Wednesday, August 07, 2019

08/07 Links Pt2: State Department redefines antisemitism: Don't compare Israel to the Nazis; A Liberal Jewish Writer Takes Down the Anti-Zionist Left

From Ian:
State Department redefines antisemitism: Don't compare Israel to the Nazis
The US State Department has updated its definition of antisemitism to include "drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” as an example of antisemitism in public life.

In 2018, According to pro-Israel philanthropist Adam Milstein, the State Department adopted the definition of antisemitism set by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Milstein disseminated a release about the change on Wednesday morning Israel time:


Most of the examples presented by IHRA were included in the State Department’s definition, except for comparisons of Israeli policies to Nazi Germany. The State Department, under the leadership of Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and Elan Carr, the U.S. Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism, determined that comparisons of Israeli policies to those of the Nazis constitute antisemitism and have added it to the definition.

The working definition of antisemitism also includes the understanding that “antisemitic acts are criminal when they are so defined by law. Criminal acts are antisemitic when the targets of attacks, whether they are people or property – such as buildings, schools, places of worship and cemeteries – are selected because they are, or are perceived to be, Jewish or linked to Jews,” according to the US government’s website. In addition, “Antisemitic discrimination is the denial to Jews of opportunities or services available to others and is illegal in many countries.”

The move comes only weeks after US Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) compared the anti-Israel BDS movement to previous boycotts of Nazi Germany in a resolution supporting the right to boycott Israel.
Rashida Tlaib's bulletproof hypocrisy and hate
Never missing an opportunity to politicize a tragedy, Rashida Tlaib has joined all of the Democratic presidential candidates in spinning the mass shootings of this past weekend. And while many of the candidates were vile in their accusations (Beto O'Rourke's lovely expletive-filled rant blaming Trump ending with "What the f---?," for instance), Tlaib is particularly hateful and dishonest due to her obsession with (and dual loyalty to) "her people."

To be clear, Palestinians have been committing mass murder with guns, cars, knives, and bombs since Israel's founding. While I abhor Jake Tapper's underhanded comparison of Donald Trump's rhetoric to the very real and clear incitement to violence of Palestinian leadership from Yasser Arafat to Mahmoud Abbas, he did infuriate Tlaib, so there's that.

In typical disingenuous fashion, the Palestinian congresswoman responded to Tapper attempting to distinguish the terrorists she supports from white supremacists by claiming that Palestinian jihadists are actually "human rights advocates." Yeah, right — in her sick mind, it's okay to kill innocent Jews when your goals are "equality, human dignity & to stop the imprisonment of children." Because that's worked out so well for Palestinians over the decades. In Tlaib's terrorist circles, killing Jewish children is a moral human rights crusade if your goal is to stop the imprisonment of stone-throwing, gun-toting, knife-wielding child terrorists. It is truly difficult for sane people to get their heads around this analysis from a sitting member of the United States Congress. And yet there are Americans who actually voted this hater into office.

But how do we know that Palestinian children who are arrested in Israel are a threat to Jews who live in that country? Here is where the real irony and Tlaib's abhorrent hypocrisy come in. Tlaib once again took to Twitter Tuesday to comment on bulletproof backpacks being sold in Walmart: "This gave me chills. I can't believe this is what we have become."





Anti-Semitism under the guise of human rights
Senior WCC officials view Israel as solely responsible for the "difficulties facing Christians in the Holy Land," while turning a blind eye to the many hardships faced by Christians in the Palestinian Authority. They reject the link between Israel and the Jewish people and use religious terminology to combat Christian support for Israel. WCC General-Secretary Olav Fykse Tveit, from the Church of Norway, compared the fight against Apartheid in South Africa to the "crisis in Israel and Palestine." The WCC also promotes the "Kairos Palestine" document, which posits that the West is compensating the Jews for their suffering in Europe at the expense of the Palestinians. The roots of terror, according to the document, lie in the human injustice caused by the "evils of the occupation." In response to a hunger strike by Palestinian security prisoners in Israel, among them terrorist mastermind Marwan Barghouti, Tveit declared that "the vast majority of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are political prisoners, and as Christians, we must remember that Jesus empathized with prisoners and called for their release."

