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Sunday, March 08, 2020

03/08 Links: David Collier: SOAS hosts Islamist linked fake Jewish group – created to attack Jews; The ironic bigotry of progressive activism; 1620-2020: the 400th Anniversary of the US-Israel Alliance

From Ian:
David Collier: SOAS hosts Islamist linked fake Jewish group – created to attack Jews
This exclusive account demonstrates that SOAS has been the venue for a hate-infested political group set up explicitly to attack mainstream British Jewry. The official minutes from this group’s meetings demonstrate-
- That it was set up by academic(s) at SOAS. The university hosts the group’s strategy meetings
- Calls itself Jewish even though it is driven by non-Jewish antisemites
- The Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) – the radical Islamist group behind the pro-Hezbollah Al Quds demonstrations -gives them directives to act against the Jewish community
- A volunteer from Interpal and the Campaign Manager for the PSC have also been part of the ‘Jewish’ steering group
- At its first public outing -two of the three official attendees were non-Jews who share antisemitic conspiracy theories
- They do not have a connection to a single Rabbi and struggled to find somebody who could fill the role
- They prepared a ‘lecture series’ to tour on UK campuses which will create hostility towards Jewish people in the UK and destabilise the Jewish community

There is no justification for SOAS continually being permitted to get away with so much flagrant antisemitic activity. It isn’t just about the poor Jewish students who study there – SOAS is incubating groups that align with Hezbollah, Iran, Islamist movements – and that are created with the purpose of helping to tear the world of British Jewry apart. And if you complain – they will shield antisemitic political activity as being under the umbrella of ‘academic freedom’. How toxic is that!

The ironic bigotry of progressive activism
Though they claim to stand for inclusion and universality, progressives these days are managing to denounce more groups than they include. Anyone who does not share their politics is, at best, persona non grata; at worst, they are downright demonized. Progressives condemn hate, unless it’s toward an individual or group they’ve deemed worthy of hating. The most glaring and pernicious example today is the obsessive delegitimization of Israel, the very embodiment of Jewish people hood.

The first prong of attack is the Left’s gross mischaracterization of Jews as predominantly “white,” and therefore powerful, in contrast to Muslims, who are perceived as “brown,” and therefore oppressed. In fact, global Jewry is dominantly brown-skinned, and millions of Muslims are actually white. But it is a small lie to tell for the sake of one’s sacred political theory.

Such a fallacious mode of thinking about group oppression begs the question: Who gets to determine the “universal” hierarchy of victimhood? Muslims may be an oppressed group in China, but in the Arab world, Muslims are doing the oppressing. Palestinians may be a persecuted minority in Lebanon, but in Gaza and the West Bank, their leadership is persecuting Christians and practicing gender apartheid against women.

The anti-Israel activist group IfNotNow has gone so far as to blame an Israeli victim of a terrorist attack for his own murder, decrying the teenager’s participation in a government they deem a colonialist regime. At the same time, they never disclose that the very term “Palestine” was an imperialist invention of the Roman Empire.




1620-2020: the 400th Anniversary of the US-Israel Alliance
The Abolitionist Movement

Moses and the Exodus played a key role in the formation of the Abolitionist anti-slavery movement, and in the determination of President Lincoln to abolish slavery. Thus, Harriet Tubman, who initiated the Underground Railroad, which freed black slaves, was called Mama Moses.

The anti-slavery anthem of black slaves was composed with lyrics from Exodus 8:1 — “Go Down Moses, way down in Egypt land, tell old Pharaoh to let my people go.”

The Jewish liberation from Egyptian bondage inspired Martin Luther King, Jr., the key leader of the Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968).

US identification with Jewish Statehood

The second US president, John Adams, supported the idea of a Jewish State in the Land of Israel: “I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation.”

On March 5, 1891, six years before the convening of the 1897 First Zionist Congress, over 400 US leaders, including the Chief Justice, House and Senate leaders, and chairmen of Congressional committees, governors, and mayors, signed the Blackstone Memorial, which called for the reestablishment of a Jewish State in the Land of Israel.

