Pages

▼

Sunday, June 20, 2021

06/20 Links: Palestinian Arab leaders sacrifice health for pr -will their fellow travelers react?; Concessions to Hamas Lead to Violence. Holding Firm Leads to Calm

From Ian:

Why Didn’t Media Challenge Palestinian Authority’s Reasons for Rejecting Over 1 Million COVID-19 Inoculations?
This, even though Israel has asserted that the expiration dates were known when the deal was struck. “The COVID vaccines we gave the Palestinian Authority were perfectly valid,” a statement from the Israeli Health Ministry added. “The Palestinians received the same vaccines that are currently given to Israelis.” Indeed, if stored correctly, there is no reason to believe that the quality of the COVID shots will deteriorate before the expiration date.

So why did the PA refuse over a million vaccines, enough to fully inoculate some 24 percent of all Palestinians in the West Bank, or over 35 percent of the Gaza Strip? The reason can perhaps be gleaned from Palestinian public opinion. As political analyst Saleh al-Nuami commented: “The PA would not have backtracked on its shameful step were it not for the outrage expressed on social media.”

Many Palestinians criticized the vaccine exchange online, saying it was a form of “normalization with the Israeli occupation.” Moreover, rumors circulated that the Jewish state, in collusion with the PA, was trying to “poison” Palestinians with expired doses.

The agreement was also lambasted by Palestinian NGOs, which called for an investigation into the “scandal.” Within hours after the public backlash, Health Minister al-Kaila and PA spokesperson Ibrahim Melhem announced the cancellation of the deal. PA officials afterwards claimed that the agreement would have led to a “health disaster.” The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a US-designated terror group, falsely asserted that the vaccines “could have harmed human life.”

While many Middle Eastern nations like Egypt (0.7 percent fully inoculated), Iran (1%), and Iraq (0.5%) are still struggling to obtain coronavirus vaccines, the Palestinian Authority refused what appeared to be perfectly good doses that could potentially save lives.

Yet, media failed to question the Palestinian leadership on the reasons it gave for not using the batch of vaccines, leaving Ramallah’s claim about the expiry date largely unchallenged. In doing so, news organizations are seemingly attempting to revive the thoroughly debunked libel that Israel is somehow preventing Palestinians from accessing COVID-19 inoculations.
Palestinian Arab leaders sacrifice health for pr -will their fellow travelers react?
Propaganda against the Jewish State is more important to the leadership of the PA than the lives of their people.

This does not surprise me. It is consistent with the behavior of the PA.

The question is how their fellow travelers react to this development.

Someone from Physicians for Human Rights-Israel took to the airwaves to slam Israel while admitting that he was clueless about the details of the expiration dates of the doses.

Will B'Tselem join the chorus?

How about J Street?

Are these groups really on the side of the Palestinian Arabs themselves?

NO.

They are on the side of the Palestinian Authority rulers, not the Palestinian Arabs.

Because if they were truly on the side of the Palestinians they would be slamming the Palestinian rulers for sacrificing the health of Palestinian Arabs for the sake of their ongoing propaganda campaign against the Jewish State.
Khaled Abu Toameh: Why the PA scrapped the vaccine deal with Israel - analysis
One reason many Palestinians have been outraged the past 48 hours is because they first learned about the Pfizer exchange deal from the Israeli media. Israeli media outlets have long been serving as a main source of information for the Palestinians about what’s happening in the PA.

The PA has long been facing criticism from many Palestinians not only because of corruption, but also over its continued security coordination with Israel in the West Bank. During last month’s Israel-Hamas war, the PA also came under attack by many Palestinians for failing to make a serious effort to help the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

And more recently, PA President Mahmoud Abbas faced widespread criticism for his decision to call off the Palestinian parliamentary and presidential elections, which were supposed to take place on May 22 and July 31.

The vaccine agreement with Israel was supposed to boost the PA’s already tarnished reputation and show that it is doing its utmost to provide the doses to the Palestinians.

The PA was hoping that the vaccines would reduce the number of coronavirus infections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, help the Palestinians return to normal life and improve the Palestinian economy, thus bolstering the standing of Abbas and the PA leadership in the eyes of the public.

