Monday, August 12, 2019
California Introduces Radical Anti-Semitic High School Curriculum
Public research materials viewed by the Free Beacon reveal that several committee members behind California Department of Education's Draft Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum are outspoken critics of Israel.
One member, Samia Shoman, is a Palestinian-American who teaches in the San Mateo Union High District. Her lesson plans on Palestinian history have been featured as a teaching tool by the Qatar Foundation International, a group tied to the nation and its efforts to proliferate boycotts of Israel. Shoman is also a pro-Palestinian activist on Twitter.
Another committee member, Gaye Theresa Johnson, an associate professor at UCLA college of social sciences, also has supported pro-Palestinian causes on Twitter, including retweets from pro-Iran individuals who have deemed Tehran as the victim in the ongoing nuclear standoff with the United States.
A third committee member, Theresa Montaño, a professor at California State University, Northridge, has publicly supported the BDS movement and advocates for Israeli scholars to be boycotted in the United States. Montaño also signed a 2009 letter to then-president Barack Obama that was organized by one of the globe's most prominent BDS organizations.
Masha Merkulova, founder and executive director of Club Z, a Bay Area organization that fosters commitment to Israel, told the Free Beacon that the effort to promote this one-sided curriculum should worry all Americans.
"If we allow this to happen, California's children are going to be indoctrinated in intolerance and hate," Merkulova said. "This is our flashpoint … this ethnic studies curriculum is infused with Jew hatred. Let's call it for what it is, anti-Semitism. Our Department of Education has put bigoted people in charge of writing a curriculum that is supposed to promote inclusivity and tolerance."
"This is an attempt to make anti-Semitism institutional," she said. "This is what the kids are going to learn as part of normal things they learn."
There are no "roads or neighbourhoods that only Israeli settlers are allowed to enter" in the West Bank, @hannahluci and @thetimes
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) August 12, 2019
There are areas that Israeli *citizens* can enter. Not just settlers. BTW, Palestinian citizens of Israel are as free to visit as any other Israeli. pic.twitter.com/au4u9XJYMt
Record Number of Jews Visit Temple Mount on Tisha B’Av, Despite Riots
According to Army Radio, Netanyahu said in response that he was in favor of allowing access to Jews, but left the decision in the hands of the Israel Police. His office indicated that Netanyahu had issued no closure.
Police responded to the violence by utilizing riot-control measures to end the protests. Reports indicate that the head of the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf was injured during the incident, as well as an estimated 14 Muslim worshippers and four police officers.
At 10:30 am, police authorized Jews to enter the Temple Mount in small groups. The worshippers were under close police escort and limited to a very small area, but some reported that police appeared to be more accommodating than usual, allowing them to pray openly and performing security checks less stringently.
Despite the limited Jewish access, Arabs at the site began chanting “Allahu Akbar!” and throwing chairs and other objects at them for the hour, during which police held the site open to Jews. A video Sunday showed Waqf director Azzam al-Khatib and Mufti of Jerusalem Muhammad Hussein encouraging the angry crowd, telling them: “In spirit and blood we will redeem you!”
At approximately 11:30 am, the site was closed to Jews, but reopened again in the afternoon for one more hour.
Regular visitors to the site noted that the closure time is usually 11 a, but said police held the site open an extra half hour due to the Waqf incitement.
Last year, some 1,400 Jews ascended to the Temple Mount for Tisha B’Av, a record number. However, this year, despite the violence and concerns that Jews would not be given access, more than 1,700 Jews ultimately paid their respects at the holiest site to the Jewish people.
Leftist Jews’ Weaponization Of The Holocaust On Tisha B’Av Is An Act Of Historical Betrayal
Tisha B’Av — the ninth of Av — is the saddest day on the Jewish calendar. Traditionally, observant Jews fast and deprive themselves while they pray and remember various major catastrophes in Jewish history. Over time, other calamities have been mourned, including the Nazi Party’s formal approval of “The Final Solution” on Av 9, AM 5701, and the start of the mass deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka one year later. For many, Tisha B’Av is a time of mourning for the Holocaust as a whole.