On June 30, 1922 Congress passed a Joint Resolution, which was signed by President Warren Harding, “favoring the establishment, in Palestine, of a national home for the Jewish people.”
Netanyahu, Pence agree to collaborate to fight coronavirus spread
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Vice President Mike Pence spoke Sunday about collaborating to fight the spread of the coronavirus, according to the Prime Minister's Office.

White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Deborah Birx joined the call, as well.

According to the PMO, the talks focused on promoting technological and scientific collaboration.

The release came amid reports that Netanyahu would be speaking to Pence about a possible decision to place US citizens entering Israel in a 14-day quarantine, according to Israel's Channel 13.

On Saturday night the Health Ministry said that it is holding discussions about placing travelers from the states of Washington, New York and California under quarantine.

Netanyahu is specifically holding discussions with Pence because it would have "immense effect on Israel's economy," the Channel 13 report said.

The Health Ministry is expected to announce a final decision regarding American travelers by end of day Sunday.
Yisrael Medad: What? Where is Israel, WHO?
WHO issues an update report on the Corona Virus.

Geographically discombobulated:


Israel is in Europe.

And in the Eastern Mediterranean is...

Sinai mission, crisis response forces and numerous outdated tasks potentially on chopping block
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told lawmakers Wednesday that seldom-used crisis response forces and a number of outdated mission tasks across the combatant commands were under review as the U.S. looks to shore up resources to counter Russia and China.

Pentagon planners are still conducting a defense-wide review of thousands of tasks and missions across the combatant commands that may not align with the military’s strategy to address rising near-peer competitors.

One mission potentially on the chopping block following the review is the Multinational Force and Observers mission, where several hundred U.S. troops have been participating in a peacekeeping operation between Egypt and Israel since 1981.

Gen. Mark Milley, the Joint Chiefs chairman, told lawmakers Monday at a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the defense budget that the Pentagon needs to look at whether the Sinai mission “is still a valid mission” for U.S. forces, and whether the peacekeeping operation “still makes sense” to address rising near-peers.

Egypt has used U.S. military aid to purchase major U.S. defense systems, such as the F-16 fighter aircraft, the M1A1 Abrams battle tank, and the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter and Humvees, some of which have seen combat on the Sinai Peninsula.
Kyle Rempfer

Esper also hinted there may be some changes coming down the pipeline for U.S. crisis response forces across the combatant commands. He told lawmakers Monday that for years the Pentagon has “stacked up crisis response forces” that are held “pending” for a crisis. He said in some cases “we never actually use them.” (h/t Zvi)
Ousting Netanyahu may turn out to be Gantz’s biggest mistake
It’s important to note here that Likud will not, of its own accord, act on this interest and remove Netanyahu. He has shown, especially in Monday’s race, that his premiership has the backing of the party’s rank and file, and even of many supporters of allied parties like Shas and Yamina.

Someone from outside, like Gantz, would have to force the removal — but it is Likud that would likely enjoy much of the windfall.

Or, put another way, it is quite likely that Netanyahu’s departure makes Gantz irrelevant to the very partners he needs if he is to have any chance at winning the premiership.

It’s a bitter and ironic trap. Gantz, the architect and enabler of the end of Netanyahu’s rule, the astoundingly successful herder of the many cats that compose the Blue and White coalition, a man who rebuilt for an as-yet unknown length of time a long-dormant center-left political identity, may be rendered moot by his very success.

Even a unity government could be pushed further from his reach. Why would Likud share power with a 33-seat Gantz when it could monopolize the top posts in an arguably more stable coalition with the many newly available and much smaller partners?

Gantz is now within throwing distance of toppling Netanyahu — but needs Netanyahu as a target to maintain his own position as Netanyahu’s alternative.
Liberman sets out secularist conditions for joining coalition; Gantz agrees
Yisrael Beytenu party leader Avigdor Liberman on Sunday laid out five preconditions for his joining a potential coalition, consisting primarily of a set of secularist demands that have no chance of being accepted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultra-Orthodox allies but were quickly accepted by Blue and White party chief Benny Gantz.