Even disregarding the WCC's rejection of the IHRA's definition of anti-Semitism, the organization crossed the red line a long time ago. In essence, it is no different from many of the other extremist organizations focused on delegitimizing Israel under the guise of human rights causes. The WCC, however, isn't just any other organization; it is one of the most important bodies in the Christian world, its religious representatives work in Israel, and their claims against the Jewish state are accompanied by religious rhetoric.

The WCC reflects the tendency shared by many international aid groups to wrap their claims against Israel in anti-Semitic rhetoric, and by doing so contribute to exacerbating the phenomenon. A real change can only come when those who purport to promote human rights internalize the importance of the IHRA's definition – and adopt it.
A Liberal Jewish Writer Takes Down the Anti-Zionist Left
NYU journalism professor Susie Linfield’s provocative book, The Lions’ Den: Zionism and the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky (Yale University Press, 2019), features eight intellectuals and their views on Zionism — all but one of them Jewish.

First is political philosopher Hannah Arendt. After 1933, she became a Zionist activist, while her mentor and former lover Martin Heidegger became a Hitler apologist. Released by the SS, she fled to Paris, ultimately reaching the US in 1940.

Arendt’s first acclaimed book, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1950), was followed by Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963). It alleged Jewish passivity (even complicity) in the Holocaust, and speculated about “the banality of evil” among Nazis. Linfield dissects virtually every word of Arendt’s as a snide disparagement of Israel’s founding generation.

It would take Freud to explain Arendt’s contradictions: urging the creation of “a Jewish army” during World War II, but opposing the creation of Israel; prescience about Israel’s coming conflicts with the Arabs, yet evincing little empathy for Palestine-born Jews. Rejecting Israel as an obnoxious “new nation,” she still supported Israel in the 1967 war.
The Normal Anti-Semite
Why would anyone deny that they are anti-Semitic? Why is racism seen as wrong?

Historically, distaste, suspicion or hatred of Jews and other “others” has been an unremarkable feature in many societies. While the “great” events in the history of anti-Semitism—the massacre in York in 1190, the Spanish expulsion of 1492, the Kishinev pogrom in 1903 and, above all, the Holocaust—loom large in the Jewish imagination, it is the persistence of “casual,” everyday anti-Semitism that reveals its deeper roots.

In 2005, the writer Simon Garfield published a book of extracts from the diaries of a selection of ordinary British citizens, written in the immediate post-war period. The diaries were solicited by the Mass Observation project, which sought to take the temperature of public opinion, both during the war and afterwards. The value of the diaries is that they were written neither as a public document for subsequent publication, nor as a purely personal document. They occupy the borderlands between uncensored emotional expression and face-saving public rectitude and, as such, give an invaluable impression of what was seen as acceptable to say in semi-public settings.

On Nov. 20, 1945, Maggie Joy Blunt, a writer in her mid-thirties living in Slough, reports a conversation with friends about the situation in Palestine (then under British control and with the Zionist movement pushing for independence):

At lunch today someone mentioned the problem of Palestine. “I don’t think the Jews should be forced to leave the country—let them go to Palestine if they want to.” “Jews get such a financial hold on a country.” “That’s true—all the same, a country is nearly always better off where Jews are powerful—they may make big money, but they circulate it.” “They produce much talent too.” “Pity they have such unpleasant characteristics.” “Only due to long years of persecution—aggressive trait has developed.” “Well, we all get aggressive don’t we, when we feel looked down on?”
Omar and Tlaib must be sure to investigate 'Auschwitz in Palestine'
How are the victims being brought to these new Auschwitzes? Have Israel or the PA been forcibly deporting Palestinian Arabs from various other regions, in cattle cars, to the death camps?

Surely no one could carry out such mass deportations in this day and age without everyone knowing about. So why hasn’t the New York Times reported on it?

