Saturday, May 04, 2019
250 rockets fired at Israel; IDF bombs 120 Gaza sites, including attack tunnel
The Israel Defense Forces on Saturday bombed more than 120 targets in the Gaza Strip, including a cross-border attack tunnel, an underground rocket factory and a six-story building used by Hamas’s military intelligence, in response to the hundreds of rockets and mortar shells fired at southern Israel throughout the day, the army said.
The army said it was prepared to continue conducting airstrikes if the attacks from the Strip continue.
Terror groups in Gaza made similar threats, saying they were prepared to attack deeper into Israel, including toward the city of Beersheba, if the IDF continued its strikes on targets in the enclave.
The fresh exchange began on Friday evening when Palestinians in the Strip shot two soldiers on patrol near the border in southern Gaza. A male soldier was moderately wounded, and a female soldier was lightly hurt, the IDF said. In response, the Israeli military bombed a Hamas post, killing several of the terror group’s operatives.
On Saturday morning, terror groups in the Strip began launching rockets and mortar shells at Israel. As of Saturday night, over 250 projectiles had been fired, most of them at the towns closest to the Gaza border, but some reached as far as Rehovot and Ashdod. At least two Israeli civilians were wounded in the attacks.
In response, the military launched a series of strikes from air and land, hitting targets throughout the coastal enclave connected to Hamas, which rules Gaza, and the Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
200+ rockets rained down on the homes of Israeli families today. WATCH: pic.twitter.com/XZoqPabuQ6— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) May 4, 2019
RAW FOOTAGE: Incoming rocket fire from Gaza at Israeli civilians, as filmed by the Israeli civilians that Hamas is targeting. pic.twitter.com/Kz1d1KwCle— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) May 4, 2019
After 2 soldiers shot, IDF checks whether Gaza sniper targeted senior officer
The army was investigating the possibility that a Palestinian sniper targeted a senior Israel Defense Forces officer during riots on the Gaza border Friday.Attack tunnel discovered and destroyed as IDF strikes hit Gaza
The army’s Gaza division would conduct an investigation into the shooting, which injured two soldiers who were part of a patrol near the border in the southern Gaza Strip, the Walla news site reported.
One soldier was moderately wounded in the attack and a female soldier was lightly hurt, the IDF said. Both were evacuated by helicopter to the Soroka hospital in Beersheba. Media reports said the male soldier, an officer and a tracker, had a gunshot wound in the thigh, while the female soldier was hit by shrapnel.
In response to the shooting, an IDF aircraft attacked a nearby Hamas post, the army said.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said two people were killed in the strike and two others were wounded. The ministry identified the two killed as Abdullah Ibrahim Mahmoud Abu Salouh, 33 and Alaa Ali Hasan al-Boubli, 29.
Hamas, an Islamist terror group, confirmed the two men killed in the airstrike were members of its military wing and pledged to respond to what it called an “Israeli aggression.”
IDF tanks and helicopters began attacking terrorist targets belonging to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, managing to destroy a Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) attack tunnel entering Israel from the southern part of the strip, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit reported on Saturday.Gaza Factions Launch Dozens of Rockets at Israeli Territory
The tunnel was, until Saturday, under surveillance by the IDF. It was destroyed by fighter planes. The tunnel was dug by members of the PIJ in order to carry out a terror attack inside Israel. It was over 20 meters deep with several entrances.
"The resistance is always ready to respond to the crimes of the occupation," the Hamas Spokesperosn in Gaza said, while the Islamic Jihad claimed that "We are committed to protecting our people and to deter Israel at all costs and under all circumstances."
Islamic Jihad Deputy Khalil al-Hayya added that "There is no escape but that the occupation will be committed to understandings and to break the siege. The resistance has tools capable of forcing Israel to maintain the understandings reached."
The Islamic Jihad leader Baha Abu al-Ata was invited to Cairo and immediately left Gaza through the Rafah border crossing. Israel has threatened to kill Abu al-Ata more than once, since he is responsible for the launching of many rockets into Israeli territory.
Since the beginning of the weekend, five Palestinians have been killed according to Palestinian sources. The Gaza Health Ministry, however, reports that one was killed and nine injured.
Why the Gaza rocket fire? Because Hamas thinks Israel is vulnerable to extortion
At some point overnight Friday-Saturday, Hamas evidently decided to launch a controlled escalation of rocket fire into Israel. It began with rocket fire at Israeli communities near the Gaza border, continued north to Ashdod, and seems set to widen further, as of this writing, given that Beersheba has decided to open its municipal bomb shelters.Islamic Jihad threatens attacks on Dimona nuclear facility, Ben Gurion Airport
This escalation of violence is not solely in response to the deaths of two Hamas terrorists on the Gaza border Friday afternoon. Rather, it reflects the decision by the terror organization to try to gain from what it recognizes as a situation in which Israel can be pressured into significant concessions, most especially regarding the transfer of Qatari funds into the Gaza Strip.
