Friday, November 05, 2021

11/05 Links Pt2: Jewish Activists Noa Tishby, Bari Weiss, and Eve Barlow Discuss How Social Media Emboldens Antisemitism; ADL's anti-hate speaker accused Israel of "ethnic cleansing"

From Ian:

Palestinians — How Invaders Became Indigenous
According to the anti-Zionist narrative, the Palestinians are the residents who have always lived in “historic Palestine”, they were the Canaanites, Philistines, Jebusites and even the ancient Israelites who in the Byzantine period converted to Christianity and in the Islamic period and converted to Islam.

According to Shlomo Sand’s theory in his book “The Invention of the Jewish People”, for example, the Jews were never expelled from Judea, but simply became the ancestors of the Palestinians.

How true is this narrative?

What does Genetics Say?

According to the study “The Y chromosome pool of Jews as part of the genetic landscape of the Middle East”:
“Palestinian Arabs and Bedouin differed from the other Middle Eastern populations studied here, mainly in specific high-frequency Eu 10 haplotypes not found in the non-Arab groups. These chromosomes might have been introduced through migrations from the Arabian Peninsula during the last two millennia.”

Studies show that Palestinians are genetically closer to Saudi Arabia than to the Levant:

The Demographics of Palestine
The following data is based on Rivka Shpak Lissak book “When and How the Arabs and Muslims Immigrated to the Land of Israel” details the migration of various groups to Palestine that have become in recent centuries, especially in the years 1830–1947

During the Byzantine period (4th to 7th centuries), Eastern Orthodox Christians were the majority of the Land of Israel’s population, with Jewish and Samaritan minorities. The country’s population declined during the Arabic occupation, but exact numbers are not known. In total, there was a significant decline in population, from 1.500,000–2.000,000 during the Byzantine the period, to less than 500,000 during the Crusader period.

The Eastern Christians continued to be the majority during the Arab-Muslim period, and, joined by Franks, were still the majority during the Crusader period: There were 100,000 to 120,000 Franks, and the Eastern Orthodox Christians numbered approximately 200,000 to 250,000. No data exist for the number of Jews and Samaritans — the Samaritan population declined while the Jewish population declined and then increased, but both communities remained small.

After centuries of Islamic repression and massacres of the Crusaders, the Jewish population was reduced to a few thousand


‘We Are at War:’ Jewish Activists Noa Tishby, Bari Weiss, and Eve Barlow Discuss How Social Media Emboldens Antisemitism
Israeli author Noa Tishby and Jewish journalists Bari Weiss and Eve Barlow discussed the fraught relationship between social media and the rise of antisemitism, and their efforts to defend Israel and counteract Jew-hatred at a virtual event on Wednesday.

The three Jewish activists took part in a panel discussion moderated by award-winning news broadcaster Jamie Gutfreund and hosted by Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, as part of the organization’s annual State of the Union event. The panelists analyzed how social media has allowed the proliferation of anti-Jewish sentiment and disinformation about Israel, and what the public can do to stop it.

“There’s a worldwide war right now on truth and facts,” explained Tishby, the actress-turned-author who published earlier this year her debut book, “Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth.” She said, “it’s a long-term battle, it’s going to be ugly,” urging online audiences not to get “triggered” when they see antisemitism.

The Tel Aviv native said she has already spoken to members of Congress about ensuring that major social media companies are held accountable for what people say on their platforms. She also spoke to Congress about the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, and said, “BDS needs to be rooted out of Western society.”

She argued that while it’s often seen as effective to have celebrities and recognizable figures speak out against antisemitism, she believes “the work needs to be from the bottom up” — with outreach to organizations at the grassroots level, to support the Jewish community.

“This is a well-funded political campaign that has been waged against Israel in the past 20 years,” Tishby added.
What about the Palestine lobby and our media?
Abdel-Fattah bemoans the fact that anti-Israel campaigns are not plugged for free in our media outlets and that she and her Israelophobic cohort have to actually pay to insert nasty statements, subscribed to by a band of die-hard anti-Zionists, into our newspapers.

