Wednesday, August 28, 2019
Honduras recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital
Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez will travel to Israel on Friday to inaugurate a “diplomatic office” in Jerusalem, recognizing the holy city as Israel’s capital.
The diplomatic office in the city will be an extension of Honduras’s Tel Aviv-based embassy.
“For me it’s the recognition that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel,” Hernandez said on Tuesday.
The Honduran foreign ministry said in a statement Israel had proposed that Honduras move its embassy to Jerusalem, which is being “analyzed and evaluated in the international and national context.”
US President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in late 2017 and officially moved the US embassy there last May, sparking a deterioration in relations with the Palestinians.
Honduras’ President Juan Orlando Hernandez speaks at the AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington on March 24, 2019. (Screen capture/AIPAC)
Guatemala and Paraguay followed suit while Brazil said it was studying the possibility. Paraguay reversed its decision four months later, after a change in government.
Moving an embassy to Jerusalem is highly contentious. Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its capital, while Palestinians view East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
Most diplomatic missions in Israel are situated in or near Tel Aviv as countries try to maintain a neutral stance over the status of Jerusalem.
(h/t IsaacStorm)
MEMRI: Blog Post On Website Of Qatar's Al-Jazeera Network Praises Hamas Summer Camps And Its Efforts To 'Raise A Generation That Believes In The Duty Of Jihad'
In an August 4, 2019 blog post on the website of the Qatari Al-Jazeera network, Palestinian blogger Ahmad Samir Qannita praised the summer camps held by Hamas's military wing, the 'Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades,[1] and commended Hamas for instilling the values of jihad and resistance in the Gazan youth and raising a "generation that believes in the duty of jihad." He noted that Hamas devotes all its resources, including its official institutions, media and education system, to this goal and that the summer camps for children and teens are an example of this. He noted further that the camps offer the participants – junior high and high school students from all over the Gaza Strip – a comprehensive military training program conducted by professional Al-Qassam fighters and "similar in its intensity to [the training] received by the Palestinian resistance fighters." The program includes the maintenance and use of machine guns and other weapons, live ammunition practice, urban warfare, and the crossing of enemy lines by means of attack tunnels.Honest Reporting: BBC Portrays Israel as a Military Abuser of Palestinian Children
The blogger also quoted lines from a militant poem by Sheikh Yousuf Al-Qaradawi, a major ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood who lives in Qatar and is close to the Qatari regime, which urges the Arab and Muslim nation to produce arms and fighters for the sake of Islam.[2]
The following are excerpts from Qannita's blog post:[3]
"Gaza is not like it was in previous decades, when the jihad activity there was limited to small armed groups that acted in secret, [striving] to carry out high-quality operations against the Zionist occupation forces in complicated security conditions. [Such was the situation] after, in 1996, the Oslo authorities [an epithet for the Palestinian Authority] delivered harsh blows to the armed Palestinian factions, led by Hamas, and persecuted and arrested anyone leaning towards the idea of resistance. The [Palestinian] Authority's security apparatuses even established an army of informers who were tasked with spying and collecting information on young jihad fighters, so as to arrest them and incarcerate them in dungeons, to deter them from fighting the Zionist occupation...
Ahed Tamimi: the Palestinian poster child
While the BBC shows footage of Tamimi attacking an IDF soldier, for which she spent eight months in an Israeli prison, it fails to give any real background on the Palestinian poster girl for terror. For the real tragedy is not Tamimi’s experience with the Israeli military court system (what the BBC terms a “childhood”).
Ahed Tamimi’s entire childhood has been spent in an environment permeated with Palestinian terrorism: terror in which her family has long played an active and prominent role. For example, Ahed’s aunt helped plan the horrific Sbarros Pizza restaurant bombing, and her mother posted anatomically precise tutorials on how to most effectively stab Israelis.
Ironically, this very terrorism is the reason Israel has security measures in the first place.
Related reading: Ahed Tamimi’s Global Propaganda Tour
Since childhood Ahed has learned from her family that all of Israel is occupied Palestinian land, including Tel Aviv, and that she must fight to gain all of it. Hardly a path to peace. And Ahed’s family have placed her personally in danger over and over, for the benefit of cameras.
Her appearance for the BBC is just the latest in a global propaganda tour, milking her iconic status.
