Monday, March 15, 2021
Daniel Greenfield: Antisemitism is a Conspiracy Theory Against Meritocracy
Last week, the Gross Family Center for the Study of Antisemitism and the Holocaust kindly invited me to address their audience. I spoke to them about Socialist antisemitism and the war on meritocracy, why the enemies of meritocracy are also the enemies of the Jews and why when Jews oppose meritocracy, we're enabling antisemitism.The Ramallah Quakers
Here's the video of the speech along with a few key points.
To understand where the new antisemitism came from, it’s important to look at how the origins of modern antisemitism redefined the Jews from the oppressed to the oppressors.
And that didn’t happen in 1948. It didn’t happen in the Six Day War.
The new antisemitism redefines Jews as the oppressors. But redefining Jews as the oppressors dates back to a time before the rebirth of the State of Israel, a time when Jews hardly had any rights, and the few rights they had were coming under attack.
"Every government having regard to good morals ought to repress the Jews," Pierre Leroux, credited with coining the term 'Socialism' wrote. "When we speak of Jews, we mean the Jewish spirit, the spirit of profit, of lucre, of gain, the spirit of commerce."
American socialism traces its ideological ancestry to Charles Fourier, a French socialist bigot who fumed that Jews were the embodiment of capitalism, “parasites, merchants, usurers”, and the "incarnation of commerce: parasitical, deceitful, traitorous and unproductive".
“What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in the face of which no other god may exist,” Karl Marx ranted. “The god of the Jews has become secularized and has become the god of the world.”
The emancipation of the Jews meant that they were free to pursue careers, go into business, and do their best to succeed. (h/t Chairman LMAO™)
It is hardly a surprise that Sa'ed Atshan would be given tenure at Swarthmore College. What is noteworthy is how this came about. It points to the special place Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) supporters have in academia.
To start, Atshan is a well-known BDS activist, and the college itself has endorsed BDS. In many ways, Atshan is a poster child for Quaker education—he's an alum of the Quaker school in Ramallah who now teaches for the same Quaker school he attended as an undergraduate. He represents the Quaker echo chamber regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that ensures that only the Palestinian narrative will be voiced.
Atshan has also been active with Students for Justice in Palestine, whose parent organization, American Muslims for Palestine, was recently shown to be connected to the same American Muslim Brotherhood supporters who funded Hamas through the Holy Land Foundation, and which has trained its activists in "Countering Normalization of Israeli Oppression on Campus."
The Ramallah Friends School, where Atshan was educated, is one of the oldest Quaker institutions in the Middle East. The school acts as a feeder to the Quaker colleges in Pennsylvania. Another proud alum of the school is Joyce Ajlouny, the Secretary General of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Ajlouny is a native of Ramallah and formerly the head of the Quaker school.
The Ramallah school has also been exporting its pedagogy through programs like "Go Palestine," which is focused on Palestinian culture. Yet, in addition, "Go Palestine" participants receive a steady dose of anti-Israel rhetoric through films and lectures. These include"Occupation 101" and "Jerusalem: The East Side Story," films which depict Israel as a racist, savage oppressor. A panel on "Youth Activism and Engagement in Palestine" featured representatives of "the Love Under Apartheid Campaign [and] the BDS movement."
Ms. James’ tepid response to the wave of Jew hatred that proliferated throughout New York City in the summer of 2019 and has continued in various incarnations until this day, will not go unanswered.
It doesn't take much to know that the rudimentary function of the Attorney General is to launch meticulous probes in order to root out the pernicious source or sources from which criminal behavior is emanating, to find out who the suspects are and what their motive is.
While Ms. James is on the fast track to take on Asian-American discrimination with a palpable gusto, her willingness to be a pro-active prosecutor when it pertains to anti-Semitism is sputtering like a faulty engine.