At the end of the day, our media covers the Israel-Palestine dispute very extensively and one senses that the complaints from the likes of Abdel-Fattah are that articles bashing Israel don’t appear frequently enough. In the same vein, she needs to note that there are very few reports appearing that extol the virtues and achievements of an extraordinary country that is compelled to spend so much of its resources on defence. Media moguls know all too well that to screen a program or to write an article that shows Israel in a good light is inviting the restive Palestinian lobby to rise up and object.

In the meantime, I continue to produce programs on my radio show that attempt to cover many issues broadly and fairly about Israel. Now that the Australian government has adopted the IHRA Working Definition on Antisemitism we will hopefully see more sanity in discussion about Israel-Palestine.

For me, the name of the game is engagement, something that the pro-Palestinian movement appears to loathe. They are fundamentally dishonest by avoiding being challenged, unwilling to be genuinely accountable for malevolent views they are trying to shove down our throats.


ADL's anti-hate speaker accused Israel of "ethnic cleansing"
The Anti-Defamation League’s upcoming international conference on combatting hate will include a speaker who has publicly accused Israel of perpetrating “ethnic cleansing” against the Palestinian Arabs.

Was she the only speaker available in the whole world? Couldn’t the ADL find anyone else?

The ADL says that the conference, titled “Never is Now” and scheduled to take place (via Zoom) on November 7-9, will be “the largest annual summit on antisemitism and hate” ever held.

If the event will indeed be that large, that makes it all the more urgent that the featured speakers not include anybody who has engaged in smears against Israel.

Yet Dr. Sara Yael Hirschhorn, who has repeatedly circulated anti-Israel slurs, will be one of the featured speakers. Hirschhorn, who teaches at Northwestern University, has repeatedly criticized Israel on Twitter.

One particularly extreme and troubling string of accusations appeared in a series of Hirschhorn tweets this past January 12:

-- Hirschhorn wrote: “The Palestinian case shares some common features with South Africa—population transfer/ethnic cleansing, restriction of movement, lack of citizenship rights (beyond the Green Line), continued second class citizenship and technocracy.”

Isn’t it remarkable to hear Israel accused of “transferring” and “ethnic cleansing” of an Arab population which has constantly grown over the years? Where were the Palestinian Arabs all “transferred” to, exactly?
Joshua Washington: Israel’s police trainings save lives
In reality, GILEE does precisely the opposite – focusing on de-escalation tactics, and the importance of building relationships between law enforcement and the communities that they serve. Louis Dekmar, chief of the LaGrange Police Department located an hour outside Atlanta, traveled to Israel in 2004 to learn tactical defense and de-escalation skills. Unlike their American counterparts, Israeli police are taught to shoot for non-vital organs when engaging with dangerous combatants. After extensive research, Chief Dekmar brought this innovation to LaGrange and began training his officers to aim for legs and hips. By adopting this Israeli policing method, officers are able to incapacitate armed suspects while reducing the risk of death in officer-involved shootings.

Anti-Israel hate groups must stop spewing propaganda that victimizes our intergenerational struggle as black Americans. These organizations hide behind a facade of “equality” while advancing an anti-Jewish agenda. They thrive by creating a connection between our struggle, real or fabricated, as blacks in the US and the hyper-political situation in the Middle East. They oversimplify a complex conflict between two ancient and historically persecuted peoples, attempting to claim that one of them is the victim and the other the oppressor. Such groups fail to build a diverse community of oppressed voices as they make the target of their indignation not actual inequity, but Israel.

It is truly reprehensible that JVP would go to such lengths to use black Americans to attack Israel; and especially while using talking points that do not reflect the majority of our community, but a modicum of academic and political elites. GILEE is an incredible program that benefits the communities of Georgia. To oppose it would be to oppose the very people it exists for, and the very people groups like JVP claim to fight for.
Reuters, AP Paper Over Internal Palestinian Discord On Sheikh Jarrah
The Associated Press likewise gives no hint about the internal Palestinian divisions (“Palestinians reject offer to delay their Jerusalem eviction“). Indeed, AP’s Joseph Krauss and Jeffery present the Palestinian residents as a monolith, erasing dissent and discord.