This, however, is the real Ahed Tamimi that you won’t see on the BBC:
There are some real doozies here https://t.co/FgazEGJcLn #AhedTamimi #ShirleyTemper
— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) August 28, 2019
Melanie Phillips: We'd rather champion dead Jews than live ones
Holocaust memorialising is sometimes used as a fig leaf for present-day antisemitism. It’s easy to pay tribute to dead Jews. What seems so much more elusive is support for live ones, particularly those in Israel trying to defend themselves against those who yet again want them killed just because they are Jews.The Hebron Riots of 1929: Consequences and Lessons
There is no doubting the government’s generous impulse in wanting to build this memorial. Yet the British government was also a cheerleader for the Obama-brokered 2015 deal that enables Iran, which has waged terrorist warfare against the west and the Jews for 40 years, to build a nuclear weapon after a mere decade or so delay.
Moreover, in supporting the EU’s attempt to bust the Iranian sanctions reimposed by the US last year, the British government is trying to funnel funds once again to a regime openly committed to Holocaust denial and wiping Israel off the map.
Towards this infernal goal, Iran has more than 120,000 missiles pointed at Israel from Lebanon through its proxy Hezbollah. In an act of war thwarted at the weekend by Israeli warplanes, Iran intended to dispatch from Syria its own explosive-laden drones to attack Israel’s northern towns. Yet for a Jew to suggest that Britain might join America in trying to bring the monstrous Iranian regime to heel provokes sneers about an Israeli warmongering agenda from people for whom the threat of another Jewish genocide occasions at best an eye-roll.
In 1929, Arab clerics and politicians provoked riots across Palestine by accusing Jews of plotting to take control of Jerusalem's al-Aqsa Mosque. This month marks the 90th anniversary of those riots and Palestinian Authority and Hamas leaders incite violence today using similar falsehoods and ideology.The Tikvah Podcast: Avi Weiss on the AMIA Bombing Cover-Up
The 1929 riots destroyed the Jewish community in Hebron. They persuaded Labor Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion that socialist fraternity among Jewish and Arab workers and peasants would not ensure peace. They impelled Palestine's Jews to bolster the Haganah, their underground self-defense group. And they vindicated Zionist warnings against relying on foreigners for security.
Today's conventional wisdom holds that Palestinian-Israeli peace will result from resolving the "final-status issues." This is to assume away profound Muslim religious and Arab national objections to Israel's very existence.
To commemorate the 1929 riots is to refute the common error that the conflict is about the "occupation" that began in 1967. Arab anti-Zionist violence predates not only 1967 but Israel's birth in 1948. It started even before the 1929 Hebron massacre.
Arab rejection of Israel and Zionism emerges from an all-or-nothing view of justice and honor. It has never brooked compromise or moderation. It has justified, indeed demanded, murder of the enemy and destructive sacrifice of Palestinian lives.
Until the Palestinians have a leadership willing to set aside the ideology and cool rather than inflame the passions that spawned the Hebron massacre, the conflict will not be resolved through diplomacy.
On July 18, 1994, a car-bomb struck the headquarters of AMIA—the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association, the largest Jewish community center and social-service agency in Buenos Aires—killing 85 people and wounding 300 more. It was the worst single attack on Diaspora Jews since the Holocaust.‘I’m Sure It Wasn’t Cristina’: Argentine Presidential Election Frontrunner Makes Bold Claim Over Murder of AMIA Prosecutor Alberto Nisman
A quarter-century later, the perpetrators of this terror attack have still not been brought to justice. And in this month’s Mosaic essay, the renowned Jewish activist Rabbi Avi Weiss tells the story of the shameful cover-up of the AMIA bombing.
As soon as he heard about the attack, Rabbi Weiss packed his bags and traveled to Argentina to be present with the suffering Jewish community there. But he soon found himself confronting the then-president of Argentina, Carlos Menem, and attending a cabinet meeting where it became clear to Rabbi Weiss that the Menem government was not serious about catching and punishing the perpetrators of this horrific crime.
In this week’s podcast, Rabbi Weiss joins Tikvah’s Jonathan Silver to discuss his essay. He recounts his initial trip to Argentina and surreal meeting with President Menem, reflects on his many journeys back to Argentina in the years since the bombing, and offers his thoughts on the complicated role of the Jewish activist who operates outside the corridors of power demanding justice for his people.