Let’s remember that during the wave of heightened anti-Semitism that plagued New York City and beyond, Ms.James and her cohorts remained completely silent about the insidious surge until she was coerced to hold a press conference in the aftermath of the brutal stabbings of hassidic Jews at the home of Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg of Monsey in December of 2019. .
In a statement released to the media at the time, James said, “There is zero tolerance for acts of hate of any kind and we will continue to monitor this horrific situation. I stand with the Jewish community tonight and every night.”
Really, Ms. James? Your actions certainly do not justify these statements.
She followed that up with a press conference after meeting with Orthodox leaders. She then claimed that she would work with local district attorneys in providing them support for their prosecutions of Anti-Demitic attackers. She also promised that she would monitor social media sites that routinely provide a platform for haters to spew forth vitriolic anti-Semitic diatribes.
Suffice it to say, Ms.James, despite her words, has done absolutely nothing to prevent the burgeoning anti-Semitism that has gripped our city and state. She still has not promulgated a viable plan to quash anti-Semitism as the slow motion roll to yet another European style deadly pogrom takes place before our very eyes.
Ms. James, we ask you and your colleagues why you maintain a double standard as it pertains to battling discrimination and prejudice? Why don’t you fight the scourge of Jew hatred with as much fervor as you do when other minority groups are the target of violence?
Coronavirus: Has Israel reached herd immunity?
As noted, experts believe that around 80% of the population would have to be vaccinated or recovered to achieve herd immunity, but this is just an estimate.Israel to ship COVID vaccines to US for diplomatic staff
In the case of measles, around 90% to 95% of the population need to be vaccinated to have indirect protection, Cohen said. In contrast, in the case of other vaccine preventable diseases, such as diphtheria and polio, only about 80% of the population needs to be vaccinated.
It’s possible that in certain areas of the population, herd immunity has already started to appear, he said – such as in areas with less youth or greater vaccination rates – but that is different from achieving national herd immunity.
Yamin said that in the near future, the coronavirus should enter a state of “silent epidemic” meaning that there would not be massive infection and certainly less strain on the health system. This is especially so because the majority of children do not develop serious cases of COVID-19.
But he said that while the disease is still spreading, Israel should proactively test the population to catch asymptomatic cases before they spread, especially in areas where people could be at the highest risk, such as in senior living facilities.
“We should now put all of our efforts to protect those at high risk,” Yamin said.
Cohen added that while Israel is enjoying an exciting downward trend in morbidity – only around 2.4% of people screened on Saturday tested positive – the population should still act with caution and continue to combine vaccination with other preventative steps, such as masks and social distancing where applicable.
“The data are very encouraging,” Cohen said, “but we still cannot speak about a significant herd immunity at this stage.”
Israel is preparing to send doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to the United States in order to vaccinate Israeli emissaries in the country, the health and foreign ministries said in a joint statement Sunday.Israeli anti-vaxxers submit ethics complaint to ICC - report
According to the plan, the vaccine doses will be sent to New York, where Israeli staff from the country’s Washington embassy and eight consulates will go to receive the shots.
The plan includes vaccinating about 500 people overall: embassy and consulate staff, and their family members. Israel plans to send a second shipment of doses three weeks later.
The decision is part of a larger policy, initiated by Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi, to vaccinate all Israeli representatives abroad.
Israel has so far vaccinated emissaries to different countries and areas in Africa, Europe, Eurasia, India, and the Middle East, but those representatives came to Israel to receive the shots. The New York plan, if successful, could be implemented in other countries and territories, the statement said.
Anshei Emet (People of Truth), a group against coronavirus vaccination, filed a suit against the Israeli government with the International Criminal Court (ICC) earlier this month, arguing that Israel’s administration of the coronavirus vaccine and policies to encourage vaccination are considered “crimes against humanity” according to the Nuremberg Code.PreOccupiedTerritory: Man Willing to Testify About Discriminatory Parking Enforcement In ICC Case Against Israel If That Helps (satire)
“It is our intention to present to you and detail how in the State of Israel this year, the Government of Israel with its ministers and its Knesset members, heads of cities, and additional senior factors, violate the Nuremberg Code in an unlawful manner, blatant and extreme. And to our regret, not only in a single aspect but many – too many!” the group wrote in the suit filed by Tel Aviv-based A. Suchovolsky & Co. Law Offices.
