Tuesday, July 09, 2019
Prof. Phyllis Chesler: The politically correct Quran
And then—out of nowhere, the magazine also hopes that “Judaism Will Decolonize Itself.” This entry was written by a Black Jew, Professor Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, whose black maternal ancestors were “enslaved in Barbados,” and whose father was a Russian Jew. On Twitter, she identifies as “queer and black” but not as Jewish. Prescod-Weinstein, a theoretical physicist, writes: “Jews need to engage in deep conversations about the very idea that we’re entitled to a homeland. The Israeli government denies Palestinian people the right to live or be there and has made very clear that Jewish people are to be treated as first-class, which of course means there are second-class citizens. That does not make a democracy. ....But also, let’s remove the borders around gender...If we decolonize ourselves from what we have been taught, adapted, miscarried under imperial and colonial rule—we can be free.”The Anti-Semitic Propaganda Blaming Jews for Police Brutality in the U.S.
No mention of the Torah, the Talmud, rabbinic learning, Jewish intellectuals, Israel’s—and Israeli’s—great accomplishments, Israel's historical, religious and legal rights, Israel’s granting of asylum to Palestinians in flight from persecution in Gaza or on the 'West Bank' because they are homosexuals—and, of course, no mention of the ceaseless pogroms or the Shoah that made a return to our homeland a matter of existential survival.
Even more outrageous, this anti-Israel “decolonizing” propaganda is paired with the following: “Islam Will Return to its True Nature by Centering Justice.” It is written by the Organizers of Masjid Al-Rabia Muslim Community Center in Chicago, a gay and transgender friendly mosque founded by Mahdia Lynn, a “white bisexual transgender Muslim activist” who is shown wearing hijab. S/he states that “the role of imperialism in Islam” meant that “Christian Crusaders invaded Muslim lands and castigated the “permissive attitudes towards gender expression and homosexuality” that characterized Islam.
Has this author ever read the Qu’ran? Or the history of Islam from the 7th century until the Crusades began in 1095, three or four centuries later—after Muslims had killed an untold number of Christians and taken over or destroyed their churches.
Finally, the Chicago mosque organizers state: “Islam is a framework by which one can lead a better life.”
And Judaism is not?
The penetration of the gay movements by pro-Palestine propaganda has borne poisonous fruit. And please be advised: These marches are not feminist. The issues chanted, the banners held aloft, do not focus on abortion under siege, the equal rights amendment, or violence against biologically born women. It is pro-surrogacy and pro-prostitution which is not the view of abolitionist feminists who are themselves under siege and who are often viewed as “transphobic” for criticizing the physical violence against them by transgender activists who want no feminist analysis to limit them in any way.
Maybe, in a sense, all these Pride Marches are Odes to the Eternal Feminine, whereas many feminists are those who have demanded the right to make choices.
Beginning in 2017, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)—an anti-Israel group that is neither for peace nor especially Jewish in its membership—launched its “Deadly Exchange” campaign, which takes the fact that some American police departments have visited Israel to meet with law-enforcement agents there as evidence that Israelis are training U.S. police officers to commit unnecessary shootings and other abuses, especially against racial minorities. In reality, these visits, many of which are arranged by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), are used to study Israeli strategies for dealing with terrorism and mass-casualty situations. Miriam Elman describes JVP’s insidious logic:
Heavily promoted today by a host of U.S.-based anti-Israel organizations, the “Deadly Exchange” campaign . . . traffics in tropes about Jewish power in order to accuse Israel and Jewish American organizations of conspiring to encourage police brutality and increased deportation and imprisonment rates of American people of color. It follows that if you care about social-justice issues like policing problems and prison reform or the Black Lives Matter movement, then you must also revile Israel and detest its supporters, who now stand accused of complicity in the suffering of American blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans. . . . .
Racial issues in the U.S. unrelated to Israel have long been hijacked by BDS activists keen on turning them against Israel, and for years prominent progressive activists have been blaming Israel for police shootings of African Americans. . . . JVP’s innovation was to package that patently false [account] into a full-blown campaign that turns American Zionists into co-conspirators with Israel in some nefarious mission to hurt their fellow Americans. . . .
City councils are being aggressively lobbied by activists promoting the campaign, and at least one municipality—Durham, North Carolina—has now aligned its policing policy with the Deadly Exchange agenda. . . .
Israel Advocacy Movement: Debating Labour Antisemitism with David Collier, Joseph Cohen and Dipak Rajgor at London PalExpo
We spoke to Dipak Rajgor, the anti-racist who can't stop being racist, at the London PalExpo 2019.
Dipak: Antisemitism is a concern for any good decent human being
A few minutes later...
Dipak: Jews control the police 🤪
You need to watch this debate.
US puts Hezbollah lawmakers on sanctions blacklist for first time
The US Treasury placed two Hezbollah members of Lebanon’s parliament on its sanctions blacklist on Tuesday — the first time Washington has taken aim at the Iran-allied terror group’s elected politicians.Israel Pushes Back on U.S. Report on Religious Freedom
The Treasury named MPs Amin Sherri and Mohammed Hasan Raad to a terror-related blacklist, saying that Hezbollah uses its parliamentary power to advance its violent activities.
Also placed on the blacklist was Wafiq Safa, a top Hezbollah official close to Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah.