And is Rajoub alleging that either Israel or the PA are causing mass starvation in Palestinian cities, like the Nazis did? How many innocents have already perished as a result? Why isn’t the World Health Organization speaking out on this?

And what about Congresswoman Tlaib’s own grandmother? Mrs. Fatmeh Harbi lives in the village of Beit Ur al-Fauqa, which is ruled by the PA. Is she imprisoned in an Auschwitz in her town? What can be done to rescue her?

Representatives Tlaib and Omar need to get to the bottom of this. They need to take photos of the Palestinian Auschwitzes, see the gas chambers, skeletons, piles of shoes and gold fillings, speak directly with the inmates to hear all about the torture, starvation, and mass murder, and reveal who is carrying out this genocide.
Rashida Tlaib says Palestinians are not responsible for terrorism
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) has tweeted that Palestinians are not responsible for terrorism and that they do not spew negative rhetoric against the State of Israel.

“Comparing Palestinian human rights advocates to terrorist white nationalists is fundamentally a lie,” tweeted Tlaib on Monday, one day after two mass shooting attacks claimed the lives of more than 30 people in the United States. “Palestinians want equality, human dignity & to stop the imprisonment of children.

“White supremacy is calling for the *domination* of one race w/ the use of violence.”

Tlaib was responding to a statement made by CNN’s Jake Tapper that Palestinian rhetoric is similar to that of US President Donald Trump.

"You hear conservatives talk all the time – rightly, in my view – about the tone set by, well, the Arab world," said Tapper. "The Palestinians and the way they talk about Israelis, justifying – in the same way you're doing, no direct link between what the leader says and the violence to some poor Israeli girl in a pizzeria – but the idea you're validating this hatred."

"You can't compare the ideology of Hamas with anything else," added Tapper, "but at the same time, either tone matters or it doesn't."

Activist Linda Sarsour also responded to Tapper. She tweeted, "Somehow Jake Tapper still finds a way to bring the Arab world and Palestinians into a conversation about WHITE SUPREMACISTS murdering innocent people. Disgusting. But hey, when someone shows you who they are, believe them."
Anti-Semitic Va. Democrat Dumped Water on Fox News Host in 2016
The Virginia lawmaker who interrupted President Trump's speech in Jamestown has been identified as the individual who dumped water on Geraldo Rivera at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

A reporter for the Daily Beast filmed Rivera interviewing a group of protestors outside the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. As Rivera speaks with one of the protestors, a man in hat with the Palestinian flag approaches him from behind and dumps water over his head, dousing the news anchor.


Ibraheem Samirah, who was more than two years away from joining Virginia House of Delegates, identified himself as the perpetrator in two Facebook posts.

"I swear it wasn't on purpose, Geraldo!" Samirah posted on his personal Facebook page linking to a story about the interaction.

"FOX News' Geraldo Rivera wanted to dance with the stars, so I gave him a little taste of it," he said in a another post featuring the raw video.

Samirah did not respond to requests for comment about the incident.
Maryland Aims to Dismiss Suit Challenging Its Anti-BDS Rule
The fate of Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s 2017 executive order barring state contractors from participating in the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement is in the hands of a Federal judge. The order violates First Amendment rights, a lawsuit filed by a former Maryland state legislator claims.

Saqib Ali is represented by the Council on American Islamic-Relations (CAIR) Legal Defense Fund. Hogan and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh are listed as defendants. US District Judge Catherine C. Blake heard arguments last week concerning a state motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

The international BDS movement aims to isolate Israel through economic, cultural, and academic boycotts and sanctions modeled on the 1980s boycotts against South Africa’s apartheid government. Opponents consider the movement antisemitic because it singles out the world’s only Jewish state for treatment not imposed on other states with much worse human rights records, and because it is reminiscent of the Nazis’ economic warfare against Jewish-owned companies.