But the botched deal has turned out to be one of the worst PR disasters for the PA, whose leaders are currently working to limit the damage and prevent their critics and political rivals from cashing in on the “scandal.”
Palestinian anti-Israel politics prevent COVID-19 vaccinations
The Palestinian Authority shot itself in the foot with its decision to reject up to 1.4 million Israeli vaccines that could have enabled it to inoculate its citizens months earlier than planned.

On Friday, less than a week since Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s new broad-based coalition was sworn in, Israel announced that the country had reached a deal to immediately transfer Pfizer vaccines that were nearing their expiration date to the Palestinians in exchange for the same number later on.

The PA had ordered vaccines from Pfizer back in April, but the company said they were not expected to be delivered for at least several more months.

The shipment, on top of the one million vaccines promised to the Palestinians under the United Nations-related COVAX program, could have allowed for up to 40% of the Palestinians to be vaccinated by the end of the year.

The Palestinian health minister initially praised the deal, but after coming under intense internal pressure, she used the fact that the first 100,000 vaccines, which were already delivered, were set to expire in the next 12 days to foil the entire deal.

“The decision to return the vaccines we received from Israel was made after our professional teams discovered that the vaccines did not meet our standards,” Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila said during a press conference.
BBC News resurrects redundant Covid vaccinations talking points
It also resurrects redundant themes seen in previous BBC reporting.

“UN experts had been critical of Israel’s failure to fully extend its vaccination programme to Palestinians under its control.”

As we noted back in January, those “UN experts” are in fact two UN special rapporteurs (who are not UN staff members) for the notoriously anti-Israel UN Human Rights Council – Tlaleng Mofokeng and Michael Lynk. In common with numerous previous BBC reports, this one too makes no effort to inform audiences of the obviously relevant anti-Israel record of one of the authors of the cited document.

The BBC’s report goes on:
“The Israelis said the Palestinians were responsible for managing health matters in the territories.”

Back in early February the BBC acknowledged that the Oslo Accords “give the Palestinian Authority oversight of public health” following a complaint.

One must therefore ask why the corporation insists on continuing to misrepresent the part of the 1995 Oslo II agreement relating to health (Article 17) which states that “Powers and responsibilities in the sphere of Health in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip will be transferred to the Palestinian side, including the health insurance system” as merely something that ‘Israel says’ is the case.


Concessions to Hamas Lead to Violence. Holding Firm Leads to Calm
Perhaps the most striking example, and certainly the costliest, was the series of concessions PM Ehud Barak made to Arafat at Camp David in the summer of 2000, which, according to then-President Bill Clinton, included custodianship over the Temple Mount. Soon afterward, Arafat launched a terror war against Israel that resulted in over 1,000 Israeli deaths (mostly civilians) over the next four years.

In the past decade and a half, concessions sharply abated relative to the Oslo period, and terrorism fell sharply as well. But the pattern still prevails.

An almost daily reminder of the costs of making concessions stems from a major concession made after the quelling of Arafat’s war against Israel in 2004-5—Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in September 2005, in which Israel itself dismantled all Israeli settlements and forcibly removed their inhabitants. For that concession, Israel has paid dearly in four major rounds of conflagration, interspersed with numerous smaller ones, during which Israelis scurry for shelter from the 15,000 missiles launched against its citizenry by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza.

A sizeable percentage of Israel’s Jewish citizens, and an even greater proportion of Israel’s business, media, high-tech, and academic elites, nevertheless deny the reality of this pattern and insist on making concessions.

They are continuously cajoled into thinking that way by liberal elites from continents molded in the religious and cultural belief of turning the other cheek. Those elites overlook the fact that their own willingness to make concessions—to, for example, the murderous Iranian regime—belies their long history of war-making and particularly WWII, the destructiveness of which can be attributed to the concessions European powers made to Nazi Germany’s military build-up and territorial annexations.

