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Saturday, March 28, 2020

03/28 Links: Douglas Murray: In this strange new world, where do we find purpose?; What do you do during a rocket attack amid coronavirus quarantine?

From Ian:
Coronavirus cases in Israel rise to 3,619 with 54 people in serious condition
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Israel rose to 3,619 people, the Health Ministry announced Saturday evening.

The tally included 54 patients in serious condition, of whom 43 are attached to ventilators.

Another 81 are in moderate condition and the rest have mild symptoms.

The ministry said a majority of patients, 1,828, were isolating in their homes under monitoring and 484 were currently hospitalized. The remainder were in various care facilities, including the specially converted hotels.

Twelve people have died in Israel from the virus, and on Saturday the Foreign Ministry announced an 82-year-old Israeli tourist died in an Italian hospital after he contracted the virus.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Friday that the country could enter into a complete shutdown if there isn’t an improvement in the number of confirmed virus cases in the next two days.

Netanyahu held a series of discussions with top ministers regarding additional steps the country can take to manage the ongoing crisis, “including preparations for a closure,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement.

He said that authorities would bring the additional movement restrictions before the cabinet in 48 hours.
Trump Says He May Quarantine New York, New Jersey and Connecticut
President Donald Trump said Saturday he was considering imposing a quarantine on New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Trump said he was mulling the quarantine, while at the same walking back urging to quickly reopen the economy. Trump said he was unsure about whether the United States will reopen for business by April 12th following shutdowns in major cities across the country. Asked whether he thought the United States would open by Easter Sunday, Trump said at the White House on Saturday, “We’ll see what happens.”
NY rabbi who survived COVID-19 donates blood plasma to treatment research
A New York rabbi who recovered from a mild case of COVID-19 donated blood plasma to researchers on Friday in the hope that his antibodies could be used to treat patients with more severe coronavirus symptoms.

Rabbi Daniel Nevins, dean of the rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, was laid up for a few days earlier this month with a fever and some aches, and then recovered.

Nevins was tested for the coronavirus on March 12 and a week later got back a positive result. A week after that, he was tested again. Friday morning, he got the result: All clear.

Within hours, Nevins was hooked up to a machine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York to donate blood plasma. In the race to develop effective treatments for the disease, researchers are investigating whether antibodies from the blood of people who have successfully fought off the disease may provide treatment for people who with more serious symptoms.

Earlier this week, the Food and Drug Administration allowed doctors to treat critically ill coronavirus patients with plasma on an experimental basis. Plasma has been shown effective in treating other infectious diseases, like polio, measles and influenza.

“I felt fortunate that my mild case of this illness might turn into a blessing for people who are seriously ill,” Nevins told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “The Torah teaches us not to stand idly by the blood of our neighbor. My Midrash [interpretation] is that no, instead lie down in a donor bed and give plasma.”


Douglas Murray: In this strange new world, where do we find purpose?
During recent years, much of our society found a purpose, and a kind of meaning, in politics. Even at the time that period seemed curious. It was a period in which people who had no connection to the media felt that they needed to absorb minute-by-minute updates on everything. It was an age in which watches would beep, phones would buzz and tablets would ping with updates on things that few of us could affect and mostly wouldn’t affect us. But it gave a purpose of a kind. Worlds away though they seem now, the Stop Brexit and Stop Trump crowds (and their opposites) had a distractingly busy few years. And if they didn’t find meaning in the deepest sense (as in ‘what I would look at with pride on my deathbed’) they certainly found some of the best simulacrums around.

There is a risk that this virus also becomes ‘something to do’. A thing which — how-ever well or badly we ride it out — absorbs almost all of our time, thoughts and energies. The temptation is there in the regular news conferences and announcements. Each day brings new figures to absorb, new comparisons to make between countries. Hell, we’ve even had that hangover discussion about what to call the virus and whether referring to its origins is racist or not. Absorption in some or all of these things has already come to constitute a full-time job for many people. And I will say nothing about the number of undercover virologists who turn out to have been living among us all these years.