Israelis were unlawfully not informed that they were taking part in a “medical experiment,” and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had signed an agreement with Pfizer to receive a large amount of vaccinations if Israelis were used as “experimenters,” Anshei Emet argued. The state did not present “alternatives for treating the Corona disease” and concealed information regarding the vaccines, the suit said.
In an interview last month, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla called Israel the “world’s lab” due to the country’s high vaccination rate, which provides real-world data on the vaccination campaign’s effect on health and the economy.
Members of the Helsinki Committee did raise concerns that the agreement with Pfizer could violate privacy rights, as information about the vaccination’s effectiveness is shared with the company.
“Many” were killed, injured and severely damaged by the vaccine, Anshei Emet said in the suit, adding that the Health Ministry “openly admitted that 41% of police persons, military, education and medical personnel who were vaccinated suffered severe side effects.” The Jerusalem Post was unable to verify whether the ministry did this.
A resident of this country’s capital voiced his readiness to serve as a witness for the prosecution at the International Criminal Court investigation into alleged war crimes in 2014, the man announced today, by describing the city’s disproportionate focus on the unlawful placement of his vehicle.Corbyn supporters threaten to ‘take care of’ Jewish activists
Guy Mendelssohn, 28, told reporters Monday that he hopes to contribute to righting some of the world’s wrongs by offering to include his grievances against the Municipality of Jerusalem in the ICC case, which the court’s chief prosecutor announced about ten days ago. He specifically offered to detail the myriad ways in which the municipality focuses on his area of residence in its parking enforcement while ignoring or sending only token or occasional representation to less-central neighborhoods.
“I hope the ICC investigation covers the discriminatory way this city gives me parking tickets,” declared the part-time paralegal and full-time political activist. “It’s unconscionable that if I fail to move my car from Betzalel Street before seven each morning I get slapped with a hundred-shekel fine, while folks in the upscale Rehavia neighborhood just a few minutes’ walk from here can go hours into the day without seeing a parking inspector. This is just another manifestation of the same dehumanizing approach the government takes to all of its policies, including, at least allegedly, the targeting of civilians in armed conflict. I expect to hear from the ICC on this subject very soon.”
Mr. Mendelssohn brushed aside concerns that the Municipality of Jerusalem is not a party to the case, which focuses on actions by the Government of Israel and its military arms. It also ostensibly includes investigation into actions by the various terrorist groups that attacked Israeli communities with rockets and mortar shells, but few experts believe that element of the case matters.
A group of Labour members, a number of whom have been suspended or expelled from the party, is being investigated by police after it set up an “anti-Zionist action network” to discover the addresses of Jewish Labour activists and “take care of those individuals”, the JC can reveal.
The Labour in Exile Network (LIEN) vowed to unearth the “identity, location, activities and associations” of Jewish activists from the campaign group Labour Against Antisemitism (LAAS).
The announcement came during the online launch event for LIEN, which was attended by 200 people and featured speeches by Jackie Walker and Marc Wadsworth, both of whom have been expelled from the Labour Party.
The group said it would target the Jewish members in order to take “action against the individuals”, referring to them as “Zionist trolls”.
Details of the “anti-Zionist action network” were posted on its website.
Jewish leaders have reported the organisation to both Kent and the Metropolitan Police.
Alex Hearn, director of LAAS, likened the comments to the language and tactics used by the “far right”, but said that Jewish members would not be “silenced or intimidated”.
He said: “LAAS is proud to have fought against hate and extremism on the left. Thanks to our hard work, people in the Labour Party know that publicly posting antisemitic material has consequences.
“Threats to our members are a sign of our success. But this was unlike the ‘normal’ threats we have encountered.