Israel is now governed by representatives of this elite. The question is whether new PM Naftali Bennett and PM designate Yair Lapid will be guided by the veracity of the costs of making concessions and the benefits of holding firm, or will impose the inevitable costs of believing that concessions are the answer in a violence-prone Middle East.
8 Reasons Why Anti-Zionism Is Always Anti-Semitism
Answers to a Burning Question


What does it take to distinguish Jew-hatred from mere ‘political speech’, ‘academic research’, or ‘social justice’? The dvar torah that your rabbi recently gave could tell you why the messiah hasn’t come yet after all of the mess in the world, but not answer this aching question. For too long, we’ve argued over the degree to which Anti-Zionism is or can possibly be antisemitic. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks’s popular animated lessons and Natan Sharansky’s “3 D’s” have found a special place in the content of Jewish organizations and their piles of advocacy literature. Yet, most scholars who have attempted to explain Anti-Zionism as “the new antisemitism” have only picked up certain concepts, failing to capture the full details that articulate the socio-cultural words and realities that Jewish youth currently experience.

Thus, a ‘machloket’ remains for Jews in reaching basic consensus on defining this recycled, intellectualized form of an age-old hatred for the non-Jewish world. Today, with years of compiled anti-Israel propaganda unleashed in common institutions and news outlets, it is much easier to identify and categorize the psychological weapons of Anti-Zionists, beyond just Rav Sacks’s visual explanations and Sharansky’s litmus test of “demonization, delegitimization, and double standards”. From my several years of engaging with a surplus of Anti-Zionist arguments and philosophical approaches, I’ve come to realize that the rhetorical devices currently used in various platforms to justify alienating Jews from their indigenous homeland can be confidently dismantled into eight general categories. I’m willing to argue that with the following eight “Anti-Zionist Principles of Disenfranchisement”, we can begin to put this dispute to rest:
1. Firstly, the abrogation or ‘replacement’ of Jewish history and identity with that of other peoples is a foremost means to undermine Jewish claims to self-determination in Israel. Fallacious anachronisms such as “The site of Al-Haram Ash-Sharif (the Dome of the Rock) was always of Muslim heritage” are typical and meant to contradict long-standing evidence of Jewish presence, like the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem.
2. At other times, Anti-Zionists strangely employ appropriation of the Jewish legacy, in order to refute our legitimate autonomy, i.e. most famously, “Jesus was an Arab Palestinian” and other jingoistic fantasies.
How Do You Fight Antisemitism? With Arab Israelis.
If we want to make a real impact, we need to enlist not Jews but Arab Israelis. They have the credibility to turn the success idea into a progressive Israeli ideal.

There are thousands of Arab citizens throughout Israel who have made it because they live in the Jewish state. These are the best spokespeople we can hope for. They represent a direct rebuttal to Israel bashers who brand Israel as the world’s biggest oppressor of Arabs.

That assertion is a blatant, dangerous lie. As a Jew born in an Arab country, I can tell you that the people who can best expose that lie are Arabs themselves.

Is Israel’s record with its Arab minority perfect? Hardly, just like America’s record with its own minorities is far from perfect. But despite the flaws, Arab citizens of Israel still enjoy the same rights and freedoms as Jewish citizens. Arab Israelis have served on the Israeli Supreme Court and are represented in Israel’s parliament. They are integrated in universities, hospitals and even the media. They have more rights and opportunities than Arabs living in Arab countries.

“I made it thanks to Israel” is a potent message from Arab Israelis to the world.

Of course, it’s not a silver bullet. Nothing is. Nothing can eradicate the world’s oldest hatred. But we can aim to make progress with smart, credible ideas.

In the complicated field of shaping public opinion, enlisting Arabs to promote Israel would be progress, and it’s certainly good for the Jews.


6 Arab Israelis, 2 Palestinians nabbed over murder of Lod man in May
Six Arab Israeli and two Palestinian men were arrested in connection with the murder of Yigal Yehoshua in a rock-throwing attack on his car during violent riots in the central Israeli city of Lod last month, Israeli law enforcement bodies announced Sunday, calling the incident a “racist and nationalistic” crime.

The eight suspects were arrested over the past several weeks in a joint operation by the Shin Bet security service and Israel Police, according to a statement from the two organizations.

Seven of the men stand accused of the murder, while the eighth will face charges for other rock-throwing attacks in the city and for attempting to obstruct the murder investigation, a Shin Bet spokesperson said.