Rent Control: $62.50 Per Month

The internal Palestinian conflict isn’t the only element stripped from the contrived neat narrative.

Reuters characterizes the rejected compromise as follows:
Seeking a compromise, Israel’s Supreme Court in October proposed a deal that would have seen four Palestinian families remain in their homes for 15 years as “protected tenants” while paying rent to settlers who claim the land.

The AP also notes that the compromise requires the Palestinian residents to “pay rent to the settlers.”

Notably, though both foreign media outlets saw fit to report the rent requirement, neither bother to disclose the notable amount of rent: approximately $62.50 a month, a sum so low it gives new meaning to “rent control.”

As Haaretz reports:
“Each family will deposit yearly rent of 2,400 shekels [$750] in the account of the counsel of the Nahalat Shimon Co. The payment will be deposited every year in advance beginning January 1, 2020 and every January 1 thereafter,” according to the plan.

But, in a narrative where the Palestinian residents are the owners of the homes, any rent — now matter how low — is objectionable.

Here’s how AP covers the ownership issue:
The settlers are making use of an Israeli law that allows them to claim properties that were owned by Jews prior to the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation. Palestinians who lost homes, properties and lands in the same conflict do not have the right to recover them. . . .

The families, who are originally from what is now Israel, say the Jordanian government granted them the land on which their homes were later built in exchange for their refugee status after it assumed control of the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 1948.They have been living there ever since.

Unfortunately for the Palestinian residents, Jordan never registered the properties in their names. This fact, concealed by the news agencies, deprived the residents of any ownership claims and the reporters of a clean narrative. While the latter issue is overcome by selective reporting, the former is not nearly as surmountable.

The simplistic AP/Reuters narrative on Sheikh Jarrah, in which monolithic Palestinian residents in perfect harmony fend off dispossession by Israeli settlers belongs to the so-called “contextualized truth” of “Israel’s systematic oppression of Palestinians” hailed by hundreds of journalists last spring. In other words, it’s an affront to ethical journalism.
Mezuzah Reported Vandalized at George Washington University, Days After Fraternity Torah Desecrated
A George Washington University sophomore said her mezuzah had been taken from her door and tampered with before being returned Tuesday, days after a Torah belonging to a fraternity was desecrated, drawing a national outcry.

The GW Hatchet student paper reported that the mezuzah had been stolen Sunday and discovered by the student Tuesday morning — fastened back to her door with damage suggesting the thief had attempted to break it open and access the prayer scroll inside.

The GW-themed mezuzah was returned after sophomore Emma Reese reported its theft to a group chat for her residence hall.

“My grandmother was the CEO of a Jewish nonprofit, she got death threats all the time,” she told the outlet yesterday. “My mom — very Jewish — got death threats at her college too. So it just sucks knowing that I’m next in line for this kind of stuff.”

On Sunday, a paper Torah scroll belonging to the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity was found ripped apart and soaked in blue laundry detergent after a break-in, an incident condemned by national Jewish groups and local authorities.

In response, some 400 Jewish and non-Jewish students marched through George Washington University and Washington DC on Monday. The “Torah procession” began at the Tau Kappa Epsilon house and continued through the neighborhoods of Jewish fraternity Zeta Beta Tau and Jewish sorority Alpha Epsilon Phi, with each receiving a mezuzah on the doors of their houses.


The NYTimes' comical account of what it means to be Israeli
Over the eight stops, readers are also told of two people who say Israel isn’t legitimate. Another raises questions about the country’s legitimacy. Another rails against the “system.” The possibility of replacing Israel with a new country encompassing both Israel and Palestinian-ruled territories repeatedly pops up—in Haifa, Tekoa, and Eilat—although it is an idea that, off the pages of the New York Times, is broadly understood to mean the gerrymandering away of the world’s only Jewish-majority country, and which consequently holds very little currency among the average Israeli.