Once a close ally of Netanyahu, Liberman has been a thorn in the prime minister’s side since May 2019, when his insistence on a secularist agenda during coalition-building talks with Netanyahu and his ultra-Orthodox allies following the April election scuppered the negotiations and led Netanyahu to disband the Knesset and call a new vote.

Relations quickly grew acrimonious, with Netanyahu accusing Liberman of thwarting the formation of a right-wing government and joining the left (though Liberman’s political positions remain hawkish), as well as attempting — unsuccessfully — to destroy his base of support in the subsequent September vote. Liberman instead grew from five to eight Knesset seats. Last week Liberman won seven Knesset seats, as part of a bloc of 62 lawmakers who oppose Netanyahu. The prime minister and his supporters won 58 seats.

Over the past year Liberman has become an increasingly vocal critic of the prime minister, and has recently said repeatedly that “the Netanyahu era is over.”

On Sunday, Liberman listed in a Facebook post his conditions for joining a coalition. The first was guaranteeing a monthly stipend of at least 70 percent of the minimum wage in Israel for all retirees living off old-age pensions or guaranteed incomes.

All the other demands concerned the issue of religion and state.
Head of Arab nationalist faction in Joint List sets terms for supporting Gantz
If the Blue and White party wants the support of the Joint List, it will have to make an official approach and openly request coalition negotiations with the mostly-Arab alliance, Mtanes Shihadeh, the leader of the alliance’s Balad faction, said Sunday in an interview with Army Radio.

“The Joint List won’t repeat the mistake of three months ago to recommend [Blue and White Leader] Benny Gantz without any commitment, without any agreement, without anything written,” Shihadeh said. “We saw what happened last time: The Joint List made its recommendation and Gantz basically broke right, adopting all the Likud party’s positions.”

Shihadeh added that the Joint List would have a number of demands in exchange for its support, among them “annulment of the Kaminitz Law and the Nation State Law, an economic program [to improve the economic situation of Israel’s Arab minority], a peace process, a change in the status of the Arab population in Israel, and annulment of discriminatory laws that significantly change the standing of the Arab population.”

The Kaminitz Law, a 2017 amendment to the Planning and Building Law, was aimed at strengthening “enforcement and penalization of planning and building offenses.” However, critics, among them Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, charge that it would have “a disparate impact on Arab citizens of Israel as it fails to take into account the decades of systematic discrimination in state land planning and allocation against them that has resulted in a severe housing crisis in Arab towns and villages.”

Arab lawmakers have said the law was designed to hurt their constituents while ignoring the difficulties Arabs face in obtaining authorization for construction.
Israel Katz: The Joint List is full of terrorists in suits
Foreign Minister Israel Katz (Likud) lashed out at members of the Arab Joint List on Sunday, calling them “terrorists in suits.” The phrase was popularized by the Strategic Affairs Ministry, which has a report by the same name.

“We heard [Blue and White leader] Benny Gantz talking about forming a minority government with the support of the members of the Joint List,” Katz said in an interview with the Hebrew press. “They went against the Arab League’s decision to recognize Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. They are terrorists in suits or supporters of terrorists in suits.”

In response to Katz’s comments, Joint List chairman Ayman Odeh said, “The Likud are losers in ties.”

But other Arab MKs and members of the Joint List did not take Katz’s comments in jest.

MK Heba Yazbak (UAL-Balad) said Katz’s comment and similar ones by other members of Likud, including the prime minister, were “dangerous and unrestrained incitement against Arab elected officials.”

“‘Terrorists in suits’ is a nice code name for, ‘We lost the elections and we do not know how to deal with it,’” she said.
PMW: International Women's Day - The PA doesn't protect Palestinian women against violence; Top PA official: We are only committed to the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women when it is "consistent with Islamic law"
On the occasion of International Women’s Day, the official Palestinian Authority daily published various statistics on violence against women in the PA.

The Palestinian Women's Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling documented 76 murder cases of women in the West Bank, including Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip over a 3-year period. A researcher at the center, Nabil Dweikat, explained that "in the great majority of the cases of murder about which there is confirmed information – 22 cases – the murderer was from the murdered woman's close surroundings, from her family." – A fact that might indicate these murders were so-called "honor killings."