On Sunday, prosecutors in Israel’s Central District filed their intentions to indict the seven murder suspects, requesting that the men be kept in jail through the criminal proceedings.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett lauded the police and Shin Bet for the arrests. “Every enemy and terrorist who tries to harm us will know: The State of Israel will get its hands on every wrongdoer sooner or later, and we will bring them to justice,” he said in a statement.

Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was serving as premier at the time of the deadly attack, similarly praised the security forces, adding that he sent “condolences from the bottom of my heart” to Yehoshua’s family.


Germany set to ban Hamas flag amid rise in antisemitic attacks — report
The German government has agreed to ban the Hamas flag following a rise in the number of antisemitic incidents surrounding the recent conflict between Israel and Gaza terror groups, a report said Sunday.

According to the Deutsche Welle news agency, citing the Welt am Sonntag newspaper, the decision was made in response to a number of incidents at anti-Israel protests last month.

Hamas is one of several Palestinian groups listed by the European Union as terrorist entities.

The plan to ban the terror group’s flag was originally proposed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party (CDU), the report said.

“We do not want the flags of terrorist organizations to be waved on German soil,” Thorsten Frei, the deputy parliamentary spokesman for the CDU, reportedly said, adding that the ban was a “clear signal to our Jewish citizens.”

The center-left Social Democratic Party, a coalition partner to Merkel’s party, had initially raised constitutional concerns about the potential ban on the flag, but later gave its backing to the proposal.


PMW: PA education in EU-funded school: Hamas rocket model alongside map that erases Israel
The European Union contributes millions of euros every year to the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Education. Included in these donations, is aid for the construction of schools. Instead of turning the schools in to safe havens for education and for promoting and fostering peace, the PA uses them as a means to implement its systematic indoctrination of the kids. The Elementary School for Girls in Hawara, built with donations from the European Commission, is just one example.

A recent exhibition in the school highlighted three elements of the PA’s indoctrination:

Glorifying violence:
The picture featured in a dominant place of the exhibit displayed a rocket with “Ayyash 250” written on it. The reference is to one of the 4,300 rockets Hamas and other Gaza-based terrorists fired at Israel in the recent war, indiscriminately targeting Israel’s civilian population.

[Facebook page of the Fatah Movement – Nablus Branch, June 14, 2021]


Erasing Israel’s existence:
Alongside the rocket, was a map of “Palestine” painted in the colors of the Palestinian flag. The map does not limit itself to Gaza and the West Bank. Rather the map covers the entire area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, completely erasing Israel.

[Facebook page of the Fatah Movement – Nablus Branch, June 14, 2021]


Iran’s Election Farce Raises ‘Regime Change’ Debate Once More
The people of Iran were again subjected last Friday to the farce that befalls them every four years, when the Islamist regime calls for mass participation in its presidential “election.” Ten hours after the polls opened, a CBS News team in Tehran reported that less than 25% of eligible voters had bothered to turn out, providing early confirmation of what was widely suspected before the ballot — that Iranians at large would shun the risible attempt of their rulers to persuade the outside world that their corrupt, bloodstained theocracy is a respectable form of government.

The names that eventually make it onto the ballot paper of an Iranian presidential “election” are handpicked by the 12 jurists on the powerful Guardians Council, six of whom are personally appointed by Iran’s “Supreme Leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. At the beginning of this election cycle, 600 candidates threw their hats into the presidential ring, including 40 women. By the time the Guardians Council had whittled the list down, seven men remained, of whom only four went on to actually contest the election on June 18.

Though Iranian presidential elections have always been rigged in advance through this system, in the not-so-distant past, some Western media organizations have depicted them as genuine political contests between “reformers” and “hardliners.” During the 1990s, the late Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani — a canny multimillionaire widely believed to have approved the bombing of the AMIA Jewish Center in Buenos Aires in 1994 — nonetheless enjoyed the reputation of a reformer who wanted to improve relations with the West. This was even more the case with his successor, Mohammad Khatami, a diva whose love of the international stage sparked the ire of regime conservatives, and who was duly replaced in 2005 with the renowned Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

For a significant period during the 2010s, both Ahmadinejad’s successor, Hassan Rouhani, and his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, were portrayed by President Barack Obama’s administration as heroic — yet Islamically authentic — reformers whose overarching goal was to protect world civilization by agreeing to a historic deal over Iran’s nuclear program.
Over 180 Columbia University Faculty Back Research Ties With Israel After Call for Boycott
Over 180 Columbia University faculty members wrote an open letter supporting the university’s academic ties with Israel, on the heels of a call from others at the school to end relationships with Israeli institutions.