On Tisha B’Av of all days, thousands of leftist American Jews staged protests across the country against ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
For some time, the Holocaust has been used as a comparative metric in order to condemn the implementation of existing immigration laws. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) famously likened detention facilities to concentration camps and referenced the phrase “Never Again” — synonymous with Holocaust remembrance. The same phrase adorned T-shirts and signs at the protests on Sunday, with the hashtag #JewsAgainstICE going viral.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s weaponization of Jewish tragedy is an example of the uninformed and offensive rhetoric that we have come to expect from the New York congresswoman. However, when the incomparable catastrophe that was the Holocaust is weaponized by leftist Jews in a bid to peddle Democratic talking points, we have moved beyond casual political ignorance and into the realm of deliberate historical destruction.
Right-wing MKs to congresspeople: 2-state solution ‘far more dangerous’ than BDS
A group of right-wing lawmakers, including two deputy ministers, sent a letter on Monday to four US lawmakers warning that calls for a two-state solution are “far more dangerous to Israel” than efforts to boycott the Jewish state and urging them to refrain from such appeals in the future.Why We Must Fight the False Premise of Anti-Israel Boycotts
The letter, signed by 21 Knesset members, comes on the heels of a resolution passed with an overwhelming majority last month in the US House of Representatives that rejects the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel but also explicitly calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state.
“Israel is grateful to all our wonderful friends in Congress who stand with us on so many fronts. However, we would like to express to you our concern regarding the anti-BDS resolution (H. Res. 246),” the letter reads.
“We believe it contains a grave error because it expresses, among other things, support for a so-called ‘Two-State Solution,’ meaning the establishment of a ‘Palestinian state’ in the heart of tiny Israel… We would like to make our position clear that the establishment of a Palestinian state would be far more dangerous to Israel than BDS.”
The letter was sent to the offices of the four Congressmen who co-sponsored the resolution — Brad Schneider, Lee Zeldin, Jerry Nadler and Ann Wagner. It was written and sent at the initiative of Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan, the Land of Israel caucus in the Knesset and the National Conference of Likud, an informal group of hawks within the ruling party.
It was signed by Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely (Likud), Deputy Defense Minister Eli Ben Dahan (United Right), and Likud MKs Avi Dichter, Gideon Sa’ar, Yoav Kisch, Uzi Dayan and others.
House Resolution 246, which also calls for increased security aid to Israel, passed by a 398-17 margin, with five abstentions.
It resolved to oppose BDS, “including efforts to target United States companies that are engaged in commercial activities that are legal under United States law, and all efforts to delegitimize the State of Israel.”
I was gratified by the House’s recent approval of an anti-BDS resolution, because it shows broad political support for Israel.Former Miss Iraq Blasts ‘Antisemitic’ Ilhan Omar, Says ‘She Does Not Represent Me as a Muslim’
The resolution was obviously intended to denounce the hypocrisy of US Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MN), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) for the scurrilous claim that Israel has enacted “racist policies.”
The congresswomen’s stated justification for proposing and supporting BDS was to punish Israel for what they claim to be “racist policies.” That false premise should have been dismissed out-of-hand. Unfortunately, it was not.
The failure to reject this deceitful premise outright is extremely troubling, because it allows those who are biased against Israel to make the false claim that Israel is a racist and “apartheid” state, when it grants full and complete rights to its Arab citizens.
The fact that Israeli Arabs, Christians, and Muslims are members of the Knesset, the Supreme Court, professors at universities, physicians in hospitals, and participants in virtually every aspect of public and private life, does not register with the “Squad” or those spreading lies about Israel.
Iraqi beauty queen Sarah Idan sharply criticized Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar in a radio interview last week, calling the controversial representative “antisemitic” and saying she should not be considered a spokesperson for the Muslim community.NY Dailynews May 2019: Rashida Tlaib partners with Humpty Dumpty Institute for Israel-critical trip to West Bank
“Omar does not represent me as a Muslim, (she) does not represent millions of Muslims in the Middle East. You know like in Arab countries we call her the Muslim Brotherhood,” Idan, 29, said on the podcast The Sara Carter Show on Aug. 4.
