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Monday, January 27, 2020

01/27 Links Pt2: Survivors, world leaders at Auschwitz mark 75 years since its liberation; Western world nations support terror-linked Palestinian NGOs; Rashida Tlaib resurrects a 700 year old blood libel

From Ian:
Western world nations support terror-linked Palestinian NGOs - report
A new report issued on Monday by the research institute NGO Monitor found that eight Palestinian NGOs, which receive support from Western nations, maintain ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a terrorist organization.

NGO Monitor claimed that the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, France, Ireland, Norway, and Belgium funneled millions of dollars to the Palestinian groups. The support was not limited to EU countries as the US, Canada and Japan were also among the donors. UN-OCHA and UNICEF were among the international organizations who also donate.

Over 70 current and former staff, board members, and general assembly members, as well as senior management and founders at these NGOs have direct ties to the PFLP, the report found.

Founded by George Habash in 1967, the PFLP is a Palestinian, secular, Marxist-Leninist terror group, originally supported by the USSR and China.

The PFLP was involved in suicide bombings, shootings, assassinations and other attacks targeting Israeli civilians. The group was well-known for hijacking commercial airlines in the 1960s and 1970s
David Collier: Antisemitism and Holocaust denial – the rise of the left
The Rise of Holocaust denial on the left

It would be fair to say that Marxist elements on the political left can freely love the victims of the Nazis. The tragedy of the Holocaust and the anti-nationalist ideologies of the modern left are a perfect fit. What better way to show everyone how evil some of their ideological enemies are, than by holding aloft the furnaces of Auschwitz?

When I began the undercover work into antisemitism it never crossed my mind that Holocaust denial would exist on the Marxist left. Yet just as antisemitism has evolved and mutated so too has Holocaust denial. In fact, ‘left-wing’ antisemitism today is so rooted in Holocaust denial it would be unable to have spread into the mainstream without it. It sits hidden away in an antisemitic sewer titled ‘Rothschild Conspiracy’.

Many people I know – indeed even many people who fight antisemitism – consider Rothschild Conspiracy as something akin to a racist joke. Antisemitic – but put away with Icke’s lizards as a silly and almost laughable version of it. An adaptation of the ‘socialism of fools’ that blames Zionists rather than Jews for the inequality of the world. Marxists hate bankers, antisemitic stereotypes paint Jews as bankers, therefore antisemitic Marxists hate Jews.

This misses the point entirely. Rothschild Zionist Conspiracy – is not throwaway foolishness, nor is the inherent Holocaust denial within accidental. It is all an absolutely vital part of anti-Zionist ideology.
20,000 Jewish children burn

The problem is this: Israel is an ethical imperative. It is why elements of the left supported the early Zionists as a liberation movement even before the rise of the Nazis. The more the Nazis rose – the more of the left understood the necessity of Israel. What the Holocaust managed to do, was simply end the argument. Even amongst Jews – there was near universal support. Zionism was no longer just based on history or universal human rights, but on an undeniable contemporary necessity. Had Israel existed earlier, millions of Jews could have been saved.

This image is from a file at the British archives. The Polish consul sought agreement from the British for 20,000 Jewish children from Poland to be allowed to immigrate into the Mandate of Palestine. The date 18 Sep 1939.
US Democratic Presidential Candidate Bloomberg Vows to Back Israel, Takes Dig at Sanders
US presidential contender Michael Bloomberg pledged on Sunday to “always have Israel’s back,” while separately joking he was the only Jewish candidate who does not want to turn the United States into a “kibbutz.”

The joke, made during a speech on antisemitism and foreign policy, referred to collectivist farms in Israel and was an apparent dig at fellow Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders.

Bloomberg and Sanders, who are both Jewish, are vying for the Democratic nomination to take on Republican President Donald Trump in the November election.

Sanders is a front-runner in the race and proposes left-wing policies like abolishing private health insurance in favor of a government-run Medicare-for-All program, based on the government program for older Americans.

Sanders spent several months in Israel in the 1960s as a volunteer on a kibbutz, and calls himself a democratic socialist.

Bloomberg has more centrist positions and has largely avoided attacks against individual Democratic candidates. A former mayor of New York whose wealth is estimated at about $60 billion, he has pledged to spend from his fortune to support the eventual Democratic nominee even if he loses the contest.

