Wednesday, March 10, 2021
Corruption affects everything in Palestine – even vaccines
Visit certain parts of the West Bank and you’ll encounter mansions owned by senior officials in the Palestinian Authority (PA). By any standards – let alone those to which ordinary citizens are accustomed – they are impressive, with arches, colonnades and tall windows. If you’d been watching them in recent weeks, you might have seen vaccines being quietly delivered to these residences in unmarked cars, having been skimmed off the supply intended for medical workers.
Those, at least, were the allegations made by a number of Palestinian human rights and civil society groups. Last week, the Palestinian health ministry was forced to come clean. In a statement, the ministry admitted that 10 per cent of the 12,000 doses it had received had been put aside for government ministers and members of the PLO’s executive committee.
The rest, it claimed, had been given to workers treating Covid patients and employees of the health ministry. Aside from the 200 doses that were sent to the Jordanian royal court, that is. And those reserved for presidential guards. And those that had been given to the Palestinian national football team.
None of this should come as a surprise. One of the many sufferings that afflicts the residents of the West Bank, not to mention Gaza, is the corruption of their rulers.
Mahmoud Abbas is currently 16 years into a four-year term. New elections were promised as a gesture for the new American President, but few observers believe they will actually take place. The administration has been mainlining international aid dollars for years while continuing to funnel cash to reward convicted terrorists, with the worst crimes attracting the most wealth – a story that I first covered in 2014 and that continues unchecked, despite widespread outrage.
According to AMAN, a Palestinian anti-corruption body linked to Transparency International, almost 70 per cent of Palestinians believe that their government institutions are corrupt. An EU report found that embezzlement had led to a loss of £1.7 billion of aid money between 2008 and 2012 alone. Huge sums are spent on fake companies and projects, including – in 2017 – a non-existent airline.
New Book Explores UK-Jewish Relations Through Humor and Firsthand Experience
The Taming of the Jew, by Tuvia Tenenbom (Geffen Publishing, 2021).Pope Francis and Part Two of the Abraham Accords
Prophecy is gone from Israel. We no longer hear vox dei, but only vox populi, in this case, through the medium of the brilliant Israeli writer Tuvia Tenenbom. Posing as a German or Arab journalist (and sometimes even posing as himself), Tenenbom travels the world, provoking people from all walks of life into telling him what they really think about the Jews.
Where is God?, he asks in effect, when so much hatred afflicts God’s people? The result is quizzical and tragic at the same time, the sort of comedy sketches that Samuel Beckett might have written if he were Jewish rather than Irish.
Tenenbom’s 2011 book Allein unter den Deutschen (“Alone among the Germans”) became a bestseller in Germany, as did his romp through the world of non-governmental organizations, Catch the Jew. In 2011 I reviewed a self-published English edition of his first book — to my knowledge the first review he received — and characterized him as a Jewish Hunter S. Thompson. That was glib, and wrong.
A Talmud prodigy in his native Bnei Barak who moved to New York to learn mathematics and then theater, Tenenbom brings a deep religious sensibility to what at first seems like journalistic street theater. In his latest book, The Taming of the Jew, a political travelogue of the British Isles, he speaks with the prophetic tone of Mordechai in the Book of Esther. In place of Haman his antagonist is former British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, one of the world’s leading antisemites.
The book was complete, but for an epilogue, before the December 2019 national election, Labour’s worst humiliation since the general election of 1935. That led quickly to Corbyn’s removal as leader and a purge of the antisemites he had brought into the party leadership.
In the book, we learn at length that many Scots, Irish, and English hate Jews, especially the Scots and Irish, who seem to believe a lot of the anti-Israel propaganda that they hear, and the English aren’t much better. We tour Gatestone, the site of Britain’s largest yeshiva, and find that the talmidim live at constant risk of physical assault. We tour Manchester, home to several kosher restaurants, several of which were firebombed
Our father, Abraham, has had a lot on his plate lately—always for the good of humanity, as is his habit. “Lech lecha,” the Creator commanded him, “go from your land and from your birthplace and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you.”
From that time on, the adventure of monotheism began. Unfortunately, the task was left to Abraham’s two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, whose eternal dispute has relentlessly pursued us to this day.
Pope Francis bravely went to Syria on Friday—to Mosul, Najaf and Ur—where he led a prayer reminding attendees of Abraham’s message: that God is invisible, infinite and very close; full of love towards and demands of man, foremost among them to live in peace.
Peace is a moral attribute of monotheism, the son of Judaism, as well as the founder of what has come to be called the “human spirit,” which includes Christianity and Islam.