“Hezbollah uses its operatives in Lebanon’s parliament to manipulate institutions in support of the terrorist group’s financial and security interests, and to bolster Iran’s malign activities,” said Sigal Mandelker, Under Secretary of Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.
The move came as the US steps up pressure on Iran and its proxies in the Middle East, including close ally Hezbollah.
It was the first time the US Treasury had placed Hezbollah lawmakers on its blacklist, which forbid US individuals and businesses with a US branch — including leading international banks — from doing business with those sanctioned.
A Foreign Ministry official on Monday pooh-poohed an annual US State Department report on religious freedom in Israel, in a gentle rebuke of Washington’s assessment of the Jewish state’s policies in 2018 governing its Jewish majority and Christian, Muslim, Druze and other minorities.Iraqi Jew tells her story to Irish newspaper
The State Department report “doesn’t always get it completely right because the US system and the Israeli system are so different,” said the Foreign Ministry’s Akiva Tor on Monday, addressing a round-table discussion on the report hosted by the Israel Democracy Institute think tank and attended by the US embassy’s Curtis Ried.
Tor, however, later expressed satisfaction with the document and Israel’s efforts to influence it.
The State Department report on freedom of religion around the world, released on June 21, is a roundup of government policies impinging on religious freedoms in the previous year. The informational summary on Israel, with its dozens of examples, implicitly criticizes the state’s handling of the issue, though it refrains from outright condemnation.
The examples in the report include the Chief Rabbinate’s exclusive control over marriage, divorce, and burials for Jews, and the Orthodox prayer arrangements at the main Western Wall plaza; the status quo arrangement on the Temple Mount and Israeli security measures at the holy site in response to violence, which were accused of hindering Muslim worship; and alleged police violence against Christian leaders and selective taxation of churches.
“Because religious and national identities were often closely linked, it was often difficult to categorize many incidents as being solely based on religious identity,” the report concedes, including so-called price tag attacks against Palestinians, the ultra-Orthodox anti-IDF enlistment rallies, an ongoing land dispute between Jewish and Bedouin residents of the Negev, and denial of Israeli residency status to the spouses of non-Jewish Iranians, Iraqis, Syrians, Lebanese, and West Bank and Gazan Palestinians, as examples under the umbrella of religious freedom.
For the first time, the readership of the Irish Catholic, not known for their sympathy to Jews or Israel, have been given the opportunity to learn about the tragic story of the Iraqi Jews. Aida Phelops, who was two when her family escaped Iraq, gives voice to a history that has been silenced:Warren I Would Push Israel to 'End Occupation' of Palestinians
Ms Phelops, who left Baghdad with her family at just two years old, has lived in the UK as well as Israel and has now been living in West Cork for over 11 years. In the last couple of years, she became an Irish Citizen and sees herself as an Irish Iraqi Jew.
“Growing up in the UK as an Iraqi Jew was very frustrating,” Ms Phelops said. “People would know I was Jewish and then, when they would hear where I was born, the question I always got was, ‘well, how can you be an Arab and a Jew?’” “I wasn’t Aida anymore,” she explained. “I became a political subject. It became so annoying that I used to lie.”
However, nearly 80 years after the Farhud pogrom, she still feels justice has eluded her people. “The older I’ve gotten the more I’ve wanted justice, not just for the Iraqi Jews but for all the Arab Jews.”
Throughout history, the story of the Iraqi and Arab Jews has gone mainly untold, and while parts of the timeline align with the Holocaust, Ms Phelops feels there is rarely a balanced representation of the persecution of the Jews in Arab states and their unique, long-term struggles.
2020 hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) told activists at an event Monday that she supported pressuring Israel to, in their words, "end occupation" of Palestinian territories.
In a video posted by the left-wing Jewish group IfNotNow on Twitter, two of its activists approached Warren for a picture—she poses for photos with anyone who wants them after campaign events—and introduced themselves as American Jews with a proposition for her.
"We really love the way you're fighting corruption. We'd really love it if you also pushed the Israeli government to end occupation," one of the activists said.
"Yes, yes. So I'm there," Warren said quickly.
Warren then took a picture with the two activists.
Warren's campaign did not respond to a request for comment about her stance on the conflict.
BREAKING: Our members in New Hampshire just asked @ewarren if she would commit to pressuring the Israel to stop their 52 year military Occupation over the Palestinian people.
— IfNotNow🔥 (@IfNotNowOrg) July 8, 2019
She said YES. pic.twitter.com/8GLhNMQ2gf
Warren Staffer Draws Criticism for Anti-Israel Tweet
Berger, who identifies himself as a Justice Democrat, is no stranger to controversy when it comes to Israel. He is the cofounder of the far left group IfNotNow, alongside Simone Zimmerman, the infamous Bernie Sanders Jewish outreach director forced to resign over an expletive-laden Facebook post condemning Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. IfNotNow routinely criticizes Israel and accuses it of crimes in the Palestinian territories.i24: IfNotNow on Swaying 2020 Policy About Israeli Occupation
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which combats anti-Semitism, told the Free Beacon that Warren must immediately distance herself from Berger and his comments.
"Anyone who wants to be friendly with Hamas has no business being in a presidential campaign," Cooper said. "It's very straightforward."
"If that's the message that Elizabeth Warren wants to send to Jewish progressives and the rest of the American Jewish community, that the person she put in charge of outreach wants to be friends with Hamas, no way," Cooper said, adding that he finds it hard to believe Warren would be comfortable knowing one of her staffers has engaged in such rhetoric. "She's going to have to deal with this right now."