Alberto Fernandez, the current frontrunner in Argentina’s upcoming presidential election, has defended his vice presidential nominee — former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner — from the suggestion that she was involved in the murder of federal prosecutor Alberto Nisman in 2015.California Democrats Pass Resolutions Condemning Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism
Speaking at a public forum in Buenos Aires last Thursday, Fernandez exclaimed, “Cristina was the one most affected by Nisman’s murder.” Several local media outlets covering the event noted that Fernandez rapidly corrected himself after using the word “murder” in relation to Nisman, substituting the words “that death” instead.
Nisman’s body was discovered in the early morning of Jan. 19, 2015 — hours before he was due to unveil a complaint against Kirchner’s government for reaching a pact with Iran despite the ongoing investigation, which he was leading, into the July 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires. Eighty-five people were murdered and more than 300 wounded in an attack conceived and executed by Iran in collaboration with its Hezbollah terrorist proxy.
Kirchner’s government falsely maintained that Nisman’s assassination was a suicide until an independent police investigation in May 2017 established beyond doubt that the federal prosecutor had been murdered. More recent efforts within Argentina to bring Kirchner — who has served as a senator since losing the 2015 presidential election — to trial over both the AMIA case and Nisman’s murder have come to nothing.
The California Democratic Party’s executive board passed three pro-Israel resolutions on Aug. 25, condemning hatred towards Jews and the State of Israel.IfNotNow Activist Accuses Jewish Congressman Of Dual Loyalty
One resolution, which Progressive Zionists of California (PZC) Co-Founder Susan George said “sailed through,” expresses “how antisemitic hate speech harms Jews and other Zionists in the California Democratic Party.”
It states that Zionism is “the human right to self-determination of the Jewish people in their homeland of Israel,” and mentions that antisemitic rhetoric has been “regularly employed by anti-Israel activists both inside and outside the [party] using demeaning and degrading language about Jews and supporters of Israel.”
The resolution also condemns sentiments that “dehumanize or employ stereotypes about Jews, such as that Jews control or wield unusual power over the economy, government or media,” in addition to contending that “Jews do not have a right to self-determination or protections from discrimination accorded to others.”
A second resolution offered backing for “diverse voices targeted by the Trump administration,” including Jews.
Finally, a third resolution approved the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism.
At the same time, the California Democratic Party’s legislative committee also voted to support a bill sponsored by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) that advocates for “the human rights of Palestinian children living under Israeli military occupation and [requires] that United States funds do not support military detention, interrogation, abuse or ill-treatment of Palestinian children.”
An audience member connected to the anti-Israel organization IfNotNow accused Rep. Brad Schneider (D., Ill.) of dual loyalty during a town hall with constituents last week.
The organization promoted the video on its Twitter account and blasted Schneider as a "die-hard @AIPAC-nik" who "couldn't even say the word ‘Occupation.'"
"I have family in Israel, as I'm sure that you do, so your Israel policy is of particular concern to me," the audience member, identified by the video's subtitles as "Nathan," said while reading from his phone. "When Donald Trump opposed BDS, moved the embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, signed the Taylor Force Act into law, withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, and recognized Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights, you celebrated every single one of these moves."
"How is your policy towards Israel different than President Trump's?" he asked Schneider.
"My policy towards Israel is supportive of the U.S.-Israel relationship," Schneider responded. "Israel is without question our best ally in the region. Israel is one of our most important allies in the entire world. So you go down the list, let's start with the embassy. Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. If you would talk to Israelis, if they think the U.S. should move its capital to Jerusalem, they would say ‘yes,' and not just the U.S., every country should move their embassy to the capital."
At that point, a man from the crowd shouted out, "That's not what he asked." "You represent American Jews, not Israelis," Nathan added.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ pic.twitter.com/RxKXH2yiL0
— Alex VanNess (@thealexvanness) August 27, 2019
.@JenniferWexton *really* doesn't want to talk about her support for pro-BDS, pro-@jvplive anti-Israel Del. @IbraheemSamirah, who said that giving money to Israel is worse than giving to the *KKK,* among limitless other insane comments #VA10 @RJC pic.twitter.com/qi7wyhRMHb
— Matthew Foldi (@MatthewFoldi) August 27, 2019
Media Receives Backlash for Smearing Trump’s Judicial Nominee
President Donald Trump's judicial nominee for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals has been subject to a media smear campaign which has distorted his past writings and labeled him a white nationalist, provoking backlash from experts.