Pope Francis’s meeting with Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a key spiritual leader of Iraqi Shiite Muslims was significant. After years of atrocities committed against Christians at the hands of ISIS particularly and by political Islam in general, he traveled from Rome to the Middle East to talk to the most suitable of interlocutors among Shiites, who have not only traditionally suffered as a poor minority within the Sunni-majority Islamic world, but today—due to the regime in Tehran—represent the thorniest current issues: imperialism, uranium enrichment and the persecution of minorities.
Yet Sistani is a notable exception. A balanced character, he was born in Iran but significantly distant from his homeland, which is dominated by a group of Khomeinists who, according to Islamic religious law, will become the recognized leaders—only with the coming of the Mahdi, Imam Hussein—of the world’s redemption.
He is a moderate, cautious with politicians, but powerful within his community. He tried to placate the former after the 2003 invasion of Iraq by a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland, while also attempting to contain attacks against Americans. He pushed hard, as well, for the war against ISIS. Moreover, he maintains a relationship with Iran without demonstrating devotion to it.
An Urgent Crisis: Holocaust Education Is Fading in America
According to the US Millennial Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Survey, 63 percent of millennials in the United States are unaware that six million innocent Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.The Anti-Semitic Rhetoric of Anti-Zionists
Despite this alarming figure, the requirement of Holocaust education is decreasing in America, while antisemitic attacks are rising rapidly.
Currently, only 16 out of 50 US states are required to teach about the Holocaust. This is grossly inadequate. It should be mandatory that all public schools in the United States have a detailed curriculum that includes Holocaust education, so that the lessons of the past are not forgotten or repeated.
Aside from a basic lack of knowledge about the Holocaust, a statistic published by the National Holocaust Museum shows that 10 percent of people believe that the Jews shoulder the blame for the Holocaust. But how can we expect others to know about what the Jewish people endured — and the related lessons on the dangers of extremism, intolerance, and prejudice — if we aren’t teaching it to them?
Just as happened in the early 20th century, Jews are once again being blamed as scapegoats for all the world’s ills. And attacks against Jews are rising.
The number of antisemitic attacks in the US has risen dramatically over the past few years, spiking at an all-time high in 2019, an 18% increase from 2018. In the US, several Hillel and Chabad student buildings have recently been set on fire, synagogues have been targeted with antisemitic graffiti and threats, and Jews have been murdered by right-wing and left-wing extremists.
And what has been the country’s response? Eliminating the Holocaust from its social studies curricula.
There was a time, not so long ago, when there was wide consensus about what antisemitism is and why it should be combatted in all its forms. Manifestations of Jew hatred and anti-Semitic rhetoric were relegated to the fringes of society in the decades following the defeat of the Nazi regime and the exposure of their atrocities in the Holocaust. But as time progressed, classic anti-Semitism re-emerged from the shadows. In addition, anti-Zionism — the rejection of self-determination for Jews in their ancestral homeland— continues to gain considerable ground, sparking debate about whether it is just another manifestation of anti-Semitism.Starmer’s Video Call with Palestinian Ambassador Who Claimed Israel “Fabricated” Holocaust
Anti-Zionists contend that anti-Zionism is a political position rooted in progressive values and principled advocacy for Palestinians whom they consider the rightful heirs to the Holy Land and that charges of anti-Semitism are just cynical smears meant to muzzle legitimate criticism of Israel. They claim that anti-Semitism is limited to the far-right, white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
It is instructive therefore to compare the language and rhetoric used by prominent anti-Zionist organizations, politicians, journalists and activists to the classic antisemitic tropes disseminated by Nazis in the prelude to and during the Holocaust. Themes and Tropes Used in Nazi Germany Propaganda
When Nazi party leader Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933, his personal manifesto, Mein Kampf [My Struggle], became a bestseller in Germany. It clearly spelled out his political ideology, hatred and demonization of Jews. To further promote his position, Hitler appointed Joseph Goebbels to head the new Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in Berlin as well as the propaganda office of the Reich (Reich Propagandaleitung) in Munich. The goal was to shape public opinion and foment hatred against Jews. To that end, Nazi propaganda incorporated classic anti-Jewish blood libels and medieval anti-Semitic canards about Jews being agents of the devil seeking supremacy over non-Jews. These canards were amplified with ones about Jewish racism, criminality, deviousness, greed, wealth, and corruption. Propaganda became the first weapon employed by Hitler and his Nazi party in the battle to transform public opinion, vilify Jews and pave the way for the Holocaust.
What follows is a comparison of the tropes and themes used in Nazi propaganda to those used by current-day anti-Zionist activists.