During his time as an anti-Israel provocateur, Berger "was arrested with fellow IfNotNow (INN) activists for occupying and refusing to leave the lobby of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (Conference of Presidents) building in New York City," according to the watchdog website Canary Mission, which documents the activities of anti-Israel activists across the country.
"Berger has spread hatred of Israel, protested against the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), demonized pro-Israel American Jews and promoted INN-organized ‘Liberation Seders," according to the website's cache of information on Berger. "He has also defended anti-Israel agitators and supported the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement."
Ami Kaufman in studio with with founding member of IfNotNow's, Emily Mayer and Executive Director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, Halie Soifer.
New PAC established to back pro-Israel Democrats
A political action committee to back pro-Israel Democratic candidates has been established by the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI), the Jewish Insider reported on Wednesday.Ron Dermer: New York Times Editorials Against Antisemitism Have No Credibility
The PAC aims at strengthening incumbent members of Congress who are challenged over their pro-Israel position in the primaries.
“The overwhelming majority of elected Democrats are pro-Israel and we intend to keep it that way, there is a small group of outliers who are trying to change that and we are here to do battle with them,” Mark Mellman, the group’s leader, told Jewish Insider, adding that they had not decided which races it would be active in.
According to the report, the PAC has not solicited contributions yet, but several people have already pledged to donate to it.
The group aims to establish itself as a significant player in the 2020 elections.
“We know a lot of our champions being threatened around the country and we know some of those races are going to be serious races,” Mellman further said.
The New York Times‘ “attempts to demonize Israel” have amplified antisemitism, said Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., in an interview published last Tuesday on Mark Levin’s eponymous radio show.Ilhan Omar Admits Lying to High School Students
Dermer characterized the New York Times‘ ostensible opposition to antisemitism as lacking credibility given the news media outlet’s hostility towards Jewish independence via statehood in Israel.
Dermer said:
The New York Times will sometimes write against — they’ll do an editorial — against antisemitism. As if, if you’re going to demonize the one and only Jewish state week after week, month after month, year after year, and not expect that to lead to an increase in antisemitism, they’re kidding themselves.
The New York Times is a paper that calls on political leaders to not contribute to a climate of hate. What have they done for Israel? I don’t think that they have fully come to grips with how they have contributed so much to the problem.
They have a very problematic history when it comes to covering Jewish issues. There’s a big story there, people know — some people don’t, maybe your listeners know — how the Times buried the Holocaust. So this is not something new for the Times. I think it has gotten to, it’s become more and more extreme.
“[The New York Times] attempts to demonize Israel week after week after week after week,” added Dermer. “It’s not something that’s new. It didn’t start today. It didn’t start with President Trump, or even President Obama. It’s been going on for a long time with the Times‘s coverage of Israel, and its attempt to demonize Israel.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) admitted to flubbing the facts of an anecdote she told a large group of students to illustrate the "racism, cruelty, and injustice" she's seen in America since being accepted as a refugee more than two decades ago.
The freshman representative told 400 high school students she was sent to a Minneapolis courtroom where she witnessed a "sweet, old … African American lady" who spent the weekend in jail for stealing a $2 loaf of bread to feed her "starving 5-year-old granddaughter," according to the Washington Post. Omar says she screamed "Bullshit!" in the court room after the woman was fined $80 for the crime.
"I couldn’t control my emotions," Omar told the crowd, "because I couldn’t understand how a roomful of educated adults could do something so unjust."
The Post had several pieces of evidence indicating Omar was not entirely truthful about this experience.
"Omar’s story echoed the plot of ‘Les Miserables.' If true, it is also probably embellished," wrote Greg Jaffe and Souad Mekhennet, the author's of the Post‘s article. (h/t IsaacStorm)
You'll never guess what word is missing from this puff piece on Ilhan Omar (actually you'll probably guess it right away) https://t.co/OaoiRDdw23
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) July 8, 2019
And then partway through the Washington Post's puff piece about a Somali-American family they HIT YOU WITH THIS pic.twitter.com/IadxqVYtMg
— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) July 9, 2019
Petition to Israel's Knesset: Impeach Yousef Jabereen now!
Youseff Jabereen must be charged with spreading sedition and treason.
Below is the petition I sent to Israeli Knesset members following the disgraceful conduct of KM Youseff Jabereen in London where he called for a massive uprising against Israel and international boycotts against the country in whose legislature he serves.
When a Member of Israel's Knesset goes abroad and publicly tells an audience and the international community to boycott Israel that is sedition.
And when he adds to that a call for an uprising isn't that treason added to his sedition against the state he represents?
As an Israeli law-maker, you should be made aware of the crimes against the state perpetrated by Youseff Jabereen, and take steps to have him removed from our legislative body, the Knesset.
MK Yousef Jabareen (Hadash) publicly called for a boycott of Israel in remarks he gave at the anti-Israel Palestine Expo event that took place in London 0n 8 July.
“The international community has all the tools to deal with war crimes,” Jabareen said. “To boycott settlers, to boycott settlement products, to boycott international companies – and there are a lot of these – that deal with expanding the settlements.”
He also called for a massive uprising.