Shortly after the interview aired, Omar, 37, fired back at Idan on Twitter, saying, “Hey, I might be wrong but I don’t think you are a #MN05 resident and like that makes be [sic] not your representative.”
The former Miss Iraq replied, “Seriously @IlhanMN this is your intellectual come back?” She then went on to lambaste Omar as anti-American and antisemitic. In a series of follow-up tweets she accused Omar of pursuing a “Muslim Brotherhood agenda using this democracy to further YOUR & YOUR FRIENDS Islamic socialism goals of dividing & weakening our country.”
She added, “I fled from the same ideology you’re trying to export here.”
On Friday, Idan also blasted Omar for using her platform as congresswoman to advocate for the freedom of Hoda Abdelmonem, a senior member of the Muslim brotherhood, but not to help women “enslaved by mandatory sharia/in jail awaiting an imminent death for speaking out against dictatorial regimes.”
Rashida Tlaib has her anti-Israel priorities straight, but her message may be getting scrambled.
The Palestinian-American congresswoman is partnering with the oddly named Humpty Dumpty Institute for a congressional summer trip to the Israeli-occupied territories that will coincide with a similar junket held annually by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
In a “You’re Invited” flier, Tlaib asked fellow lawmakers to join her on the trip to “Occupied Territories in Palestine” for five days in mid-August, Jewish Insider reported.
The trip is being funded and organized by the Humpty Dumpty Institute, an international non-governmental organization that purports to — you guessed it! — “put the pieces back together again.”
Humpty Dumpty says it was founded by disillusioned aid workers after the Rwanda genocide and claims it brokers “strategic public/private partnerships that provide sensible solutions to serious problems.”
“The principle is that once things fall apart you can’t put them back together again,” said Joe Merante, the group’s executive director, comparing Humpty Dumpty’s unusual name to the Robin Hood Foundation which takes donations from the wealthy to help the poor.
I'm going to launch conspiracy nuts into orbit w this coincidence: @RashidaTlaib & @IlhanMN were going to go to Occupied Palestinian Territories w the Humpty Dumpty Institute. It's good HDI pulled out. One of the directors, Mark Epstein, is sitting Shiva for his brother Jeffrey
— Lenny Ben-David (@lennybendavid) August 11, 2019
Adam Schiff, Debbie Wasserman Schultz Advise Think Tank Led By Jeffrey Epstein’s Brother
Democratic representatives Adam Schiff, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Maxine Waters are just three elected officials who sit on the congressional advisory board of a foreign policy think-tank led by Jeffrey Epstein’s brother, Mark Epstein.J-Lo concert draws 2,000 in Egypt, singer unfazed by BDS calls after Israel gig
Co-founded by socialite heiress Constance Milstein in 1988, the Humpty Dumpty Institute works closely with the United Nations, the State Department, and “various countries” to “put the pieces back together” in parts of the world ridden with conflict. (RELATED: Jeffrey Epstein’s Net Worth Unveiled)
Mark Epstein has played a significant role in this mission. According to the organization’s website, Jeffrey Epstein’s brother serves as Humpty Dumpy’s vice chairman, and has represented the group abroad on delegations alongside members of Congress and U.N. dignitaries. As recently as last February, several months before his brother was arrested at Teterboro Airport on federal charges for allegedly sex trafficking minors, Mark traveled with the group to the United Arab Emirates on a trip cosponsored by the nonprofit Peace Without Limits, which, according to Wikileaks, is funded by the Crown Prince of Furjairah in UAE. In 2015, he hosted a private dinner for a Humpty Dumpty conference, which featured a keynote address from former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power.
While Humpty Dumpty lists over thirty elected officials on their advisory board, only four are Republicans. Many of the representatives, including Schiff and Wasserman Shultz, have been critical of how public officials have handled Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes, specifically how President Donald Trump’s former Labor Secretary Alex Acosta negotiated a deal for Epstein while serving as the U.S. attorney for southern Florida. They have not noted their involvement in an organization his brother serves as vice chairman of. A picture from 2015 on Humpty Dumpty’s website shows Mark Epstein, Wasserman Shultz and other representatives smiling together.