While Nazi propagandists demonized ‘Jews’ as a collective, anti-Zionists substitute ‘Israel’ or ‘Zionists’ as the largest and most prominent, modern-day collective of Jews.
Sir Keir joined some eyebrow-raising company yesterday as a video call with the UK Palestinian Mission saw him come face-to-face with Ambassador Husam Zomlot to discuss the bilateral relationship. Starmer, his Deputy Political Director and Lisa Nandy all joined Zomlot who lobbied the Labour leadership for the UK to recognise the state of Palestine and boycott Israeli exports.Guido was surprised to see Starmer with Zomlot given he’s been so keen to distance himself from Corbyn-era antisemitism rows…Aristocrat, 26, whose birthday party at family's Perthshire estate featured in Tatler magazine joined pro-Palestinian activists to spray red paint on London HQ of Israeli defence firm, court hears
In 2014, Zomlot appeared to claim that Israel “fabricated” the Holocaust, telling the BBC:
“[Israel] are fabricating all these stories about beheading journalists in Iraq… as if they are fabricating also the story of the Holocaust, that it happened in Europe.”
The comments came to light in the Mail on Sunday when it emerged Corbyn spoke at Zomlot’s wedding. The same article revealed a photo of Zomlot protesting with Swastika-adorned signs…
The same remarks also saw the then-Palestinian ambassador claim Israel was founded on the “skulls of our nation” and accused the country of an “ethnic cleansing campaign”. Zomlot then claimed he misspoke during the 2014 BBC interview, saying “I absolutely do not deny the Holocaust, which was a heinous crime”. He now insists he meant to argue Israel was using the Holocaust to justify “its murder of Palestine”. So that’s alright then…
An aristocrat who joined a gang of pro-Palestinian protestors to spray red paint at the door of an Israeli defence contractor's office has appeared in court.
Doone Stormonth Darling, 26, is accused of attacking the outside of Elbit Systems' central London headquarters on October 10 last year.
Stormonth Darling - and four others aged 25 to 56 - used paint-filled fire extinguishers to damage the buildings in protest at the presence of the defence company's office at 77 Kingsway.
Stormonth Darling's family live on a vast estate in Perthshire and she was featured in upper class magazine Tatler when she held her 21st birthday party there.
The estate was once occupied by Robin Stormonth Darling, a stockbroker and City regulator.
Elbit Systems is an Israel-based international defence electronics company.
Stormonth Darling, Flora Thomas, 26, Joley Thomas, 29, Anthony Bardos, 56 and Jocelyn Cooney, 25, all face one count of criminal damage to 'property and clothing' valued under £5,000 and conspiracy to destroy or damage such property.
Damla Ayas, prosecuting, told Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court: 'Protest groups have attended and occupied the roof of the factory building of Elbit.
'There were spray fire extinguishers filled with red paint and they were carrying tubs filled with red paint.
Jewish Students at @BristolJsoc are standing against antisemitic targeted harassment from a professor at @BristolUni. Let’s stand alongside them by donating to this crowd funder treating them to a well deserved drink and to enrich Jewish life on campus 🍺 https://t.co/omsKuJFXhX
— leekern (@leekern13) March 9, 2021
CAA asks St Paul’s School why disgraced peer Shami Chakrabarti who authored whitewash report into Labour antisemitism will address pupils on “equality between people”
Shami Chakrabarti has been invited to speak at the prestigious St Paul’s School on the subject of “equality between people” on the occassion of International Women’s Day, despite her role whitewashing antisemitism within the Labour Party.PreOccupiedTerritory: ‘Don’t Define Islam By A Tiny Violent Minority!’ – A Jew Who Demands You Define Judaism By My Tiny AntiZionist Minority by Ariel Gold, Code Pink (satire)
Following a complaint to us from an appalled alumnus, Campaign Against Antisemitism has written to the High Master of the boys’ school to ask why the disgraced peer has been invited to speak tomorrow, to insist that she is challenged on her role whitewashing anti-Jewish racism in the Labour Party, and to make welfare arrangements for Jewish students and anyone else affected by her address.
The alumnus told Campaign Against Antisemitism: “My old school St Paul’s has invited Chakrabarti to speak at an event to mark International Womens’ Day on Tuesday. I and several other Jewish alumni have objected to the High Master as we don’t feel that she is suitable to be given a platform at the school, given her contribution to the continuation of antisemitism which she could have snuffed out with the position and power she had. I also don’t believe she did very much to help Margaret Hodge, Ruth Smeeth, Luciana Berger and so many other women Labour Party members who were subjected to antisemitism after the publication of her joke of a report.