Earlier this month, MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow attacked Steven Menashi, Trump's nominee for the open seat on the circuit court, for a 2010 law review article he wrote. Maddow characterized the article, titled "Ethnonationalism and Liberal Democracy," as a "high-brow argument for racial purity" arguing that democratic nations couldn't function unless they were unified by race.
"Are you talking about what I think you're talking about? Oh yes you are," Maddow said. She added that the article "ends with this sort of war cry about how a country can't work, how definitely democracy can’t work unless the country is defined by a unifying race."
Ed Whelan in National Review explains that Menashi's argument was about national identity and not about "racial purity." Menashi argued, quoting John Stuart Mill, that national identity requires a people "united among themselves by common sympathies which do not exist between them and any others, which make them cooperate with each other more willingly than with other people, [and] desire to be under the same government."
The Wall Street Journal editorial board slammed Maddow for her smears of Menashi.
Timothy Mynett, @IlhanMN campaign strategist and alleged lover, is a walking #BDS-fail! https://t.co/4XnftEiL2p cc: @WeWork
— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) August 28, 2019
UK Home Secretary vows to ‘stand up to antisemitism’
The UK’s newly appointed Home Secretary Priti Patel has vowed to stand up to antisemitism following a meeting with British Jewish organizations on Tuesday.UK Labour members ‘radicalized’ on Israel since Corbyn’s election, report claims
Patel said in a statement late Tuesday night that she was “delighted to meet with the Board of Deputies of British Jews.
“I look forward to working with them to stand up to the threat of antisemitism, and ensure the security and safety of Jewish communities,” she said.
The meeting with the organizations was organized by the board.
They discussed topics that included “tackling antisemitism, countering extremism and safeguarding Jewish interests in the context of Brexit.”
Board of Deputies president Marie van der Zyl, together with Community Security Trust (CST) chairman Gerald Ronson and Jewish Leadership Council vice chairwoman Debra Fox, said in a joint statement that they were, “very pleased to meet the new home secretary and congratulate her on her appointment to this crucial role.
Britain’s Labour party has become “an incubator for anti-Semitism,” a new report has claimed.High profile hate speech case heard in South Africa’s Constitutional Court
Since the election of the party’s hard-left leader Jeremy Corbyn in September 2015, Labour members have become “radicalized” about both Israel and Jewish people, according to a study by researcher and blogger David Collier.
In “The British Labour Party: Obsession and Radicalization,” Collier presents evidence of a pattern by which members who had rarely or never commented about the Jewish state, Zionism or Jews prior to Corbyn’s election as leader nearly five years ago began to post about them on scores of occasions afterwards. They often shared anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, denied the existence of Jew-hate within the Labour party and rejected the mainstream media as controlled by “Zionists.”
Mark Gardner, director of communications at the Community Security Trust, which monitors anti-Semitism and protects Jewish venues, said Collier’s research showed “the radicalizing effect upon some Labour members of prolonged heated debate on the party’s anti-Semitism problem.”
He labeled it “a sadly inevitable outcome of any such political argument: creating interest where there was none and then people adopting ever stronger positions on it.”
Ten years ago, well-known South African trade unionist Bongani Masuku walked into a classroom at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand and made threats against the Jewish community.US medical resident fired over anti-Semitic posts requests hearing
It was March 2009, and it happened to be the in middle of Israel-Apartheid week, where tension between pro-Palestinian students and pro-Israel students on campus swells.
Masuku, who was the spokesman for international relations for the country’s main trade union, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), was addressing an event hosted by the Palestine Solidarity Committee and the Young Communist League.
He told attendees that life for Jews who support Israel would be made “hell.”
During his speech, Masuku also threatened violence against South African Jewish families who had members who were serving or had served in the IDF, adding that Jews who continue to stand with Israel must “not just be encouraged, but forced to leave South Africa.”
Just a month before, in February 2009, Masuku had written a blog post attacking Jews.
“As we struggle to liberate Palestine from the racists, fascists, and Zionists who belong to the era of their friend Hitler,” he wrote. “We must not apologize, every Zionist must be made to drink the bitter medicine they are feeding our brothers and sisters in Palestine,” he said.
“We must target them, expose them, and do all that is needed to subject them to perpetual suffering until they withdraw from the land of others and stop their savage attacks on human dignity,” Masuku continued.
“Every Palestinian who suffers is a direct attack on all of us,” he added.