Dweikat further explained that these murders happened regardless of efforts having been made to protect Palestinian women:

"These numbers were recorded despite the effort being made by many official and unofficial institutions in order to provide protection to women and young women whose lives are in danger."
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 3, 2020]

But it is not surprising that the efforts have not been entirely successful, considering the PA’s official stand on women’s rights. Recently, the PA's Supreme Shari'ah Judge and Chairman of the Supreme Council for Shari'ah Justice Mahmoud Al-Habbash emphasized that the PA is not committed to the international Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) "at all" – even if it signed it – "except for what is consistent with Islamic law." Al-Habbash claimed this view has been endorsed by both PA Chairman Abbas and the PA Parliament:


Who's Attacking Palestinian Christians?
The plight of Christians living under the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip is one that is often ignored by the international community and foreign journalists based in the Middle East.

It is worth noting that that the Christian population in the Bethlehem area has dropped from 86% in 1950 to less than 12% today. Across the West Bank, Christians now account for less than 2% of the population....

In the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, the situation of Christians is even worse.

Instead of raising their voices against the persecution of Christians by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, these Christian leaders are busy trying to blame Israel. They want the world to believe that Christians are fleeing Bethlehem and the Gaza Strip because of Israeli security measures against terrorists, and not because of the brutalities perpetrated by the Palestinian authorities and Muslims in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. If their claim were true, why aren't Muslims also fleeing as a result of the purported Israeli measures?
Lebanon Set for Debt Default as Government Decides Not to Pay
Lebanon decided on Saturday not to pay foreign currency debt, official sources said, setting the heavily indebted state on course for a sovereign default and restructuring negotiations as it grapples with a major financial crisis.

The decision not to pay maturing Eurobonds and to launch negotiations with creditors was taken unanimously at a cabinet meeting, ministerial sources and a senior politician said.

Prime Minister Hassan Diab is set to announce the decision in a speech to the nation at 6:30 p.m. (1630 GMT).

A default on Lebanon’s foreign currency debt will mark a new phase in a crisis that has hammered the economy since October, slicing around 40% off the value of the local currency, denying savers full access to their deposits and fueling unrest.

The crisis is seen as the biggest risk to Lebanon’s stability since the end of the 1975-90 civil war.

Lebanon has a $1.2 billion Eurobond due on March 9, part of a portfolio of some $31 billion in dollar bonds that sources told Reuters on Friday the government would seek to restructure in negotiations with creditors.

The cabinet session followed a meeting between the prime minister, the president, the parliament speaker and central bank governor during which the attendees opposed paying the debt, the presidency said.


Senior Quds Force commander assassinated near Damascus
A field commander with the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was assassinated near the Syrian capital, an Iranian semiofficial news agency and an opposition war monitor reported Saturday.

Iran's semiofficial Fars news agency identified the commander as Farhad Dabirian and said he was killed in the south Damascus suburb of Sayeda Zeinab. The area is home to a holy shrine for Shiite Muslims.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the killing and Fars reported no additional details on how Dabirian was killed.

The Fars report didn't say what Dabirian's role was in Syria but noted he was a commander of the battle to retake the historic town of Palmyra from the Islamic State group.

Iran is an ally of Syria and has offered military advisers and sent militiamen and material support to help Syria President Bashar Assad's government forces in the nine-year civil war.
Senior commander in Somalia's al Shabaab terror group killed in airstrike
A senior commander in Somalia's al Shabaab group with a $5 million bounty on his head was killed in an American air strike last month, according to Somalia state media, a blow to the militants' Islamist insurgency.

According to a Somalia state radio report late on Saturday, Bashir Mohamed Mahamoud was the head of al Shabaab's operations and was killed in an American air strike on Feb. 22 in the Sakow district of the Jubba region in Somalia's south.

Mahamoud sometimes used the alias Bashir Qoorgaab.

"AFRICOM forces killed in an air strike Bashir Mohamed (qoorgaab), the operation head as well executive member of al Shabaab," the state radio reported, using an acronym for the U.S. military's Africa Command.

The radio report said Mahamoud had been responsible for a series of attacks on Somalia national army military bases among other attacks.