“The school’s response is that they haven’t asked her to talk about antisemitism or Labour so it’s fine that she still speaks regardless of the offence it has caused and will cause Jews. They quote freedom of speech, debate, open-mindedness etc. to justify not cancelling her engagement.”
Prejudice and discrimination have no place in our society – or in our world. Anyone who defines the hundreds of millions of adherents of Islam – the religion of peace! – by the violent actions of a misunderstood but mistaken small minority, commits the sin of prejudice. I say this as a member of the Hebraic persuasion – specifically, of an even smaller minority within the Hebraic persuasion that insists everyone disregard the attachment and support of ninety-five percent of that persuasion for the State of Israel.New York Times Covers Up for a Terrorist — and Smears Golda for Good Measure
For decades, especially in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, Muslims and their allies have struggled to explain that the evil actions of their coreligionists – as justified as I might feel them, and as much as I believe all those bereaved families had it coming – do not represent Muslims as a whole, and certainly not American Muslims. How dare anyone tar them with the same brush as those terrorists! I also maintain that anti-Zionist Jews, who number perhaps a twentieth of the Jewish population, represent authentic Judaism, and that the nineteen twentieths who defend Jewish sovereignty in the ancestral Jewish homeland can be safely dismissed as irrelevant.
Judaism does not imply Zionism! Just look at the sliver of the Jewish demographic called Neturei Karta, who, like me and my organization, stand in solidarity with the Islamic Republic of Iran and their ambition to destroy Israel. The fact that the rest of Jewry views Neturei Karta with horror and revulsion is just a political smoke screen. How can anyone think that a marginal group of Jews allied with the Holocaust-denying regime in Teheran do not represent authentic loyalty to the Jewish nation and tradition? It beggars belief. They have dark frocks and sidelocks and everything! Nothing is more authentically Jewish than a style of dress that originated among Russian imperial nobility of the eighteenth century!
When is a Palestinian terrorist not a Palestinian terrorist? When The New York Times covers up her past and hopes nobody will notice.Why does ‘The New York Times’ incessantly attack Israel?
I’m referring to a deeply troubling allegation contained in a major article in the Times on March 6, authored by its new Jerusalem bureau chief, Patrick Kingsley.
The article focused on a Palestinian disc jockey, Sama Abdulhadi, who was recently arrested by the Palestinian Authority for performing a concert near a mosque. Incredibly, Kingsley quoted Abdulhadi and others blaming “the Israeli occupation” for the mistreatment of Palestinian dissidents by the PA. I’m going to leave that absurdity aside because of an even more disturbing part of the article.
In an apparent attempt to show the continuity of alleged Israeli misbehavior from generation to generation, Kingsley wrote that in 1969, “the Israeli authorities expelled her grandmother, Issam Abdulhadi, a leading women’s rights activist.”
That statement puzzled me. Could it be true? Since when is “women’s rights activism” a crime? Would Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir—herself the living embodiment of advocacy of women’s rights—have authorized the deportation of a Palestinian woman for being a women’s rights activist?
When it comes to reporting or commenting on the State of Israel, The New York Times, America’s so-called “paper of record,” has become more akin to an anti-Zionist advocacy organization than an unbiased news outlet, sometimes even descending into outright anti-Semitism.Washington Post Distorts History of Jewish Refugees from Iraq The Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries is one of the most significant events in modern Middle East history, yet the details nevertheless remain largely unknown to many. The departure, flight, expulsion and evacuation of some 850,000 Jews from across the region, as well as from North Africa exposed the fundamental insecurity of the Jewish people across much of the region.
According to David Bernstein, president and CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Times holds “a decided institutional bias” against Israel. This was after his organization researched 107 editorials on Israel and Jews published in the Times since 2016.
The situation has become so extreme that opinion editor Bari Weiss, one of the few openly Zionist voices employed by the Times in recent years, felt forced to resign in July 2020 because of harassment. According to Weiss, her colleagues called her a “Nazi” and “racist,” and intimated that she wrote too many “Jewish stories.”
Apparently, though Jews are by far the foremost victims of hate crimes in the United States, enough is enough at the Times with Jewish this and Jewish that.
While in the past the Times has allowed some nuanced voices to be heard, including those of William Safire and Abe Rosenthal, in recent years, all pretense has been dropped.
The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) has long chronicled the Times’s bias against Israel. In a study undertaken in 2011, CAMERA found a “disproportionate, continuous, embedded indictment of Israel that dominates both news and commentary sections. Israeli views are downplayed while Palestinian perspectives, especially criticism of Israel, are amplified and even promoted.”