" I want to be frank here and say that there needs to a more mass mobilization of our people on the ground, in Gaza but also in the West Bank,” Jabareen said.
https://t.co/4qYem9mQeT Gideon Levy at PalExpo: ‘Corbyn is a victim of a systematic campaign’
— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) July 8, 2019
Exposing Labour MP cowardice
Lord Falconer is a former senior Labour minister. He stated recently that there are probably thousands of antisemites in the Labour Party. This is the first time that a number of this magnitude is mentioned by a prominent Labourite. Falconer also introduced the ‘Pete Willsman acid test: "I said 14 days ago that it would be an acid test of the Labour Party’s disciplinary process whether it dealt with the Pete Willsman case within 14 days. The 14 days are up today.” Falconer concluded that the party had failed the test. Willsman, a member of the party’s National Executive Committeel had claimed that the allegations of antisemitism in the Labour Party were total lies. He had said: “One of these things about antisemitism is that they’re using that to whip people up. They’ll use anything – any lies. It’s all total lies and they just whip it up.’ (…)"Three UK Labour members quit party due to antisemitism controversy
Falconer wrote: “If Pete Willsman remains a member of the NEC it is impossible to see how any Jewish person could have confidence complaints of antisemitism …would be dealt with properly by the Labour Party when they are happy to tolerate as a member of their ruling body someone who regards most of the complaints of antisemitism as lies." Falconer had intended to conduct his own investigation inot antisemitism in Labour before the EHRC announced its inquiry.
Another former Labour Minister, Lord Hain published a 3000 word statement together with Daniel Levy, a former advisor to Israeli Labour prime ministers. They wrote that the antisemitism crisis of Labour has led “to empower apologists for totally unacceptable Israeli government attacks on Palestinians and the steady throttling of their rights – allowing those apologists to scale new heights in their dishonest attempts to label criticism of such Israeli policy as ‘antisemitic.” Hain and Levy argue that is legitimate to challenge Zionism and question whether a two state solution still remains the best route to peace.
It is clear that the authors think that by acknowledging the antisemitism within Labour, they can justify their attack on Israel. Not explicitly mentioning the Palestinian Authority’s financial rewards for those who murder Israelis and Hamas’ calls for genocide of Jews fit indeed the attitude of Labour’s current leaders.
The above is just a small selection of in Labour’s multiple new interactions with antisemitism. At the pace they come many new developments are likely in the coming weeks.
Member of the British Parliament and former general secretary of the Labour party Lord David Triesman resigned from the party on Tuesday due to "institutional antisemitism," according to BBC Newsnight.Baroness Tonge Pilloried at House of Lords Session She Initiated on Israel’s Treatment of Palestinian Children
Soon after, former Labour Health Minister Lord Ara Darzi and Former President of the Royal College of Physicians and Labour Peer Lord Leslie Arnold Turnberg confirmed that they too were resigning from the party, BBC Newsnight reported.
"As an Armenian survivor of the Armenian genocide, I have zero tolerance to antisemitism, Islamophobic or any other discrimination against religion or race," said Darzi, explaining his decision. He will now sit as an independent in the British parliament. Darzisaid that his decision had "not been taken lightly."
"We may one day be the party of anti-racism once again but it certainly isn't today," wrote Triesman in his resignation letter.
Triesman described the resignation as "a painful decision arrived at with great sadness...But the decision has become inevitable."
"My sad conclusion is that the Labour Party is very plainly institutionally antisemitic, and its leader and his circle are antisemitic having never once made the right judgement call about an issue reflecting deep prejudice," wrote Triesman. "The number of examples is shocking."
"Day by day, the extent and depth of antisemitism become clearer in the top leadership and the National Executive Committee," continued Triesman in his resignation letter. "Antisemites are shielded and solid and serious Party members are thrown out unceremoniously. Each new manifestation is followed by a grim parade of social media messages directed at Jewish Party members. The experience of life in the Party has become sickening."
Pro-Israel Lords then struck back at Tonge, with Baroness Ruth Deech asking if the minister would “equally disapprove of the way that Hamas uses children.”Guardian publishes pro-Corbyn letter whose signatories include anti-Semites (Update)
“In Gaza recently, children were given a day off school, they were bused to the fence, they were bribed, they were used as human shields, they’ve been used as suicide bombers, and rockets are deliberately placed in kindergartens,” Deech pointed out.
“Does the blame not equally lie, if not more so, with Hamas?” she asked.
Ahmad replied that Hamas’ exploitation of children was “to be condemned” and “cannot continue.”
He added, “Hamas must recognize Israel. Let’s get the right to exist for everyone in the region.”
Lord Ian Livingston also rose to Israel’s defense, saying, “Whilst the Israeli Defense Forces are not perfect, the obsession of focusing on them despite being the most moral and professional army in the Middle East is very strange.”
“At the same time, one has to also focus on the issue of, for example, the Palestinian authorities having more than 30 schools named after terrorists who murdered Israelis,” he continued.
In response, Ahmad sidestepped the issue, simply saying that “Israel has a right to self-defense” and calling for Hamas to “stop firing rockets into Israel.”
“If there is a life lost on the Israeli side or a life lost on the Palestinian side, I think we are equally appalled,” he asserted.
The letter (Jewish support for Chris Williamson, July 8) repeats the familiar smear that the real aim of Jews and others who accuse Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters of antisemitism is to undermine the Labour party’s leadership and “all pro-Palestinian members” – a version of what’s known as the Livingstone Formulation. This term, coined by Professor David Hirsh, refers to a line of argument insisting that Jews raise the issue of antisemitism cynically and dishonestly in order to silence criticism of Israel.