Popstar Jennifer Lopez’s concert in Egypt on Friday night went ahead as planned, despite calls by anti-Israel groups to scrap the show over her recent appearance in Israel. The performance north of Cairo drew some 2,000 people, including Egyptian celebrities, artists and government ministers, according to a CNN Arabic report Saturday.New York Imam Active in Interfaith Work Disseminates Extremist Propaganda on the Side
According to the report, the Egyptian Minister of Investment and International Cooperation Sahar Nasr, the Minister of Social Solidarity Ghada Wali, and the Minister of Planning and Administrative Reform Hala Al-Saeed were at the event. Nasr posted a photo to Instagram of herself and the other ministers at the concert on Friday.
Attendance at the concert in the coastal city of El-Alamenin was much lower than the 50,000-60,000 or so in Tel Aviv on August 1. The Egypt show stirred controversy as calls increased by the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement for Lopez to cancel the show after she performed in Tel Aviv’s Park Hayarkon. BDS actively campaigns for a complete boycott of Israel, and does not accept the idea of a Jewish state, even within the framework of a two-state solution.
Lopez’s shows are part of her “It’s My Party” tour, a worldwide celebration marking her 50th birthday. She performed in Russia, Turkey and Spain earlier this week and is headed back to Russia for her next performance in Saint Petersburg.
Ahead of her Egypt concert, Lopez told the press, “It will be a new experience,” adding in Arabic. “I will see you soon.”
Muhammad Shahidullah is a man of seeming contradictions.BBC interest in Israeli politicians’ legal cases has its limits
As an imam, he is active in interfaith outreach, speaking to the New York Police Department and visiting the White House in April as part of an interfaith delegation. In December 2017, he participated in an interfaith event organized at New York’s 9/11 Tribute Museum. He also attended the United Nations World Interfaith Harmony Week a year earlier, and has been recognized in a New York City Council citation as “an outstanding citizen, one whom is worthy of the esteem of both our community and the great City of New York.”
But Shahidullah also runs a proselytizing website, Dawah USA, that ostensibly seeks to invite people to Islam, but in fact serves as a clearing house for extremist and Islamist propaganda, the Investigative Project on Terrorism found.
Tax records for the New York-based Dawah USA Inc. show that it is registered as doing business as the Interfaith Center USA. Shahidullah, a Bangladeshi native who lives in Queens, serves as president of both organizations.
Extremist material published on the Dawah USA website include an audio of American-born al-Qaida cleric Anwar al-Awlaki’s infamous 2002 “It’s a War on Islam” speech. It frames government counter-terrorism efforts as “a war against Muslims and Islam” and seeks to alienate Muslims from the mainstream of society.
By contrast, since the beginning of the year visitors to the BBC News website have seen just one report about a possible criminal/legal case in the Gaza Strip (not involving politicians) and just one report about Palestinian Authority politicians (not involving a legal case).Facebook and YouTube Are Failing to Detect Terrorist Content in Arabic
Interestingly, the BBC is apparently rather less interested in potential indictments when they involve an Arab Israeli political party, even though it has in the past repeatedly given a platform to one of the people involved.
“Former lawmaker Haneen Zoabi and the Arab party Balad will be indicted pending a hearing for forgery and fraud relating to their reports on campaign funding filed to the state comptroller, the attorney general and state prosecutor announced Thursday.
Balad is suspected of having received from abroad some three million shekels ($862,650) and using the funds while pretending that the money had come in as donations. The party rejected the accusations, claiming they were part of “political persecution.” […]
Zoabi and the others are suspected of aggravated fraud, attempted fraud, money laundering, aggravated forgery, using a forged document and forging corporate records. […]
Party officials deposited around 2.4 million shekels ($690,000) in the party bank account before the 2013 general election. In a financial report provided to the state comptroller in February 2016, the funds were described as donations. The report was accompanied by 1,300 receipts, found by police investigation to be forged, and a list of donors, also found to be forged, according to the prosecution.”