Hamas is clearly prepared to take the risk of a still wider conflict, gambling that Israel desperately wants a ceasefire at this moment.
The next 10 days are going to be extremely complicated for Israel. The Gaza terror group smells blood.
In four days time, the State of Israel will mark Memorial Day and then Independence Day, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not want to be marking those occasions in the midst of a major escalation with Gaza. In 10 days time, the Palestinians will mark Nakba Day, the anniversary of what they consider the catastrophe that befell them with the establishment of the State of Israel, while Israel will be hosting the semi-finals of the Eurovision Song Contest. Huge numbers of people around the world will be turning their attention to Tel Aviv.
Hamas recognizes that given the imminent Eurovision festivities, it has a real opportunity to create pressure points and obtain significant concessions on the ground. In other words: to blackmail Israel.
The military wing of the Gaza-based Islamic Jihad terror group on Saturday released a video threatening rocket attacks on the nuclear facility in Dimona and other sensitive sites in Israel, amid continuous rocket fire from the enclave and IDF strikes in response.We can no longer hesitate on the Gaza Strip
The release of the video, which shows members of the Iran-backed group loading projectiles into a rocket launcher, comes amid a round of fighting between Israel and terror groups in the Gaza Strip.
In addition to the Dimona reactor, the video also shows footage of Ben Gurion Airport, the Ashdod port and refineries in the northern city of Haifa.
To this day, Israel has never acknowledged that it has a nuclear arsenal, produced at Dimona about 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Tel Aviv, instead maintaining a policy of “nuclear ambiguity” while vowing that it will not be the first to use nuclear weapons in the Middle East.
During the 2014 conflict between Hamas and Israel, terror groups from the Palestinian enclave targeted Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport, located 12 kilometers southeast of Tel Aviv, and briefly grounded flights.
The Haifa bay area is home to some of the heaviest industry in the country, and residents there have long feared an incident that could endanger the northern port city.
The video was released hours after the terror group threatened to disrupt the Eurovision Song Contest, due to take place in Tel Aviv between May 14 and May 18.
The new government will certainly seek to revert to its predecessor’s agenda. However, the time bomb that is Gaza requires a paradigm shift and its placement as a focal point of national decision-making.The New Wave in the IDF's Social Media Strategy
Eighteen years have passed since the start of the launch of “flying pipes” into Sderot. Since then Hamas has become an organized army with significant capabilities, operating in accordance with strategic objectives. In the offensive arena, it has set itself the goal of growing in strength in terms of its rocket capability in order to allow it to threaten to paralyze the routine of life in Israel. In the defensive arena, it aspires to deter Israel from a general confrontation because of the fear of the price in bloodshed that such a confrontation would claim.
Hamas is close to achieving its objectives. The freedom of action it exercises – from breaches of public order around the fence and through to the sporadic firing of rockets into the center of the country – indicates the confidence of its leaders in establishing a balance of terror vis-à-vis Israel. This is the result of our policy of suppressing the problem and treating Hamas as a tactical nuisance. This policy – whether or not it was right at the time – must change.
The Gaza Strip has long since been more than a tactical nuisance. The determination we demonstrate in demarcating red lines in the Syrian arena, where we do not overlook even random shooting toward the Golan Heights by the Iranians and their proxies, must also be expressed here. Hamas’s light finger on the rocket “trigger,” its proven ability to disrupt the routine of life in the country in the blink of an eye, and to paralyze air traffic – all sharpen the understanding that this threat has become unacceptable. It seriously erodes our deterrent power and causes cumulative attrition damage to an extent not even reached by the Iranians.
Deborah Lipstadt: Anti-Semitism Is Thriving in America
In truth, when it comes to anti-Semitism, the right and the left often find common ground. The far right talks about the federal government as ZOG, the Zionist Occupation Government; the left sees AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, as a behemoth of unbelievable proportions, driving American policy in ways that are antithetical to America’s best interests. This absence of a dividing line between left and right when it comes to anti-Semitism was evident when the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke clicked “like” on Representative Ilhan Omar’s tweet claiming that American support of Israel is “all about the Benjamins baby.”Mark Levin: How the New York Times has been complicit in the rise of anti-Semitism for almost a century
How can this hatred find such hospitable circumstance at diametrically opposed ends of the spectrum? Part of the answer lies in the ubiquitous nature of anti-Semitism. Jew hatred can best be compared to a herpes virus for which there is no cure. It is adaptable and thrives in a welcome environment. Anti-Semitism flourishes when anti-Semites feel emboldened and think that what they are doing will be welcomed and not looked upon askance. That is true of people on the right and the left.