The full list of signatories to the letter includes extreme (non-British) anti-Israel, pro-terrorist voices such as Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, antisemitic conspiracy theorist Richard Falk, and anti-Zionist British Jews who’ve been expelled from Labour for antisemitism, such as Tony Greenstein and Jackie Walker.
Most notably, it also includes hardcore anti-Semites, such as Michael Morgan (though his name was subsequently deleted from the list) and Elleanne Green – neither of whom, by the way, are Jewish.
As many no doubt recall, Green is the founder and administrator of the now infamous pro-Corbyn antisemitic Facebook group “Palestine Live”. In addition to the anti-Jewish hate (including Holocaust denial) found on the Facebook group she administers, research by David Collier and Campaign Against Antisemitism revealed that Green has used the group to personally express antisemitic beliefs and disseminate (or ‘like’) extreme antisemitic material and conspiracy theories – including at least one neo-Nazi article.
Whilst it’s not uncommon for the Guardian to publish op-eds and letters about Israel and antisemitism by Jews who represent a minuscule anti-Zionist fringe within the community, the extremism of many of these signatories is especially troubling.
Though the Guardian occasionally acknowledges – albeit perfunctorily – the profound fears of the Jewish community amidst a Labour Party that has become institutionally antisemitic, their editorial decisions more often than not suggest an ideological inclination to legitimise those racist voices within the hard left who believe the entire row is some sort of anti-Corbyn plot hatched by ‘Zionists’.
UPDATE 1: See a scathing editorial by the Jewish Chronicle about the Guardian letter
here, and a statement by the Board of Deputies here.
UPDATE 2: At some point after our post, the letter was deleted from the Guardian’s site “pending investigation”.
The Guardian proving once again that @UKLabour isn’t the only institutionally antisemitic organisation on the British Left:
— Euan Philipps (@EuanPhilipps) July 8, 2019
‘Jewish support for Chris Williamson’#LabourAntisemitism @guardian @KathViner https://t.co/JsCz3XBun7
Shameful “Jewish Support for Chris Williamson”, letter published in the @Guardian has been removed from the website following a public backlash.
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) July 9, 2019
Several mentioned are not Jews at all, some are unequivocally antisemites, some spew neo-Nazi hate, others defend antisemites. Vile. pic.twitter.com/Vrw7YFR2Mj
European association said to nix Jerusalem conference, fearing BDS pressure
In a first-of-its-kind incident, a European academic association has reportedly canceled a planned conference in Israel due to fear that it will come under pressure from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.
Two weeks after the European Network for Mental Health Service Evaluation (ENMESH) last month concluded its 2019 meeting with a decision to hold its next biennial conference in Jerusalem in 2021, the chairman of its executive committee unilaterally canceled that resolution, Haaretz reported Sunday.
In a letter sent to board members, Mike Slade said his decision came after several members complained about the location, and that he was trying to preempt the resulting outcry from boycott supporters, the report said, citing sources who had read the letter.
Had he gone forward with the plans to hold the next conference in Israel, Slade contended, ENMESH’s work over the next two years would have been dominated by dealing with the controversy and the pressure from anti-Israel activists.
The cancellation caused an uproar, according to the report, with two members of the executive board announcing their resignation: Bernd Puschner, a professor of psychiatry at Ulm University in Germany, and David Roe, an Israeli professor of psychology at the University of Haifa. (h/t GUEST)
Please join our letter campaign combating BDS.
— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) July 9, 2019
Please write to the ENMESH board of directors demanding that they "Cancel the Cancellation" and reinstate the conference in Jerusalem.https://t.co/6mqBJvZ1dX pic.twitter.com/ft9YbwVgRp
Former Miss Iraq and linguist for US troops still under rape, death threats after advocacy for Israel
An occasion that should have been marked by excitement, smiles and unity spiraled into death and rape threats for Miss Iraq 2017, Sarah Idan, after the country's first pageant representative in 45 years posed for a photo with then-competitor Miss Israel, Adar Gandelsman, with an Instagram caption reading "Peace and Love."Miss Iraq 2017 Sarah Idan Takes at Shot a Mideast Peace
And the backlash hasn't stopped.
In the initial wave of anger, the Iraqi government demanded their national representative take down the photograph, apologize and condemn Israel – which Idan refused to do. Two years on, Adnan’s daily life remains plagued by death threats and accusations of being a “traitor.” Her family – all Iraqi Muslims – have since had to flee their homeland.
Still, the former beauty queen and TV host remains a vehemently forthright champion of inter-religious tolerance and is an anti-Hamas activist, making her a deeply polarizing and widely ridiculed public figure in her homeland.
“Israel has a right to exist and its existence doesn’t mean Palestine will suffer. On the contrary, it could be the end of suffering for them when they reach a peace deal,” Idan, 29, told Fox News. “It is acknowledging two independent and equal states and saving them from the hands of extremist militias.”
Former Miss Iraq Sarah Idan ignited a firestorm in her home country in when a selfie she took with Miss Israel Idan, who was reunited with her unlikely friend Adar Gandelsman on an extraordinary visit to Israel last year, said that she believes in a two-state solution and lamented far-right elements on both sides of the conflict who would seek to deny the other's right to a national homeland. "I'm not a politician. I'm trying to influence people, to open their eyes, especially the Arab people...to things that they are not seeing," the Iraqi-born beauty queen said. at the 2017 Miss Universe contest went viral. Undeterred by the death threats and backlash that forced her family to flee Iraq for the United States, Idan recently joined the NGO UN Watch as an ambassador for peace.