Organized in early June by the Academic Engagement Network (AEN), a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit supporting education about Israel, the letter encouraged Columbia to build on research and teaching missions in the Jewish state.

“As members of the faculty of Columbia University, we are deeply concerned by the recent war between Israel and Hamas,” the letter said. “In the wake of this sobering conflict, we write to express our commitment to the university’s ties with Israel.”

“As a democracy with constitutional protections for the individual rights of all citizens, and as the home to great universities, Israel shares values, interests, and aspirations with us. Columbia benefits from ties with Israeli faculty, students, research, and technology,” it continued.

The letter was signed Columbia University affiliates including Ester Fuchs, Professor of International and Public Affairs and Political Science; Nicholas Lemann, Pulitzer-Moore Professor of Journalism and Dean Emeritus; David M. Schizer, Dean Emeritus & Harvey R. Miller Professor of Law. and Matthew Waxman, Liviu Librescu Professor of Law.

It followed a May 23 petition signed by faculty and students calling for the the university to “end [its] complicity with Israeli apartheid,” and cut Columbia’s ties with Israeli academic institutions.

The pro-Israel letter argued that preserving ties with Israel was integral to the mission of Columbia University.
CUNY Orthodox Jewish Prof Resigns from Union Over Anti-Israel Resolution
Jeffrey Lax, an Orthodox Jewish professor at the City University of New York’s (CUNY) Kingsborough Community College, announced on June 18 that he is resigning from CUNY’s professors union over the recently passed anti-Israel resolution.

The Professional Staff Congress (PSC)-CUNY voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution on June 10 condemning “the continued subjection of Palestinians to the state-supported displacement, occupation, and use of lethal force by Israel” as well as “racism in all forms, including anti-Semitism, and recognizes that criticisms of Israel, a diverse nation-state, are not inherently anti-Semitic.” The resolution also cited recent reports from Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem accusing Israel of apartheid and calls for discussions for the union to potentially endorse the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

“Through an abhorrent resolution, the union now seeks to use my union dues for anti-Semitic purposes,” Lax wrote in a letter to PSC President James Davis. “The resolution can self-proclaim itself as not anti-Semitic all it wants, but that does not make it so. In fact, several of the items demanded in the resolution do not just seek ‘discussion’ of BDS as it claims, but actually demand current BDS action.” Lax told the Journal that the end of the resolution calls for the Biden administration to cease all military aid to Israel. “That’s divestment! What do they think the ‘D’ [in BDS] stands for?” He argued that the PSC is trying to say they’re not involved in BDS because doing so would prevent the state of New York from working with them under New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo’s executive order.

Lax also criticized the resolution for omitting any reference to the “Hamas missile attacks against Israeli civilians in the recent conflict” and noted the resolution is correct to label Israel a “diverse nation-state” because “there is not a Jew to be found in Gaza or the West Bank (not to mention the mere handfuls remaining in countless other Middle-East countries)” while “Arabs make up over 20% of the population in Israel, serve on the Supreme Court, serve in the Knesset, and lead political parties and movements.”
German media giant: If you’re anti-Israel, don’t work for us
Berlin-based Axel Springer, which was founded in West Germany in 1946, is the largest digital publisher in Europe. It owns Bild, Die Welt, Business Insider, Politico Europe and many other news brands, as well as Israel’s largest classified-ads website, Yad2.

“We support the Jewish people and the right of existence of the State of Israel” is listed as one of Axel Springer’s five essential values on its website.

During Thursday’s meeting for employees, Döpfner addressed complaints about an Israeli flag being raised outside company headquarters in Berlin.

“After these weeks of terrible antisemitic demonstrations, we at our building headquarters said next to the European flag, and the German flag, [and] the Berlin flag, let’s raise for one week the Israeli flag as a gesture of solidarity,” he said. “We do not accept these kinds of aggressive antisemitic movements.”

Some people said they did not want to work for a company that does such a thing, Döpfner said.