Still the question lingers: ‘What ought we to be doing?’ Both during and after this crisis, I would expect the political left to once again prove their ability to provide narratives and explanations. Doubtless at some point they will declare a great mission. And perhaps it will have its attractions: a call to have more doctors or care workers, for instance. Or an insistence that since we were all equal in the eyes of the virus, so we should be made more equal in other ways too. Parts of the political right will bang their own ideological drums. They will talk about the markets and much more, as if everything did not just change radically. In the era to come, who knows which of these people we will want to listen to? If any.

As a writer, I might claim to have been in training for this moment all my life. Solitude and silence have been agreeable, indeed vital, companions to me. And to that extent recent days have not been that different from any others. Apart from performing the new chores we all must carry out, I spend my days as I always do at home. Inside, I migrate between my writing desk and piano. I enjoy the garden more. And yet in the gaps that have opened up the bigger question hovers. I suppose my own answer is a doctrine of a kind. Which is that we are most likely to find meaning in the places where meaning has been found before. That what has seen our forebears through, and nourished them, will see us through and nourish us in turn. I don’t listen to the news much. If the church is open I will sit in it. I remake my acquaintance with great music. In the evenings I read Anna Karenina.



Judy’s story - the heroism of a Canadian who smuggled Jews out of Syria
“There is one thing you have to understand as all this was taking place,” says Judy Feld Carr as she began to relay her extraordinary tale. “I cannot stress enough the secrecy of it all.”

Born in the city of Montreal, Canada, Judy would go on to lead a clandestine operation to smuggle more than 3,000 Jews out of Syria between 1975 and 2000. Yet there would be nothing in her early life to suggest that she would carry out an international human rescue mission straight out of the pages of a Tom Clancy novel. Judy was raised in the small mining town of Sudbury, nestled in the frozen wilderness of northern Ontario, where her Russian Jewish father made his living as a fur trader.

“We would live in the bush for half the year, where I learned a lot about myself. My father was the president of the Sudbury Jewish community and I was the only Jew in a Catholic elementary school,” says Judy, who was frequently the target of antisemitic attacks from fellow classmates. Judy recounted an incident in second grade when a kid accused her of killing Jesus and threw a rock at her face, smashing her bottom teeth.

“Luckily they were baby teeth,” Judy chuckles. “But these are things that always stick with you.” In 1957, she left Sudbury to study music education at the University of Toronto, earning a bachelor’s and master’s degree in musicology. Several years later, Judy would marry a young physician named Ronald Feld (Rubin) and the couple would raise three children.

Judy and her husband became involved in their Jewish community, noting with pride the fact that she became the first woman president of Beth Tzedec Congregation (1982-1983) in Toronto, one of the largest synagogues in Canada. Judy was one of the millions involved in the rescue of Soviet Jewry and one of many who sent letters to Avital Sharansky.

“Between my work with the JDL at that time, family, holding a job... my life was a little hectic to say the least!” notes Judy.
Gaza, like you never knew it
"Gaza will be like Ponevezh," the famous Israeli tea merchant Ze'ev Kalonymus Wissotzky predicted in the summer of 1885, as he laid out his revolutionary vision of "building urban Jewish neighborhoods in Arab cities like Lod, Nablus, Bethlehem, Tyre, Sidon, and Gaza."

Wissotsky made his proposal after he concluded that the Jewish agricultural settlement that existed in the Land of Israel was insufficient to provide for the new olim coming in from Russia. Wissotzky 's vision began to become a reality a year and a half later. A founding core group arrived from Jaffa under the leadership of Avraham Haim Shlush and Nissim Elkayam. Later, other families from Jerusalem and Hebron joined them, and eventually, the Jewish community increased to 30 families. The Arabs of Gaza, as difficult as it might be to believe, welcomed them.

Journalist and researcher Haggai Hoberman has just published a new book about the venture, titled "A Jewish Community in Gaza," in which he tells the story of the city's Jewish history. If today, "Gaza" is synonymous with terrorism and alienation, a place with a Philistine and Palestinian past, Hoberman's new research tells the unknown story of the Jews who lived there for generations, from the days of the Hasmoneans, during the Mishnaic and Talmudic periods, in the Middle Ages, and until the early 20th century.