Israeli Arab Champion Threatened by Anti-Zionist NGO
Israeli high-jump champion Hanin Nasser, 22, one of the most gifted female athletes in the country, has been attacked by the vehemently anti-Zionist Arab NGO Hirak Haifa which accused her of being a race traitor, Makor Rishon reported on Monday.PreOccupiedTerritory: Upcoming ‘Batman’ Reboot Reported To Erase Indigenous Gotham Palestinians (satire)
“After exhausting in vain all attempts to communicate with the athlete Hanin Nasser, and although we have provided her with many respectable alternatives to complete her athletic progress through international sports clubs and with distinguished Olympic coaches from different countries in the world, as well as the readiness of various entities to support her economically and to embrace this promising talent, Hanin does not listen to the voice of her people and the voice of truth, and is still determined to participate in the name of ‘Israel’ in high-jump competitions in Europe,” Hirak Haifa posted recently.
The NGO added: “We condemn her representation of the Zionist entity that uprooted our people and is using her as a fig leaf to cover up the racism and crimes of Israel.”
Second Israel not in quotes.
Nasser, a Muslim, was born in Arraba, an Israeli Arab city in the Lower Galilee. She trains at and represents the Beer Sheva club of Negev Athletes.
Indications have emerged via leaks from Warner Brothers that a scheduled iconic superhero action film scheduled for release early next year fails to depict Palestinians native to the city where most of the action takes place, drawing ire from progressive activists.
Unconfirmed reports from sources claiming knowledge of Batman: Doomsday production detail a litany of cultural sins the film commits, chief among them the erasure of indigenous Palestinians from their homeland, Gotham City. Representatives of Arab-American and Palestinian organizations rushed to condemn Director Zack Snyder for what they called another evil in a long line of wrongs Palestinians have suffered since 1948.
Council on American-Islamic Relations spokesman Naqba Nakhsa told reporters his organization had filed a discrimination complaint with Los Angeles County authorities. “Dispossessing Palestinians of their ancestral homes cannot occur again,” he stated. “We will not tolerate further erasure of Palestinian culture, not least in the cradle of Palestinian civilization and history, Gotham City – or, as it is known in the original Arabic, Gathma.”
Sickening display as a Jewish employee of @prageru sits down and is all buddy buddy with vile antisemite @OwenComedy. https://t.co/7Vzb9GeipT cc: @benshapiro
— Ozraeli Dave (((דיויד לנג))) (@Israellycool) July 9, 2019
Department of Justice to convene summit on fighting anti-Semitism
The U.S. Department of Justice is convening a “Summit on Combating Anti-Semitism” that will bring together Jewish community figures with “administration leadership.”How to Ideologically undermine Holocaust Denialism
The summit’s agenda, to take place July 15, includes sessions on “combating anti-Semitism while respecting the First Amendment;” “anti-Semitism on campus;” and “prosecuting hate crimes;” and will be rounded out by a “fireside chat” with “administration leadership” on the topic.
Participants are not listed on the agenda, but top Trump administration officials who deal with anti-Semitism include Elan Carr, the State Department envoy combating anti-Semitism, and Kenneth Marcus, the top civil rights official at the Education Department whose last job was president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which tracks anti-Israel activity and anti-Semitism on campuses.
Denying the Holocaust is impossible. Holocaust Denialism is fundamentally flawed not only because it denies the historical reality, but because it contradicts itself. In this video, I will explain how to defeat the ideological motivations behind Holocaust Denialism, severely weakening the arguments against an undeniable event. (h/t MtTB)
Anti-Semitic slogan 'Jews to the ovens' painted on Paris sidewalk
A sidewalk in central Paris was defaced on Monday with graffiti reading "Jews to the oven."Jewish-owned Melbourne cafe daubed with Holocaust denial graffiti twice in week
The virulently anti-Semitic slogan infuriated the local Jewish community.
Yaakov Hagoel, acting chairman of the World Zionist Organization, said in response to the incident that "Diaspora Jews are crying out for security, justice, and a calm life. It's time to devote effort and resources to an uncompromising battle against anti-Semitism. Education, laws, and even strict enforcement in cases of hate speech, threats, or attacks are vital in every country right now, and sooner rather than later."
Last month, the French police arrested five members of a neo-Nazi cell who were planning to carry out terrorist attacks on Jewish and Muslim places of worship throughout France. France 24 reported that a senior French legal official said that the cell members who were arrested "held opinions similar to those of the Nazis."
Europe in general and France, in particular, have seen a rise in anti-Semitic incidents in recent years. A new survey conducted by the Conference of European Rabbis, which represents hundreds of Jewish communities on the continent, indicated that nearly half (49%) of Israeli travelers were afraid they would encounter anti-Semitism while abroad. More than half (55%) of parents of young children said they were afraid of being targeted in anti-Semitic attacks.
In addition, 71% of respondents said they believed that European Jews were no longer safe in their own countries. When asked if European Jews should move to Israel, 91% of respondents said they should.