Somalia's information minister Mohamed Abdi Hayir Mareye did not respond to a Reuters' call for comment. Al Shabaab could not be reached for comment.
Iran: The Train Hits Something Hard
After weeks of debate, the outgoing Majlis had rejected the budget with a clear majority. The "Supreme Guide", however, needed the budget to release funds for the various military and security organizations on which the regime is built not to mention stipends for Bashar al-Assad, Hassan Nasrallah, the Houthis, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Iraqi militias and kindred groups across the globe.

In other words, Trump's policy has forced the Islamic Republic to assume its true identity as a typical "Third World" regime based on the military-security apparatus with a pseudo-theocratic faรงade.

The daily Kayhan, believed to reflect Khamenei's views, claimed last Tuesday that, in a letter transmitted through the Swiss ambassador, Tehran had "indicated agreement" to return to a de facto recognition of "The Zionist regime", disarming of the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah and end of support for Hamas

No longer enjoying access to massive amounts of easy money from oil exports, the Khomeinist leadership is growing daily more desperate to loosen the lasso thrown by the Trump administration. Always anxious not to lose face, it has modified aspects of its behavior, confirming the view that the Khomeinist train, which according to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had no reverse gear, would stop only if it hits something hard.




Jesse Jackson backs Sanders; Harris endorses Biden
Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator aiming for the Democratic nomination in the coming United States presidential election, announced Sunday that civil rights icon Jesse Jackson was formally backing him.

Jackson was appearing with Sanders during a campaign stop in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and planned to say that Joe Biden had not reached out to him for endorsement and Sanders had. He said he chose Sanders after the senator’s campaign offered responses on 13 issues Jackson raised, including protecting voting rights, increasing funding for historically black colleges and universities and committing to putting African Americans on the Supreme Court, according to prepared remarks released by the campaign.

Jackson noted that the “black firewall” of support for Biden had changed the dynamics of the race, but he questioned whether moderate policies would benefit African Americans.

“A people far behind cannot catch up choosing the most moderate path,” he said.

“The most progressive social and economic path gives us the best chance to catch up and Senator Bernie Sanders represents the most progressive path. That’s why I choose to endorse him today.”

Sanders, who has had trouble attracting black support, touted the endorsement on Sunday television talk shows, calling Jackson “one of the great civil rights leaders in the modern history of this country.”

“He changed American politics with the concept of the Rainbow Coalition — getting the blacks and whites and Latinos together in ’84 and ’88,” Sanders said on ABC’s “This Week.”

“He’s been a leader in helping to transform this country, an aide to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., so we’re proud.” (h/t Jewess)


Scripps College to host professor who wrote book claiming Israel purposely harms Palestinians
Scripps College, a private woman’s liberal-arts institution and part of The Claremont Colleges in Southern California, is scheduled to host a keynote this month by Rutgers University professor Jasbir Puar, who wrote a book accusing Israel of maiming Palestinians to assert control over them.

The March 12 address at the school, titled “Debility and Disability in Palestine: Notes Towards Southern Disability Studies,” is presented by Scripps’ anthropology department, the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, and the college’s Department of Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

It is also co-sponsored by Claremont Graduate University’s Cultural Studies Department and the Pomona College Politics Department.

“This keynote will detail various strands of histories of disability in Palestine and their import in terms of activism, advocacy and the field of southern disability studies,” according to the event description. “Based on fieldwork with disability and rehabilitation center workers in 2016 and members at refugee camps in the West Bank from the summer of 2018, Jasbir Puar’s research suggests that disability is lived as an inevitable consequence of Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation.”

Puar’s 2017 book, The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability, asserts that the Israeli Defense Forces believe in “rehabilitation through the spatial, affective and corporeal debilitation of Palestine,” as well as “the sovereign right to maim, wielded by Israel, in relation to the right to kill.”




Researchers find Nazi photo album bound with human skin
Researchers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum said they have found a Nazi photo album with a cover made of human skin.

The album was likely made at the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany, the museum said.

The museum determined the album cover was made of skin by comparing it in a laboratory to a similar object in its collection. It first announced the find in January.