In our era, Gaza and its religious leaders are seen as demonic. An image bolstered by the TV series Fauda, Hoberman reveals that once, Gaza was home to Islamic religious leaders who were no less devout than those of our time, but different. It almost reads like science fiction. Who would believe that only 110 years ago, then Chief Rabbi of Gaza Nissim Binyamin Ohana, and then mufti of Gaza Sheikh Abdullah al-Alami, co-authored a book?

"In Gaza," Ohana wrote in one of his essays, "I wrote a book, Know What the Heretic Will Say in Response with the mufti of Gaza, Sheikh Abdullah, who would visit my home twice a week because he wanted to know the exact meaning of the verses copied from the Old Testament into the New Testament by the apostles."
Theresa Khalsa, hijacker of 1972 Sabena flight to Tel Aviv, dies at 65
Theresa Khalsa, one of four terrorists who in 1972 hijacked the Belgian Sabena Airlines’ flight 571 as it flew from Vienna to Tel Aviv, has died in Jordan at the age of 65. She was the final surviving hijacker.

Khalsa was born into a Christian family in the northern Israel coastal city of Acre. She told the Haaretz daily that her family had close relations with their Jewish neighbors until the 1967 Six Day War.

“We lived very close to the Jews. I had Jewish friends,” she said “We lived with them. On Saturday, they asked us to come in and turn on the gas and electricity in their house [on the Sabbath]. We came in and left like a family.”

After 1967 she joined the Black September terrorist group and took part in the hijacking.

Shortly into the flight from Vienna, Ahmed Awad, Abed al-Aziz Atrash, Khalsa and Rima Tannous rushed the cockpit of Sabena flight 571 armed with explosives and pistols.

The four members of the Black September terrorist group, named for the deaths and expulsions of thousands of Palestinians in Jordan in September 1970, demanded the release of 315 terrorists in exchange for the 97 passengers and crew.

The terrorists, as they had done in the past and would do in future plane hijackings, separated the Jewish and Israeli passengers from the non-Jews.

Khalsa, who was 18 years old at the time of the hijacking, said in an interview in a film in 2015, “I wanted to blow up the plane. That’s the truth.”



Gazans fire rocket into Israel, breaking lull in violence amid virus outbreak
Terrorists in the Gaza Strip fired a rocket toward Israeli territory, triggering warning sirens in the southern town of Sderot and the surrounding area on Friday evening, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement.

A regional spokesman said the projectile apparently fell in an open area and there were no injuries or damage.

The IDF retaliated later Friday night.

“IDF aircraft and a tank a short time ago attacked military positions and infrastructure used for underground activity belonging to the Hamas terror group in the northern Gaza Strip,” the IDF said. “The attacks were carried out in response to rocket fire launched from the Strip toward Israeli territory earlier in the evening.”

This was the first red alert siren to go off since March 12 when one was triggered in Kibbutz Re’im near the Gaza border, though the IDF subsequently confirmed that it had been a false alarm.

A week earlier, terrorists in the Hamas-run coastal enclave fired a rocket toward Israel, which fell short of the border and landed inside the Palestinian enclave, the IDF said.

For the past three weeks, a period of calm had been holding in Gaza as authorities on both sides of the border have focused on combating the outbreak of the coronavirus.
What do you do during a rocket attack amid coronavirus quarantine?
The Health Ministry released guidelines on what to do in the event of a rocket attack and having to be in quarantine due to coronavirus.

Upon seeking the nearest shelter, if possible, the quarantined individual should opt for an isolated shelter. In case that is not possible, the isolated person should wear a protective mask and stay away as far as possible from the others within the shelter and avoid having physical contact with them as well as facing in the opposite direction.

If a plastic chair can be found in the shelter, one should be provided to the isolated person to be later disinfected using bleach.
There are currently 3,460 Israelis diagnosed with the virus, while the latest number of Israelis isolated was last updated on Thursday and stood at 59,493.

The Health Ministry released the guidelines after a rocket was fired from Gaza to Israel on Friday, breaking a lull from violence amid the deadly coronavirus pandemic.

The IDF said that one projectile was fired from the northern part of the Hamas-run coastal enclave, with local reports saying that it struck an open field.
82-year-old Israeli tourist dies in Italy after contracting coronavirus
An 82-year-old Israeli has died in a hospital in Italy after contracting the coronavirus, the Foreign Ministry announced Saturday.