Certainly the government must act, but in the interim, what can we as individuals do? Though it sounds prosaic, we must speak out against the rhetoric that gives rise to and eventually legitimizes such acts of hate. We must shame people who, though they may never, ever contemplate acting on their hate and prejudices, express Jew hatred. And, above all, we must be willing to criticize—directly and not gingerly—our political allies when they cross the line into anti-Semitism.
Acts of terror never begin with actions. They begin with words. We must place this kind of talk well outside the pale of legitimate discourse. There is nothing fine or legitimate about these views.
For the past seven decades, it has been shameful to be an open anti-Semite. We assumed that, after the Holocaust, the world recognized where anti-Semitic rhetoric can lead. We were wrong.
We must strive to banish open anti-Semitism so that we will no longer need armed guards screening worshippers as they enter their synagogues. (h/t Zvi)
Citing examples further outlined in his forthcoming book, “Unfreedom of the Press,” Levin explained how the newspaper’s complicity in anti-Semitism goes back to the days of the Third Reich, when the outlet “intentionally hid the news of the Holocaust in its back pages, when it even talked about it, which was rare.”
“The New York Times made it virtually impossible for the American people to know what was taking place in the early parts of the Third Reich, in the early parts of the Holocaust,” Levin concluded of the outlet’s reportage.
As further proof of the NYT’s anti-Semitic history, the best-selling author and former Reagan administration official criticized the outlet’s consistent anti-Israel bias in its coverage of armed conflicts between the Jewish state and terrorist groups, its coverage of the recent shooting at a southern California synagogue, and its treatment of blatant, repeated anti-Semitic comments from Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.
Levin began by reminding viewers of a recent anti-Semitic cartoon that the newspaper had to apologize for. The controversial illustration featured a blind President Donald Trump being led by a small seeing-eye dog bearing the face of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“That cartoon could have been in official Third Reich newspapers during Hitler’s reign,” Levin commented. “That’s how outrageous this is.”
“This is pure poison,” Levin added. “This is pure hate.”
The NYT's Anti-Semitism Isn't an Isolated Incident
National Review fellow Madeleine Kearns takes on the sinister mainstreaming of anti-Semitism, which has now appeared in the New York Times, the Democratic party, and the British Labour party.
David Collier: Back on the street, lies, the JW3 and bloody racists
Spring is here and the anti-Israel activists wake from hibernation, brush the dust from their racist banners and take to the streets once more. It is going to be a busy season. Over the coming weeks, several large anti-Israel demonstrations are planned. Just a few days ago, on Tuesday 30 April, a small but twisted demonstration took place outside the JW3, a key Jewish cultural centre in London.
It started with a lie
As is often the case, this anti-Jewish demonstration started with a lie.
For thousands of years, people have made up lies about Jews in order to stir up hatred against them. They’ve been blamed for everything, from deicide to spreading the plague. Most modern antisemitic falsehoods are told about Israel and its defence forces. Where once Jews were the baby-killers, now it is the IDF. In reality the majority of IDF forces are 18-21 year-old conscripted Israelis – just as British youth used to be conscripted. Thankfully, the British need for conscription has passed. The UK is an Island in a conflict free zone. The US is a massive nation far from its enemies. Israel is in a toxic neighbourhood. On its borders are some of the most dangerous radical Islamic ideologies on the planet. Israel needs conscription and the IDF protects Israel and saves lives.
Much of the information spread by anti-Israel activism is either an outright lie, entirely distorted or told completely out of context. These anti-Israel activists are spreading lies about Jews, just as antisemites always have done.
The call for a mass demonstration at the JW3
On Tuesday, there was an event held at JW3. It was part of ‘Seret UK‘. the Israeli film festival. Letters appeared in a local Camden newspaper, signed by a group called the ‘International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network’. The network is one of the twenty-five or so identities used by the fifteen or so active anti-Zionist Jews. The three signatures on the letter were Selma James, Michael Kalmanovitz and Sam Weinstein. The letter mistakenly argued the event was part of a recruitment drive by the IDF.
Gerry Downing, who has been expelled from the Labour Party, took it further:
Hen Mazzig: Imperialism, colonialism and oppression in the Middle East
Each year, on May 15, Palestinian activists around the world mourn the nakba (“catastrophe”), or the re-creation of the Jewish state, with fictitious stories of how the “white” Jewish Europeans came and colonized the land of the indigenous “brown” Palestinians.Israel's first Ethiopian-born woman Knesset member describes her journey
Lost in this debate over what did or didn’t happen to the Palestinians in their catastrophe are the stories of the tens of millions that suffered genocide, expulsions and forced assimilation (cultural genocide) under Arab and Turkish imperialism.