It isn’t only the residents painted in bleak colors. In villages, farms take a back seat to quarries. Israeli cities are “shabby,” or “tired,” or once “dour” but now “garish.” Neighborhoods are “rundown.”

Everything Jewish, we’re told, is new, and built upon or alongside ruins of something Arab. By contrast, Jewish history in the Jews’ ancestral homeland is treated as entirely recent. The Galilee, understood as “the center of Jewish life in late antiquity,” is dotted with the ruins of synagogues, but the New York Times tour guides tell readers only of a former Palestinian village.

The 1948 flight of Palestinians from Haifa and from a former village within Tel Aviv’s municipal borders is likewise noted, but not the flight, expulsion, or massacre of Jews from Midgal Eder or Kfar Etzion, near Tekoa, in 1929, 1936, and 1948. The displacement of Palestinians in 1948 is certainly relevant to the conflict. But so is the historical rootedness of Jews to the land, and so are Palestinian attacks against Jewish communities long before any occupation and before even the birth of the state. To repeatedly cite the former while ignoring the latter, on a tour seems designed to cast Jews as outsiders and oppressors, feels less like good-faith reporting and more like advocacy for a particular narrative*.

And, indeed, the Palestinian narrative somehow saturates the journalist’s account of the Israeli experience. The occupation is highlighted twice in the first nine paragraphs of Kingsley’s 5000-word feature, which spans well over 100 paragraphs. But the word “terror” or “attack” or “bomb” doesn’t appear once, as if Palestinian terrorism has done nothing to shape Israel or the views of its residents. The Palestinian accusation of apartheid appears. But rampant antisemitism in the West Bank, Gaza, or elsewhere in the Arab world is invisible.

A Dark Cartoon
So goes the New York Times’ account of Israel: A story of the country as an “unwanted” child, an “unsolvable” puzzle of “incompatible” factions burdened by “grievances” and “consequences.” And that’s only in the first seven paragraphs. Then there are the “underlying tensions and inequities,” “divisions,” “unrest,” “fury,” “ambivalence,” “illegitimacy,” “alienation,” “injustice,” the history of “discrimination,” “bias,” and “ethnic abuse,” the greed, misfortune, ethnic jokes, stereotypes, illegality, distrust, “apartheid,” “anger,” “crimes,” lack of belonging, “police violence,” “demolitions,” “oppression,” and “disappointment,” a land of “slums” where people are treated like “garbage” and “shabby,” “tired,” “dour,” “garish” towns, where coexistence is a “deception,” and a country which has a conditional right to exist, or none at all.

And finally, a happy non-Zionist to show us where the problem lies.

It is a cartoon. And whatever thoughtful insights Kingsley might offer are buried in this avalanche of cartoonish negativity. Yes, societies all have some darkness, not least one forced into decades of conflict and war. One would expect an appropriate share of the above adjectives in an honest exploration of any country. Israelis will certainly recognize some the themes Kingsley dwells on.

But this is over the top. In a country whose history of conflict makes all the more remarkable its resilience, vibrancy, and happiness, the New York Times, whose reputation of anti-Israel advocacy has grown in recent years, bends itself out of shape to curate malcontent. It isn’t following where the Israeli roads leads, letting chance encounters eventually paint an accurate picture. Rather, it’s flipping a two-headed coin to get the intended result. The cheating is apparent to those familiar with the country. It looks desperate. The desperation is clumsy. And the clumsiness is funny.

But it’s also sad, because a newspaper’s reporting isn’t meant to be funny. So the joke is on readers.


‘The Plots of 120 Years Ago Have Been Realized’: Anger in Italy as Publishing House Issues New Edition of Notorious Antisemitic Fabrication
Italy’s Jewish community has expressed disgust at the publication of a new edition of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” an antisemitic document originally fabricated by the Russian Tsar’s secret police in 1903, which is available through the online store of Feltrinelli, one of the country’s leading publishers.