“It was part of a conference, reportedly attended by 200 people, and a working group was specifically created to target and silence members of LAAS because we report antisemitism.
“Their intentions were proudly reported on their website. This type of activities and the language used are indistinguishable from the far right. This has been reported to the police, but rest assured we will not be silenced or intimidated. We will keep fighting for the right of Jewish people to have a safe space in the Labour Party.”
This has made my day, Tony Greenstein the “notorious antisemite” is currently residing at her majesty’s pleasure in Birmingham 🤣 https://t.co/bh7bA3oCQV
— (((GnasherJew®גנאשר))) (@GnasherJew) March 14, 2021
The US’s version of Britain’s anti-Zionist academic is seen as a celebrity
Hill complains that there’s a litmus test for the friends of Farrakhan. But he advocates for a litmus test on Jews if they want to be part of the “progressive” left. “We have this person we call the PEP: the person who’s Progressive Except for Palestine,” he said last week.
Hill’s litmus test places Jews who support Israel on the side of the enemies of the sacred buzzwords “anti-racism”, “social justice” and “racial justice”. In other words, it equates Jews with white supremacists as enemies of progress. This may seem illogical, but there’s a logic at work here.
The anti-Jewish animus of black nationalism goes back to the late Sixties, when Malcolm X replaced Martin Luther King as the leader of the civil rights struggle. Meanwhile, following the Six-Day War, the New Left turned against Israel. In a society divided by race and money, antisemitism offers one of the few chances for “solidarity” between rich and poor, black and white. It’s a sweet spot for political organisers, right as well as left.
Decades of indoctrination in churches, mosques and universities have established the fraudulent notion that American racism and Israel’s civil war with the Palestinians are somehow the same: “Ferguson is Palestine”, as the left now say. And what the left say after that is getting closer and closer to traditional libels about the perennial, malign Jewish power.
“One of the worst pieces of antisemitism,” Hill said last week, “is the belief that there’s some secret Jewish conspiracy, a power that can’t be defeated. No, we can organise politically and stand in solidarity with each other and defeat it.”
The Jews are Hill’s misfortune. Jewish “power” controls politics, and is blocking the march of justice. America’s progressives are progressing towards classical antisemitism.
There won’t be letters with hundreds of signatures from academics in Hill’s field, objecting to his bigotry as they’re now objecting to David Miller’s. And it’s not because American have more free speech. It’s because his academic peers agree with him.
Someone actually Zionist? #JStreet21 pic.twitter.com/vYIOgW8SrK
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) March 15, 2021
Fact Check: Did Israeli Soldiers Arrest Palestinian Youths for ‘Picking Flowers’?
Did Israeli soldiers arrest Palestinian youths recently for the “crime” of picking flowers and vegetables located on a Jewish outpost in the West Bank?Winnipeg Free Press Prints Misleading Anti-Israel Photo
That’s exactly the story being propagated by the Associated Press (AP) in a piece based entirely on a video and statement supplied by the provocative NGO B’Tselem.
The AP article, which was republished in major outlets such as ABC News, suggested: “Israeli troops detained five Palestinian children for several hours after they were confronted by Jewish settlers while gathering wild artichokes near a settlement outpost.”
The story was also written up by other sites such as Business Insider and NBC News.
Even before the piece was published in the media, the Independent’s Middle East correspondent, Bel Trew, wrote in a Twitter thread on Wednesday that, “Israel arrested 5 Palestinian children aged 7-11… after they were picking flowers near a settlement in the occupied West Bank according to rights groups.”
The claims, too, are based entirely on anecdotal and partial evidence provided by B’Tselem.
There are three major problems with Trew’s statement:
1. The correct term is “detain,” not arrest. The children were brought to a police station and later released into the custody of their families.