My family is Berber (Amazigh) Jews on my father’s side and Iraqi Jews on my mother’s. Both were expelled from their lands, and because of this persecution I came to learn about these largely untold stories. Over time I have learned that many other groups were persecuted, en masse, without any restitution or “right of return,” and that the global community was (and is) silent. Why the double standards? In the past 150 years, nakbas have occurred in North Africa, the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean.
The victims of these largely unknown genocides include: the Assyrians (300,000 from 1914-1920); Armenians (1.5 million from 1914-1923); Kurds (180,000 from 1986-1989); Greeks (750,000 from 1913-1920); Yazidis (10,000 in 2014 alone, other numbers unknown); and the Sudanese in Darfur (300,000 from 2003-2009).
The victims of expulsion and persecution leading to emigration include Lebanese Maronites (8 million to 14 million Lebanese in the diaspora, and 4 million in Lebanon); Assyrian Christians (15 million in the diaspora and in Syria); and the Armenians under the Turkish Empire (11 million in the diaspora today).
There there are the 850,000 Jews that were expelled or forced to flee North Africa and the Middle East, as well as the 1 million Copts that have left Egypt.
Where expulsions or emigration did not occur, widespread persecution did.
We sat down to get the skinny on MK Pnina Tamano-Shata – a lawyer, journalist, politician and proud member of the Ethiopian community – becoming the first Ethiopian-born woman MK in 2013 as part of Yesh Atid.Caroline Glick: Trump Is Right About the Muslim Brotherhood
Journey to Israel
“My earliest memory is from when I was just three years old, during the long journey my family embarked on from Ethiopia to Israel via Sudan in 1984. I remember so clearly the bowl of porridge we received in the refugee camp in Sudan, probably since it was one of the few times we had something real to eat during our journey, which many people didn’t survive.
“I also recall the night that was most critical for my family. Thousands of Jews were gathered at a specific meeting place in the middle of the desert, and there were trucks waiting to take us from the refugee camp to an Israeli airplane, which would fly us to Israel as part of Operation Moses. This was the first time I came into contact with IDF soldiers – they handed us bags with water, food and candy inside of them.
“My next memory, from when we were already in Israel, is one of overwhelming sadness that my mother and two sisters had remained back in the refugee camp in Ethiopia, since the truck they’d been riding in had broken down on the way to the plane. After surviving another year in the refugee camp, they were finally able to join us in Israel, and we were once again reunited. In my mind, my mother and sisters are my true heroes, and I am so proud of the way they supported one another through that difficult time.”
Absorption center
“The absorption center in Pardess Hanna was like a warm protective glove for us. It was there that we were exposed to all the beauty and warmth of Israeli society. People really took care of us.
“When I was in second grade, however, we moved to a community near Petah Tikva, and I was forced to deal with the tough reality of life on our own. All of a sudden, we had to fend for ourselves, without the help of counselors helping my parents to adjust to their new life in Israel. They didn’t speak any Hebrew, and had barely had time to begin adjusting to living in a Western country.
“And so at this young age, my siblings and I became the representatives of our family when dealing with the authorities: health fund, school, the welfare agencies, etc. I began to see how much my parents gave up by following their dream of moving to Israel, the land of our ancestors. Their faith in Judaism was so strong, and they’d yearned all their lives to finally reach the Promised Land.”
President Donald Trump reportedly intends to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization.Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinian Leaders and Inconvenient Truths
On its face, the move is inarguable. The Brotherhood is the religious foundation of Islamic terrorist groups al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas. It not only serves as their religious and ideological wellspring, but also cooperates with them on multiple levels, including financing their operations, whichamount to material support for terrorism on a massive scale.
So who can argue with designating the fount of all major Sunni Islamic terror groups a terrorist organization?
Well, the New York Times can. The Times opposes going after the mothership of Sunni Islamic terrorism because it is wedded to a notion that has failed demonstrably for 18 years.
The failed notion, which was embraced by both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, as well as by the European Union ,views terrorism as a standalone proposition. Terrorists, by this view, operate in isolation from their social and political milieu. Only the trigger-pullers are terrorists. Their support networks are peaceful.
The strategic concept at the root of the Bush-Obama perception of terrorism is that it is possible to separate the trigger-pullers from their environments by appeasing their supporters and spiritual guides. Once this happens, so the thinking goes, the trigger-pullers will put down their weapons.