A Jewish-owned café in a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, was hit with anti-Semitic graffiti twice in one week.Florida school principal removed for stating he couldn’t say Holocaust happened
On Saturday, the back fence of Aliza’s Place Café was painted with “The Holocaust didn’t happen but it should have,” and a large blue swastika. It came two days after the same fence was painted with the words “The Holocaust is a lie.”
The owner, Aliza Shuvaly, told the Australian Jewish News after the first attack that many members of her family were Holocaust survivors.
“I cannot ignore this symbol,” Shuvaly told the newspaper. “All my family were Holocaust survivors – my mother’s parents, my husband’s parents – and for me it’s hurting twice. I started to shake, I didn’t know what to do.”
A high school in Boca Raton, Florida, removed a principal who told a parent that he needed to remain neutral on whether or not the Holocaust occurred.Israeli startup reinvents the wheel, by using it to contain car’s key components
The Palm Beach County School District said in a statement Monday that it was aware of remarks made by William Latson in 2018 and had instructed him to expand Holocaust curriculum at Spanish River Community High School and spend time at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
“Despite these efforts, his leadership has become a major distraction for the school community. It is, therefore, in the best interest of students and the larger school community to reassign Mr. Latson to a District position,” the school district said in a statement on Monday.
In an email exchange a year ago, in response to a parent who asked how the Holocaust is being taught at the public school, Latson responded that “I can’t say the Holocaust is a factual, historical event because I am not in the position to do so as a school district employee.” (h/t Yerushalimey)
Israeli startup REE has unveiled a “revolutionary” new design and look for electric vehicles, in which all of the classic components of the car — the motor, the steering system, the brakes and the suspension — are moved from under the hood into the wheels.Immigration to Israel in 2018 up from Russia, down from France, US
This helps create a vehicle framework, the chassis, that is completely flat, like a skateboard, and thus more versatile. This shape also helps reduce weight, an essential component for the success of electric vehicles.
REE’s approach, which will be officially presented on Wednesday at the TechCrunch Mobility event in San Jose, California, strategically places the motor, steering, suspension, drivetrain, sensors, brakes, thermal systems and electronics into the wheels. This allows manufacturers to use the same platform, or car framework, for different types of vehicle bodies.
This will eliminate the need for multiple platforms for different vehicles, resulting in “substantial savings,”as the design and validation of each platform traditionally costs manufacturers $20 billion, the firm said.
The “modular chassis” frees up space by 67 percent and reduces vehicle weight by 33%, data provided by the company shows.
The same platform can be used for any type of vehicle: a high-performance car able to do 0-60 mph in less than 3 seconds, an off-road SUV with advanced active suspension technology, a robotaxi or even a 10-ton truck, the company said in a statement.
Over 28,000 new immigrants arrived in Israel in 2018, with more than two-thirds of them coming from countries of the former Soviet Union, according to figures published Tuesday by the Central Bureau of Statistics.Historic Torah scroll, severed in half, reunited after centuries
In addition to those who were new to the country, there were also 3,502 “returning citizens,” amounting to a total of 31,601 immigrants in 2018.
The numbers showed a continuing trend of increased annual immigration to the country, though immigration from France — which topped the numbers in 2015 — continued to decline.
Overall, there was a 6.6% increase in new immigrants to Israel from all over the world as compared to 2017, when 26,357 arrived. In 2016, the number stood at 25,977.
The highest figures came from Russia — 10,460 or 37.7% of the total arrivals — a jump of 46.6% compared to 2017, when 7,135 arrived.
The US was the second-largest source of new immigrants with 2,496, though that figure represented a 2.8% drop compared to 2017.
France was third with 2,415, down 23.5% compared to 2017 when 3,424 newcomers arrived.
In 1965, Alpha Owens, an alumna of the University of Kansas, passed away. She had graduated from the university at the beginning of the century, before earning a PhD from Johns Hopkins University and traveling around the world.The Holocaust Survivor Who Made the Nazis’ Language of Murder Decipherable
Owens bequeathed to her alma mater one of the treasures she brought back from her travels: half of an ancient Torah scroll. Over half a century later, the story of the artifact has been uncovered, and it has been reunited with its other half, according to a report by KU.
After two years of research, that involved a collaboration with the National Library of Israel and a trip to France, Paul Mirecki, associate professor of religious studies at KU, was able to solve many of the mysteries that surrounded the severed scroll.
“The significance of the scroll is not only its content, but the history of the scroll itself: That’s the story,” Mirecki explained to the KU news service. “It’s like an Agatha Christie mystery.”
The professor was able to determine that in 1840, the still intact Torah scroll belonged to a synagogue in the Algerian city of Medea. It was a difficult period: France was in the middle of its campaign to conquer Algeria from the Ottoman Empire. That year, a pogrom against the Jewish community erupted in Medea, carried out by part of the Muslim population.
A polyglot and linguist who evaded Hitler by fleeing Poland for the Soviet Union, Nachman Blumental (1905-1983) returned in 1944 and joined a group of Jewish intellectuals working to document the slaughter of European Jewry. Gal Beckerman writes of the task Blumental took upon himself:Long-lost Holocaust-era Soviet songs in Yiddish brought to life in Israel
Along with an assortment of historians, ethnographers, and linguists, [Blumental] established the Central Jewish Historical Commission. They transcribed 3,000 survivor testimonies between 1944 and 1947, scavenged for Nazi paperwork in abandoned Gestapo offices, and meticulously preserved fragments of day-to-day ghetto life—a child’s school notebook or a food-ration ticket. And Blumental, from the beginning, gathered words.