The net effect, states the report, “is an overarching message, woven into the fabric of NYT coverage, of Israeli fault and responsibility for the conflict.”
Unfortunately, a recent Washington Post article left readers entirely unaware of the horrific circumstances of the near-total decimation of Iraq’s Jewish community.
The piece, by Miriam Berger, deals with a topic seemingly unrelated to Israel: namely, Pope Francis’ visit this week to Iraq. While the article for the most part had nothing to do with Israel or Jews, and rightfully detailed how the trip was “particularly rich in symbolism for Iraq’s embattled minority Christian communities,” a couple of references included therein are problematic.
Israel’s Creation: the Reason For Jewish Community’s Collapse?
At one point, Berger writes that (emphasis added): “Iraq, like elsewhere in the Middle East, was once a rich tapestry of religions and ethnicities. But wars and political changes in the 19th and 20th centuries, such as the fall of the Ottoman Empire, European colonialism, the rise of Arab nationalism and the creation of Israel, altered the frameworks that had once kept these communities together.”
In listing Israel’s creation alongside such obviously fraught and dangerous political moments such as the fall of the Ottoman Empire and European colonialism, the very existence of the world’s only Jewish is categorized as a destabilizing influence on the region. This simply is not true. Israel’s existence is not the reason for the collapse of Iraq’s Jewish community: Arab and Muslim intolerance of Jewish independence was.
Certainly, in and of itself, the declaration of a Jewish state had no direct negative impact on the fabric of life in Iraq. As such, the article should have listed fierce Arab opposition to Israel’s creation among the critical factors that “altered the frameworks” that once kept Iraq’s Jewish community relatively safe.
Even then, this only partially explains how the country’s Jewish population, which at its peak numbered in excess of 130,000, disintegrated in a matter of decades, to the point that only a handful of Jews are believed to now live in the region. CS Monitor Yet Again Misreports Palestinian Attitudes
A Feb. 22, 2021 Christian Science Monitor report entitled “Can a new generation change Palestinian politics?” misleads readers.5 Pillars 'news site' descends to parody - warns of Zionist children threatening al-Aqsa
The dispatch’s authors, correspondents Fatima Abdulkarim and Taylor Luck, are no strangers to biased reporting about Israel. Abdulkarim has worked for anti-Israel propaganda entities including Iran’s government-controlled Press TV and has been quoted approvingly by the anti-Israel Qatari propaganda outlet, Al-Jazeera. Likewise, Taylor Luck has provided flawed reporting involving Israel.
These same CSM writers had collaborated in December 2020 to echo false Palestinian complaints against Israel and the United States.
The writers ignore the reality of a society deeply influenced by pervasive Islamist indoctrination, poisoning minds from cradle to grave to hate and attack Jews, blaming them for many, if not most, of their ills. The influencers include mosques, media and schools in addition to the political leadership (more below).
In its decades of coverage of the Palestinian conflict with Israel, CSM has rarely cited this ongoing indoctrination and then only in terms of something like “Israeli claims” or “Israeli allegations”— although the evidence of this indoctrination has been readily available for decades.
Additionally, the writers note that in “the 2006 [Palestinian] election, which saw Hamas take a surprise majority – largely in protest against Fatah’s corruption – [it] prompted parliament’s dissolution.” Here, the writers imply that Hamas’ Islamist dictatorial method of governing is not problematic for the West Bank Palestinians. Yet they fail to ask if this support for Islamist terrorism is consistent with the portrayal of a society supposedly seeking greater democracy and drastically improved economic conditions.
First, the characterisation of the Australian man who started the fire, Denis Michael Rohan, as a “Zionist” who was ideologically motivated is extremely misleading.TikTok combats violence, antisemitism, with these new features
Rohan suffered from serious mental illness, and claimed, during his trial in Jerusalem, that “heavenly voices” told him to set fire to the Mosque. He was found to be mentally ill, deported to Australia and committed to a mental institution. Further, the trial established that Rohan gained access to the mosque, off-hours and with a backpack full of explosives, by bribing the Muslim guards and the sheikh supervising them.
Moreover, 5 Pillars’ claim that Israeli authorities prevented Palestinians from putting out the fire, our Arabic researchers have confirmed, is a common libel in the Arab media, one echoed by Islamist extremist preachers like Raed Selah, and pro-Hamas propaganda outlets like MEMO.
Scholar and historian Nadav Shragai has written that it’s a baseless libel, and Ynet journalist Yaron Druckman has written, in an account of the events surrounding the fire, that the opposite is true. “Whether intentional or not”, he wrote, “hundreds of the old city’s Muslim residents”, outraged at the fire which they falsely assumed started by a Jew, “interfered with the firefighters attempts to control the flames”.