Despite its usually lively interest in legal cases and criminal investigations involving Israeli politicians and public figures and although this story about Balad broke last week, the BBC News website (once again) has to date not found it at all newsworthy.
On YouTube, terrorist propagandists are linking extremist material to mainstream content. This approach appears designed to game the platform's search algorithms by linking mainstream content to terrorist content, and hence driving traffic back to dangerous content. A number of the playlists were also posting a smattering of mainstream content, including videos of popular Egyptian singers, belly dancers, and mobile-phone shot videos of families.New York Times Faults One of Its Own Editors for Repeated ‘Poor Judgment’
Islamist supporters seeded eight different direct links to the PDF version of The Management of Savagery on Facebook. The links were shared 184 times across the platform, and in some instances were downloaded thousands of times. One public page with more than 137,000 followers posted a link to the PDF version of the terrorist strategy that has been shared 61 times on Facebook. The same link has been liked more than 160 times.
Both YouTube and Facebook have made strides in detecting terrorist content. For instance, Facebook claimed last year to have removed 99 percent of “terror content” before it was reported by third parties. In the first three months of 2019, YouTube said it removed 89,968 videos that “violated its violent extremism policy.” The question remains, is what we are finding in Arabic the remaining one percent that has not been reported or automatically detected? Most likely both. How large is that one percent, especially in terms of how much content is uploaded to both sites, not only in a day, but in any given hour? YouTube similarly contends that “90 percent of violent extremist videos that were uploaded and removed in the past six months were removed before receiving a single human flag, and of those, 88 percent had fewer than ten views .”
It's evident that much of the effort of social media platforms has been on English language content, however, the inability to detect clearly defined terrorist content in Arabic, the digital sphere’s fastest growing language, is a gaping hole for the companies. YouTube and Facebook should update their manual and automated Arabic language detection efforts to ensure legacy terrorist content no longer festers across their platforms. This should include the basics. Arabic names of al Qaeda and ISIS ideologues, and the titles of terrorist strategies, pamphlets, books, and films. While the platforms have been diligent at removing some English-language terrorist content, the same approach has yet to be reproduced in Arabic. Until that basic level of detection is instituted, terrorist content will, in the words of the infamous ISIS refrain, “ bakiya, bakiya, bakiya, or remain, remain, remain.”
Weisman declined to comment about the situation to The Algemeiner. Longtime Algemeiner readers, however, won’t necessarily be surprised to see Weisman’s name surface in connection with “poor judgment.”Showtime Displayed Antisemitic Hoax Cartoon to Smear Breitbart News
In 2018, we reported that several Jewish leaders and other journalists described a Weisman op-ed in the Times as “weird,” “odd,” “partisan,” or “inane.” The op-ed criticized Jewish organizations for supposedly having failed to speak out against antisemitism.
In 2015, Weisman claimed responsibility for a New York Times chart that labeled Jewish senators and congressmen opposed to the Iran deal in the color yellow. He advised Jews upset about it to “chill out.”
The Times later published an “editor’s note” undercutting Weisman. It conceded, “Many readers and commenters on social media found that aspect of the chart insensitive. Times editors agreed and decided to revise it to remove the column specifying which opponents were Jewish.”
Weisman also claimed responsibility for having edited a front-page Times article in September 2018 about how the federal Education Department was handling an antisemitism case at Rutgers University. That article had significant flaws, but Weisman defended it “100%.”
Ken LaCorte of LaCorte News has published a YouTube video slamming Showtime for a recent episode of its miniseries, The Loudest Voice, in which it created a fake headline and an antisemitic cartoon to smear Breitbart News.Man arrested for assaulting 2 Jewish men in Crown Heights
The Loudest Voice is a seven-part miniseries about the late Roger Ailes, who built the Fox News Channel into the dominant force in cable news. It is based on a book by Gabe Sherman, The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News–and Divided a Country; Ailes is played by Russell Crowe.
LaCorte, who ran Fox News’ Internet division for over a decade, recently started LaCorte News with former Fox editorial chief John Moody. The site focuses on media spin and censorship.
The website has devoted particular attention to scrutinizing and criticizing The Loudest Voice, given LaCorte and Moody’s knowledge of the inner workings at Fox.