The publisher’s blurb promoting the latest edition made no mention of the dubious provenance of the “Protocols,” which has been cited across more than a century by the German Third Reich, successive Arab regimes and western neo-Nazis and white supremacists as proof of a secret Jewish conspiracy to control world affairs.

“From the beginning they have been branded as a brilliant fake and there are many reasons for and against, especially from those who wish to bury them permanently, thereby contributing to their incredible survival,” read the caption that accompanies the book.

The promotional text then went on to claim that whether the “Protocols” had been fabricated or not was an irrelevant consideration because its predictions had turned out to be correct.

“Whether they are true or false no longer matters, because these mysterious protocols, even out of their time, have proved to be prophetic in a secular sense,” it continued. “After nearly 120 years, many of those plots, then only vague, seem to be largely realized: history confirms that the recorded notes which we present in a new and revised translation show that they were not pious fantasies.”

The latest Italian edition of the “Protocols,” which carries a large Star of David on its cover, has been issued by Segno Editions, a publisher that bills itself as a “small, independent house specializing in religious publications” and a “leader in the Christian publishing sector.” Its books can be purchased through the online store of Feltrinelli, which is known as one of Europe’s leading publishers of left-wing politics and culture.
Kanye West says that Jewish people “kill each other in business” during interview
In a newly released interview that took place on the podcast Drink Champs, musician Kanye West has said that Jewish people “kill each other in business”.

Towards the end of the interview, Mr West spoke on the issue of black mobility within society and said: “I’m a community builder…but the people that have in the past been in a position of power are gonna try to separate Jay [Z] and [Damon Dash], separate my mom and my dad, separate me and Virgil [Abloh]. You see a pattern? That makes it impossible for Black Wall Street…I thought of our community growing, when we not forced to make the choice of whether or not we can afford to have a child, when we’re not forced to say, ‘I’ma have to kill this [n-word] cos he said this or this’.

“You know, you never hear about Jewish on Jewish crime. You know, they kill each other in business in a different kind of way, but not actually physically taking a life.”

According to the International Definition of Antisemitism, Making mendacious, dehumanising, demonising, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions is an example of antisemitism.
Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate appears with Nazi sympathizer and QAnon-linked activists at campaign events
Kari Lake, the Arizona gubernatorial candidate recently endorsed by former President Donald Trump, has embraced fringe far-right figures in her campaign events, including publicly thanking a Nazi sympathizer for his support and appearing with figures linked to the QAnon conspiracy, a CNN KFile review of her appearances has found.

At a campaign event in late August, Lake posed for a photo and video with far-right personalities Ethan Schmidt-Crockett, the founder of the AntiMaskersClub, who harassed a store specializing in wigs for cancer patients this summer because it required customers to wear masks, and Greyson Arnold, a Nazi sympathizer who has a history of making White nationalist, racist, antisemitic and pro-Nazi statements, including once calling Adolf Hitler "a complicated historical figure which many people misunderstand."

"Anti-maskers club here with Kari Lake," said Schmidt-Crockett alongside Lake and Arnold in the video. "America First," they each said.

After Arnold posted a photo of the trio on Twitter, Lake replied, "It was a pleasure to meet you, too."

Lake became an early favorite in the GOP primary by embracing the once-fringe extremism now mainstream within the Republican Party, including promoting election lies, doubling down against mask and vaccine mandates, and calling for the imprisonment of Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who is also running for governor. GOP Gov. Doug Ducey cannot run again next year because of term limits.
Richard Burgon to address controversial Halifax Friends of Palestine group
The Labour MP Richard Burgon is reportedly set to address the Halifax Friends of Palestine group, despite its controversial record.

Mr Burgon, a former Shadow Justice Secretary and close ally of Jeremy Corbyn, is due to speak at the group’s gala dinner later this month.

It has been reported that the Yorkshire-based group participated in a rally in September celebrating a terrorist who killed six civilians in Israel, and another rally in August in which the chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” was heard. The chant only makes sense as a call for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state – and its replacement with a State of Palestine – and is thus an attempt to deny Jews, uniquely, the right to self-determination, which is a breach of the International Definition of Antisemitism.