A contemporaneous account by JTA on Aug. 22, 1969 backs up this account. The article reports that “according to Fire Chief J. Lieberman, they were pelted with rocks and sticks and even assaulted bodily by mobs of infuriated Arabs who were already on the scene.”
Also, see this archival footage by Associated Press, taken the day of the fire, that shows Israeli firefighters putting out the blaze.
The 5 Pillars editorial advances another conspiracy theory towards the end:
Moreover, over the past decade Israel has constructed a series of tunnels in the occupied Palestinian neighbourhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem, south of Al-Aqsa. [Israel] has forcibly evicted Palestinians from the area as part of the Kedem colonial settlement project and many fear the tunnels are part of a strategy to weaken the foundations of Al Aqsa and provide a means of access for the Zionist colonists.
The trope that sinister Jews are plotting to build an underground entry point to weaken the foundations of Al-Aqsa and/or gain access to the mosque, under the ‘pretext’ of archaeological digs, is a common Arab conspiracy theory that is cynically employed by Hamas and other extremists to incite Palestinians to violence.
TikTok has launched two new features aimed at combating online bullying by encouraging users to think before they type.Israeli Envoy in Ukraine Slams Naming of Soccer Stadium in Honor of Nazi Ally Roman Shukhevych
The new features were launched on the popular social media platform on Wednesday, and are expected to have a positive impact on discourse taking place on the app. Similar strategies have been used on other popular social media platforms in recent years.
The first new feature launched by TikTok is called "Fitler all comments." It will allow users the possibility to either show or hide comments posted on their uploaded videos. If this feature is turned on, comments will not show automatically, but only after being approved by the content's creator - allowing users to limit hurtful or irrelevant comments on their videos.
The second feature, "Consider before you comment," will encourage TikTok users to be nicer to one another by making them pause before posting hateful messages. Whenever a user is about to post comments that include violent words or an aggressive undertone, a pop-up message with come up asking the user: “Would you like to reconsider posting this?” before encouraging users to edit their posts or post them anyway. TikTok has recently announced a zero-tolerance policy toward violent content or discourse on its app.
"That's why the company has gone to great lengths to block violent content from appearing on the platform and is now adding technological solutions on the app, aimed at combating violent discourse that might rise due to controversial content being shared on the platform," a statement released by TikTok read.
TikTok's announcement reflects increasing instances of violence and hate speech being shared on the platform and reported by often underage users. In some cases, such as that of the violent crackdown imposed on protesters in Myanmar, TikTok was used in a political context by soldiers spreading fear among protesters.
Antisemitism directed at Jewish or Israeli content on the popular platform has also been reported by users, indicating a growing need for tools that will allow users to divert uninvited people only looking to spread hate.
Israel’s Ambassador to Ukraine on Tuesday lambasted the city of Ternopil after its council named a rebuilt soccer stadium after Roman Shukhevych, the leader of a Ukrainian nationalist brigade created by the occupying Germans during World War II.Singapore Muslim soldier arrested for planning stabbing spree outside synagogue
“We strongly condemn the decision of Ternopil city council to name the City Stadium after the infamous Hauptman of the SS Schutzmannschaft 201 Roman Shukhevych and demand the immediate cancellation of this decision,” the Israeli envoy in Kiev, Joel Lion, stated on Twitter.
The newly-reconstructed stadium holds just over 15,000 spectators and will host the final of the Ukrainian Soccer Cup later this year. Confirmation that the stadium would be named in honor of Shukhevych came following a meeting of the Ternopil city council on March 5 — the 71st anniversary of Shukhevych’s death during a shoot-out with Soviet intelligence agents who raided his hiding place in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.
A committed Ukrainian nationalist from his days as a student, in 1940 Shukhevych commanded a military unit of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) that actively collaborated with the Nazis. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Shukhevych became the commander of the Ukrainian “Nachtigall” battalion under the ultimate command of the Germans.
Shukhevych is regarded as a hero by post-war Ukrainian nationalists both inside the country and in the diaspora. Many of his defenders angrily deny that the “Nachtigall” battalion was involved in the widely-documented slaughter of Jews in Lviv in 1941.
However, according to Per Anders Rudling — a Swedish academic who has published extensively on World War II in Eastern Europe — “Roman Shukhevych personally helped set up the Ukrainian nationalist militia, which played a key role in the L’viv pogrom. Soldiers of Nachtigall partook in the July 1, 1941 L’viv pogrom, as well as massacres of Jews in the vicinity of Vinnytsia.”