Bloomberg previously criticized leading Democratic candidates as too liberal to beat Trump. His remarks on Sunday appeared to take aim at Sanders, although he did not mention the senator from Vermont by name.

“I’m not the only Jewish candidate running for president. But I am the only one who doesn’t want to turn America into a kibbutz,” he told a campaign event at a synagogue in Miami.





Survivors, world leaders at Auschwitz mark 75 years since its liberation
Survivors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp recalled their suffering as they marked the 75th anniversary of its liberation on Monday, returning to the place where they lost entire families and warning about the ominous growth of anti-Semitism and hatred in the world.

About 200 camp survivors attended, many of them elderly Jews and non-Jews who traveled from Israel, the United States, Australia, Peru, Russia, Slovenia and elsewhere. Many lost parents and grandparents in Auschwitz or other Nazi death camps, but were joined by children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren.

They gathered under an enormous, heated tent straddling the train tracks that had transported people to Birkenau, the part of the vast complex where most of the murdered Jews were killed in gas chambers and then cremated. Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet army on January 27, 1945.

Ronald Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, brought the crowd to tears with the story of a survivor who was separated from his family: The man watched watched his young daughter, in a red coat, walk to her death, turning into a small red dot in the distance before disappearing forever.

“Do not ever let this happen again to any people,” Lauder said, warning about the rising anti-Semitism.

After the end of the war, when “the world finally saw pictures of gas chambers, nobody in their right mind wanted to be associated with the Nazis,” he recalled. “But now I see something I never thought I would see in my lifetime, the open and brazen spread of anti-Jewish hatred.”
Rivlin to Polish counterpart: ‘Many Poles’ stood by, helped murder Jews in WWII
President Reuven Rivlin, in a meeting on Monday with his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda, fired the latest salvo in a spat between the two nations over the complicity of Poles in anti-Jewish violence during and after World War II, noting that although the Polish people fought against Nazi Germany, “many Poles stood by and even assisted in the murder of Jews.”

During a meeting in Krakow in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the Israeli president added that although Nazi Germany was the architect of the Holocaust, others in Europe who helped must also take their share of responsibility.

“We remember that Nazi Germany initiated, planned and implemented the genocide of the Jewish people in Poland and other places and that it takes full responsibility for its actions. And we also remember, with distress, that significant assistance came from across all of Europe, and that also demands the acceptance of responsibility,” Rivlin said.

He added that he invited Duda to Jerusalem for “discussions that will strengthen our relations and the important cooperation between our countries.”

The president noted the “unbreakable bond” between the two nations, but said that history should be left to historians, without political interference.






Holocaust 'Crime against God and humanity,' says Trump
The Holocaust was a crime "against God and humanity," which must never be allowed to happen again, US President Donald Trump said on Monday, in recognition of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Americans must resolve to combat evil and oppressive regimes worldwide with "democracy, justice and the compassionate spirit that is found in the hearts of all Americans," Trump said, invoking the memories both of those who died in the Holocaust and those who sacrificed their lives to defeat the evil of Nazism and ensure that freedom prevailed.

Acknowledging the antisemitism still suffered by Jews, the president highlighted his executive order, issued in December, to help combat antisemitic discrimination. "Antisemitism will never be tolerated, and this action bolsters my administration’s efforts to create a culture of respect that deeply values the dignity in every human life," he said.

And he continued: "As we come together as one nation on this International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we ask God to grant strength to those who survived the depravity of the Nazi regime, and comfort to the families of the victims whose lives were cut short.

"We ask that the world reflect on this day and seek to ensure that we stand united against intolerance and oppression of people of every race, religion or ethnicity," he said. "And, in order to ensure that these horrific crimes against God and humanity never happen again, we must resolve to combat evil and oppressive regimes with democracy, justice, and the compassionate spirit that is found in the hearts of all Americans."


Holocaust Survivor Never Thought She’d See This
The unbelievable moment Holocaust survivor Lila sees her grandson flying over her home in Israel!


Remembering the Muslims murdered at Auschwitz
Thankfully, there is some important good news. A growing chorus of Muslim leaders has been increasingly active in countering this pernicious hate, speaking out in support of tolerance and against Holocaust rejectionism. These range from the king of Morocco, who has publicly declared the Holocaust to be “one of the most tragic chapters of modern history,” to the secretary-general of the Saudi-based Muslim World League, who denounced Holocaust denial and is now making his own high-profile visit to Auschwitz.