2. There is video footage of the children trespassing on a Jewish farm. The sounds of farmyard animals are clearly recorded on the video, and the children are seen crouching alongside what a voice on the video describes as a parrot cage. That is the reason why they were detained. There is no evidence to back up the claim that they were held for picking flowers (or vegetables).
3. The claim was not made by “rights groups” in the plural, but a single group, which has repeatedly made clear its anti-Israel agenda.
On March 9, the Winnipeg Free Press published a highly misleading Associated Press photo depicting bellicose Israeli soldiers armed with automatic rifles standing guard as a Palestinian worker received his dose of the COVID vaccine in Israel.BBC's ‘Reality Check’ still promoting redundant claims about Gaza blockade
The headline read: “On Guard Against Covid” and it featured the following caption: “Israeli soldiers stand guard as a Palestinian that works in Israel receives a Moderna COVID-19 vaccine on Monday at the Tarkumiya crossing between the West Bank and Israel.”
Untold by the Free Press, this man was amongst 120,000 Palestinians who will receive free vaccinations by the Jewish state as they are employed in Israeli communities. Israel, which leads the world in inoculations administered to its population having just exceeded 5 million people vaccinated, has already promised to vaccinate all Palestinians over 16 years of age with its surplus vaccine supply.
The Jerusalem Post quoted a Palestinian woman, Hiyi Ouanina, who said she was “grateful to receive a vaccine offered to her by Israel rather than the Palestinian Authority (PA) and felt safer when she received the shot.” Ouanina said that the PA has done little to help Palestinians receive a vaccine.
This is the true face of Israel, a moral and humanitarian nation that vaccinates all its citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, and even its non-citizens who identify as Palestinians.
In fact, on February 17th 2,000 doses of the vaccine were delivered to the Gaza Strip via the Kerem Shalom commercial crossing controlled by Israel. On February 21st the 20,000 doses donated by the UAE entered the Gaza Strip via the Rafah crossing controlled by Egypt and on March 11th a further 40,000 doses donated by the UAE arrived via the same route.Telegraph book review falsely suggests Edward Said was a refugee
That latest delivery was not reported in this updated version of the ‘Reality Check’ article and neither has it been reported in other BBC content to date.
With 62,000 doses of the Russian vaccine having now been delivered to the Gaza Strip, the redundancy of the BBC’s repeated claim that “[g]etting vaccines to Gaza is faced with the logistical challenges of the restrictions imposed on the area, which has been under blockade by Israel and Egypt since the militant Islamist movement Hamas took charge there in 2007” is even more apparent.
Equally notable is the updated article’s failure to make any mention of the criticism concerning the Palestinian Authority’s distribution of the 12,000 doses it has already received, including its transfer of 200 doses to Jordan.
A Telegraph review of a book about Edward Said, (How Edward Said took on orientalism; The Palestinian critic became the embodiment of ‘radical chic’ – then the world forgot his subtleties, March 13) by Rupert Christiansen, included the following claim:LA Times’ Food Department Serves Up New ‘Palestine’ Policy
In 1951, in the wake of Israel’s expropriation of Palestinian lands, the Said family moved to the US, where Said enjoyed an Ivy League education.
First, it wasn’t the “Said family” that moved to the US in 1951, it was just Edward Said. And, Said moved from Cairo, the location of his family home, not, as readers would likely intuit from a previous sentence about his city of birth, from Jerusalem.
Here’s a 2003 NY Times correction to their obituary on Said, an anti-Zionist and post-colonial theorist sometimes described as the most influential Palestinian intellectual, which had initially claimed his family home was in Jerusalem:
Also, he (alone) was sent, by his father – again, from Cairo – to the US (to a boarding school in Massachusetts) because he was expelled from an elite British-run school in Cairo. His classmates at the school included the future King Hussein of Jordan.
More importantly, contrary to the journalist’s claim that his move was connected to “Israel’s appropriation of Palestinian lands”, a propagandistic and ahistorical euphemism for the 1948 Arab-Israel War, Said – as he later acknowledged – left Jerusalem when he was two, and was never a refugee. (In fact, even by Said’s own earlier false accounts, his family left Jerusalem for Cairo in 1947, a year before the 1948 war.)