In every Nazi document he came across, he circled and underlined innocuous terms like Abgang (exit) or Evakuierung (evacuation). He knew what these words actually meant when they appeared in memos and bureaucratic forms: they were euphemisms for death. A mission of his own took shape: to reveal the ways the Nazis had used the German language to obscure the mechanics of mass murder and make genocide more palatable to themselves.
His dictionary of Nazi words was, at one level, a desperate undertaking: if he could reverse-engineer the language, he might be able to figure out how everything he had known and loved had been destroyed. But the project had other, more practical functions as well. He hoped that such a lexicon would be useful for prosecutors during the many postwar trials of the late 1940s — three of which Blumental attended as an expert witness, including the trial of Rudolf Höss, the Auschwitz camp commandant. And he was aiming, too, at the future, for a time when the documentary evidence of the genocide might be indecipherable without some kind of linguistic key.
In a musty basement hall of an unassuming building nestled among modern high-rises in the heart of Tel Aviv, a few hundred spectators are kindly requested to turn off their cellphones. What makes the typical scene surreal is that they are asked to do so in Yiddish — the playful, lyrical language of Diaspora European Jews.As archaeologists say they’ve found King David’s city of refuge, a debate begins
In its first performance in Israel, a Grammy-nominated concert had arrived to play the lost songs of lost Jews in a nearly lost language. More than 70 years after the purged poems of Holocaust survivors, victims and Jewish Red Army soldiers were first composed and curated, a Canadian historian has brought back to life works thought to be long gone.
The result is “Yiddish Glory,” a collection of songs describing the harrowing World War II experience of Soviet Jews. Even amid the horrors of the Holocaust, Jewish musicians created a vibrant cultural life in camps and ghettos, with the arts providing a refuge, a sense of meaning and even a form of resistance.
“The last thing a lot of Yiddish speaking people did was to write a song,” said Anna Shternshis, the University of Toronto professor behind the project. “Before Yiddish was killed, it was sung.”
As the war raged, a group of Soviet Jewish ethnomusicologists led by Moisei Beregovsky recorded hundreds of Yiddish songs detailing the Holocaust and Jewish resistance to fascism as part of an effort to preserve the fast-diminishing Jewish culture of the 1940s. Beregovsky planned to publish an anthology after the war, but the project was shut down in 1949 at the height of Stalin’s anti-Jewish purge and Beregovsky was arrested on suspicion of promoting Jewish nationalism. His documents were seized and he died thinking his work had been destroyed.
Unlike a dozen other leading archaeologists, Prof. Yosef Garfinkel had no intention of searching for the lost biblical town of Ziklag when he commenced excavations in 2015 at Khirbet a-Ra‘i, located between Kiryat Gat and Lachish. However, as the twice-yearly dig seasons progressed at the site, about 70 kilometers (43 miles) southwest of Jerusalem, he and his two co-excavation directors, Saar Ganor of the Israel Antiquities Authority and Dr. Kyle Keimer of Macquarie University in Sydney, noted that it was starting to resemble the biblically attested Philistine town of Ziklag, a well-recorded site where the future King David sought refuge from King Saul.Israel Daily Picture: In Honor of CUFI's Summit in Washington in Support of Israel
After seven dig seasons that uncovered some 1,000 sq.m., the archaeological team found evidence of a Philistine-era settlement from the 12-11th centuries BCE under layers of a rural settlement dating to the early 10th century BCE, largely considered the Davidic era. Among the findings were massive stone structures and typical Philistine cultural artifacts, including pottery in foundation deposits — good luck offerings laid beneath a building’s flooring. Some of the olive pits and other organic objects found in the deposits were sent for carbon dating, which confirmed their contexts, said the archaeologists.
Given the location of the excavations in the Judaean foothills, Philistine artifacts, along with the carbon-14 dating, have all pointed the archaeologists toward identifying the site as the lost town where David settled in the first and second Books of Samuel.
Roughly a dozen sites have already been suggested as candidates for Ziklag over the past several decades, but largely dismissed. As explained by Sydney-based archaeologist Keimer, there are three elements that must be found at the site for it to be under consideration for identification as Ziklag: 12th-century BCE Philistine habitation, 10th century settlement, and a destruction layer — evidence of the widespread ruin wrought by the Amalekites, as described in the Hebrew Bible.
The Bible is timeless. Transmitted thousands of years ago to the People of Israel, its message and prophecy come true in modern Israel today. Some people meet its commandments and narration with skepticism, but photographs of the Holy Land from the 19th-century bear witness to the Bible’s veracity. Here are examples, found in the Library of Congress and archives worldwide.
The history of photography starts with the daguerreotype photographic process in 1839 by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre. Several photographs of Holy Land landscapes exist from that period, but a newer, cheaper process took over by the 1850s, and photographers flocked to the Holy Land sailing on the new invention, the steamboat. They were fascinated by biblical scenes, holy sites, and people of the land. The photographic process often took several minutes, so some of the subjects had to stand perfectly still; they had to be posed or models used in their stead.
One of the first resident photographers was Mendel Diness. His 1859 photograph below is probably the first picture of Jews at the Western Wall. Consider the chronological context of the two men: the photo was taken before Abraham Lincoln became president of the United States. George Washington was probably president when the older rabbi was born.
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