A former medical resident at the Cleveland Clinic who lost her position after scores of anti-Semitic social media that she wrote were exposed, has requested a hearing before the State Medical Board of Ohio.Resolution to Boycott Israeli Academic Institutions on Docket for Annual Poli-Sci Conference
Lara Kollab was informed last month that following an investigation, including a deposition in which she admitted to authoring the tweets, the medical board would discipline her, in punishments that could range from fines, permanent suspension or limiting her license, the Cleveland Jewish News reported. She is entitled to request a hearing to defend herself.
Kollab apologized in January when the anti-Semitic posts she wrote from 2011 to 2017 came to light.
She said she visited Israel and the Palestinian territories every year as an adolescent and “became incensed at the suffering of the Palestinians under the Israeli occupation.” The posts came because she had “difficulty constructively expressing my intense feelings about what I witnessed in my ancestral land.”
They resurfaced after being publicized by the controversial website Canary Mission, that hosts dossiers on pro-Palestinian student activists, professors and organizations, focusing primarily on North American universities. Among the posts that got the most attention was a tweet from 2012, when she was a medical student, which said: “hahha ewww.. ill purposely give all the yahood [Jews] the wrong meds….”
During the upcoming American Political Science Association’s (APSA) annual conference in Washington, DC, a group of political theorists is expected to discuss a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions.
While the “Academic Boycott Resolution” will only be discussed and not voted on during the Aug. 31 meeting, the Academic Engagement Network (AEN) nonetheless expressed alarm towards the APSA, which was founded in 1903 and is “the leading professional organization for the study of political science and serves more than 11,000 members in more than 100 countries,” according to its website.
In a letter to APSA Executive Director Steven Smith, AEN, which consists of APSA members, expressed concern that the resolution, which is expected to be introduced by APSA’s Organized Section 17, Foundations of Political Theory, will “further a virulently anti-Israel agenda and the goals of the BDS movement” and “not allow a fair discussion of the resolution.”
“Indeed, the resolution’s sponsors have already shown that they are uninterested in debate or dialogue with those opposed to academic boycotts in general and of Israel’s academy in particular,” continued the letter, which was written by AEN’s Chairman Mark Yudof; Executive Director Miriam Elman; and Deputy Executive Director Michael Atkins. All three call for the discussion to be “robust and even-handed.”
Several other academic associations have also considered a boycott of Israel in the past. Most notably the American Studies Association passed a resolution to boycott the Jewish state in 2018, while the Modern Language Association rejected a resolution in 2017.
— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) August 27, 2019
Palestinian Harvard student barred entry into U.S.
A 17-year-old Palestinian Harvard freshman was denied entry into the United States on Tuesday, with immigration officers questioning him for hours before cancelling his visa, according to Harvard University newspaper The Crimson.
A resident of Tyre, Lebanon, Ismail B. Ajjawi says he was subjected to interrogations and had his laptop and cellphone searched for five hours before being challenged regarding social media posts made by friends that were deemed by the officials as anti-American.
“I responded that I have no business with such posts and that I didn't like, [s]hare or comment on them and told her that I shouldn't be held responsible for what others post,” he wrote, according to The Crimson. “I have no single post on my timeline discussing politics.”
The immigration officer then decided to cancel his visa and Ajjawi was denied entry into the country.
"Applicants must demonstrate they are admissible into the U.S. by overcoming ALL grounds of inadmissibility including health-related grounds, criminality, security reasons, public charge, labor certification, illegal entrants and immigration violations, documentation requirements, and miscellaneous grounds," wrote US Customs and Border Protection spokesperson Michael S. McCarthy in a letter to Harvard. "This individual was deemed inadmissible to the United States based on information discovered during the CBP inspection.”
Surely the “apartheid” #Israel lie is on life support https://t.co/w39aXcuqCr @Hadassah
— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) August 28, 2019
Miami Herald Columnist Echoes Farrakhan’s Antisemitism, Smears Jewish Conservative as ‘Termite’
Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr., used what many conservatives and Jewish leaders are saying is an antisemitic attack against those working to expose the media, calling in a just-published column those involved in the effort, such as GOP strategist Arthur Schwartz, “termites.”Arabic Media Grapples With Jews from Arab Lands, Part 3
Schwartz, the only person Pitts, Jr., names as involved in the effort, is a Jewish conservative and ally of President Donald Trump.
The use of the word “termites” echoes antisemitism from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has recently used the word to attack Jewish people.
“A president who has branded journalists ‘enemies of the people’ and news media ‘an evil propaganda machine’ now has working on his behalf an anti-journalism hit squad,” Pitts, Jr., wrote in the column. “These people are nothing less than termites in the woodwork of freedom.”