By smearing Breitbart with an antisemitic cartoon, LaCorte explains, Showtime has crossed a line.
A man who assaulted two Jewish men in Crown Heights, New York, on Friday evening is facing charges for hate crime.WIlliamsburg: Six Elderly Jews Attacked While Walking To Shul In Attempted Robberies
According to the New York Police Department, just after 7 p.m. on Friday night, a 39-year-old man identified as Kenya Dean started arguing with a Jewish man on Carroll Street in Crown Heights.
Dean made several antisemitic remarks, broke a glass bottle and later pepper-sprayed the 27-year-old Jewish man in the face.
Police also confirmed that Dean then hit a 62-year-old man at the scene with a stick, lightly injuring him.
Dean was arrested and has since been charged with harassment and hate-crime assault.
The neighborhood's community website, CrownHeights.info, reported that both victims were Jewish. They were standing on Carroll Street when Dean reportedly walked past the two and said: “You f****** Jews! Hitler should have finished you off!”
The two men then responded to his antisemitic comments. As the argument spiraled out of control, Dean maced the younger man.
Six elderly men were attacked while walking to Shul in the heart of Williamsburg, Monday morning.Tires slashed on over 50 cars belonging to Jews in New Jersey
It happened just after 6:00AM, when the suspect(s) carried out a string of what appears to be attempted robberies. One of the incidents occurred in front of 13 Hooper Street, another by 626 Whyth Place, one by Juliana Pl & Morton St, and one by the Williamsburg “Hitch Location”. The other two robberies were in the same area.
Shomrim tell YWN that all the victims were approached from behind and all had their pockets checked by the suspect. Two victims were punched in the head.
The NYPD and Williamsburg Shomrim responded and canvassed the area, but were unable to locate the four suspects who are believed to have fled into a nearby building (611 Whyth Place).
Detectives and Shomrim are searching the area for security camera footage to help identify the suspects. Thankfully, footage has been secured and published below.
The tires on over 50 vehicles owned by Jews were slashed over the weekend in a predominantly Orthodox town in New Jersey.Poster of Anne Frank Defaced With Swastika in Melbourne, Australia
Police are treating the vandalism in Lakewood as a bias crime, CBSNewYork reported Sunday.
Yitzchak Katz, a Lakewood resident, told the network he noticed his four tires were slashed on Saturday morning.
“As I was walking down the block, it was only the Jewish houses that the tires were slashed. That was it. It was pretty obvious,” he said.
In surveillance video, a hooded suspect could be seen puncturing the tires on a pair of vehicles before walking away.
A poster bearing the image of Anne Frank — the Dutch Jewish girl whose Holocaust diary was published after her death in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp — was defaced with a swastika on Friday night in the Australian city of Melbourne.
The poster was an advertisement for a dramatization of Anne Frank’s diary performed by the Peridot Theatre Company. It was defaced with a swastika painted in red, as well as the word “@LEROY.”
The theater posted a message on its Facebook page saying, “Upset, angry, disgusted. Some lowlife has sprayed a swastika on the board advertising our production of ‘The Diary of Anne Frank.’ This action is sickening.”
Quoting Anne Frank’s diary, the theater added, “‘I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.’ We are honored to tell Anne’s story. We say NO to hate.”
A second post stated, “The despicable vandalism just underlines the fact that stories such as Anne Frank’s still need telling. Today’s matinee was virtually sold out and the audience was hugely complimentary.”
The swastika is a sign of infamy, evil and hate. Sadly though, it’s becoming all too common across vandalised sites in Melbourne, the latest being on a promotion for a theatre production of The Diary of Anne Frank. These criminals have no shame and no sense of history. pic.twitter.com/viTh8ejiz8
— Josh Frydenberg (@JoshFrydenberg) August 12, 2019
Poland honors World War II group that collaborated with Nazis
Polish officials joined war veterans on Sunday to pay tribute to a World War II-era underground force that collaborated with Nazi forces toward the end of the war in their battle against the Communists, who were imposing control on the nation.Brooklyn Jewish Girls School Becomes First in New York City to Install Bullet-Resistant Security Doors in Wake of Mass Shootings
A mass in Warsaw opened ceremonies honoring the Holy Cross Mountains Brigade of the National Armed Forces on the 75th anniversary of its formation.
