Wednesday, December 08, 2021

12/08 Links Pt2: Michael R. Bloomberg: Both Parties Must Fight Anti-Semitism in Their Ranks; Bob Dole fought to free Soviet Jews; BDS: 'A Front for Terror Groups'

From Ian:

At UJA-Federation’s Wall Street Dinner, attendees pledge to fight antisemitism
Despite the swanky setting and the (mostly) maskless crowd in bespoke suits and dresses, UJA-Federation of New York’s Wall Street Dinner Monday night made very clear that the city – and even its most affluent denizens – still lived in the shadow of the pandemic.

There was an atmosphere of relief in the room, with the usual scenes of hugging, smiling and schmoozing that typify fundraising dinners. Hors d’oeuvres were eaten, awards were given and speeches were made.

But the ongoing effects of COVID pervaded the event Monday night at the Marriott Marquis in midtown Manhattan, and lent it an air of guardedness. Former mayor Michael Bloomberg received the night’s main award, and Stephanie Cohen, an executive at Goldman Sachs, was also honored.

But in the first speech, former Goldman Sachs CEO and current chairman Lloyd Blankfein made a point of reminding attendees how the pandemic has bared their privilege.

“The lesson of COVID that’s most pertinent to tonight’s purpose is just how bifurcated our society is,” said Blankfein, who emceed the event.

“So let me say, at the risk of being provocative and sounding tone-deaf, I had a pretty good pandemic, and most of my friends who live in the same bubble as me had a pretty good pandemic too,” he continued. “The market went up and we even made money. That is our bubble. But what about the rest of the world, the 99%? People in service jobs who had to show up or whose jobs didn’t survive the pandemic?”
Michael R. Bloomberg: Both Parties Must Fight Anti-Semitism in Their Ranks
I realize that standing up to your friends is not easy — and that’s especially true for young people. They have their antenna up against injustice, and that’s great to see. But on campuses across the country, if they want to be involved in social justice issues, they often feel forced to make a terrible choice. They can either defend their Zionism and be excluded from groups that claim to be progressive, or they can join these groups and turn a blind eye to them when they single out for attack the only democratic country in the Middle East and the only Jewish state in the world.

That is wrong.

We cannot allow a new generation of Jews to be intimidated from supporting the very existence of Israel — or to feel shame about their heritage, rather than pride.

So to everyone here, whatever your party, I hope you will recognize that as a people — and as a country — we cannot afford to let prejudice live within partisanship. We must call it out wherever it exists, and no matter who is involved — whether we hear it from Marjorie Taylor Greene or Rashida Tlaib or anyone else.

And as we do this, we should remind our allies of something Rabbi Jonathan Sacks of Great Britain once said: “The hate that starts with the Jews never ends there.” And of course, as the quotation on the wall of the Holocaust Museum reminds us, the hate that starts with others can end with us.

We have always believed that in America, “It can’t happen here.” But when lies are widely accepted as truth, when verbal and physical attacks on marginalized groups pass without condemnation, when wild conspiracy theories run rampant, when election results are dismissed as fraudulent, and when leaders in government downplay an assault on the U.S. Capitol and the peaceful transfer of power, we must recognize that, tragically, it could happen here.

America is increasingly becoming a tinderbox. And we know from history that small fires — if they are not extinguished — can grow more dangerous and deadly, and can even lead to the unthinkable.

Tonight, as the holiday ends, let us resolve to find inspiration in the unity Hanukkah celebrates — all year long. Let us shine a light on anti-Semitism, whenever it appears and whoever it comes from. And as we do, may God’s light shine on all of us, of all faiths, working to repair the world.


Bob Dole fought to free Soviet Jews
Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, who died on Sunday at 98, had a complex record on Israel but a much more clear-cut one on Soviet Jews, whose cause he championed as a senator and Senate leader.

“The freedom of enslaved people is America’s business, and freedom is a task we must apply,” Dole, a Republican and Senate minority leader at the time, said in remarks at the 1987 mass rally at the U.S. Capitol on behalf of some 400,000 Jewish refuseniks. “I will not rest, and you will not rest, America will not rest, until they are all free.”