In Europe, this strategy is implemented by making artificial distinctions between terrorists and their support networks. For instance, the EU insists that Hezbollah, the Lebanese legion of the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, has two branches: the political branch and the military one. The EU has banned the so-called military branch but allows the “political” branch to operate openly. Rather than moderating its positions, Hezbollah uses its open operations to facilitate terrorism in Europe as well as weapons procurement, while building cadres of supporters in the Muslim communities of Europe.
The Palestinian news agency evidently does not want Palestinians to know that their Arab brothers are refusing to help them financially. It appears, instead, to want the Palestinians to believe that Israel and the US are solely responsible for the financial crisis facing the Palestinian Authority government. In fact, this is how the Palestinian propaganda machine has long been functioning. This is the old Palestinian blame game: always make Israel or the U.S. appear responsible for the suffering you inflict on your own people.Palestinian with close ties to Trump administration launches new party
The Arab betrayal of the Palestinians is not new. Instead of supporting their Palestinian brothers, the Arab states have been cutting aid to them. According to one report, Arab financial aid to the Palestinians has dramatically dropped in the past two decades. Another report revealed that donations from the Arab world to the Palestinians has been slashed over the past few years by 50%. A mere quarter of the PA's 2017 budget of approximately $3.7 billion has come from Arab states, the report said.
The Palestinians are right to believe that the Arab world no longer cares about them and their problems. The Arab countries have their own problems, particularly financial ones. Most Arab countries seem sick of the Palestinians and see them as ungrateful, particularly after the PLO's support for Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait – one of several wealthy Arab countries that funded the Palestinians to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in the 70s and 80s.
The PLO's support for Saddam Hussein was a wake-up call for Kuwait and many Arab countries, who are now telling the Palestinians: "Here's some tough love: you spit in our faces, we cut off your allowance."
Like most Palestinians, Abbas is well aware that the Arab states are no longer willing to serve as a cash machine for ingrates. Under the current circumstances, the Palestinians are more likely to succeed in cajoling money from duped Western donors than from their loving brothers. From the Palestinian leaders' point of view, however, this is an inconvenient truth best hidden from their people.
In a bold move, a Palestinian businessman from Hebron announced over the weekend the establishment of a new party that calls for focusing on economic prosperity for Palestinians.Corbyn Attacks Finkelstein For Exposing His Anti-Semitic Book Endorsement
The founder of the party, called Reform and Development Party, is Ashraf Jabari, 45, who belongs to a prominent clan from Hebron.
Palestinian Authority officials claimed that Jabari is working with the US administration to undermine the PA. They said that the timing of the announcement of the new party was linked to US President Donald Trump’s upcoming plan for peace in the Middle East, also known as the “deal of the century.” The PA is strongly opposed to the plan on the pretext that it aims to “liquidate the Palestinian cause and national rights.”
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Jabari said that he has long been thinking of establishing a new party that would offer hope to Palestinians. “Three days ago, I launched my new party together with many people,” he said. “We’re not offering ourselves as an alternative to anyone. We just want to focus on the economy and ensure a better future for our people. The status quo can’t continue.”
Jabari, who previously worked for the Palestinian Authority security forces, said that his party’s platform supports the idea of a one-state solution “because the two-state solution is no longer viable.”
The Palestinians, he said, are anyway living under Israeli rule. “We are all living under Israeli military rule,” Jabari added. “Even the Palestinian Authority, which is a self-rule authority, is under Israeli control. The Palestinian Authority is not a state; rather, it’s a self-rule authority. Israel controls everything. The ID cards the Palestinians hold are written in Arabic and Hebrew. Besides, Israel has full control over the borders.”
Jeremy Corbyn has finally issued a detailed response to the revelation that he wrote a gushing foreword in praise of a deeply anti-Semitic book… by writing a letter to the Board of Deputies of British Jews attacking Danny Finkelstein for having dared to reveal it. True to form…In outrageous statement, Labour claims that by pointing out Jeremy Corbyn’s use of an antisemitic trope, CAA is reinforcing antisemitism
Corbyn dismisses the accusations of anti-Semitism against him as politically-motivated smears: “the latest in a series of equally ill-founded accusations of anti-Jewish racism that Labour’s political opponents have made against me”. He then goes on to attack The Times and Finkelstein himself:
“I note that the Hobson story was written by a Conservative Party peer in a newspaper whose editorial policy, and owner, have long been hostile to Labour.”
Strange how Corbyn passed up the opportunity to discuss his other views about exactly who has “unbelievably high levels of influence” over the media…
There isn’t even a hint of an apology in the letter, instead Corbyn says that he is “deeply saddened that the mischievous representation of my foreword to the book will have caused real stress in the Jewish community”. Newsflash for Corbyn: if there’s one thing that has the UK’s Jewish community seriously concerned – it’s him.
