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Friday, December 11, 2020

12/11 Links Pt2: Caroline Glick: The new Greeks; David Collier: Glasgow University publishes antisemitic conspiracy theory; Idan Raichel joins Andrea Bocelli in Dubai

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The new Greeks
While many American Jews were scared that Netanyahu's courageous challenge of Obama's central foreign policy would provoke anti-Semitism, in fact, it empowered many Americans to oppose the deal. Republicans rallied against it. Every Republican presidential candidate in 2016 pledged to abandon the deal, and President Donald Trump kept his promise.

By being a leader, Netanyahu also empowered the American Jewish community to defy Obama, even as he and his advisors channeled anti-Semitism by demonizing the deal's opponents as being in the pockets of nefarious donors and foreign interests.

AIPAC launched a major campaign to oppose the nuclear deal in Congress and tens of thousands of otherwise uninvolved American Jews attended demonstrations across the US to voice their opposition to the deal that paved the way for Iran to become a nuclear power.

Netanyahu explained that in dealing with leaders like Obama, with whom he had profound disagreements, "You seek compromise where you can, but you have to avoid compromise where you can't and you have to distinguish between the two and that's what I tried to do."

This lesson in leadership is perhaps the key message of our time. Like the Greeks of yesteryear, the progressive elites today insist that, to be accepted in polite society, Jews have to give up an essential part of their identity – and their civil rights. The Greeks demanded that the Jews give up the Torah. The progressives demand they give up their Jewish peoplehood. These are things that cannot be compromised, only fought, even when those demanding their forfeiture are Jews themselves.
Commentary Magazine Podcast [Israel bit starts 16min]: Will Biden Screw Up the Middle East?
Dan Senor, co-author of Start-Up Nation and host of the new “Post Corona” podcast, joins us today to talk about the electoral college and who intimidated whom (answer: Democrats sought to intimidate Trump electors in 2016) and how the transformative Abraham Accords might be derailed by a Biden administration just as Bibi Netanyahu finds himself in existential trouble as his trial is getting ready to begin. Give a listen.
David Collier: Glasgow University publishes antisemitic conspiracy theory
Glasgow University is ranked as a top UK university. The University is a member of the Russell Group. It runs a platform called esharp which is an ‘international online journal for postgraduate research.’ The University is very proud of the outlet. It states that all the paper are ‘double blind peer reviewed’. The university claims that the ‘rigorous and constructive process is designed to enhance the worth of postgraduate and postdoctoral work.’

A paper on the ‘Israel lobby’ appeared in issue 25 volume 1 (June 2017). It was written by Jane Jackman, an academic product of the universities of Durham and Exeter. There isn’t much to be found about Jackman online. She spoke at events in Exeter and SOAS and was an active member of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES). In 2017 Jackman was being supervised by Willaim Gallois at Exeter. Unsurprisingly, the conspiracy theorist and ‘liar’ Ilan Pappe was a co-supervisor.

There is almost no sign of public activity from Jackman on social media. There is an inactive Twitter account in her name, which only follows accounts linked to Israeli advocacy or the fight against antisemitism. Given her academic focus on the ‘Israel lobby’, it is a safe bet to assume it is hers. She did spend some considerable time commenting on blogs and articles, including mine.

Jackman’s paper was titled ‘Advocating Occupation: Outsourcing Zionist Propaganda in the UK‘. The key thrust of the argument is that people like myself (I feature prominently) have been recruited by Israel to spread disinformation. I have studied the entire article. My key questions would be –

How did Glasgow University ever permit this to appear in their journal?
How is it possible that this was peer reviewed?

The paper isn’t just laden with conspiracy, antisemitism and errors – much of the time the reference material does not even support what the article is suggesting. The work is beyond shoddy. Jackman makes unsupportable outlandish statements, that are far more fitting for gutter press journalism such as the Independent than an academic journal. The paper frequently contradicts its own logic. This is in no way an academic piece of work. It should be hung on the walls at Glasgow university as a reminder of the shame that they ever allowed this to be published. The only justification for ‘peer reviewers’ to have accepted this piece is that they agreed with its content and wanted it published. The entire process is rife with heavy antisemitism. Who were the editors that sat around a table and accepted this submission?
Cary Nelson: Who Is Harming Palestinian Academic Freedom?
Not in Kansas Anymore: Academic Freedom in Palestinian Universities, by Cary Nelson (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2020)