Mr Burgon is one of a number of Labour MPs against whom Campaign Against Antisemitism has submitted complaints, which we expect the Labour Party to investigate once it has introduced the anticipated semi-independent disciplinary process.

A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “Richard Burgon is a magnet for controversy. A key ally of Jeremy Corbyn, he previously claimed that ‘Zionism is the enemy of peace’ and then lied about doing so. If he is interested in making amends, withdrawing from this event would be a start. In the meantime, we expect the Labour Party to investigate our complaint against him and other MPs, so that the Jewish community can finally have justice.”
Case adjourned for four accused of shouting antisemitic slogans from car convoy
Four men charged with yelling antisemitic abuse from a car in a ‘Convoy for Palestine’ have had their case adjourned until 23 November.

Mohammed Iftikhar Hanif, 27, Jawaad Hussain, 24, Asif Ali, 25 and Adil Mota, 26, all from Blackburn, Lancs, were all said to be part of a convoy travelling through St John’s Wood earlier this year, accused of engaging in racist abuse.

They had been due to appear for a plea and trial preparation hearing at Wood Green Crown Court this week, but it had been adjourned until later this month.

The four are all charged with using threatening, abusive or insulting words, or behaviour, with intent, likely to stir up racial hatred on 16 May.

In October, they appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court and spoke only to confirm their names and addresses.

Their lawyers indicated they would all be denying the charges.
West Ham soccer club promises action after antisemitism by fans
The West Ham United soccer club expressed shock after video was published on social media showing a number of the club's fans chanting "we've got foreskin, haven't you" as a Haredi man boarded a flight they were on.

The flight was headed to Belgium where West Ham faced K.R.C. Genk in the Europa League.

In one clip shared by The Jewish Chronicle on Twitter, fans of the club could be seen chanting "we've got foreskin, haven't you" as a haredi man quietly boarded the flight.

In a second clip, the fans could be seen chanting "Tottenham get battered everywhere they go," as the Haredi man walked by. The chant seemed to be referring to the fact that Tottenham Hotspurs, known as the Spurs, has many Jewish supporters.

West Ham United stressed that it was "appalled" by the videos and condemned the behavior, according to UK media. The club stated that it was in contact with the airline and relevant authorities in order to identify the individuals involved.

"We continue to be unequivocal in our stance - we have a zero-tolerance approach to any form of discrimination," said the club in a statement to the media. "Any individuals identified will be issued with an indefinite ban from the Club. Equality, diversity and inclusion are at the heart of the Football Club and we do not welcome any individuals who do not share those values."


Scottish Football Association fined after fans booed Israeli national anthem
Scottish football authorities have been fined by Fifa after fans booed the Israeli national anthem during a World Cup qualifying game.

The Scottish Football Association (SFA) will have to pay over £8,000 for the disturbance and the inappropriate use of a flag.

While Fifa did not specify what flag this was, video footage shows one Tartan Army member waving a Palestinian flag during the game.

Pro-Palestine demonstrators outside the ground also held Palestinian flags and a banner reading “Zionism is racism. Victory to the intifada".

A month earlier the phrases “Palestinian blood” and “Free Gaza” were spraypainted on the stadium’s walls, reported Palestinian news agency WAFA.

The incident took place in October of this year at Scotland’s national stadium, Hampden Park, during a match won 3-2 by Scotland.

It was the first time the stadium had a full capacity since a game against England in June 2017.

The official report says the SFA was fined over a failure on “Order and security at matches (disturbance during national anthems, use of objects - flag - to transmit a message that is not appropriate for a sports event).”
Chelsea fan sent to prison for eight weeks over antisemitic tweets aimed at Tottenham supporters
A man who pleaded guilty to sending a series of antisemitic, hateful and racist tweets has been sentenced to eight weeks in prison at Westminster Magistrates’ Court today.