Opponents also note the link between the BDS National Committee, which coordinates the movement internationally, and Palestinian terror groups, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Last month, the US House of Representatives voted 298-17 on a resolution condemning BDS for “encouraging the Palestinians to reject negotiations in favor of international pressure,” and citing BDS leader Omar Barghouti’s statement, “We oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No Palestinian, rational Palestinian, not a sell-out Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”
Higher Indoctrination (Education?), and the Angry Jew News Service..
Among the rare professors and some others on the front lines in dealing with these issues--in addition to the ongoing work of Drs. Daniel Pipes, Martin Kramer, and others - the work of Professor Tammi Rossman-Benjamin’s” AMCHA Initiative, as seen above, is exemplary.

For now, however, let’s turn the clock back a bit to learn more about one of the biggest proponents of BDS, that same Professor As’ad Abu Khalil.

In February, 2012, Cinnamon Stillwell at Professor Daniel Pipes' Middle East Forum’s Campus Watch reported about Abu Khalil's reaction to Dr. Norman Finkelstein's apparent flip flop on some key Arab-Israeli issues...Best known for his own rabid anti-Zionism, for some unknown reason, Norman seemed to have suddenly received a revelation about the true nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict--the supremacist, genocidal nature of the Arabs, that is.

Well, as those of us with senses intact have long noticed, Arabs don't take kindly to those who challenge their own alleged solely self-centered rights to what they routinely call "purely Arab patrimony" (i.e., practically all of the Middle East and North Africa--despite scores of millions of native, non-Arabs who also live and predate the Arab imperialist caliphal jihadi conquests there), so it was no shock that Abu Khalil’s venom was directed not only against any who challenge that notion, but especially towards former sycophants and banner wavers like Finkelstein.

Based at Cal State and the man behind the Angry Arab News Service, he continues to pull no punches. And I know that, nauseatingly, any professor doing likewise--but, in the opposite direction in terms of Arab-Israeli politics--would, more often than not these days, not have a job. And doctoral students challenging one-sided, anti-Israel positions in too many classrooms like those of Abu Khalil's would at times even be blocked from getting their degrees. Unfortunately, I know of such people firsthand.

On a personal note, I’ve debated assorted Abu Khalils over the decades--sometimes on television. I'd love the opportunity to exchange thoughts about such issues with As’ad as well, on any platform he chooses--preferably on his home base.

Consider me the Angry Jew News Service.- at your service.
Because They Took a Clear Look at the Terms Used by Anti-Zionist Professors, They’ve Been Smeared
Recently the scholars Donna Robinson Divine, Miriam F. Elman, and Asaf Romirowsky became curious about the ways in which anti-Zionist academics have turned previously neutral terms and ideas relating to the Israel-Palestinian conflict into weapons for pillorying the Jewish state. So they solicited essays on the subject and published them, under the title “Word Crimes,” in a special issue of the journal Israel Studies. Almost immediately the special issue, the contributors to it, and the three editors were assaulted in the most vociferous terms. As they report:

[C]ontributors were denounced as having produced subpar work; the editors smeared as having practiced deception in the review process and selecting contributors based on a political litmus test. There were even allegations that we may have paid to ensure publication! That these accusations are damaging to a group of scholars—including people in the junior ranks—is as obvious as it is shameful. There are established ways to launch critiques in peer-reviewed journals. Sadly, the kind of rhetoric on display over this special issue was not even close to following established norms of collegial exchange and open intellectual inquiry.

“Word Crimes” emphasizes how a delegitimizing lexicon of terms and concepts is often used in highly politicized anti-Zionist scholarship. We focused on this linkage between language and thought partly because it is long a staple focus for political theory and philosophy (consider how significant this topic is in the works of Plato, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, for starters). That a vocabulary of historical explanation has dissolved into today’s crude value judgments and “unhinged polemics” distorts the academic study of Israel, of Palestinians, of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and not incidentally of politics.

The special issue struck a chord—sales have been brisk and it’s now in a second printing—not only because it raised questions about the conventional discourse but also because it challenged the right of an increasingly politicized academy to serve as gatekeepers, determining what can and cannot be said about the Israel-Palestinian conflict.




Belgian editor defends publication of column saying Jews have ‘ugly noses’
The editor of a prestigious Belgian daily defended an op-ed described as anti-Semitic, saying its critics were trying to silence criticism of Israel.