It is fundamental and axiomatic on the international left, an unexamined article of faith, that the State of Israel suppresses the academic freedom of Palestinian students and faculty. Not in Kansas Anymore: Academic Freedom in Palestinian Universities, a new 180-page book by Cary Nelson sets out for the first time to ask what evidence supports this claim and determine whether or not it is true. The evidence gathered here shows that Palestinian students and faculty in fact do not have the protections they need to exercise freedom of speech; indeed they are coerced and threatened to conform. But it is not Israelis who do so.

An excerpt from the book is below:
From 1978 to 1991, Professor Sari Nusseibeh taught philosophy at Birzeit University on the West Bank. He had studied at Oxford and received a doctorate in Islamic Philosophy from Harvard. In September 1987, at the end of a lecture on John Locke, he learned that a group of masked students armed with clubs were outside his classroom seeking “a traitor” — whom he shortly learned was himself. Keeping his colleagues at bay with knives, they beat him “with fists, clubs, a broken bottle, and penknives.” Thanks to adrenaline, he was able to escape his attackers, though “my heart was pounding hard enough to pop my eardrums.” His colleagues, now free to help, drove him to the hospital where his forehead wound was stitched up and his broken arm set. The reaction of the university and the public was essentially non-existent. He had been identified as a traitor for participating in discussions of Israeli-Palestinian possibilities for peace.

Nusseibeh’s narrative is far from unique. When higher education institutions worldwide carry the name “college” or “university,” we often assume that these institutions are roughly similar everywhere. It’s true that an accounting or engineering course in one country will resemble courses in the same subject elsewhere. But a Religion course in a theocracy that imposes a state religion on its people will be different from a course of that same name in countries where religious and democratic freedoms prevail. Similarly, a course on Government or Politics in a dictatorship will not resemble comparably named courses elsewhere.


From 150,000 to None: The Jews of Iraq
Nearly 3,000 years ago, after the destruction of Jerusalem’s First Temple, the Jewish people were forced to disperse, with many ending up in Babylon, now modern-day Iraq. Throughout the years, the Jews of Iraq maintained their Jewish identity through culture and traditions, such as observing Shabbat and keeping kosher. They spoke Judeo-Arabic — a language that distinguished them from the broader community.

During the 12th century, Iraq was home to 40,000 Jews, with 10 yeshivot and 28 synagogues. Tolerance toward Jews afforded them freedom to exercise their religious beliefs and customs. More recently, in the early 1900s, Jews played a vital role in civic life; for example a third of the Baghdad Chambers of Commerce were Jewish. They also filled key roles in the Iraqi parliament, and many held important positions in wider society.

But when the Zionist movement first emerged in the 1930s and conflicts erupted, the tolerance toward Jews began to decline. In the year of Israel’s independence (1948), the Iraqi authorities outlawed Zionism, making it a crime carrying a lengthy prison sentence. The Jews of Iraq faced more antisemitism along with rising anti-Zionism. Almost 120,000 of the 150,000 Jews in Iraq were airlifted to Israel between 1949 and 1951. Those left behind were soon unable to leave, as Iraq banned emigration to Israel.

However, despite the increasing restrictions, many led happy lives during these years. My mother recalls the prosperous periods during that era. Her family often spent weekends at the Jewish country club, embarked on many trips and spent Shabbats with friends and family in synagogue. She describes their early lives in Iraq as “luxurious.”

In 1963, the restrictions took a turn for the worse, as Jews were banned from buying new properties and were forced to carry yellow identity cards wherever they went. The Jews also faced public hangings during that same decade. In 1967, after the Six-Day War, the well-being of the Jewish people in Iraq swiftly deteriorated: Jewish bank accounts were frozen, Jews were subjected to house arrest — even setting foot in the streets posed a danger. My mother recalls that Jews were even banned from using telephones. My uncles were arrested, thrown into jail and slashed with whips and electrical cords for no other reason than their Judaism.
Why Did So Many Doctors Become Nazis?
The medical literature supports these widespread anecdotal references. Omar Haque and Adam Waytz (2012) discuss causes of dehumanization alluded to previously: empathetic erosion and moral disengagement in training and practice. There is also another that particularly rings true: dissimilarity between physician and patient. Dissimilarity “manifests in three primary ways. First is through dissimilarity in illness—patients, by their very nature of being ill, become less similar to one’s prototypical concept of human. Second is the labeling of the patient as an illness, rather than as a person who has a particular illness.