In an outrageous statement, Labour has claimed that it if you point out an antisemitic trope, that is reinforcing antisemitism. This statement sets a new low in Labour Party responses to accusations of antisemitism.
Labour was responding to the revelation yesterday that in 2009 Jeremy Corbyn authored an article in which he claimed that a decision by the BBC not to broadcast a 2009 appeal to send money to Gaza demonstrated the “unbelievably high levels of influence that Israel’s government appears to have in the upper echelons of parts of the media.” He also wrote that Israel has “control of US foreign policy.” The comments which appeared in an article that he wrote for the extreme-left Morning Star were exposed by investigative journalist Iggy Ostanin.
Responding to Mr Corbyn’s comments about media control, a spokesperson for the Labour Party said that: “The suggestion that Jeremy was talking about Jewish people, when he commented on the greater level of media influence the Israeli government has than the Palestinian leadership, is entirely false, and itself relies on a damaging antisemitic trope.”
The accusation of Jews controlling foreign policy and the media is one of the most well known antisemitic conspiracy theories. Under the International Definition of Antisemitism, “Making mendacious, dehumanising, demonising, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions” is antisemitic.
It is very clear to us that Mr Corbyn was deploying an antisemitic trope, and the Labour Party’s attempt to blame us for calling him out on it is appalling.
"A great tome"— The Mossad (@TheMossadIL) May 3, 2019
"Brilliant and very controversial at the time." pic.twitter.com/NJxXI4OBH1
Fourth arrest over internal Labour Party antisemitic hate dossier leaked to LBC, following report by CAA
A fourth arrest has been made after Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Chairman, Gideon Falter, called into an LBC phone-in with Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick and made a live-on-air police report of the antisemitic hate crimes detailed in a secret Labour Party dossier which had been leaked to LBC and reviewed by a former police Commander responsible for obsessing hate crime, Mak Chishty.Labour reportedly took ten days to start an investigation over Amanda Bishop’s call for members to march on her local synagogue
The latest arrest is of a 44-year-old man fron Newham was arrested this morning on suspicion of incitement to racial hatred, which is a very serious criminal offence.
This fourth arrest follows the arrest of two men in their 50s as well as a woman in her 70s, at the end of March, all also on suspicion of incitement to racial hatred, which is a very serious criminal offence. Those three are understood to have been expelled from the Labour Party after the Party learned on LBC that its secret dossier had been reported to the police by Campaign Against Antisemitism live on air.
The secret internal dossier contains over eighty pages of antisemitic hatred by Labour Party members, including numerous admissions of guilt, but the Labour Party kept the dossier secret, not even telling Jewish Labour MPs who were directly threatened within it. This is despite police considering threats to their safety to be so severe as to warrant special police protection.
The Labour Party reportedly took ten days to launch an investigation into a Party member, Amanda Bishop, who called for fellow activists to “march” on her local synagogue.‘Act Of Moral Illiteracy’: Code Pink Slammed For Defending Venezuela’s Maduro
Ms Bishop wrote in the Brighton and Hove Labour Party Facebook forum that: “We can’t allow this to go on. We need to march about this on the Synagogue in Hove, all of us members in Brighton.” Her call for direct action against the synagogue was in response to the suspension of Alexandrina Braithwaite, from the Brighton and Hove Labour branch, for sharing allegedly antisemitic posts on social media, which Ms Bishop felt was “bulls***”.
The Telegraph reported that Labour was forced to suspend Ms Braithwaite, who was also a council candidate in the upcoming elections, after the newspaper revealed that she had posted a web of online Rothschild and Israel conspiracy theories.
After Ms Bishop’s comments were uncovered, Labour sources reportedly confirmed that she had been suspended pending an investigation.
Code Pink faced backlash Thursday and Friday as the activist group holed up in the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, D.C., claiming to hold the territory for dictator Nicolas Maduro.Austrian police fine students for waving Israel flag at anti-BDS protest
“[Code Pink] is a harmless joke of an organization. But this LARPing at the Venezuelan embassy is mildly sinister. Millions of Venezuelans struggle for free and fair elections. And Code Pink defends Venezuela’s tyrant,” Bloomberg opinion columnist Eli Lake tweeted, “Call this stunt what it is, an act of moral illiteracy.”
The U.S. State Department ordered Venezuelan diplomats representing the Maduro regime to return to Venezuela, recognizing opposition leader Juan Guaido as the legitimate leader of the Venezuelan people — and Code Pink activists took over the vacated building, saying that they had permission from the “legitimate president” to stay there.
But because the U.S. officially recognizes Guaido as the interim president, for representatives of the unrecognized Maduro regime cannot legally reside within the Venezuelan embassy in Washington.
The State Department issued a statement Thursday calling for the protesters to vacate the building.