The column, written by Dimitri Verhulst, was published July 27 in De Morgen and quickly drew outrage. It describes Jews in Israel as land thieves with a religious superiority complex and says they have “ugly noses.”

“We clearly do not view the text as anti-Semitic. Otherwise we wouldn’t have published it. Neither did the author intend it as anti-Semitic,” Bart Eeckhout, De Morgen’s editor in chief, wrote in response to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “The op-ed surely is a harsh criticism on Israel’s politics toward the Palestinian people. It is written in a hard, sarcastic fashion and it foretells the current uproar, stating that any hard criticism on Israel will always be reinterpreted as anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is a very serious allegation, which we think is used too easily in this case, in a way to silence the debate about Israel’s policies.”

Titled “There is no promised land, only stolen land,” the op-ed charges through sarcasm that Israeli Jews and their supporters regard themselves as “chosen” and God’s “darlings,” and they use the ambiguous biblical concept to justify the subjugation of the Palestinians.

“Because God has His favorites and they have their privileges, Palestinians were driven out of their homes in 1948 to make place for God’s favorites,” Verhulst wrote. “Speaking with [the] chosen is difficult. As soon as you mention Israel and the fate of the Palestinians, they look at you like you masterminded the Holocaust yourself.”
BBC News coverage of terrorism in Israel – July 2019
The Israel Security Agency’s report on terror attacks (Hebrew) during July 2019 shows that throughout the month a total of 92 incidents took place: 54 in Judea & Samaria, 24 in Jerusalem and inside the ‘green line’ and 14 in the Gaza Strip sector.

In Judea & Samaria and Jerusalem the agency recorded 66 attacks with petrol bombs, six attacks using pipe bombs, four arson attacks and one vehicular attack.

Incidents recorded in the Gaza Strip sector included eight attacks with petrol bombs, two attacks using pipe bombs, one attack using a grenade, one shooting attack and two incidents of rocket fire.

Five members of the security forces were injured in a vehicular attack on July 6th near the Hizme checkpoint in Jerusalem which did not receive any coverage whatsoever on the BBC News website.

Two incidents of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip on July 12th were likewise ignored, as was the death (not included in the ISA report) of an 89 year-old woman who was injured during a rocket attack on Ashkelon in May of this year.
Seth J. Frantzman: Five headlines show worldwide anti-Jewish incidents - analysis
We are supposed to be inured to these kinds of reports. 1,000 attacks here, 2,000 there, vandalism, spitting, harassment, threatening phone calls, graves defaced, rabbis attacked, children punched coming home from synagogue, women’s head-scarves pulled off by security, kippot banned, synagogues shut, and authorities dismissing charges by claiming perpetrators are crazy, juveniles or just “politically motivated.”

In France, a man who murdered a Jewish woman while shouting religious hatred was found not to be criminally liable, because he was under the influence of marijuana, as though taking drugs or getting drunk were now a free pass to murder Jews in the country. In Germany, the firebombing of a synagogue was ruled to be not antisemitic, because the court claimed the bombing of the Wuppertal shul was directed at Israel. In Norway, a rapper who cursed Jews was found to be not antisemitic but only anti-Israel.

Across Europe countries and local courts have sought to redefine antisemitism as “political,” so as to not charge hate crimes, vandalism and attacks on Jews.

In Finland the Israel Embassy has been subjected to 15 neo-Nazi attacks, according to another recent report. No other embassies in Finland are routinely attacked by neo-Nazis. Only Israel. Only Jews.

The reports raise disturbing questions about a pattern in some countries in which hatred of Jews not only is growing but is being whitewashed by authorities and made to seem acceptable to people’s ears, in a way racism and hatred against other groups are not. Even as Western countries ostensibly struggle to have more stringent hate speech and hate crimes legislation, for some reason the largest target of such crimes, members of the Jewish minority, are sometimes least protected, because of a tendency to portray anti-Jewish views as anti-Israel.
Dayton shooter showed Pittsburgh massacre video to girlfriend on a date
A woman who briefly dated Connor Betts, 24, earlier this year wrote about his troubling behavior in an essay posted Tuesday on Medium.