Whatever the reason—dissimilarity or something more sinister—language alters perception, and perception affects our ethical calculus. For example, to build support for euthanasia of the disabled, Nazi filmmakers deliberately altered lighting on the faces of the disabled, to make them more “inhuman” in their appearance. Purposeful and dramatic dehumanization has the same ultimate outcome on our perception as slow, chronic dehumanization. Simple gestures—such as standing up against such language publicly when people dehumanize or showing personalistic leadership through examples of patience and even tenderness at the bedside—will do much to begin reversing this narrative.

Finally, a fifth lesson to be learned is that, as a physician, you must serve the patient exclusively—not some abstracted idea of “society.” Physicians and health professionals in the Holocaust decided that the good of the racial state took precedence over the good of individual persons. “Nazi doctors hailed a move ‘from the doctor of the individual to the doctor of the nation.’” The justification for the euthanasia program, in large part, was couched in economic terms—a cost-saving measure for society in a time of scarcity.

Today, we seem to be losing more of our commitment to the individual patient—for there are other “gods” in medicine. “Quality of life,” “public health,” or even “patient satisfaction” have become ends in themselves, not a means to an end. Physicians and mental health professionals in this century have (and continue to be) complicit in torture, in racial discrimination, and in capital punishment. In all of these examples, the physician obscures the value and dignity of the person for some other goal—some even laudable ones, perhaps (security, order, public health, etc.) Yet, the power of the “white coat” demands, if we are to fulfill our obligations of trust, that we do not serve the state (and its economic interests), nor the patient’s family (however compassionate our motivations), nor any other “just cause” or goal, including our own.

The white coat derived its significance in the last century from the physician as laboratory scientist, surgeon, and hospital doctor—but ultimately, its power rests in its symbolic value of the physician as healer. As black’s opposite, which often signified darkness and death, the white coat conveys the pull towards light, and life. This is not to ignore the controversies surrounding the white coat and its contemporary use, misuse, or disuse; it is only to point to a reality of the physician: that our profession was meant to always uphold the life and dignity of the human person, even if we could not preserve it.
Revealed: A Young Senator Biden Delivered Egyptian Disinformation to Israel Ahead of Yom Kippur War
In the summer of 1973, the junior senator from Delaware Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. visited Egypt and met with local officials – not the first tier ones: the highest-ranking among them were the country’s Minister of Propaganda, alongside Hassanein Heikal, editor of the semi-official daily Al-Ahram.

Following his Cairo visit, Biden, who had just been elected the previous year, met in Israel with then Prime Minister Golda Meir and passed on the Egyptian disinformation. Biden told the Israeli prime minister that of all the Egyptian VIPs he had met, not one denied Israel’s absolute military superiority, and they all reassured him that it would be impossible for Egypt to go to war against Israel now. We all know how that turned out.

This week, Israeli historian Yigal Kipnis told News 12 about that meeting, which probably did not have a serious impact on Israel’s catastrophic decision-making regarding the possibility of an Egyptian attack in the Sinai a few months later. The meeting and its disinformation were probably another layer in the consensus of the Golda government that refused to recognize the imminence of war with Egypt.

“Golda did not need Biden to help her presume that the Egyptians would not go to war and that if they did then the result would be clear,” Kipnis put things in proportion, adding that it is difficult to know how much Biden’s report to Golda helped the Egyptian pre-war fraud scheme, if at all.

The report on the meeting that appears in Kipnis’s book, “1973: The Road to War” (Just World Books, 2013) was sent to then Israel’s ambassador to Washington Simcha Dinitz, most likely to be added to the senator’s file. Dinitz, by the way, was a sworn Golda loyalist whose appointment had been forced by the PM on then Foreign Minister Abba Eban.