“So, I think that is also a good point... This person does not fit the company and its values,” he said. “It’s very simple.”

Döpfner said he welcomed “critical questions” and that some of those complaining had good points, which he responded to.

“But this fundamental opposition to it leaves the spectrum” of acceptable responses, Döpfner said.

Axel Springer put the Israeli flag up in front of its headquarters in May, following antisemitic displays at pro-Palestinian demonstrations across Germany, including marches to synagogues, shouting slogans against Jews, attacks on Jewish institutions and the burning of Israeli flags.

“Whoever uses such protests to proclaim their hatred of Jews is abusing their right to protest,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the time.

“Anyone who spreads antisemitic hatred will feel the full force of the law,” German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer added.
Israeli food truck disinvited from Philadelphia festival after threats
Moshava, an Israeli food truck based in Philadelphia, was disinvited from a food festival in the city slated for Sunday after threats and complaints about its participation.

“We have some unfortunate news to share with all of you. We won’t be attending ‘The Taste of Home’ event, this Sunday, on Father’s Day,” Moshava posted on Instagram on Saturday. “We are deeply saddened by this. The organizers of the event heard rumors of a protest happening because of us being there and decided to uninvite us from fear that the protesters would get aggressive and threaten their event.”

The festival was being organized by Eat Up the Borders, an organization that says its mission is ​”to break down our everyday barriers through shared experienced through language, food, and culture.” The organization says its goal is to “promote small, family, or immigrant owned businesses within the Philadelphia area.”

Eat Up the Borders deleted both its Facebook and Instagram pages on Sunday amid the uproar. But Moshava, which opened just last month, shared the original post that the organization wrote in announcing the decision to disinvite the Israeli eatery from the event.

“In order to best serve our guests, we decided to remove one of our food vendors for Sunday’s event so that we could deliver an optimal experience to all,” the statement read. “This decision came from listening to the community we wish to serve and love. We do stand by our initiative to give vendors from all nationalities a platform to showcase their talents and provide an awesome experience for all.”


AP Conflates Palestinian ‘Refugee’ Myth with Millions Displaced During Pandemic
The Associated Press (AP) on June 18 promoted a contentious Palestinian narrative in an article ostensibly focused on a United Nations report detailing the plight of millions of people displaced in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic. The piece, titled UN: Millions driven from homes in 2020 despite COVID crisis, was subsequently republished by news organizations such as the Los Angeles Times, ABC News, US News & World Report, Fox News and The Independent (UK).

AP’s move is important because it effectively conflates a central issue of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian with a story about how war, persecution and human rights violations last year caused millions of people to flee their homes despite the global health crisis. Indeed, the AP seemingly used the opportunity to promulgate the Palestinian leadership’s claim for a “Right of Return” to Israel of some 5.7 million so-called refugees, even though this would result in the end of Jewish self-determination.

AP Cites UNRWA STATS, But Not UNRWA

Instead of focusing on the issue at hand, the Associated Press piece written by James Keaten and Edith M. Lederer veers off course: The [UN] report said that at the end of last year there were 5.7 million Palestinians, 3.9 million Venezuelans and an additional 20.7 million refugees from various other countries displaced abroad.…”

It is curious that AP uses the 5.7 million figure without citing its source: that is, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). This may have to do with the fact that the Palestinians are the only people in human history whose population of ‘refugees’ has increased over time.

This is because UNRWA was created uniquely for Palestinians, and oversees only them.
In The New Republic, Dalia Hatuqa Pulverizes The Facts
“Why the Unrest in Gaza Might Get Worse,” the June 17 The New Republic article by freelance journalist Dalia Hatuqa is so rife with factual errors and partisan reporting it’s hard to know where to begin.

Attack on the house of senior Hamas operative Atallah Abu al-Sabah. All around, buildings are not pulverized (QudsN Facebook page, May 19, 2021)

In her most outrageous, factually-challenged assertion, Hatuqa fabricates: “Gaza was pulverized by an 11-day-long Israeli bombardment in May.” But the facts tell a different story. According to the United Nations, in the last round of fighting last month,”450 buildings in the Gaza Strip were completely destroyed or damaged by missiles.” According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (2018), there are 186,156 buildings in the Gaza Strip. In other words, no more than .2 percent of the buildings in the Gaza Strip were damaged or destroyed. (Presumably, additional buildings have been constructed since 2018, driving the percentage down further.) The tiny percentage of buildings affected by the fighting completely belies Hatuqa’s sweeping fabrication that “Gaza was pulverized.”