Betts opened fire outside a bar early Sunday, killing his sister and eight others before being shot dead by police.

Adelia Johnson wrote that the pair had bonded over mental health problems after meeting in a college course in January. Betts said that he suffered from bipolar disorder and possibly obsessive compulsive disorder. Johnson said Betts told her that he had dark thoughts and joked about wanting to hurt people.

On their first date in March, Johnson recalled, Betts asked her if she had seen a video of the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in October that left 11 dead. She said she had not.

“He pulled out his phone and I was too drunk to care that I was watching it,” she wrote. “Thankfully the bar was too loud for me to hear what was going on. Connor gave me the play-by-play of what was happening. Even then, I did realize that that was a weird thing for a first date, but not too weird given the context of our class. In our Social Psychology class, we regularly got off-topic to talk about serial killers, Ted Bundy was a hot topic given all of the media attention he was getting.”
FBI Offers Up to $20K for Leads to Arrest of Arsonist of Three Boston-Area Chabads
The FBI is offering up to $20,000 for information leading to the apprehension of the suspect responsible for three fires at Boston-area Chabad centers in May.

Police in Arlington, Mass., responded to two cases of such fires at the home of Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries.

Rabbi Avi and Luna Bukiet’s home also serves as the Chabad Center for Jewish Life of Arlington.

On May 16, there were “light flames burning shingles on one side” of the house, reported local Fox affiliate WFXT, citing officials. A police officer patrolling the area was at the scene within 30 seconds to get rid of the flames by using a handheld extinguisher.

That same evening, there was a suspicious fire at the Chabad Jewish Center in Needham, Mass., which state and federal authorities are also investigating.

Chanie Krinsky posted on Facebook that her husband, Rabbi Mendy Krinsky, who directs the Chabad center with her, “was outside with the fire extinguisher before the smoke alarms even went off.”
Antisemitism in London - 2019
A man shoved a baby’s stroller and called parents ‘dirty Jews’. Since the beginning of 2019, a record number of antisemitic incidents have been recorded in the United Kingdom.




Startup Nobio gets FDA nod for antibacterial dental fillings
The Israeli startup Nobio Ltd., a developer of particles that can kill germs on contact, said it has received US Food and Drug Administration approval to market its antibacterial material for dental fillings.

The approval gives Nobio access to the $1.4 billion dental materials market, CEO Yoram Ashery said in a phone interview, forecasting that the first products will reach the market at the end of the year or the start of the next year an bring in revenues for the four-year old company.

Nobio will make its anti-bacterial dental filling products available to practicing dentists through its own brand as well as licensing them to other manufacturers for use in their own products, the firm said.

The startup is currently negotiating with distributors and manufacturers and intends to announce its first commercial partnerships later this year, the firm said in a statement Monday, announcing the approval.
Israel’s Amos-17 Satellite En Route to Target Orbit After SpaceX Launch
Space Communication said on Wednesday its Amos-17 communications satellite was launched into space and was en route to its orbital position after separating from its SpaceX rocket.

The Israeli satellite operator is counting on Amos-17, which was manufactured by Boeing and will provide communication services to Africa, to help it rebound from some major setbacks, including the loss of a satellite in 2016 when a SpaceX rocket exploded.

“Following a sequence of in-orbit tests that are expected to take approximately three months, Amos-17 is scheduled to begin commercial operations at the 17°E orbital position later in 2019,” the company said.

The launch took place at Cape Canaveral in Florida at 2:23 a.m. Israel time (2323 GMT) and marked the third flight for the Falcon 9 booster, according to SpaceX.
Israel’s Together Pharma Announces International Certification for Ugandan Medical Cannabis Farm
Tel Aviv-listed medical cannabis company Together Pharma announced on Tuesday it has been granted a control union medical cannabis standard (CUMCS) G.A.P. (good agricultural practice) for its Ugandan farm that will enable it, to its knowledge, to sell its products in Europe. The company has also announced it is currently in talks with a Europe-based entity that has a manufacturing facility that complies with the GMP-EU (good manufacturing practice acknowledged by the European Union) standard needed to manufacture foodstuffs and pharmaceuticals in Europe.