“The research suggests that it is very likely that both dust jackets, owing to their technology and composition, came from the same bookbinding workshop,” said Elลผbieta Cajzer, head of the Auschwitz Museum Collections.

“The use of human skin as a production material is directly associated with the figure of Ilse Koch, who, along with her husband, has disgracefully inscribed her name in history as the murderer from the camp in Buchenwald,” Cajzer said.

The album was made to hold over 100 photographs and postcards. Most of the images depict landscapes.

The album belonged to a Bavarian family that owned a guest house in a resort town during World War II and was likely gifted to the family by a staffer at Buchenwald, the museum said.
US Air Force Awards Elbit $472 Million Contract for F-16 Infrared Missile Warning System
Nasdaq and Tel Aviv-listed Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems, through its subsidiary, Elbit Systems of America, has been awarded a 10-year $471.6 million contract by the US Air Force to provide an infrared missile warning system for F-16 aircraft, the US Department of Defense announced Thursday.

Elbit’s system, already in use by the Israeli Air Force, can detect a missile launched at an aircraft and alert the pilot to engage in evasive maneuvers. Elbit will manufacture and customize its system for the US Air Force in its Fort Worth, Texas facility. An amount of $17.05 million has been obligated at the time of award and work is expected to be completed by February 2030.
Israel’s Soapy claims its hand-wash solution can kill coronavirus on hands
Health experts say that handwashing is the best protection against coronavirus, which has infected 107,490 people since the end of December. However, regular soap and water can’t remove all the microbes.

Now, two Israeli companies have joined forces to make your handwashing 100 percent effective in killing viruses — without harsh substances like bleach.

It starts with the Soapy hygiene microstation, already in use in several countries.

Soapy provides an optimal amount of water (taken from the atmosphere) and soap per 20-second handwashing. A computer vision interface verifies that the handwashing was done properly.

On request, the soap will now include a plant-derived substance proven to kill tobamovirus – which is more resistant than coronavirus.

“Our team was looking to develop the best sequence to disinfect viral residues on hands,” Soapy CEO Max Simonovsky tells ISRAEL21c.

An only-in-Israel story brought Soapy together with plant virology research scientist Aviv Dombrovsky from the Volcani Center Agricultural Research Organization in Rishon LeZion.
IsraAID offers webinars to coronavirus workers in China
Israeli humanitarian aid agency IsraAID is expanding its response to coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in China and around the world.

In the coming weeks, the non-governmental organization will launch a series of online stress management webinars for medical first responders and mental-health workers in the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai.

The five-part webinar series will launch with an initial group of 30 mental health workers and then will be rolled out to further groups as needed, according to IsraAID.

Additional target groups may include doctors from Zhuhai who have traveled to Wuhan to support the medical response at the outbreak’s city of origin and may require targeted support on their return.

“The rapid spread of coronavirus in China has led to a sense of uncertainty and fear amongst healthcare workers and wider communities alike,” said Debra Kalmanowitz,, IsraAID’s psychosocial support specialist working on the organization’s coronavirus response.

“From conversations with leading professionals at the Zhuhai center for public disease control, we understand that healthcare workers exposed to the virus are feeling increased stress, helplessness and fatigue,” she continued.

“IsraAID webinars are structured to support mental-health workers by providing a framework for reducing stress as well as sharing specialized information on stress, trauma, coping and resilience at this time.”
Birthright calls off trips to Israel over coronavirus concerns
Taglit-Birthright announced Sunday that it was canceling trips to Israel in the short term “out of an abundance of caution due to coronavirus concerns.”

The group, which brings Jewish young adults on trips to Israel, said the decision would only affect a small number of people scheduled to go on trips.

It said 500 people from the US, Germany and the former Soviet Union have had their trips called off.

“We look forward to restarting trips for summer season in May and will be staying in close contact with the Israel Ministry of Health,” the group said in a statement.

Over the last two decades, Birthright trips to Israel have been taken by more than 700,000 young American Jews.

The free 10-day trip, founded in 1999, takes participants throughout the country — from the stone streets of Jerusalem and the beaches of Tel Aviv to the ancient plateaus of Masada and the Golan Heights.




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