Polish President Andrzej Duda’s official patronage and the presence of ruling party officials underlined the right-wing government’s rehabilitation of a partisan unit that fought both Germans and Soviets and which is celebrated by the far-right. It is seen as a part of a broader attempt by the ruling Law and Justice party to appeal to right-wing voters ahead of the nation’s parliamentary vote in October.
Poland had a large underground Home Army under the command of a government-in-exile that never collaborated with the Germans and remembrance ceremonies traditionally focus on those soldiers.
The official rehabilitation of the Holy Cross Mountains Brigade began when Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki honored its members at a cemetery in Munich in February 2018. On the same day, he asserted at a news conference that there were some “Jewish perpetrators” of the Holocaust.
A Brooklyn girl’s school is the first in New York City to install special security doors in the wake of a series of mass shootings, including two targeting synagogues.German FM visits Berlin synagogue in show of support following anti-Semitic attack
According to The New York Post, the Bnos Menachem elementary school began the installation last week. The doors weigh 150 pounds and are braced by metal bars. They are made of galvanized steel and can be manually locked from the inside with the turn of a thumb.
Harrington Park, New Jersey School Superintendent Adam Fried, whose schools have installed more than 45 of the doors, said that the thumb lock is particularly important, since “a five-year-old could do it.”
A mother whose daughter attends Bnos Menachem told the Post she was happy with the new security precautions, saying, “I think it’s great. It’s a very secure feeling to know that there’s a security measure and that they’re really thinking about the safety of the children.”
The doors are made and installed by an Israeli company, Remo Security Doors, whose president Omar Barnes said the doors contain bullet-resistant windows. “No weapon will open the door,” he affirmed.
“I was born and raised in Israel. When I hear the siren and go to the safe room, I know that I’m safe, physically and mentally,” he added.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas made a special visit to a Chabad synagogue in Berlin in a show of support for the county's Jewish community over the weekend, two weeks after the city's rabbi was attacked.When Jews and Arabs Fought Together Against the Nazis
Wearing a kippah, Maas, who is considered an Israel ally, said, "Anti-Semitism did not creep in here overnight, but it has become more vocal and aggressive. If Jewish women and men are worried about displaying their Jewishness in public – it is a disgrace to the state."
He emphasized, "We stand here physically together because of what happened to Rabbi [Yehuda] Teichtal two weeks ago, it is intolerable and unbelievable. I do not want him to stand alone without support."
German police have opened an investigation after Teichtal reported he had been spat on and cursed at by two men speaking in Arabic last month.
Gideon Joffe, the chairman of Berlin's Jewish community, said, "We have a Jewish high school here in Berlin. Every third child studies in this school because they suffered harassment at the non-Jewish public schools. I say this without embellishing things: Here in Berlin, in the year 2019, our high school is full of Jewish refugees."
In recent months, Germany has reported a 14% increase in anti-Semitic incidents in Berlin since last year, when 1,083 such incidents were reported.
Thousands of Arabs and Jews from Mandatory Palestine fought side by side in the British Army in World War II against the Nazis. Mustafa Abbasi, a professor of history at Tel-Hai Academic College, has personally interviewed or secured testimonies from dozens of Palestinians who served in the British army in World War II and fought alongside Jews, including Arabs from Jaffa, Jerusalem, Safed, Jenin, and Nablus. Tiberias alone supplied hundreds of Arab volunteers.Fran Drescher, aka The Nanny, opens up to i24NEWS about playing a TV Jew
In all, some 12,000 Arabs from Mandatory Palestine volunteered for the British army during World War II, approximately half the number of Jewish volunteers who joined up. Approximately 300 died in battle and hundreds were captured. Relations between the Jewish and Arab volunteers were mostly good.
At the time, the Arab population in pre-state Israel was split between the Husseinis, under Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini - a Nazi partner - and the Nashashibi clan, who openly supported the British and usually maintained good ties with the Jewish population.