Together also stated that it is in the process of establishing a packing and extraction facility near its farm in Uganda, with construction expected to be completed by the end of the year. Together added it will strive to comply with the standard during the first quarter of 2020.

Several people involved in the Israeli cannabis industry, speaking to Calcalist on condition of anonymity, said that compliance is a good step in the right direction, but that currently there is no pharmaceutical export from Africa to Europe. Another person said there is only one approved factory in Europe — that of Canadian medical cannabis company Tilray — and that it only packages buds. European regulation states that only products that comply with the GMP-EU standard can be processed by customs, the person said, and agricultural products with only a GAPC certification do not comply with European regulation.
Actress and Singer Olivia Newton-John Talks About Jewish Roots, Mother’s ‘Words of Wisdom’
Australian singer and “Grease” star Olivia Newton-John opened up about her Jewish roots in an interview with i24News published on Sunday.

“My mother was very proud of her Jewish tradition and talked about it a lot,” said the four-time Grammy winner, 70, who added that some of her closest girlfriends now are Jewish.

Newton-John’s mother, Irene Born, was the daughter of Jewish Austrian Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Born. Newton’s grandfather was close friends with Albert Einstein and Irene in fact translated a book of letters between Max and Einstein that was published as “The Born-Einstein Letters 1916-1955.”

Newton-John told i24News that her grandfather helped German Jews escape to England during World War II and she regretted not meeting him before he died.
Remembering Lucette Lagnado, Chronicler of the Lost World of Egyptian Jewry
The late Lucette Lagnado was born to a Jewish family in Egypt in the late 1950s, a childhood that she recounted in her best-selling memoir The Man in the Shark-Skin Suit. Life there was good, writes Yvette Alt Miller in an obituary for Lagnado, who died in July, until anti-Semitism rose in the wake of the founding of Israel.

By the late 1950s, Lucette Lagnado recalled, Jews were being attacked and were panicking. The “grand synagogue on Adly Street” in Cairo had become, she wrote, “a hub of frenetic activity, the scene every day of hurried weddings. As families prepared to flee to any country that would have them, as they plotted their escape literally to the ends of the earth—Australia, Venezuela, Canada, South Africa, Brazil—young lovers chose to tie the knot lest they be separated forever. Engagements that would have lasted months were now barely a couple of days, while weddings that usually took a whole evening were performed in an hour.”

Jewish couples would sometimes go directly from their weddings in the synagogues to the piers to catch boats out of Egypt. “There wasn’t even time to cry,” Lagnado described. “There was only a feeling that one had to get out at any cost.”

With her family, Lagnado fled to America, where she found success as a reporter and writer. But she spent much of her life mourning the lost community of her youth, though later she managed to find something close to it.
Mystery solved: Missing Herzl parochet found in KKL-JNF House in Tel Aviv
The parochet– or “curtain” – that was meant to cover Theodor Herzl’s coffin when he was buried in 1949 in the land of Israel has been discovered in a Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) warehouse.

According to an article published exclusively on Wednesday in the Hebrew daily Israel Hayom, the parochet disappeared in 1949 after Herzl’s burial ceremony. Two weeks ago, at a 70th anniversary ceremony of Herzl’s burial in Israel, a reconstructed curtain was created and displayed. Now, the original parochet has been found.

“It is a great privilege to find this important historical item,” said Danny Atar, head of KKL-JNF. “Without Zionism there would be no JNF, without JNF there would be no Zionism. The parochet has sentimental value and is interwoven with the history of Zionism.”

The curtain was found because the organization was preparing to convert its KKL-JNF House in Tel Aviv from an office building to a boutique hotel, in which there will also be a museum for the preservation of Zionist history.

While preparing, Dr. Arye Ben saw a cloth – gray – folded under a cupboard, which did not look like it had any specific value. But once it was unfolded, the team realized it was the missing parochet.


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