Hatuqa’s article opens with misreporting, as the very first sentence errs: “Using the discharge of incendiary devices across the wall that hems in the Gaza Strip against the Mediterranean Sea as justification, Israel, under new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, launched a series of airstrikes in the besieged coastal enclave on Tuesday night.”

The incendiary balloons that Palestinians from the Gaza Strip launched into Israel prompting more than two dozen fires last week crossed a fence dividing the coastal territory from Israel, not a wall. While an underground wall was constructed to thwart Hamas’ cross-border tunnels,a fence divides Israel and Gaza above the ground.
Metro UK corrects article that erased Hamas rockets from Gaza war
As we noted to editors, the first sentence we highlighted included only Israel’s ‘bombardment of Gaza’, but omitted Hamas rocket fire into Israel that sparked the war. The second sentence we highlighted included only Palestinians killed in the war, whilst omitting Israeli casualties.

Our complaint was upheld, and the sentences amended to include the relevant information:


However, contravening standard journalistic practices, Metro UK failed to note the correction below the article.
Man arrested after attacking 12-year-old Jewish boy in Los Angeles
A man was arrested after allegedly attacking a 12-year-old Jewish boy in Fairfax area of Los Angeles, a Jewish neighborhood of the city, as reported by The Daily Forward.

The man, Daniel Rankin, was arrested on suspicion of battery, and is known in the neighborhoods. The boy was released on the spot after being treated by paramedics.

The Anti-Defamation League Los Angeles chapter responded to the assault by saying that “We are outraged over reports of a violent assault on a Jewish child while playing with his friends and thank @LAPD for investigating. We have seen a significant rise in antisemitism in recent weeks and are working with community organizations and law enforcement to stop the hate.”

American Jewish Committee Regional Director Richard S. Hirschhaut also responded to the incident, telling The Jewish Daily Forward that “We hope this innocent child did not sustain any lasting injury. Melrose Avenue has increasingly become a gathering spot for vagrants, many in need of mental health services. But hate is hate and the virus of antisemitism knows no boundaries."

“We applaud LAPD for its swift arrest of the perpetrator and await further information on this case. In the meantime, it is imperative that Angelenos of all backgrounds make their voices heard in condemning the epidemic of antisemitism,” Hirschhaut added.
Teens steal Hasidic Jewish man’s hat, demand he yell ‘Free Palestine’: cops
Three teens harassed a Hasidic Jew in Midtown Manhattan, grabbing his hat and demanding that he yell, “Free Palestine!” to get back, cops said Friday.

The incident unfolded around 5 p.m. Thursday at the intersection of West 43rd Street and 12th Avenue, cops said.

The 20-year-old victim did as the teens said, but they still did not return his hat and took off on bicycles, police said.

The Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating the incident.
Boeing selects Elbit anti-jamming system for an F-15 operator
Elbit Systems’s iSNS jamming system will be integrated into a fleet of Boeing F-15 fighter jets of an unnamed operator, the aerospace giant said Sunday in a press release.

“After careful evaluation of similar systems, Elbit Systems’s solution was selected due to its proven performance and ease of integration,” Lauren Gramlich, Boeing’s director of international F-15 programs, was quoted as saying. “Elbit’s iSNS anti-jamming system will meet the demanding operational requirements of this valued customer, and it demonstrates Boeing’s commitment to partner with Israeli industry to advance the capabilities of the F-15 platform.”

The iSNS (Immune Satellite Navigation System) was developed and is manufactured by Elbit Systems in Israel. It is an effective GPS electronic counter countermeasure system (ECCS) that ensures reliable and uninterrupted GPS operation. Developed and manufactured by Elbit Systems in Israel, the iSNS – Immune Satellite Navigation System –is an effective ECCM GPS electronic counter countermeasure system that ensures reliable and uninterrupted GPS operation.

It provides full jamming immunity for multiple satellite channels and handles multiple interfering signals operating on concurrent frequencies, the press release said.







at