Police in Vienna, Austria fined four students €150 for waving an Israel flag at a protest against advocates of the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign (BDS) targeting the Jewish state.Cal Poly Campus Leaders Pass Anti-Discrimination Bill Praised by Jewish Students
A spokesperson for an organization that monitors antisemitism (Informations- und Beobachtingsstelle antisemitismus), who was at the protest in March, confirmed to The Jerusalem Post on Friday, that a police supervisor told the students the Israeli flag is a “provocation” and issued the activists a €150 fine.
“Once again there was a demonstration in Austria in which antisemitic slogans such as ‘child murderer Israel’ were present, said the spokesperson for monitoring group combating antisemitism.
The spokesperson added: “Unfortunately this is not the first and probably will not be the last incident of this kind,” noting “that a speaker was wearing a PFLP scarf at the rally in solidarity with an organization classified by the EU, among others, as a terrorist organization whose members carried out several terrorist attacks on Jews.”
The United States and European Union designated the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) a terrorist entity.
According to the spokesperson who documented the anti-Israel protest in March when the fine was issued,” the students held the Israel flag high and yelled ‘Long Live Israel.”
Student leaders at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo have adopted an anti-discrimination resolution that Jewish students said may help protect their community.Although it is removing bigots, Facebook says it will allow Holocaust denial
The “Freedom of Speech and Anti-Discrimination bylaw amendment” was introduced by seniors Noah Krigel and Aliza Herzberg and passed on Wednesday by Associated Students, Incorporated (ASI).
“Jewish students [are] concerned about the rise of antisemitism and anti-Zionism nationally… especially on college campuses, in addition to other forms of xenophobia and discrimination of marginalized communities at Cal Poly SLO,” stated Krigel and Herzberg, both members of the ASI Board of Directors for the College of Liberal Arts. They are also involved with the group Mustangs United for Israel, which is supported by CAMERA.
The bill bars ASI from engaging in discriminatory practice related to a number of protected categories, including race, religion and national origin or ancestry.
Students hope the latter categories will be particularly helpful if they ever confront the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign on campus, which has been denounced as discriminatory toward Jewish and Israeli people.
Facebook will still allow users to deny the Holocaust even though it removed prominent bigots and anti-Semites from its platform.Snoop Dogg Defends Louis Farrakhan Over Facebook Ban: ‘Ban Me Motherf*****’
The social media giant on Thursday deleted the personal, professional and fan accounts of some leading extremists and conspiracy theorists, including David Duke, Louis Farrakhan and Alex Jones. But in an April 9 letter, Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s vice president of global public policy, said the site would still allow users to “say things on Facebook that are wrong or inaccurate, even when they are offensive.”
The letter was obtained by Jewish Insider and published Thursday.
“We take down any content that celebrates, defends, or attempts to justify the Holocaust,” Kaplan wrote. “But we do not remove lies or content that is inaccurate — whether it’s denying the Holocaust, the Armenian massacre, or the fact that the Syrian government has killed hundreds of thousands of its own people.”
Last year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated the same policy.
“I’m Jewish, and there’s a set of people who deny that the Holocaust happened,” he told the tech news site Recode. “I find that deeply offensive. But at the end of the day, I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong”
Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency at the time that Facebook should not allow denial claims.
“Freedom of the press means the press should be free of governmental control,” she wrote in an email. “It does not mean that the press or social media platforms have to provide space for deniers.”
Following the banning of several controversial figures from Facebook and Instagram, rapper Snoop Dogg voiced his opposition to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan being removed from the platforms.New York Times Confronted at Shareholders Meeting for Racism, Antisemitism
“So Facebook and Instagram just banned Minister Louis Farrakhan. I want to know for what. All he ever did was tell the truth. But y’all are going to ban him though. Alright, what if we ban y’all?” Snoop Dogg said in a video posted on Instagram (which is owned by Facebook, Inc.)
“What if we stop f****** with y’all, Facebook and Instagram? How the f*** y’all going to ban Minister Louis Farrakhan for putting truth out there? I stand with him, I’m with him. Ban me motherf*****," he continued.
Snoop added that he plans on continuing to post Farrakhan’s content.
“F*** y’all that got a problem with him. Sorry about that Minister, I had to— I had to bang for you. I know you don’t permit that. But that ain’t right. It’s not right. There is a bunch of motherf*****s that y’all could ban but y’all choose Minister Louis Farrakhan,” Snoop Dogg concluded.
Snoop later posted again, encouraging his 31 million followers to also share Farrakhan’s content.
Justin Danhof, general counsel for the National Center for Public Policy Research, joined Friday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow to describe his observations when he questioned the New York Times‘s board of directors about what he described as the news media outlet’s “anti-white,” “antisemitic,” and “anti-conservative” biases during a Thursday shareholder meeting.