Shmuel Sifri was as a resident of the northern city of Haifa and was said to have died on Thursday, a few days after he was hospitalized.

The Foreign Ministry said Sifri had been on a cruise with his wife when he was taken ill, and that she is now in quarantine on an Italian military base in Turin.

Thirteen Israelis have now died as a result of the coronavirus.

On Saturday, Channel 13 news named a woman who died a day earlier as 76-year-old Dalia Adelsburg, who contracted the virus during a trip to Egypt. Her son told the broadcaster his mother fulfilled a lifelong dream to see the pyramids when she was one of 18 participants out of a group of 24 who caught coronavirus on the vacation.

Italy’s death toll from the novel coronavirus shot past 10,000 with 889 new deaths, the country’s civil protection service said Saturday.

The toll in Italy, which has suffered more deaths than any other country, now stands at 10,023. An additional 5,974 infections brought to 92,472 the number of people who have officially tested positive for COVID-19 in Italy since the crisis began last month.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke Saturday on the phone with his Italian counterpart Giuseppe Conte, his office said in a statement.
COGAT slams B'Tselem for ‘exploiting coronavirus’
The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) slammed the Human Rights NGO B'Tselem for alleging that the IDF demolished a coronavirus treatment center built by Palestinians in the Jordan Valley.

“We are sorry to see a Human Rights NGO choosing to exploit a global crisis to spread fake news,” the COGAT press statement said.
COGAT claims that the demolished structure was a guarding post built illegally and without permits by a resident of Bardala, which is northeast of Nablus.

Neither the Palestinian Authority (PA) nor International Health groups requested to build a treatment center for COVID-19 patients, according to COGAT's claims.

COGAT is coordinating the delivery of thousands of masks and COVID-19 test kits donated by the World Health Organization to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, despite the blockade still enforced there. The aid is also provided to the West Bank, which is under the control of the PA.

President Reuven Rivlin spoke with the President of the PA Mahmoud Abbas, and told him that the virus makes no distinctions between people.




Khaled Abu Toameh: PLO: Israel exploiting coronavirus to expand settlements
The PLO,on Saturday accused Israel of exploiting the world’s preoccupation with the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic to advance settlement projects and carry out “ethnic cleansing” against Palestinians.

The latest allegation came in spite of the ongoing collaboration between Israel and the Palestinians in combating the virus.

A public opinion poll published last week showed that a majority of Palestinians support the collaboration between the Palestinian Authority and Israel in preventing the spread of the virus.

Despite the cooperation, senior Palestinian officials have continued their condemnations of Israeli policies and measures, particularly regarding settlement construction and settler violence against Palestinians, as well as arrests carried out by the IDF.

The PLO’s National Office for Defending the Land and Resisting Settlements claimed that settlers were “running wild” in light of the state of emergency declared due to the outbreak of coronavirus.

It also accused the Israeli government of pursuing its policy of settlement construction and land expropriation despite the spread of the disease.
Organizers of Gaza border protests cancel Land Day event over virus concerns
The committee responsible for organizing protests in the border region between Israel and the Gaza Strip on Saturday announced the cancellation of a Land Day event, set to take place on March 30, over concerns it could facilitate the spread of the coronavirus in the enclave.

“We call for everyone to adhere to all health and preventative measures announced by the Health Ministry and all official bodies to deal with the coronavirus pandemic,” the committee said in a statement, according to Channel 13 news.

Instead, the organizers called for people to raise Palestinian flags and burn Israeli ones, as well as observing a moment of silence and staying in their homes.

Land Day marks a 1976 decision by the Israeli government to seize thousands of dunams of Arab-owned land in the Galilee region of northern Israel.

In 2018 on Land Day — March 30 — Palestinians in the Gaza Strip launched the “Great March of Return,” a series of weekly protests and riots along the security fence. Israel maintained that Hamas appropriated the campaign for nefarious purposes, using the civilian protesters as cover for violent military activities.