Over the span of nearly 15 years, The Los Angeles Times corrected erroneous usages of the term “Palestine” more than half a dozen times. But it seems that the paper’s food department — of all places — has now set a new policy for itself, designating the West Bank as “Palestine.” Thus, in his Feb. 27 food column, “The secret ingredient to a lavish Bedouin dish,” Bill Addison repeatedly referred to the West Bank, which is partly controlled by the Palestinian Authority, as “Palestine.”
A James Beard Award-winning restaurant critic at The Los Angeles Times, Addison wrote:
Za’atar is the Arabic name for origanum syriacum, an herb native to the Levantine swath of the Middle East that includes Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Jordan and modern-day Israel. . . .
The grandma video was produced by Z&Z, a D.C.-based company that sells za’atar (the spice blend) produced in Palestine. I haven’t tried it yet. A new venture out of Brooklyn, though, is selling wonderful, fragrant za’atar and other products from Palestine that have been spurring my kitchen projects. . . .
The business’s name translates as “the fragrance of Palestine.” . . .
. . . spice blends for dishes like maqluba, Palestine’s celebratory dish of meats, vegetables and rice. . .
It is loved in parts of Palestine as well as in other Middle Eastern countries.
In addition, the photo caption states: “Spices from Re7het Falasteen, a new online purveyor of groceries from Palestine.” (Emphases added.) CAMERA contacted The Times, noting that in the past the paper has been diligent about correcting erroneous references to either Israel, the West Bank or Gaza Strip as “Palestine.”
False, @UPI. The US never recognized Tel Aviv as capital of Israel. pic.twitter.com/GN72wKE8TR
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) March 15, 2021
Hitler-mustache man charged in Capitol riots spoke of ‘killing all the Jews’
An Army reservist charged with taking part in the attack on the US Capitol was known as a Nazi sympathizer who wore a Hitler mustache, coworkers told federal investigators.Polish business keeps anti-Semitism flame burning with 'Jew-shaped' candles
Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, 30, was employed as a security contractor at a Navy base when he was alleged to have breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, authorities said.
In court papers filed Friday, federal prosecutors in Washington said his coworkers at the Naval Weapons Station Earle in Colts Neck, New Jersey, told investigators that he held white supremacist views.
The filing included photos from Hale-Cusanelli’s cellphone of him with a Hitler mustache, along with pro-Nazi cartoons. Images recovered from the cellphone of Timothy Hale-Cusanelli and included in a criminal complaint filed by the US Department of Justice show Hale-Cusanelli with a ‘Hitler mustache’ (Department of Justice)
One Navy seaman said that Hale-Cusanelli told him “he would kill all the Jews and eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and he wouldn’t need to season them because the salt from their tears would make it flavorful enough.”
Other coworkers recalled Hale-Cusanelli making derogatory remarks about women, Black people and other minorities.
Prosecutors argued in the filing that Hale-Cusanelli is a danger to the public and should remain jailed while he awaits trial.
Candles in the shape of a Jewish man holding a gold coin have recently been discovered for sale on the website of a beekeeping center in Poland.Study of 25 stroke patients shows BrainQ’s wave therapy can reduce disability
The candles feature a man in bearded man in Jewish Orthodox dress and come in two sizes: "Little Jew" (12.5 cm/ 5 inches), and "Big Jew" (19.5 cm/7.6 inches). They are described as "the image of a financially successful Jew … The candle gives off a pleasant, warm light and a nice scent while lighted."
The candles were discovered by Elizabeta Magenheim, a member of Warsaw's Jewish community, who posted a picture of them in a popular Facebook group.
Israel Hayom looked into the matter and found that as of Monday, the candles were no longer posted on the shop's website.