Anti-Israel Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s Hanukkah Greetings Tweet Meets Skeptical Response
Anti-Israel Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib met with an audience of skeptics on Twitter when she posted greetings for the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah on Thursday night, with several respondents asking whether she was aware that the festival marks the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem during the Second Century CE.

“I’d like to wish my Jewish neighbors a Happy Hanukkah,” Tlaib tweeted. “Hanukkah inspires me, especially during this difficult time. I hope we can all remember that even in the most unexpected moments, miracles can happen.”

While Tlaib did not specify what aspect of Hanukkah she found inspirational, her critics on Twitter rushed to point out that the holiday was an affirmation of Jewish sovereignty over the historic Land of Israel.

Several respondents pointed out that in a separate Twitter post to mark the UN’s International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People on Nov. 27, Tlaib endorsed the anti-Zionist slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which advocates wiping Israel as an independent Jewish state from the map.


Two thoughts on the Israel TV series ‘Valley of Tears’
A couple of final thoughts on the Kan series שעת נעילה or ‘Valley of Tears,’ which concluded this week. Firstly, I will admit to a certain parochial pride at seeing the bit of the army that is ‘my’ bit portrayed at the center of a moment of supreme national importance. IDF Northern Command, Division 36, the Armored Corps, the 188 Brigade, and the Golan Heights is exactly the part of the IDF that I know well and in the framework of which I served as a regular and then a reserve soldier for 18 years. In the asymmetrical and irregular conflicts which have been the main business of the IDF for the last 30 years, the armored forces are not the ‘stars of the show’ and the corps has suffered a corresponding loss in budgets, prestige and centrality. As a result, it has often seemed that the particular combat history depicted in this series had become the concern or property of a small number of citizens, among whom I include myself. Since I have always felt that the stand of the 7th and 188 brigades on the Golan in October 1973 has something of Thermopylae (and something, frankly, of Masada, at least in the 188’s case) about it, it has been great to see it rising to this level of a kind of nationally acknowledged story, with certain even epic qualities.

A more important point, however, concerns certain absences in the story, which I find regrettable. I would not want to see a schmaltzy, syrupy type treatment of these events a la Spielberg, and it is indeed quite impossible that the Israeli culture or mentality would produce something of that kind. At the same time, it is frustrating once more to see the Israeli society and the military culture portrayed very clearly through a kind of post-Zionist and leftist lens. Not because I want to see nationalist propaganda on screen (I very much don’t), but simply because this lens deliberately omits a salient element of the Israeli-Jewish experience that is very visible to anyone who speaks Hebrew and lives here – and that is the Jewish-traditional, and mobilized element based on a sense of Jewish national rights, Jewish tradition and the rightness of Israel’s cause vis a vis the Arab-Muslim effort to destroy it. This, as everyone knows, is the belief-complex which stands at the center of Israeli Jewish society, which is reflected in its voting patterns, much of its cultural product and consumption, its levels of religious and traditional observance etc. This is the side of Israeli society which despite the renaissance of Israeli cinema and TV drama in recent years, rarely makes it to the screen, and even more rarely makes it to international audiences, but understanding of which is crucial to understanding the country and its decisions and directions.
Financial Times refers to Palestinian terrorist as a 'firebrand leftist'
A Financial Times article (Reading as resistance: the bookshops keeping free speech alive, Dec. 9) included profiles, by several contributors, of bookshops across the world – including one located in the Jaffa neighborhood of Tel Aviv. This section of the article, written by the Financial Times Jerusalem correspondent Mehul Srivastava, included the following sentences about the Yafa Book Store and Cafe:

The walls [of the bookshop] are lined with the work of authors despised by the Israeli rightwing. Noam Chomsky, the Jewish-American linguist who was barred from entering Israel in 2010, rubs shoulders with Ghassan Kanafani, the firebrand Palestinian leftist assassinated by Mossad in 1972.

However, in addition to being a “leftist” writer, Ghassan Kanafani was also a high-ranking member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Marxist-Leninist terror organisation responsible for hijackings, suicide bombings and the murder of Israel’s tourism minister in 2001.

Kanafani was the right hand man to the group’s leader George Habash and met with members of the Japanese Red Army who, in concert with the PFLP, murdered 26 people in the Lod Airport Massacre in 1972 – which is why, it’s believed, he was assassinated by the Mossad.