The Gaza Strip on Sunday reported its first two cases of the virus — two residents who had returned from Pakistan. The number climbed to nine on Wednesday, but has held since, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. The seven newly infected individuals were all “security men” and said they were among the roughly 30 who had come into contact with the Pakistan returnees.

A total of 1,568 people in Gaza were being held in more than 20 quarantine facilities, while 1,205 were isolated in their homes, Gaza’s health ministry said last week.


Don't fall for Hezbollah's coronavirus con
As the crisis worsens, Lebanon’s bankers and ruling elite will be pleading for a bailout. They hope to put to the world a binary choice: saving their system or ignoring the suffering of some 6 million people. They will almost certainly cite the coronavirus as a precipitating factor, following Iran’s example.

The Iranian regime, for its part, has launched a loud public campaign to extract cash from the IMF and gain sanctions relief from the international community under the pretext of combating the coronavirus. Of course, these activists tend to ignore the fact that the current sanctions already offer an exception for humanitarian goods, granting Iran continued access to medicine and medical equipment. In fact, Iran’s imports of pharmaceuticals in the first half of 2019 increased compared to the year prior.

The Iranian people are undoubtedly suffering from the effects of COVID-19. But the regime is only interested in getting its hands on cash. This is why the regime rejected American offers to provide medical aid to the Iranian people. In addition, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has noted, regime officials have already stolen more than $1 billion the Europeans intended for medical supplies and “continue to hoard desperately needed masks, gloves, and equipment for sale on the black market.”

In Lebanon’s case, Iran and Hezbollah are directly responsible for the spread of the virus. The Lebanese government has allowed flights from Iran to Beirut International Airport, even after the virus began to spread like wildfire in Iran, thereby increasing Lebanon's exposure to COVID-19. In addition to personnel, these flights from coronavirus-afflicted Iran carry arms shipments. These are deadly precision weapons that neighboring Israel is now openly threatening to destroy. And a war with Israel would be far worse than anything the country is now enduring.

Lebanon’s crisis, once again, is of its own doing.

Offering Lebanon help with COVID-19 testing kits and other medical gear is one thing. But a bailout without structural reform will mean perpetuating Lebanon’s corrupt system, on which Hezbollah’s criminal enterprise depends. Underwriting pro-Iranian political orders is not in the U.S. interest. This is as true during a public health crisis as when there is none. Washington’s priority must be to maintain maximum pressure on Iran and its regional allies from Tehran to Beirut.
Northern Afghan district falls to the Taliban
The Taliban seized control of the district of Yamgan in the northern Afghanistan province of Badakhshan. The district had been under siege for several months before falling to the Taliban today.

Afghan officials said that Yamgan fell to the Taliban “following hours of clashes with security forces that raged after midnight,” TOLONews reported. The Taliban had blocked all roads leading to the district before making its final push.

The Taliban has yet to comment on the fall of Yamgan.

Yamgan has been one of several districts in Badakhshan under constant threat. The Taliban first captured the district on Nov. 18, 2015, and held it up until Sept. 2019, when the Afghan military retook the district. The Taliban did not give up the fight, and redoubled efforts to regain control of Yamgan – successful now six months later.

Security in Badakhshan has deteriorated since the U.S. ended its surge in 2012 and began withdrawing significant numbers of troops. Today, 21 of Badakhshan’s 28 districts are contested, one is controlled by the Taliban, and six are controlled by the Afghan government, according to an ongoing assessment by FDD’s Long War Journal.
Pro-Iran cleric in Iraq says same-sex marriage caused coronavirus
The firebrand Iraqi Shi’ite cleric leader Muqtada al-Sadr on Saturday said legalization of same-sex marriage caused the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.

“One of the most appalling things that have caused this epidemic is the legalization of same-sex marriage,” al-Sadr tweeted, adding, “Hence, I call on all governments to repeal this law immediately and without any hesitation.”

Al-Sadr tweeted his anti-gay marriage remarks to his one million followers.

Peter Tatchell, the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) activist and human rights campaigner, told The Jerusalem Post that “The idea that the Coronavirus is divine punishment for same-sex marriage is as absurd as it is bigoted. The cleric is an ignorant hateful fool who wants to impose religious tyranny on all Iraqis."