"This crosses a line when it comes to hatred and insensitivity. This time, a Jew is being burned in the same places where millions of Jews were burned 80 years ago," said Meir Bulka, founder and chairman of J-nerations, which works to preserve the legacy of Polish Jewry.
"For some reason, the Poles don't understand that 'the Jew with the zloty,' one of the most-sold items to tourists and locals, has anti-Semitic connotations, and this time they have gone even further over the line," he said.
Israeli startup BrainQ said that a pilot trial of 25 stroke patients treated with its artificial intelligence (AI)-based electromagnetic therapy has shown “striking” results in reducing disability following a stroke.Hope for NY toddler with brain disorder, as Israelis use his DNA in drug search
The Jerusalem-based startup has developed a wearable hat-like device that looks like a large round hair-dryer. This cloud-connected device aims to treat damaged areas of the brain with electromagnetic waves, or “artificial brainwaves,” that mimic healthy neural networks, to rebalance the brain and restore it to its normal function.
The results of the double-blind randomized controlled pilot trial will be presented at the International Stroke Conference on March 17-19. The data shows that patients recovered 77% faster from the disabilities caused by the stroke and were able to resume normal life.
Based on these results, the company got FDA Breakthrough Device Designation for its therapy earlier this year, which will enable the startup to work closely with US regulators to speed up the development and the final approval of the device. The technology could ultimately have broader application for neurological disorders like spinal cord injury, Parkinson’s and MS, the company said.
Israeli scientists have identified drugs that may help an American toddler with a rare and currently untreatable brain disorder, before it causes him severe disability and reduces his life expectancy.Israeli short film ‘White Eye’ focusing on African migrants nominated for Oscar
Scott Reich, a Jewish lawyer and academic from New York, turned to Tel Aviv University in desperation after being told that his son Eli, age 2, has FOXG1 Syndrome.
The genetic condition causes inadequate production of the FOXG1 protein, which the brain needs in order to grow. People with the syndrome tend to have serious disability, caused by limited brain development, and few live beyond their teens.
His parents have described the diagnosis as “like receiving a repeated punch to the gut.” They wrote: “You gasp for air; you cry; you scream; you grieve; you ask questions. How? Why? What kind of life will Eli have? What will his capabilities be? What is his life expectancy?”
For 15 months, a team at TAU’s Blavatnik Center for Drug Discovery has been screening a library of 7,000 FDA-approved substances. Using DNA from Eli — and protein from a firefly — they have identified five drugs they say are likely to help him and some of the other 700 children and teens diagnosed with FOXG1.
“When we heard the devastating diagnosis, I said to my wife Ilissa: ‘We have to go to Israel,’” said Reich, who launched the Tel Aviv research in parallel with research at a handful of US universities. “In Israel, we’ll find the know-how, experience and out-of-the-box thinking that we need.”
Now, he is more hopeful than at any point since the diagnosis, and optimistic that the drugs will pass animal testing and can soon be administered to his son. “I’m praying for a breakthrough,” he said.
An Israeli film examining the lives of African migrants in the country was nominated Monday for an Oscar in the Best Live Action Short Film category, after being selected from a shortlist of ten films.This Jewish female artist from the comic book golden age was overlooked for decades
“White Eye,” by 33-year-old director Tomer Shushan, tackles an Israeli problem familiar to Americans: Explicit or subliminal prejudice by much of the population and police against non-white residents, especially migrants.
The film already won the Best Short Film Award at the Haifa International Film Festival in 2019 and the Grand Jury Award at the SXSW Film Festival 2020, as well as awards at a film festival in the United Kingdom.
Lead actor Daniel Gad told Channel 12 news Monday that the nomination was a “huge joy.”
“Everybody is happy right now, people here are crying from excitement,” he said, speaking from Eilat, and added that the nomination was something the whole country could be proud of.