We’ve complained to Financial Times editors about this egregious distortion.
Washington Post Editor: Netanyahu’s Rejection of Iran Deal ‘Malevolent’
Faced with the threat of a country that has long pledged to wipe Israel off the face of the map gaining access to the weapon that would enable it to carry out its stated ambition, one might understand Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reluctance over the United States’ potential re-entry into the nuclear deal with Iran.

But in the eyes of Jackson Diehl, the Washington Post‘s deputy editorial page editor, Netanyahu’s attempts at preventing a devastating war erupting in the Middle East constitute a “militant stand” against one of President-elect Joe Biden’s core policy pledges.

In an opinion piece published December 6 entitled, “Netanyahu’s reaction to Biden’s victory is appalling”, Diehl accuses the Israeli PM of “scorched-earth tactics”, and describes his reaction to Biden’s victory as having “outstripped even that of Vladimir Putin in its malevolent audacity.”

Malevolent? For having the cheek to stand up for his country against an existential threat?!

Truly, a stunning inversion of reality.

The extent of the Iranian threat to Israel specifically, and the Middle East in general, is hard to overstate. Iran funds, trains, and provides weapons to Hezbollah, a large militia-cum-political party which has successfully embedded itself in the highest echelons of Lebanese government. In 2006, Hezbollah and Israel fought a month-long war that broke out after terrorists launched a cross-border raid into Israeli territory, in which two soldiers were kidnapped and three others killed. Hundreds of rockets were fired into Israel over the course of the war.
Media Reports of PA Official’s Resignation Ignore History of Smears, Incitement
There are many forms of media bias. From the more extreme forms, such as invented quotes and “facts,” to the more commonplace, such as lack of context, HonestReporting has seen it all. One form in particular is perhaps the most insidious: selective omission. And when longtime PLO executive committee member Hanan Ashrawi tendered her resignation this week, much of the media was guilty of failing to mention Ashrawi’s darker side.

The world’s two biggest wire agency services, Associated Press (AP) and Reuters, are used as a news source by literally thousands of media outlets. In many instances, their stories are republished verbatim with no editing at all. So it’s noteworthy that both these widely-respected sources totally neglected to mention Ashrawi’s history of smearing and inciting against Israel, instead depicting her in glowing terms.

AP’s story, titled “Veteran Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi resigns”, characterizes Ashrawi as “a fluent English speaker who has been a prominent spokeswoman for the Palestinian cause in the global media for decades” who has participated in “numerous rounds of peace negotiations”.

Ashrawi is depicted as a moderate, “a vocal critic of the 85-year-old Abbas’ autocratic rule and reliance on a small inner circle of men in their 70s and 80s”, and who believes it is “time for reforms in the PLO”.

The Reuters report, “Senior PLO official Ashrawi resigns, calls for Palestinian political reforms”, is written in a similar vein. That story quoted a statement issued by Ashrawi, in which she stated, “The Palestinian political system needs renewal and reinvigoration with the inclusion of youth, women and additional qualified professionals”. The story goes on to describe her as a “champion of women’s rights” and a “PLO spokeswoman… [who] articulated the Palestinian quest for statehood to the world.”

All of this tells only a very partial picture of who Ashrawi really is.
NPR Fabricates News Hook To Revive Apartheid Canard
So Sfard’s determination that Israel is imposing apartheid on the West Bank is old news, just like the moribund annexation plan.

Also old is the falsehood that there are West Bank roads for Jews only. The canard has been long debunked, and multiple media outlets have corrected the point. While limited sections of West Bank roads are barred to Palestinian traffic, they are open to all Israelis, Jewish, Christian and Muslim alike. But Estrin nevertheless tries to salvage the discredited apartheid roads smear and even takes it to a new nadir, reporting:
There’s no law making this an Israeli-only road, but it’s designed to skirt Palestinian villages. [Sfard] says the separation is a hallmark of apartheid.

Remarkably, by Sfard’s expanded definition of apartheid, even this particular road, which is open to Palestinian traffic as well as Israeli traffic, qualifies.

Estrin and Sfard visit Arab Ramadin, a Bedouin village near Qaliqilya apparently meant to illustrate the apartheid label. Estrin reports:
We make our way to the village of Arab Ramadin. Israeli officers have come here and asked villagers to pack up and leave. The Israeli lawyer thinks Israel wants the land to expand a nearby settlement.