A radicalized Singaporean Muslim soldier has been arrested for planning a deadly stabbing spree against Jews, officials said Wednesday.German court rules former Nazi camp guard, 96, unfit to stand trial
Such cases are rare in multi-ethnic Singapore, where different religious and ethnic groups generally live peacefully side by side.
Amirull Ali, 20, planned to ambush and kill at least three Jewish men as they left a synagogue after prayers, security officials said. Israel’s Channel 12 specified that he intended to target the Maghain Aboth Synagogue.
He became radicalized after researching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict online and planned to travel to Gaza in the Palestinian territories to join Islamic terror group Hamas’s military wing, they said.
“Amirull was very serious, he had made detailed preparations, he had a knife prepared for his attack,” Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam told local media.
“He decided to target the abdomen area because that’s where the heavy bleeding will cause quick death,” the minister said.
But Amirull — who had been doing compulsory national service as an administrative support assistant — shelved his plans as he was uncertain whether he would attain martyrdom.
A German court on Wednesday halted proceedings against a 96-year-old former Nazi camp guard deemed unfit to stand trial, but ruled that he must pay his own legal fees.NBA’s Meyers Leonard suspended by Miami Heat over anti-Semitic slur
The man named as Harry S. is accused of aiding and abetting murder in several hundred cases while working as a guard at the Stutthof camp in then Nazi-occupied Poland between June 1944 and May 1945.
He was charged in 2017 along with another former Stutthof guard whose trial was discontinued in March 2019, also for health reasons.
“Due to his physical condition, he was no longer able to reasonably represent his interests in and outside of the trial,” the district court in Wuppertal said in a statement.
However, the court found there was “a high degree of probability” Harry S. was guilty of the crimes and therefore ruled that he should incur his own expenses.
Harry S. was accused of overseeing the transport of 598 prisoners from Stutthof to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp on September 10, 1944, all but two of whom were later murdered in gas chambers.
Miami Heat center Meyers Leonard has been placed on indefinite leave by the club after using an anti-Semitic slur while streaming his video-game play.US Jewish Organizations Condemn NBA Player Meyers Leonard’s Use of Vicious Antisemitic Slur During Livestream
The team said the 29-year-old would “be away from the team indefinitely” after footage of the incident on Monday emerged.
“The Miami Heat vehemently condemns the use of any form of hate speech,” the club said in a statement. “The words used by Meyers Leonard were wrong and we will not tolerate hateful language from anyone associated with our franchise.
“To hear it from a Miami Heat player is especially disappointing and hurtful to all those who work here, as well as the larger South Florida, Miami Heat and NBA communities. Meyers Leonard will be away from the team indefinitely. The Miami Heat will cooperate with the NBA while it conducts its investigation.”
Leonard, who has played only three games for Miami this season and is expected to miss the remainder of the campaign after undergoing shoulder surgery, issued an apology for his remarks.
“I am deeply sorry for using an anti-Semitic slur during a livestream yesterday,” Leonard said in a statement on Instagram.
“While I didn’t know what the word meant at the time, my ignorance about its history and how offensive it is to the Jewish community is absolutely not an excuse and I was just wrong.
American Jewish organizations reacted with concern to footage that emerged on Monday of NBA player Meyers Leonard using a vile antisemitic slur while participating in a livestream of the video game ‘Call of Duty.’Facebook rolls out Instagram Lite, sired by Tel Aviv team
“F–ing coward. Don’t f–ing snipe me, you f–ing k–e b—h,” 29-year-old Miami Heat center Leonard was heard saying during the livestream. In response, the Heat placed Leonard under indefinite suspension from the team.
The Washington, DC-based advocacy organization B’nai B’rith International said on Twitter that it had been “appalled to hear Meyers Leonard using a horrific antisemitic slur while streaming his gaming session on Twitch. We urge Leonard to issue an apology immediately and thank the NBA and Miami Heat for swiftly reviewing his hateful comments.”
Leonard did issue an apology for the antisemitic slur later on Monday, claiming on his Instagram account that he “didn’t know what the word meant at the time.” Nonetheless, he continued, “my ignorance about its history and how offensive it is to the Jewish community is absolutely not an excuse and I was just wrong. I am now more aware of its meaning and I am committed to properly seeking out people who can help educate me about this type of hate and how we can fight it.”
Facebook on Wednesday started the rollout of Instagram Lite, a lighter, faster version of the popular app designed for people living in remote communities that have poor internet access. The lite version of the app was designed by the social media giant’s team in Tel Aviv, which worked together with a team in New York.Illegal church-built tunnel on Mount Zion concealed by the city
Instagram is a photo-sharing app with more than a billion users worldwide. The app was acquired by Facebook in 2012 and has become part of the daily “sharing” life of many.