Including Muslim victims of Auschwitz alongside the nearly million Jewish victims and the thousands of Christian victims will help bring Muslims into this critical historical narrative and contribute to this positive trend. After all, while the Holocaust was an overwhelmingly Jewish tragedy, the Nazi quest for global domination based on a warped sense of racial supremacy continues to animate annihilationist rhetoric and apocalyptic strategies one hears from extremists in Muslim societies. And the genocide the Nazis attempted to perpetrate on the Jewish people has, regrettably, been replicated since then by genocidal attempts to wipe out millions of other innocents, many of whom have themselves been Muslim, from the Kurds of northern Iraq to the Rohingya of Myanmar.

The Muslims who died at Auschwitz may not have been killed because of their faith but their faith did not exempt them from their fate. Remembering them — Ismail Mamatdzanon, Nasreddin Tadzubajev, Mohammed Sultanov, Hassan Mamedov and their co-religionists — is a small step that could reverberate far beyond the killing fields of the Polish countryside.
Jewish, Arab, Druze youth to commemorate Holocaust together in Yad Vashem
Jewish, Arab and Druze national service volunteers are expected to attend a joint, multicultural ceremony in Yad Vashem on Monday to commemorate the Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

National-civic service is Israel's alternative voluntary for those who do not serve in the Israel Defense Forces, being mainly Religious Zionists and Arab Israelis.

The event is organized by Bar-Ilan University UNESCO chairwoman Prof. Zehavit Gross, who acts as the Higher Education Council's representative in the National Service Council. Participants, including National-Civic Service Authority director Reuven Pisnki, the director's adviser Einat Dermer, Yad VaShem and youth movement representatives, will focus on rescue during World War II.

According to the organizers, the topic was chosen due to its human, universal nature that ignores racial, ethnic, religious, gender or class differences.

The event's goal, they say, is to create solidarity among all groups within Israeli society, using the memory of the Holocaust as a link to create empathy and tolerance and draw attention to human rights.

Despite the World Holocaust Forum, Gross says that the memory of the Holocaust has been fading in recent years, especially among the younger generation. She says that today's youth find it difficult to connect to the Holocaust because they lack basic knowledge about it.
B'Nai Brith honors former Philippine leader who saved Jews during Holocaust
The Philippines being a refuge for the Jewish people began in 1937, against the backdrop of the war between China and Japan. Then, the American high commissioner of the Philippines, which was a US territory at the time, waived visa requirements for 28 Jewish families, allowing them refuge in the South Pacific country. Manila's Jewish community then took in Jews from Germany after they reached Shanghai.

Outraged over the treatment of Jews in Germany during the war, Quezon dedicated himself to bring even more Jews to the country and worked with the US government to do so, The Jerusalem Post reported.

Quezon devised a plan to bring some 70,000 Jewish refugees to the Philippines to work across several industries, but his plans were thwarted when the country was invaded by the Japanese.

However, thanks to Quezon's "Open Doors" policy, 1,300 refugees were able to call Manila their home and, today, that act of kindness is the foundation of bilateral relations between the Philippines and Israel.

"Jews were not welcome in many countries.This was a unique effort by a leader of a country," Alan Schneider, director of the B'nai Brith World Center, told The Jerusalem Post.

Monday's event in Tel Aviv will feature a panel discussion with Professor Robert Rockaway of Tel Aviv University, as well as screenings of excerpts from the ABS-CBN iWANT documentary, The Last Manilaners, and Star Cinema's feature film on President Quezon's decision to accept Jewish refugees, Quezon's Game.


1 in 5 Germans think the Holocaust gets too much attention, surveys find
Two new surveys show that about one in five Germans – and more than half of right-wing populists – think the Holocaust gets too much attention in the country.

The surveys, released on the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, come amid warnings. Reflecting on the Nazi’s crimes was a priority in post-war West Germany, but “this consensus is crumbling,” Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said Sunday, in a statement on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“If we do not take countermeasures now, our democracy could be seriously endangered,” Schuster said, urging a greater commitment to Holocaust education.