Village leader Kasab Sha’ur claims: “They come here and promise us money and land somewhere else. There is daily pressure on people here to try to get us to leave.”

Estrin continues:”He hands me the permit paper he has to show Israeli guards whenever he comes and goes.”

A source from COGAT, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, disputed NPR’s claims about Arab Ramadin. Speaking to CAMERA, the COGAT official said most of the homes in Arab Ramadin are legally built and there is no threat of expulsion, no pressure to leave for these residents. A few individual buildings were built without permits, and therefore have demolition orders. He emphasized that evacuation orders are issued when buildings lack permits, and contrary to Sfard’s speculation. have nothing to do with settlement expansion.
MEMRI TV YouTube Channel Reaches 40,000 Followers And Over 12.5 Million Views
The MEMRI TV YouTube channel has passed the milestone of 40,000 followers since its launch in December 2017. The channel has also received over 12.5 million views during this time.

The channel's 40,021 subscribers view MEMRI TV clips as they are released. To date, the MEMRI TV YouTube channel has posted 1,814 clips and had 12,499,886 views; it reached the one-million views mark in November 2018 and 10-million views mark in June 2020.

Join over 500,000 daily subscribers of MEMRI content on social media – follow us now on YouTube for all the latest MEMRI TV clips by visiting the MEMRI TV Videos channel on YouTube and clicking on "Subscribe."

By subscribing to the MEMRI TV YouTube channel, you will see clips from the Middle East and beyond on reactions to the Abraham Accords, responses to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and translations from around the region to other current events.
On First Anniversary of Antisemitic Atrocity at Kosher Market, Jersey City Declares ‘No Place for Hate’
Residents of Jersey City, New Jersey, paused on Thursday to commemorate the first anniversary of the deadly antisemitic gun attack that resulted in the deaths of a police officer and three individuals at a kosher market in the Greenville neighborhood.

“On today’s somber one-year anniversary, it’s with heavy hearts that we remember the four lives lost during an attack on the Jewish community and law enforcement in Jersey City,” the New Jersey office of the Department for Homeland Security (DHS) tweeted. “There is #noplaceforhate in this state, and we will strive to keep New Jersey safe and secure for all.”

On Dec. 10, 2019, the two shooters — David Anderson, 47, and Francine Graham, 50 — murdered Jersey City Police Detective Joseph Seals, a father of five children, before driving their U-Haul van to a nearby kosher market, where they shot dead the owner, Mindy Ferencz, employee Douglas Rodriguez and customer Moshe Deutsch.

Investigators later revealed that the van driven by the pair had been packed with explosives, powerful enough to explode the length of five football fields, about 500 yards.

The target of Anderson and Graham — radical Black nationalists who were shot dead after a four-hour gun battle with police — was a Jewish religious school adjacent to the market, where 50 children were studying at the time of the attack. Antisemitic social media postings by the pair were also uncovered as investigators probed further into their backgrounds.

An initial reluctance by the New Jersey authorities to identify the atrocity as an antisemitic crime led to Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop highlighting this fundamental aspect in the hours that followed the attack.


Publication details Nazi-looted libraries during Holocaust in Belgium
The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), in concert with the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO), has published “Documenting Nazi Library Plunder in Occupied Belgium and Limited Postwar Retrieval,” designed to educate people on the history of the Holocaust within Belgium.

The new publication features library collections looted by the Nazi regime during World War II, and will be available in digital form online for users to peruse.

“This new online publication represents years of knowledge that many thought were lost forever during the Holocaust in Belgium,” said Gideon Taylor, WJRO chairman of operations and Claims Conference board of directors president. “This work, which was researched and investigated by experts in the field, will be a powerful resource for Holocaust survivors and their families, the Belgian Jewish community and researchers around the world.”

The materials were stolen from targeted victims of the Holocaust some 75 years ago by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), who were organized by Adolf Hitler’s ideological spokesman Alfred Rosenberg.

The ERR systematically identified and looted the private collections of individuals and institutions after Hitler’s army invaded Belgium – all containing historical and cultural knowledge compiled by Jews, Masons, the political elite, liberal professors, labor and socialist victims over lifetimes.