Like the comic superheroes they invented, the Jewish creators of the characters often had secret identities – at least different names. Superman creators Joe Shuster and Jerome Siegel used the pseudonyms Joe Carter and Jerry Ess. Bob Kane, born Robert Kahn, created Batman. Jack Kirby, the pen name of Jacob Kurtzenberg, concocted Captain America.Holocaust Survivor Dr Avigdor Shachan, Scholar of the Lost Tribes of Israel
Although lesser known, the comic book heroine Señorita Rio was Hollywood starlet Rita Farrar by day and Nazi-fighting secret agent by night. The artist who drew Rio’s action-packed panels in the 1940s, and signed as L. Renee, lived a sort of double life, too.
“Everybody assumed I was a man,” artist Lily Renee Phillips has said of the fan mail she received at the time, which was always addressed to “Mr. Renee.” Fans knew neither Renee’s gender nor her incredible origin story, which rivaled the plotline of Señorita Rio.
In the New York offices of Fiction House, the comic book publishing firm where Renee worked, she was a scrappy immigrant who worked her way up from erasing pencil marks to drafting her own heroines. Outside work she was a Vienna-born Holocaust survivor who fled Austria after the 1938 Anschluss, the Nazi annexation of Austria. She escaped to England on a Kindertransport and reunited with her parents in New York in 1940.
Unlike her co-workers, who genuinely loved the comic world’s clearly outlined arena of villains and justice-seeking vigilantes, Renee was just trying to make a living by doing something she had always done: draw.
Those drawings will be on view in an exhibition opening Thursday at New York’s Austrian Cultural Forum. “Three with a Pen” highlights three Jewish cartoon artists who grew up in Vienna and escaped to safety after 1938: Renee, Paul Peter Porges and Bil Spira. The exhibit originally appeared at the Jewish Museum Vienna in 2019.
Renee’s pen and ink sketches have traveled to the birthplace she fled at age 17 and have returned to her adoptive home of over 80 years, where she still lives and will celebrate her 100th birthday in May.
From Shoah reparations to lost Nazi treasure: A writer’s journey on family trail
When Menachem Kaiser set out to reclaim a building his grandfather’s family owned before the Holocaust in Sosnowiec, Poland, he thought it would take him 18 months at most. His grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, had already meticulously gathered paperwork and the documentation necessary.The Jews' Secret Fleet to Israel After the Holocaust
Instead, it’s been over six years since Kaiser began the journey — and he’s no closer to an ending.
Kaiser documents his journey in “Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure,” out March 16, where his quest to reclaim his family’s building leads him to discover his grandfather’s first cousin, Abraham Kajzer, the closest relative to survive the Holocaust. Abraham, Kaiser learns, actually wrote a Holocaust memoir, “Za Drutami Śmierci,” that in part details his time spent in Riese, vast underground tunnels constructed by the Nazis where many suspect treasure looted during the Holocaust was hidden.
Abraham’s words, in modern-day Poland, have become a key text for the treasure-hunting community. They also became a central part of the story Kaiser ended up telling.
“Our stories are even richer and more complicated than we sometimes realize, especially stories that are the most familiar to us, the stories that have been passed down.” Kaiser explained in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I was really lucky to have the opportunity to push and probe, but I think a lot of people have these remarkable stories in their family. The sneakiest ones are the ones we think we know. They will just always have a trapdoor. That’s the takeaway: The journey inward into what you think is familiar territory turns out to be radically not.”
We spoke to Kaiser about his travels in Poland as a Jew, the frustrations of not having a neat ending and the ever-evolving nature of Holocaust memory and storytelling.
Murray Greenfield has been called “one of Israel's humble heroes”. In 1947, as an American sailor, he arrived in British Mandate Palestine on a ship named “Hope” - or Hatikva - one of the ships being operated to smuggle Holocaust survivors from Europe, to what would become Israel. Today, at 94, he remains one of the only known survivors of these important missions. Join StandWithUs TV as we discuss how Murray and friends brought thousands of refugees to safe haven and a new life in the soon-to-be Jewish State.