He added that “Muqtada al-Sadr is a dangerous pro-Iranian fanatic. He rejects human rights and his militias have been accused of targeting LGBT+ people and others for execution. Shamefully, sections of the UK left and anti-war movement gave representatives of this poisonous homophobe and opponent of democracy a platform at rallies against the Iraq war."

The Jerusalem Post reported last month that the the influential radical Iranian regime-linked cleric al-Sadr issued an anti-gay and anti-American diatribe against the city of Chicago in his effort to stop Iraqi women from protesting gender segregation.

Sadr tweeted that he "will not allow Iraq to become a Kandahar of religious extremists, nor a Chicago of immorality and homosexuality."


Linda Sarsour Smears Israel as Marc Lamont Hill Applauds
In a video released this week, Temple University prof and self-styled Middle East expert Marc Lamont Hill applauded antisemitic activist Linda Sarsour's calling Israel "apartheid."

The March 9 interview at Hill's Uncle Bobbie's Coffee and Books in Philadelphia was part of Sarsour's promotional tour to hawk her book, We Are not Here to Be Bystanders.

Early in their chat Sarsour described her father as coming from "a small village in the West Bank of Palestine." Hill looked on intently, not bothering to correct his guest's egregious politicization of geography, there being no such place as Palestine.

Hill skillfully prompted his guest to talk about herself, something Sarsour did quite enthusiastically. Finally, he got around to the real point of the interview: asking Sarsour about her pro-Palestinian activism.

Predictably, Sarsour rambled, tossing off loaded, mendacious terms to describe Israel's ostensible "military occupation" and its "police state."
Swiss Museum to Pay Undisclosed Sum to Heirs of Jewish Art Collector Victimized by Nazis
The Swiss city of Basel’s Fine Arts Museum has agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to the heirs of the Jewish art collector Curt Glaser as compensation for acquiring artworks from him at knock-down prices when he fled Nazi Germany, the website Swiss-Info reported on Friday.

The museum acknowledged that Glaser had been “a victim of National Socialism” and said it had reached a “fair and just” solution with his heirs. The collection of more than 100 pieces, including works by Edvard Munch, Henri Matisse and Marc Chagall, was bought at auction in Berlin in 1933.

In 2008, the museum denied taking unfair advantage of Glaser, saying it had no knowledge that the artworks belonged to him and insisting that they were purchased at fair market prices for the time.

However, leaked documents later revealed that “cheap prices” were paid in full knowledge that it was for Glaser’s collection. Glaser was forced to flee Germany after being ejected as director of Berlin’s Art Library. He traveled to the United States via Switzerland and died in New York in 1943.

The compensation was paid under the terms of the Washington Principles that address cases of Nazi-looted art, including buyers who took advantage of people selling art at bargain prices under duress to finance their escape from the Nazis.

The museum also agreed to stage an extensive exhibition of the Glaser collection in 2022.
In Ukraine, Christian group steps in to feed needy Jews confined by COVID-19
While poverty-stricken Ukraine scrambles to get a hold on the coronavirus, a Christian organization is stepping in to provide immediate food aid to elderly Jews confined by the pandemic to their homes.

With it usual activities to encourage immigration to Israel now suspended, Christians for Israel, a Dutch-based organization that supports aliyah and distributes food parcels to needy Jews in around 100 Ukrainian locales, is using all of its vans, staff and volunteers to deliver food wherever Jews need it, particularly as many soup kitchens have had to close under virus restrictions.

As of Thursday, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service was reporting 162 confirmed coronavirus cases, with various regions including the capital, Kyiv, affected.

Worst hit so far is the city of Chernivtsi, with 42 confirmed cases, one death and one recovery. Chernivtsi, in south western Ukraine, is known to Jews worldwide by its Austro-Hungarian empire name of Czernowitz. It was once the capital of Bukovina and a hub of Jewish culture. Jews made up around 40 percent of its population before World War ll. With its beautiful architecture and once thriving cultural life, it was known as the Vienna of the East.

On Wednesday, the Ukrainian government extended a national emergency to the whole country for 30 days and deepened lockdown measures.

Police have set up roadblocks at the entrances to cities and town.






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