the United States.

After Kraft paid his respects at the site, he attended services at the nearby Rodef Shalom synagogue, where he was invited to speak. He told the congregation that as big as the Steelers-Patriots game is, attending services with Jews in Pittsburgh was even bigger to him, Aditi Kinkhabwala of NFL Network reported. She added that he spoke some Hebrew in his address.
Patriots’ Edelman to wear cleats to honor Pittsburgh synagogue victims
New England Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman will wear cleats with a Star of David during Sunday’s football game against Pittsburgh, to honor the victims of the last month’s deadly synagogue shooting in the city.

The cleats included the image of the logo of the Tree of Life synagogue where the shooting took place in October, as well as a Jewish star and the hashtag “STRONGERTHANHATE.”

Edelman, who is Jewish, tweeted out a photo of the cleats before his game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, including the names of all 11 victims in the attack.


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