After an investigation by the Metropolitan Police, Nathan Blagg, 21, of Retford in Nottinghamshire, was charged in September with seven counts of sending by public communication network an offensive/indecent/obscene/menacing message/matter which violates the Malicious Communications Act. The charges refer to seven tweets sent between 29th September 2020 and 5th February 2021.

Mr Blagg pleaded guilty to all charges. The court heard that Mr Blagg was initially reported by a West Brom fan before his posts were investigated by Chelsea Football Club’s security team and finally passed on to the police. The posts included images as well as tweets and retweets of offensive messages.

Prosecutor David Roberts said that there was a “racially aggravated” element because of the “antisemitic nature” of many of the tweets.

Maeve Thornton, defending, reportedly said that Mr Blagg had been suffering at the time from “low moods” due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ms Thornton said: “He has got drawn into this in terms of a lack of awareness and understanding of the impact this was going to have. With hindsight, he now understands how wrong this is. He is indeed very remorseful and very apologetic and has taken steps to address his offending by removing himself from Twitter. There is not going to be a repeat of this behaviour moving forward.”

However, today Westminster Magistrates’ Court sentenced Mr Blagg to eight weeks in prison.


Authorities Release Images of Suspect in Austin Synagogue Arson as City Council Passes Resolution Condemning Antisemitism
The Austin Fire Department on Wednesday released images of the suspect in an arson attack on an Austin, Texas synagogue, the latest in a spate of incidents in the city that has prompted the passage of a City Council resolution condemning antisemitism.

Congregation Beth Israel was set on fire on the night of Oct. 31, causing serious damage. In a message to the congregation, the Austin American-Statesman reported Wednesday, the synagogue’s Rabbi Steve Folberg and President Lori Adelman said, “Because of the likelihood that the time to get our sanctuary fit for occupancy will be measured in weeks rather than days, we will be looking for alternative ways to gather together on our campus.”

In a media release, the Austin Fire Department issued stills from a security camera video of the suspect and his vehicle.

The release said that the suspect drove into the parking lot of the synagogue in a black SUV and approached the building carrying a five-gallon gasoline can. He then returned to his vehicle.

The FBI is also now investigating the incident.
NYPD Searching for Man in Attack on Pregnant Jewish Woman in Brooklyn
New York police are searching for a suspect who attacked a Jewish woman in Brooklyn on Wednesday.

An NYPD spokesperson told The Algemeiner that at around 11:30 am, police were called to the area of Nostrand Avenue and Eastern Parkway to investigate a case of “menacing.”

The 33-year-old victim told responding officers that she was accosted by the suspect, who threw a drink in her face while “making derogatory comments.” The suspect then fled the scene.

The suspect is described as a man with dark complexion, around the age of 40, six feet tall, and 200 lbs, with short black hair and black eyes.

The NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating the crime as a possible bias incident.

The Crown Heights-based COL Live, an Orthodox Jewish news outlet, said that the victim was in traditional Hasidic clothing and that the attacker told her, “You people disgust me.”

News 12 Brooklyn reported that the victim was pregnant and that the Anti-Defamation League is offering a $10,000 reward for information on the attack.
New York State passes ban on swastikas and other neo-Nazi imagery on public property
New York State has passed a ban on the selling or displaying of hate symbols, including swastikas and other neo-Nazi imagery, on public property.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed the legislation after being introduced last year when Confederate flags were displayed from a Long Island fire truck and fire department window.

Examples of hate symbols within the bill include symbols of white supremacy, neo-Nazi ideology or the Battle Flag of the Confederacy. The ban does not extend to symbols that serve an “educational or historical purpose,” for example those found in a museum or book.

“Public property” is reportedly defined as a school district, a fire district, volunteer fire company or police department and taxpayer-funded equipment.

State Sen. Anna M. Kaplan said: “Public property belongs to all of us, and this measure is critical to ensure that our public property isn’t being used to promote hatred. You would think it was common sense that taxpayer-owned property couldn’t be used as a platform for hate, but shockingly there was no law on the books saying so — until now.”
Israel’s Blings.io Crowned as Winner of StartUp+ Competition
Blings.io was crowned on Thursday as the winner of Calcalist and Poalim Hi-Tech’s StartUp+ competition.