Danhof reflected on the New York Times’ publication of what he said was an “extremely antisemitic cartoon” framing President Donald Trump as a blind man being led by a seeing-eye dog with the profile of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The imagery was vile,” determined Danhof. “Initially, when the Times was called out on this, they didn’t even apologize. They just issued some bland statement, and then when the backlash got super-fierce, they did apologize and they pulled down the cartoon.”
Danhof recalled, “My whole premise at the shareholder meeting when I confronted A.G. Sulzberger — the publisher of the Times — over this was: It wasn’t a one-off. It wasn’t a mistake. It was an inevitable result of the ethos that lives within the New York Times.”
Danhof described the demeanor of the New York Times‘s executive board members during the shareholder meeting.
What's that, @Guardian? No mention of rising Islamism in Gaza and Bethlehem resulting in the dwindling number of Christians remaining?— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 3, 2019
Christians are fleeing for the same reason they are fleeing Iraq, Egypt and Syria: the rise of Islamic intolerance, intimidation and violence. pic.twitter.com/Lyu0PPCnnl
Vienna school finds out what became of the 50 Jewish pupils it expelled in 1938
In fact, Schneider said, the results of the survey in Austria are similar to those in recent surveys that the Claims Conference commissioned in the United States (April 2018) and Canada (January 2019). He said they share an “appalling lack of knowledge, and a tremendous commitment to the importance of Holocaust education.”Instagram account memorializing Holocaust victim reaches over 120 million views
Changing the record
It was just such a commitment that inspired Katharina Fersterer, a history and English teacher at the Gymnasium Kundmanngasse.
Fersterer, 29, had long been interested in Holocaust history. Austria’s Ministry of Education sent her to a summer program at Yad Vashem two years ago, and she returned determined to add to her school’s historical record in time for its 150th anniversary this year.
“My principal said, ‘Yes, let’s do this,’” Fersterer recalled.
Her students found the names of 50 Jewish students forced to leave the school in April 1938, shortly after Germany annexed Austria.
“But we didn’t stop at that. We wanted to know what happened to them,” Fersterer said.
It turned out that most of the former Jewish students had been able to escape Nazi-occupied Austria via the Kinderstransport, a rescue operation that brought Jewish children from Germany, Austria and then-Czechoslovakia to England in 1938-39.
“But some were also killed in concentration camps,” she said.
The students started looking for descendants of the survivors. Ultimately the project, including art and video, involved teachers and students in other departments.
An Instagram account that brings to life the diary of a young Holocaust victim garnered more than 120 million views in just over 24 hours, earning praise for its ability to bring the horrors of the Holocaust to a new generation of social media-savvy millennials at a time when the numbers of survivors are dwindling.Actress in Viral Instagram Story About Holocaust Says She Was ‘Honored’ to Play Auschwitz Victim Eva Heyman
Launched to coincide with Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day on Wednesday evening, Eva.Stories chronicles the downward spiral of 13-year-old Eva Heyman’s life in the spring of 1944 when the Nazis conquered Hungary.
The series of 70 Instagram stories created by tech guru Mati Kochavi and his daughter Maya are based on the diary left behind by Eva that the Kochavis worked into a screenplay for the project.
The account has drawn over 1.3 million followers with 50 percent of the people viewing it being between the ages of 13-30, according to the Globes business daily. Just three million of the first 100 million viewers were from Israel, demonstrating the project’s success in reaching audiences around the world.
A young actress opened up about playing the lead role in a viral Instagram project about the Holocaust that launched on Wednesday to coincide with Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel.
Mia Quiney said she felt “so honored” to play the role of Jewish teenager Eva Heyman in a series of Instagram stories posted on the fictional account Eva.Stories that tried to show the Nazi occupation of Hungary through the firsthand account of a teenage girl who would have had Instagram at the time. She added, “It’s such an amazing project that means so much to me.”
The project is based on a diary kept by Heyman, who lived in Hungary and was killed in the gas chambers in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. She started writing her journal on her 13th birthday, on February 13, 1944, and her last entry was one day before she was deported with her grandparents to Auschwitz. Her mother and stepfather escaped deportation that same day and survived the rest of the war.
Eva.Stories was created and funded by Israeli high-tech entrepreneur Mati Kochavi and his daughter, Maya, in commemoration of the six million Jews who were killed in the Holocaust.
Heyman’s diary entries were adapted into a screenplay and filmed in Lviv, Ukraine, with the assistance of about 400 actors, extras and production assistants, according to Ynet. The Kochavis said the project cost several million dollars to produce, The New York Times reported.