The lighter app, available only on Android devices for now, will be rolled out in 170 countries this week, including in Israel, and will be made available globally in the near future, the company said, allowing the Instagram experience to remain fast and reliable for more people, no matter what device or network they are on.
The new app requires only two megabytes to download on Android — considerably less than the full-size version, which was closer to 30MB — but retains the key features that people using entry-level devices want, such as the feed, stories, filters and direct messaging. To do so, the team offloaded much of the code that the app runs on the phone into the cloud, in a similar manner to the Facebook Lite app for mobile phones, also developed in Tel Aviv, which debuted some five years ago.
Slightly more than 63 percent of the world’s population is online, as opposed to nearly 90 percent in North America. And many of the regions that are connected do not have up-to-date mobile devices, robust internet networks, or affordable data plans needed to swiftly deliver much of the data-rich videos or images found on Instagram.
Following the concealment of an illegal tunnel built by a Catholic Church on Mount Zion, the Regavim movement filed a petition with the Jerusalem District Court on Monday, demanding that the city take responsibility for its negligence.Elbit brings interoperability in the battlefield to the next level
Regavim is dedicated to preserving Israel's national lands and resources. When it discovered the possible existence of this underground tunnel, the organization petitioned that the Jerusalem Municipality investigate it.
The tunnel, extending from the Abbey of the Dormition just outside of the Old City, threatens to impede on public grounds of the national park "around the walls of Jerusalem." There are many archaeological ruins buried beneath the area from the era of King David, the Hasmonean dynasty and the First Temple; a tunnel could potentially damage or destroy them.
Following two years of legal pressure, the city admitted to the presence of the tunnel and was forced to map out its path, extending into public lands and areas archaeological remains. The tunnel connects the abbey with another church, "The House of Joseph," and was found to measure around 150 meters.
Not only did this illegal tunnel infringe on the national park's public grounds, but it also barred the entrance to the public land with a private gate.
Despite its obvious illegal status, the city never released the map it drew up, nor did it take any measures to enforce the law. Regavim filed a petition on Monday that the church be charged property tax and fees for usage of the tunnel and that actions be taken to restore the area to its original state, either by sealing or destroying the illegal structure.
“When the details began to come into focus, we demanded over and over that the Jerusalem Municipality publicize the documentation of its findings, as required by the Freedom of Information Law. We further demanded that oversight, inspection and law enforcement procedures be taken immediately, to restore the site to its previous condition either by sealing off or demolishing the tunnel,” said attorneys Avi Segal and Yael Cinnamon of the Regavim Movement.
“We filed this petition only when our repeated requests to the Jerusalem Municipality were not answered.”
In the constantly changing modern battlefield, the enemy is not what we used to know.
It is unlikely that we will see tanks fighting tanks on a battlefield. The enemy today is dubbed as “the disappearing enemy,” or “the invisible enemy,” because militias will try to operate within civilian urban areas and to be as evasive as they can.
This new warfare requires militaries to adapt to a reality in which things change in a split second, where the need for fast, reliable communication has become a necessity.
One of the main companies in Israel that deals with developing such solutions is Elbit Systems.
One of their main goals is to develop combat network systems that would not only provide solutions for the new battlefield but will also fit the exact needs of different militaries, Elbit vice president international of C4ISR Gil Maoz told The Jerusalem Post.
“We are now in a world in which the information flows all the time, and our systems allow the entire combating force, from the brigade commander to the soldier in the field, to communicate in the fastest way possible,” he said in an interview at the company’s offices in central Israel.
The main understanding at Elbit is that current warfare equipment should focus on the multi-domain battlefield. The previous division into ground, underground, sea, sky and space spheres is almost irrelevant; all of the different forces should know how to communicate in the most efficient way possible.
“We focus on what we call ‘operational flexibility,’” Maoz said. “In our command and control system, we emphasize features that allow different units of different kinds to move around and join other forces. For example, we can make tanks and battleships connect.
“Some might think that it’s irrelevant today, but maybe in a future battle it will be necessary, and our command and control system can make it happen.”
#OnThisDay in 1949, the IDF completed Operation Uvda, extending Israeli sovereignty to the Red Sea and winning Israel's 1st war. In the absence of a flag, soldiers found a sheet, drew 2 ink stripes and sewed on a Star of David torn from a first-aid kit to symbolize their victory. pic.twitter.com/CTxSLZ4jj7
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) March 10, 2021