Germans mark the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz — as well as other significant dates in Holocaust history throughout the year — with a wide range of programs, both official and private.

And this is appropriate, said 45 percent of the 2,052 Germans surveyed by the Yougov Institute on January 22-23 for the German news agency dpa. But while this survey found that 24% of respondents thought the topic should get more attention, 22% felt the opposite.

A full 56% of those who identified with the far-right, anti-immigrant party “Alternative for Germany,” agreed that Holocaust remembrance is given too much weight. In recent years, prominent AfD politicians have decried Berlin’s Holocaust memorial as “a monument of shame” and called the Third Reich “a mere bird-sh** in more than 1,000 years of successful German history.”




Rashida Tlaib Promotes False ‘Blood Libel’ Claim Demonizing Jews, Refuses To Apologize
Far-left Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), who has a documented history of anti-Semitism, promoted a false blood libel story last week demonizing Israelis for the death of a young Palestinian boy and, after significant backlash, deleted the retweet but has refused to apologize for her latest anti-Semitic incident.

The tweet that Tlaib promoted stated: “KIDNAPPED & EXECUTED 7 year old #Palestinian child Qusai was kidnapped by a Herd of violent #Israeli settlers, assaulted & thrown in a water well was found this morning frozen to death in Beit Hanina, #Jerusalem after #Israeli forces assaulted search teams.”

The claim from a random Twitter account then went to the account of a Palestinian official, who wrote: “The heart just shatters. The pain is unbearable. No words.”

Tlaib then promoted the tweet from the Palestinian official to her nearly 900,000 followers.

“In fact the boy was found by Israeli emergency services dead in a cistern on Saturday morning after going missing on Friday. Nevertheless, some Palestinian social media accounts incited against Israel, with small clashes resulting in East Jerusalem,” The Jerusalem Post reported. “The tweet accusing Israelis of kidnapping and murder and which actually shows the boy’s body being taken from the cistern by medical personnel has now been viewed 125,000 times. It has led to an outpouring of incitement against Israel.”

The Palestinian official issued a weak apology for promoting the false claim, writing, “My apologies for retweeting something that’s not fully verified. It seems that the news of his being kidnapped is not certain.”

Tlaib on the other hand has not apologized for promoting the false claim to her hundreds of thousands of followers.

Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt slammed Tlaib and noted that she had not apologized for her actions, writing, “This is an example of how the blood libel works in 2020. @RashidaTlaib retweets a vicious lie steeped in centuries-old accusations used to demonize Jews, then says nothing when it’s disproven. An apology is overdue.”

Tlaib is notorious for spreading false and inflammatory information that promotes an agenda that divides people along racial lines.
Israel Advocacy Movement: Rashida Tlaib resurrects a 700 year old blood libel
Rashida Tlaib shared an antisemitic trope almost identical to a medieval blood libel that led to the massacre of Jews.






PreOccupiedTerritory: Tlaib Apologizes For Deleting Tweet Falsely Accusing Israel Of Killing Palestinian Boy (satire)
A Congresswoman who shared a false online post regarding a Palestinian child, according to which Israeli authorities kidnapped and murdered him,when in fact the boy had fallen into water and drowned, posted again today to express remorse for taking down the false tweet, and vowed not to let such removal happen again.

Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) retweeted a Twitter post about eight-year-old Qusai Abd Abu Ramileh of Jerusalem, who went missing over the weekend, to the effect that he had been kidnapped, and later deleted her tweet when news reports came to light that the boy had slipped and fallen into a rain-filled ditch, and that Israeli police had taken a leading role in the search and rescue attempts. An online furor erupted over Ms. Tlaib’s doing so without comment, a furor that led this morning to the Congresswoman posting again that she will henceforth demonstrate more care online to avoid removing material that makes Israel look evil, regardless of its veracity or lack thereof.

“I would like to apologize for deleting my tweet about the poor Palestinian boy Qusai Abd Abu Ramileh,” she tweeted this morning (Monday). “In the emotion of the uproar and the moment I rushed to take measures that I now see were in error, and regret.” A later tweet reaffirmed the lawmaker’s resolve to stick to her anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetorical guns – though she has not specifically ruled out non-rhetorical ones for this purpose – even when such rhetoric arouses intense opposition.