Mort Klein, the president of America’s oldest pro-Israel group the Zionist Organization of America said in a phone interview on Tuesday evening he believes the comments from Pitts, Jr., are antisemitic. Klein referenced not just Farrakhan’s use of the word “termites” to describe Jewish people, but also when Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) used the same term.
This is the third in a series of posts by CAMERA Arabic (part 1, part 2) exploring how Arabic-language news networks, including those affiliated with Western media outlets, frame the topic of Jews who originate from or live in the Middle East and North Africa by distinguishing between “loyal” Jews and “treacherous” Zionists. All translations, emphases and in-bracket remarks are by CAMERA Arabic unless otherwise specified.BBC editorial standards bypassed in Radio 4 framing of Iraq story
The two previous posts in the series focused on media coverage of Tunisian Jewry. It is a small, Middle Eastern Jewish community, which faces scrutiny from the Arab Muslim majority which questions the former’s “Tunisian patriotism” when issues relating to Israel or “the Zionists” arise. As the two posts demonstrated, those concerns are often uncritically echoed by mainstream media outlets that cover Tunisia, like BBC Arabic (which maintains that it adheres to vital standards of journalism as practiced in the West) and London-based al-Quds al-Arabi (which does not follow Western standards, nor has it ever before).
It was only fitting, then, that the most recent heated debate on the matter (described in detail in the first post) was triggered by Israeli tourists of Tunisian roots who chanted “long live Israel and long live Tunisia!” – strange fish in a discourse that takes the dichotomy between tolerable Judaism and hostile Zionism for granted. Indeed, unlike the couple of thousands of Jews who live in Tunisia and whom the Arabic-speaking media were still able to somehow classify as loyal Arabs, the tens of thousands of Tunisian Jews who currently live in Israel pose a far greater challenge to the narrative they have been promoting all along.
The subject of Jewish communities who lived in the countries of the Arab and Islamic world for centuries, their recent history and their current whereabouts, is still a sensitive subject in Arab society. Therefore, seldom is it discussed openly and fearlessly in Arabic-speaking media outlets.
Note the framing there: Radio 4 listeners are told that it would be any Israeli action to counter the transfer of weapons from Iran to Syria via Iraq which “could destabilise” the latter country rather than the transfer of weapons itself or the presence of Iranian assets in Iraqi militias.Orthodox man attacked with huge rock in Brooklyn in apparent hate crime
Shah then introduced her sole interviewee – without clarifying that she is not a military correspondent – and while claiming that third hand statements – unverified by the BBC – from anonymous sources constitute “confirmation”.
Shah: “Let’s speak to Allison Kaplan Sommer who is a journalist at the Left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haretz [sic]. Ahm, just what does…what does this tell us that the confirmation of these air strikes have come from US sources?”
Towards the end of the nearly four and a half minute-long item, Shah returned to her earlier framing.
Shah: “…this is believed to be the first Israeli bombing in Iraq in nearly four decades. Do you think that this is a dangerous opening up of a new front?”
When this story first broke the BBC News website promoted unsubstantiated claims concerning Israeli involvement from an inadequately identified senior Iranian asset. The following day those claims were slightly walked back in another report.
Now we see the BBC using anonymous and uncorroborated claims published by another media outlet to promote the framing of the story it obviously wishes to amplify – with blatant disregard for its own editorial standards.
A 64-year-old rabbi, the father-in-law of popular Hasidic singer Benny Friedman, was hit in the head by a stone brick thrown at him while walking Tuesday morning in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Rabbi Avraham Gopin was hospitalized with “a broken nose, missing teeth, stitches on his head and lacerations on his body,” Friedman posted on Twitter. Gopin is a dual Israeli-American citizen, according to Haaretz.
“This morning, at 7:45am, my father in law went for his morning walk, like he always does. Suddenly a man started yelling at him, and started chasing him, holding a huge brick,” Friedman tweeted in a thread that also included a photo of his father-in-law’s bloody tzitit, a ritual garment Orthodox Jewish men typically wear daily under their clothing.
New York City Councilman Chaim Deutch tweeted that the police are investigating the attack as a hate crime.
The Anti-Defamation League said it was offering a reward of up to $5,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the assailant.
“Thank Gd, all things considered, my father in law is doing ok,” Friedman tweeted on Tuesday afternoon.