"About 60% [of the Arabs] supported the British and opposed the Husseinis. A large part was pro-Jew and pro-British and was even willing to compromise and accept the Partition Plan. In contrast to what we were erroneously taught in school, not all of them worshiped the Mufti Husseini," Abbasi says.
Although many volunteers were motivated by money, there were those who signed up because of ideology, because they opposed the Nazi ideal of a master race and believed in the British and their values. "When the Italians bombed Tel Aviv and Jaffa and Haifa, hundreds were killed, both Jews and Arabs," Abbasi notes.
Abbasi has discovered that several dozen Jews and Arabs fought together alongside British troops at the First Battle of El Alamein in Egypt in July 1942. Jews and Arabs fought together against the Nazis in Italy and Greece, and a few also took part in the Allied invasion at Normandy in 1944. In the Middle East Commando unit, 240 Jews and 120 Arabs served under British commanders.
“I was the first Jewish actress to play a Jewish character in a starring role in prime time since Molly Goldberg in 1948.” Fran Drescher, the lovably nasal actress from Flushing, Queens who won hearts around the world with her starring role in the megahit 1990s series, The Nanny, told Emily Frances on the program, TRENDING, on i24NEWS. “Procter and Gamble wanted to buy it outright, but only if The Nanny would be written Italian and not Jewish.
“We stopped taping it 20 years ago, but it’s never been off the air anywhere in the world for 25 years. And now all the millennials are very excited about it, they love the show.”
The series has also been remade in many countries.
For the show to succeed, she said, “We had to write what we knew. So I said, you know, that Fran Fine must be Jewish. We had a [brit milah] on the show, we went to Israel on the show, I had to get my tattoo removed if I wanted to get buried in a Jewish cemetery.”
Asked by Frances about Jewish influences in her childhood, Drescher responded, “We had a bar mitzvah or a wedding, it was always buying Israeli bonds, that was the gift growing up... we also planted a lot of trees and used the Jewish holidays as an opportunity to be in gratitude, and there was always this kind of, you know, safety net, that we could always go [to Israel], should we get the boot where we were.”
Israeli surgeons removed rare brain tumor through the nose of this Russian girl in a 40 hours operation. The girl was flown 2 Israel after no doctors were able to perform this task in Russia. The girl will return to her country soon.@208Juliet @james_anderssen @lackboys3 pic.twitter.com/0MKQakGqUt
— Odi F. (@odifass) August 12, 2019
Archaeologists Discover Remains from the Babylonian Destruction of Jerusalem
Yesterday, Jews around the world fasted to commemorate the destruction of the First and Second Temples. By coincidence, a group of researchers involved in excavations around Mount Zion have just announced the discovery of evidence of the earlier of those events: specifically, the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE. The University of North Carolina at Charlotte reports:
The discovery is of a deposit including layers of ash, arrowheads dating from the period, Iron Age potsherds, lamps, and a significant piece of period jewelry—a gold and silver tassel or earring. There are also signs of a significant Iron Age structure in the associated area, but the building, beneath layers from later periods, has yet to be excavated.
Because of the site’s location, various alternative explanations for the artifacts can be eliminated, the researchers argue. “We know where the ancient fortification line ran,” noted [the dig’s co-director] Shimon Gibson, “so we know we are within the city. We know that this is not some dumping area, but the southwestern neighborhood of the Iron Age city—during the 8th century BCE the urban area extended from the City of David area to the southeast and as far as the Western Hill where we are digging.”
The ash deposits, similarly, are not conclusive evidence of the Babylonian attack in themselves, but are much more so in the context of other materials. Gibson [explained that] “the combination of an ashy layer full of artifacts, mixed with arrowheads, and a very special ornament indicates some kind of devastation and destruction. Nobody abandons golden jewelry and nobody has arrowheads in his domestic refuse.”
By all accounts the Babylonian conquest of the city by the Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar was ferocious and resulted in a great loss of life, with the razing of the city and the burning of houses, and the plundering and dismantling of King Solomon’s Temple.