The Claims Conference notes that from August 1940 to February 1943, the ERR seized over 150 libraries across Belgium – estimating to include 250,000-300,000 pieces of literature.

“Understanding where these books and cultural artifacts ended up not only offers a more accurate account of what happened, but also lays the beginning foundational work for individuals and organizations who seek to pursue possible claims in the future” added Taylor.
Four passengers threaten to blow up train unless ‘cancer Jews’ get off
Police in Belgium are looking for four men who used a train’s public address system to threaten a bombing of the vehicle near Antwerp unless Jewish passengers step off.

The passengers took control of the public address system on Wednesday afternoon between Antwerp and Mechelen, the city that Nazis and their collaborators used as an internment and dispatch station for Jews whom they sent to be murdered in Poland.

“Attention, attention,” the men said in Flemish, “the cancer Jews need to leave the train now or we’ll blow you all up,” witnesses said.

Security personnel on the train failed to locate the perpetrators, according to Michael Freilich, a Belgian-Jewish lawmaker who has looked into and filed parliamentary questions about the incident to the Transportation Ministry.


11 ways to enjoy Hanukkah, even during Covid-19
Having pretty much ruined both Passover and the High Holidays season here in Israel, Covid-19 now has its sights set on Hanukkah, the usually wonderful family and oil-filled celebration marking the recapturing of the Second Temple by the Maccabees back in the second century BCE.

On Tuesday, Israel introduced a nighttime curfew over the whole holiday season (covering Christmas and the New Year as well), but the day after, the curfew was cancelled, with the threat of other possible measures instead. While we may not know here if we are coming or going, what we do know is that the week-long festival of Hanukkah is really not going to look much like itself.

There’s going to be very few visits to relatives for candle lighting, no mass gift exchanges and no hordes of children spinning dreidels for chocolate coins.

And yet, Hanukkah is not called the Festival of Lights for nothing. Despite being celebrated very differently this year, it can still shine bright and alleviate the darkness that’s surrounded us for much of this year. Here’s how.
Idan Raichel joins Andrea Bocelli in Dubai
After one of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra’s members tested positive for COVID-19, it seemed that the secretly planned Celebration of Peace Performance at Dubai’s Opera on Tuesday was on the brink of cancellation. The evening’s special guest, Andrea Bocelli, was already confirmed, and what was now missing was the Israeli side.

Then Idan Raichel, one of Israel’s most internationally celebrated artists, stepped in, and within 48 hours, he managed to gather some of Israel’s finest musicians to join him on the Dubai stage. “We organized the team in record speed and got on a flight” said Raichel. Among the artists joining him were Nasrin Kadri, Mark Kakon, Avi Wassa and Maya Avraham.

Hosted by the Israel Export Institute – in partnership with the Economy Ministry and Bank Hapoalim, and in coordination with Dubai Tourism – the event was attended by Israeli delegations that had participated in GITEX Technology Week, and coincided with the launch of three commercial flights from Israel to Dubai.

The evening emcee, Dubai Tourism’s Aida Al Busaidy, spoke in Arabic, English and Hebrew, welcoming the Israeli guests to their “second home.” Her remarks were met with a cheering applause, and the artistic program took off in what felt like another historic cultural milestone following the Abraham Accords.
Elizabeth Taylor’s Personal Menorahs Being Displayed for Hanukkah Before Auction
Two menorahs owned by the late fashion icon and actress Elizabeth Taylor will be on display for Hanukkah at a gallery in New York and then auctioned in January.

The menorahs will be showcased at the J Greenstein Gallery in New York throughout the holiday season along with a menorah exhibition.

They were purchased at Taylor’s estate sale and will be up from auction by J. Greenstein & Co., a boutique auction house that deals exclusively with antique Jewish ritual objects and art.

The taller sterling silver menorah is estimated to be valued between $7,000-$9,000 and was given to Taylor by her head of security, who brought it back from Israel for her as a gift.

The shorter silver metal Godinger menorah, together with a cobalt leaded glass Star of David, is estimated at between $15,000 – $20,000.

The “Cleopatra” star converted to Judaism in 1959 before marrying singer Eddie Fisher.


IDF Soldiers’ Surprise Hanukkah Concert


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