Aides to the Congresswoman explained that the heightened tension of the atmosphere in Washington surrounding the presidential impeachment proceedings had contributed to the ill-advised deletion. “Rashida has a lot on her political plate, as you can imagine,” noted Jiffa Sharmuta. “It’s not just the excitement and intensity of the impeachment itself; Rashida, remember, was the one who, to celebrate her election to office, yelled, ‘Let’s impeach the mother******!’ So she’s personally tied to what’s going on to an extent that many of her colleagues are not, and she can get preoccupied. We’ll all try to help her be more careful, but nobody’s perfect.”
Local branch of Corbyn-backed pro-Palestine group accused of ‘Holocaust denial’
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn faces angry calls to distance himself from a pro-Palestine group – of which he is a patron – after a local branch was accused of promoting rampant Holocaust denial on social media.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s Brixton branch (PSC), which backs boycotts against the state of Israel, drew fierce criticism from online users and activists at the weekend amid claims it promoted antisemitism and Holocaust denial in a tweet.

The tweet, seemingly deleted after it was sent from the official account for the branch on 25 January, contained a link to an article appearing to suggest the number of Jews murdered during the Holocaust could have been “exaggerated.”

The opinion piece, entitled The Jewish Holocaust And The Palestinian Nakba and published on the blog “Days of Palestine” last week, appears to draw comparisons between the Holocaust and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It claims that “accounts vary” on the number of Jewish victims murdered in the Holocaust, saying that while “some historians” estimate the figure to be six million, others “reduce it to hundreds of thousands.”

The piece also suggests a “tendency to exaggerate the number of Jewish victims” could have been used as a “cover for the daily Israeli crimes against the indigenous people of Palestine.”

“This exaggeration has been an attempt to label all those who possess the courage to reject the occupation’s policies and stand in solidarity with the just struggle of our people as ‘antisemitic,'” the article states.
Len McCluskey: Jeremy Corbyn’s opponents used antisemitism accusations to undermine him
Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, the Unite general secretary hit out at what he called "despicable” critics of the Labour leader who had used the row over anti-Jewish abuse in the party's ranks to damage Mr Corbyn.

He said: “I’m absolutely convinced that there were those individuals who opposed Jeremy Corbyn’s election right from the beginning used the anti-semitism issue to undermine him - there is no doubt about that.”

And the Unite chief added: “Lots of people were genuinely concerned, I have no problem with that. But there were others who were disingenuous.”

Mr McCluskey, whose union has thrown its weight behind Rebecca Long-Bailey in the race to succeed Mr Corbyn as Labour leader, acknowleged that the party had "never handled the anti-semitism issue correctly".

Labour is currently being investigated by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission over its approach to dealing with complaints of anti-Jewish abuse.

Mr McCluskey's comments have already attracted criticism from some Labour MPs.


Government to investigate educational material for children comparing Gaza to Holocaust, in breach of International Definition of Antisemitism
The Government has said that it will investigate educational material for children comparing Gaza to Holocaust, in breach of International Definition of Antisemitism.

The material – a course titled ‘Genocide Memorial Day’ – is recommended for children aged twelve and over, and was reportedly designed and circulated by a controversial pro-Iranian charity known as the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC). The material was reportedly uploaded to the respected TES digital educational service, an open resource platform for teachers formerly known as the Times Educational Supplement, and also emailed to educators across the country in January.

The material makes repeated equations between the Nazi treatment of the Jews and Israeli Government policy. It also describes the “Israeli assault on Gaza” in 2009 as a genocide and includes images of Hamas flags. Hamas is proscribed as a terrorist organisation and seeks the genocide of all Jews worldwide.

A one-minute video produced by the IHRC promoting ‘Genocide Memorial Day’ also minimises the Jewish element of the Holocaust, such as by referring to the “eleven million victims of the Nazi Holocaust.” Alongside the Holocaust it also lists what it describes as genocides in Gaza.

The Definition says that “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is an example of antisemitism.




New report: Over 100 anti-Semitic attacks in Brooklyn alone in 2019
Ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which will be commemorated around the world on Monday, the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs on Sunday published its report on anti-Semitism for 2019.

The report reveals extremely disconcerting trends of increased and intensifying anti-Semitic incidents across the globe in general, and in Western Europe and the United States in particular.