"The Orthodox are the Jews of the Jews. We are othered, shamed, and ridiculed for our religious practices — by non-Orthodox-Jews and non-Jews alike. And that rhetoric often escalates into downright dehumanization." Devastating, by @avitalrachel:https://t.co/otcONs3U54 pic.twitter.com/xNspPFd34W
— Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) August 28, 2019
Fliers accusing Jews of being behind 9/11 attacks appear in San Francisco area
Anti-Semitic fliers saying that Jews and Israel were behind the 9/11 attacks appeared in Northern California about 30 miles from San Francisco.Major Row Between French Jews and Leading Masonic Order Averted After Resolution Blaming Rising Antisemitism on Israel Is Withdrawn
The fliers discovered last weekend in Novato, a city of about 52,000 in the North Bay area, were plastered on telephone poles, storefronts and a high school campus. They said Israelis were seen dancing on the site of the collapsed Twin Towers, that a Jewish-Israeli man made billions in insurance money and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the attacks.
At the bottom of the page it says, “Wake up USA!”
Police Chief Adam McGill urged citizens to “stand up to hate,” but told the Marin Independent Journal that the fliers are protected by the First Amendment and there would be no investigation. No group has claimed responsibility for them.
Mayor Eric Lucan joined McGill in condemning the fliers, saying “there is no room for this type of hate speech” in Novato.
A major row between France’s Jewish community and the largest Freemasons organization in the country was averted on Tuesday after a proposed conference resolution that bitterly attacked CRIF, the French Jewish representative body, was withdrawn.U.S. Army Tests Israel's Spike Missile
A statement signed by Grand Master Jean-Philippe Hubsch of the Grand Orient de France Masonic order on Monday evening declared: “No, Freemasons are not antisemitic, just as they are not racist or xenophobic.”
The controversial resolution was due to be debated at the Grand Orient’s annual conference in the city of Rouen this weekend. The text urged the boycotting of all events sponsored by CRIF, lambasting the Jewish communal organization for supporting the State of Israel and allegedly identifying with the “politics of the extreme religious right.” It also blamed rising antisemitism in France on CRIF’s alleged acceptance of Israel’s “encroachment” upon “Palestinian territories” in the West Bank.
The resolution became public after individual members of the 53,000-strong Grand Orient order alerted CRIF to its contents. CRIF President Francis Kalifat told Le Figaro newspaper on Tuesday that he had been “amazed and angered” by the resolution.
Kalifat said he had quickly reached out to Hubsch. “He was as devastated as I was,” the French Jewish leader said.
In the mountainous desert of Arizona, an AH-64E helicopter hiding behind 1,600 feet of craggy mountain fires a missile at a target representing a Russian Pantsir medium-range, surface-to-air missile system on the opposite slope.Israeli firms develop systems capable of controlling enemy drones
The Aug. 26 scenario, attended by Defense News, was part of a U.S. Army experiment to achieve greater standoff against enemy threats using the Rafael-manufactured Spike Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS) anti-tank, guided missile.
Maneuvering outside of the Russian system’s range, the Apache pilot was able to fire and control the Spike missile. And the Army took its experiment further by having the Apache fly at a low altitude — only a couple hundred feet above the highest obstacle in the desert — when firing the missile.
The service designed the experiment for the Spike missile and the Apache pilot to lose connectivity in the last few seconds of impact to ensure the missile could take over using its automated capability and still take out the threat.
An unmanned system, meanwhile, kept eyes on the target throughout the event, confirming to the pilot the Spike’s successful impact.
Israeli defense technology firms have recently developed systems that can take control of enemy drones to thwart attacks and gather information on them, a report said Wednesday.Ali G in DamascusNetflix airs trailer for series about Israeli spy Eli Cohen
The systems hand the operators complete control of the drone, allowing them to land it safely for analysis.
“The system we developed can detect hostile drones at a range of up to 3.5 kilometers (2.17 miles) and take control of about 200 drones simultaneously,” Asaf Lebovitz, product manager in Skylock, one of the companies, told the Haaretz daily.
The report came days after a series of drone-related attacks in neighboring Arab countries that were blamed on Israel. In one of them, the Israel Defense Forces said it had conducted a strike in Syria to thwart an attack by Iranian drones. In other incidents that took place in Lebanon, the IDF made no comment.
Skylock demonstrated its new invention at an event some two months ago, according to the report.