The startup is developing a platform for creating dynamic and interactive videos, coming up with a new video format named MPFlyer (MPF) to replace all MP4 files. Luminescent, which manufactures a small, efficient, and inexpensive engine designed to generate green energy, finished in second place.

According to Blings.io Co-Founder and CEO Yonatan Schreiber, 80 percent of online traffic is video-related, but the technology remains extremely outdated.

“This is a 20-year-old technology that treats the data in the video as a closed file that cannot be modified or edited after creation, but things no longer work that way,” said Schreiber on a panel hosted by Elihay Vidal that also included Batsheva Moshe, manager of Poalim Hi-Tech. “We know today how to develop video that can be created while being watched, allowing for the video to be customized for the viewer.”

Schreiber said Blings has recently partnered with Mercedes-Benz, Singapore Airlines, McDonald’s and others. He said, “We are creating a tool that will allow every video editor to talk in a new language and create video while considering how it will be viewed by different people.”
Israeli firm Beamr awarded Emmy for video compression tech
Israeli company Beamr, the developer of content-adaptive video encoding solutions, is being awarded an Emmy in the Technology & Engineering category from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences on Thursday for its patented technology that helps compress video streams while maintaining top quality.

The company’s win was announced in January and the ceremony is set to take place Thursday. The Technology & Engineering Emmy is awarded to companies, organizations and individuals for technology breakthroughs that have a significant impact on television engineering.

Founded in 2009, Beamr started off by developing image compression technology to reduce the size of photos, later moving on to develop video solutions as consumers, broadcasters, and entertainment platforms adopted HD, and later 4K, standards. The company came up with a patented quality measure called BQM (Beamr Quality Measure), which quantifies the perceptual quality loss introduced in a video frame due to encoding processes, which transmit and reduce the size of data so that it can be consumed.

“As the quality of video goes higher, you need more bandwidth, and more bits to stream it, and the bitrate goes higher,” Dror Gill, CTO, VP Product & VP Marketing at Beamr, told The Times of Israel this week ahead of the award ceremony. Bitrate refers to the speed of upload and download transfers.

“Today, about 80 percent of internet traffic is actually video and there’s a huge demand for high-quality video,” he said, with new and old media providers having to come up with new solutions.
November riots in Libya: the end of trust between Jews and Muslims
My parents always told me when I told them to leave that I was exaggerating! I would like to remind you first of all that in 1945 40,000 Jews and 500,000 Arabs lived in Libya in a territory three times the size of Italy and that our annihilation led to our progressive expulsion despite the fact that we were residents for over 2,000 years, much earlier than the Muslims, but this is never remembered, no one gets up with the house keys to request our homes and our rights.

We were about eight percent of the population and we should have 8% of the territory, of the oil, all of the money that has robbed from us, beyond revaluation and interest. Hundreds of synagogues turned into mosques or were set on fire, hundreds of deaths and our cemetery repaved with the asphalt of a highway. We did not resist with arms, neither did the UN nor the other international associations listen to us. But I think we should start thinking about a political movement, even with the use of fashionable flotillas. Damn them.

First of all I would like to recall the context in which the pogrom took place. Libya was a Turkish colony, then an Italian colony and after the war it was under the control of Great Britain. On November 4, 1945, Muslims attacked Jews wherever they were, burned hundreds of shops, houses, synagogues and murdered 133 people. The British authorities did not lift a finger for four days and four nights!

The Jews had always trusted Muslims, and despite some problems they would never have imagined an assault of those proportions. This caused an unbridgeable gap with the Muslims and an absolute lack of trust in the British authorities. The massacres lasted from 4 to 7 November and I am not aware of any commission of inquiry of the UN or international associations. To be honest, it must be remembered that even some Muslim dignitaries tried to stop the massacres and that only after that date did the British intervene and stop them.









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