In 2019, according to the report, seven Jews and non-Jews were murdered in a series of anti-Semitic attacks, and many others were wounded. The report also states that anti-Semitic violence came from different directions and was inspired by various ideologies, by the far-right, white supremacists, the extreme left, radical Islam and even escalating street violence perpetrated by African-American youths.

The epicenters of anti-Semitism: Western democracies

The report reveals that anti-Semitism mainly poses a threat to Jews living in Western democracies with large Jewish communities – the US, France, Great Britain and Germany. The US saw a rise in the number of violent anti-Semitic incidents, with over 100 violent street attacks in Brooklyn alone in the past year.

In France, too, there was a drastic increase in the number of reported anti-Semitic attacks in the first half of 2019. And for the second consecutive year, online anti-Semitic abuse intensified, with many anti-Semitic commenters no longer searching for an excuse, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to spew classic anti-Semitic rhetoric.

In Germany, there was a 20% increase in anti-Semitic incidents, among them the Halle synagogue shooting on October 9, in which two bystanders lost their lives. Additionally, throughout 2019 Jews were assaulted in the streets, targeted with insults and threats, and neo-Nazi groups and political parties openly disseminated neo-Nazi propaganda and called for the release of Holocaust deniers from prison.
France reports 27% increase in anti-Semitic acts
Anti-Semitic acts increased in France last year by 27%, acts against Muslims inched higher, and anti-Christian acts remained stable, but were the highest of all, France’s interior minister said Sunday, denouncing the situation as intolerable.

On top of that, acts described as bearing a racist and xenophobic character, mostly threats, more than doubled between 2018 and 2019 — increasing from 496 to 1,142, according to a statement by Interior Minister Christophe Castaner.

“Expressions and acts of hate, whether they target origins or religious beliefs, whether they take the form of physical violence or verbal threats, are an intolerable attack on our common project, the foundations of our social … pact,” the statement said.

To mobilize against forces of hate, and its banalization, the ministry is creating a network of special investigators around France. And it has designated experts on racism and anti-Semitism in gendarmeries and departments, the statement said.

The statistics revealing the “permanence of anti-Semitic hate” take on a particular meaning as the world marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, he noted. (h/t Zvi)
“Hitler was the best, he was right, we hate Jews”: eleven-year-old girls subjected to antisemitic abuse on eve of Holocaust Memorial Day
Two eleven-year-old girls were subjected to antisemitic abuse on the eve of Holocaust Memorail Day, when a man shouted at them: “Hitler was the best, he was right, we hate Jews.”

The girls ran home in terror.

The incident took place yesterday, on 26th January, in Stamford Hill, and was reported by Stamford Hill Shomrim, the Jewish volunteer neighbourhood watch patrol.
Great-grandfather of new leader of Hungary’s far-right Jobbik died in Auschwitz
Jobbik, a Hungarian far-right party that critics call institutionally anti-Semitic, has elected a man with Jewish roots, Peter Jakab, as its president.

Jakab, 39, received more than 87 percent of the vote in a primary election Saturday, the news site 444.hu reported.

Jakab, a practicing Catholic, has been accused of anti-Semitism in Hungarian media after he blamed Jews for generating anti-Semitism for financial gain. He has also denied that he or Jobbik were anti-Semitic.

His election to the party’s most senior post comes three years after its leaders took steps to rehabilitate its image. One of Jobbik’s recent leaders, Gabor Vona, led this policy, which included extending Hanukkah greetings to the leaders of Hungarian Jewry.

Last year, Jobbik allied itself with left-wing parties to hurt the ruling Fidesz party of Prime Minister Viktor Orban in local elections. The alliance was effective in taking several key municipalities away from Fidesz

Jakab has often spoken openly of his Jewish ancestry. “Since my childhood, I knew from my parents that my grandmother is Jewish,” he said in a 2014 interview for Alfahir. “She raised 11 children in a peasant farmhouse in poverty but in dignity. I was also aware that my great-grandfather died at Auschwitz,” Jakab added.

Jakab has cited this background to qualify his statements about Jews and Israel, which prompted the popular Origo news site to report in 2018 that anti-Semitism “is the one constant element in Peter Jakab’s career.”
Italians Protest Antisemitism After Resistance Fighter’s House Defaced With Nazi-Style Graffiti
Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of the Italian town of Mondovi to protest against antisemitism after the house of a former World War II resistance fighter was daubed with Nazi-style graffiti last week.