“We set a certain location where we want to gain control of the drone,” Lebovitz said. “We have the ability to disrupt the connection between the drone and the operator, and then gain remote control of it and land it, to check what it is carrying and whom it belongs to.”
Netflix on Wednesday released the trailer for its series on legendary Israeli spy Eli Cohen, starring Sacha Baron Cohen.
The six-episode drama “The Spy” tells the story of Cohen, who spied for Israel in Syria in the early 1960s, and the new promo focuses on the personal toll of Cohen’s undercover work as he is forced to lie to loved ones. It also suggests that as the story progresses, Cohen will lose his own ability to distinguish truth from fiction as he assumes his Syrian persona.
The show, which will be released September 6, was written and directed by Israeli Gideon Raff, best known for the Hebrew-language drama series “Hatufim” (Prisoners of War) and its acclaimed US adaptation, “Homeland.”
Mossad agent Cohen was put on trial and executed by Syria for espionage on May 18, 1965, after he successfully infiltrated the Syrian government under the alias Kamel Amin Thaabet for four years. The intelligence he conveyed during that period was credited by then-prime minister Levi Eshkol with having greatly assisted Israel during the Six Day War.
Five decades on, Israel has not given up on retrieving Cohen’s remains from Syria and bringing them to Israel for burial.
16th-century Jewish tombstones unearthed in Ukraine
Members of the group Jewish Galicia & Bukovina were recently sent to document 16th-century Jewish graves that were unearthed in the town of Busk in western Ukraine.After Nearly Eight Decades, Moldova Reopens Synagogue Seized by Soviets
Dr. Ilia Lurie, a researcher with the organization, told Israel Hayom, "We knew that there was an old grave dating back to 1520 in the Ukrainian town of Busk. The cemetery was apparently built at the end of the 15th century."
The representatives of Jewish Galicia & Bukovina (JCB) were joined by local activists and students from the Herzog College in Jerusalem who have completed a course on European Jewry. Alongside the grave whose existence they were aware of, they were surprised to discover 10 more graves and headstones, which Lurie describes as a "rare find."
"The headstones we discovered were from the 16th century, which was known for riots that destroyed a lot of Jewish symbols and remains," Lurie explained.
Thus far, JCB – whose purpose is to document and make accessible the historic legacy of Jews from Galicia and Bukovina – has documented 15 Jewish cemeteries. These comprise only a small part of the total cemeteries and headstones that existed in these areas. The rest are believed to have been lost.
A synagogue in Moldova that was seized by the Soviet Union almost eight decades ago was reopened on Sunday.Newly deciphered Moabite inscription may be first use of written word ‘Hebrews’
About 300 people attended the reopening of the Wooden Synagogue, or the Lemnaria Synagogue, in the basement of the Kedem Jewish Community Center.
The synagogue was founded in 1835 and seized in 1940.
The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee opened the community center in 2005 in the building that consisted of the synagogue.
Alexandar Bilinkis, the president of Jewish Community of the Republic of Moldova, along with Alexander Weinstein and Grinshpun Emmanuil, contributed the funds to enable the synagogue’s reopening.
Out of about 3 million people, fewer than 4,000 Jews reside in Moldova (as of 2012), which was party to pogroms and other persecution against Jews during the 19th and 20th centuries.
The earliest written use of the word “Hebrews” may have been found upon an inscribed Moabite altar discovered during ongoing excavations at the biblical site of Atarot (Khirbat Ataruz) in Jordan. The two newly deciphered late 9th century or very early 8th century BCE Moabite inscriptions incised into the cylindrical stone altar serve as tangible historical anchors for a battle of epic proportions.
According to researcher Adam Bean’s Levant article on the find, “An inscribed altar from the Khirbat Ataruz Moabite sanctuary,” the inscriptions offer new insight into the bloody aftermath of the conquest of Atarot that is described in the famed Mesha Stele and in the Bible. In 2 Kings 3:4-5, after the death of King Ahab of Israel (reigned ca. 869-850 BCE), King Mesha of Moab rebelled against Israelite hegemony but was defeated.
The two accounts, however, give opposing victors. In the Mesha Stele narrative, the vengeful Moabite king razes the city and annihilates its inhabitants, only to later repopulate it with other peoples.
Writes Bean, these two new inscriptions — the earliest extant evidence for a distinctive Moabite script — could be Moabite records of tallied booty and a description of the conquered peoples. If his reading is accurate, those peoples could potentially include the Hebrews.