Friday’s candlelit demonstration came in response to the vandalism of the house of Lidia Beccaria — a resistance fighter who survived the women-only Ravensbruck concentration camp. Beccaria’s son Aldo now lives in the house. The door to the property was defaced with the German words “Juden Hier” — “Jews are here” — above a scrawled Star of David.

Pointing to the offending slogan, first seen in Nazi Germany during the 1930s, Stefano Casarino — head of Italy’s National Association of Italian Partisans (ANPI) — told the marchers: “This happened here, in Mondovi, in 2020.”

Aldo Beccaria also addressed the crowd, slamming the “utter ignorance” of the vandals. His mother — a powerful voice in Italy for Holocaust commemoration after the war, who passed away in 1996 — was not Jewish herself.


Israel-linked solar firm to light up 87,000 homes and businesses in Burundi
Full construction work is due to start this week on a solar energy project that will supply electricity to 87,000 homes and businesses in Burundi, one of the poorest countries in the world, thanks to a Dutch company with American investors that has offices in Israel.

Gigawatt Global’s 7.5 MW photovoltaic solar panel project will add 15 percent to the East African country’s generation capacity and represents the biggest private-sector investment in that nation’s energy sector in 30 years.

The company would not say how much the project is worth, but it is understood to be in excess of $10 million.
The solar field will be located on a 115,000-square-meter (28.4-acre) plot of private land that has been leased in the village of Mubuga, some ten kilometers (six miles) from Gitega City, seat of the Kingdom of Burundi until its abolition in 1966. Last year, Gitega replaced Bujumbura as the country’s capital following a decision by the Burundian parliament.

“We hope this historic solar project will further warm our bilateral relations and shine a light in Africa on practical solutions to both economic development and the climate crisis,” said Raphael Morav, Israel’s ambassador to Burundi.
Tests of Israeli anti-drone solution at int’l airports succeed
ELTA Systems, a subsidiary of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), has successfully tested its new anti-drone solution at “several large international airports,” the company said on Monday.

The “Drone Guard” solution serves rapidly growing demand by airport operators in the aftermath of severe disruption caused to London’s Gatwick Airport in December 2018 by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), IAI said. Specialist equipment deployed by the British Army to enable the reopening of the airport runway after 36 hours of interruption included the deployment of the “Drone Dome” system, developed by Israeli defense company Rafael.

Drone Guard was tested at airports in Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia during daily routine operating hours, demonstrating the detection and neutralization of drones without hindering flight timetables or impacting passengers.

The system has also already been deployed to protect leaders and infrastructure at the 2018 G20 Buenos Aires summit and the opening ceremony of the Buenos Aires 2018 Youth Olympics.
Israel, US researchers create ‘mini Human-on-a-Chip’ to speed up drug testing
In what sounds like something straight out of science fiction, Israeli and US researchers say they have created nine different mini human Organs-on-a-Chip that will pave the way for researchers to test out drugs as if on humans. Not only that: the researchers also managed to connect the nine Organs-on-a-Chip they have developed — including a Brain-on-a-Chip, a Heart-on-a-Chip and a Liver-on-a-Chip — creating what they call a “mini Human-on-a-Chip.”

Two new studies by researchers in Tel Aviv University and Harvard University on the subject were published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering on Monday.

Organs-on-a-chip were first developed in 2010 at Harvard University. Then, scientists took cells from a specific human organ — heart, brain, kidney and lung — and used tissue engineering techniques to put them in a plastic cartridge, or the so called chip. Despite the use of the term chip, which often refers to microchips, no computer parts are involved here.

What is new in the two studies published on Monday is the fact that the researchers have now managed to link-up the various organs, and have proven that these can react to drugs in the same way as human organs would in a clinical trial, said Dr. Ben Maoz of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Biomedical Engineering and Sagol School of Neuroscience in an interview with The Times of Israel.

When developing drugs, researchers try them out first on rodents and only then, if successful, on humans. But some 60%-90% of the drugs that are successful in rodents fail in humans, explained Maoz, a co-author of the studies.


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