Dole told the crowd that in his close to three decades in Congress, he had dealt with many requests from people who wanted help for family members seeking to immigrate to the U.S. “I’ve never had one ask for help to leave America.” The list of Soviet Jews who were aided by Dole includes the dissident-turned-Israeli politician Natan Sharansky and Evgeny Yakir.

He implored Gorbachev, who was scheduled to arrive soon after for bilateral talks in the U.S., “Let every last woman and child, who wants to sleep under the same roof with their children and their family, or say a prayer in the synagogue, whether it be in Washington or Jerusalem; who only wants the chance of medical treatment — let them go, Mr. Gorbachev, let them go.”

In 1985, when he was Senate majority leader, Dole introduced a resolution that called for an end to harassment and for the release of refuseniks. It read in part: “Americans are a people who have strong compassion for the oppressed, undying love for freedom and an unwavering intolerance of the deprivation of basic God-given rights.”

A few years earlier, in 1982, Dole and former Congressman Jack Kemp — donning yarmulkes — presided over a Jewish long-distance wedding between a dissident in Washington, D.C., and a woman seeking to escape from the Soviet Union.








'A Front for Terror Groups': The 'Murky' History Behind the Antisemitic BDS Movement
Arsen Ostrovsky, CEO of the International Legal Forum, says “a number of these so-called charities and NGOs are really a front for terror groups like the PFLP to funnel money that ultimately goes towards carrying out terrorist actions and promoting boycott activities.”

Ostrovsky says boycott activities go back 20 years to the movement’s beginning at a UN conference in South Africa designed to fight racism.

“Instead of the international community coming together to fight racism, it ended up coming to promote racism and against one state and one state only, the Jewish state Israel,” says Ostrovsky.

Einat Wilf, co-author of the War of Return, says that helped propel BDS to become a key weapon against the Jewish State.

“Through repeated wars, invasions, terrorism, economic boycotts; they have failed. None of these violent efforts to undo the sovereign state of the Jewish people have succeeded. So, BDS, the right of return, the demand to settle in Israel, have come to the forefront as the only tools by which the Palestinians still hope to achieve their goals,” says Wilf.

Wilf points out the main tactic is to demonize and delegitimize Israel.

“The placard strategy is the equations that everyone who goes to an anti-Israel demonstration sees it on their placards. They're structured in this way. It says, ‘Zionism equals’ or ‘Israel equals’ or sometimes it just says, ‘The Star of David equals’ … These words are all chosen because in our collective consciousness, they denote evil. So, what happens through the placard strategy is basically people are exposed to an ongoing refrain that says, ‘Zionism, Israel, Star of David, equals evil,’” says Wilf.

That, according to Wilf, promotes the idea of Israel as the global villain.

“Now, there's no greater good in this world than the eradication of evil. So, if you create this mental mindset, you create a global mindset that there is an evil out there, and the evil is Israel and Zionism. And through the placard strategy, people have this refrain in their minds: ‘Israel, Zionism, Star of David is evil.’ Then, you're creating an invitation to violence. You're basically saying because Israel, Zionism and the Star of David are evil, whatever you do to rid the world of this evil, will be justified,” she says.
Europe’s Jewish Students Face Antisemitic Onslaught
If there were a survival handbook for Jewish students at the universities of Europe, it would probably begin with this:
1. Tell no one that you’re Jewish.
2. Condemn Israel as a terrorist, genocidal state.
3. Get used to it.

This, at least, has been the experience of students at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, according to recent reports and an eye-opening interview with a Jewish student leader there.

But students at universities in Belgium, France, and the UK have faced similar forms of antisemitism on campus. A press outlet in the UK declared last month that “antisemitic abuse on university campuses has reached record levels” — a full 59 percent higher than in 2020. One student at Glasgow University was encouraged to “go gas herself,” according to the Times; another was sent a photoshopped image of her head in a guillotine.

And it’s not just students. As one professor at the University of Maastricht told a Jewish colleague, “If you want to keep your job, don’t tell anyone that you’re Jewish and that you support Israel.”

Speaking to the Dutch online newspaper Israel Nieuws, Maastricht student Ethan Gabriel Bergman described dozens of incidents at the school, including the administration’s decision to ignore International Holocaust Remembrance Day on the school calendar, noting only “Chocolate Cake Day,” which falls on the same date. This past May, as anti-Israel demonstrations rocked Europe, protesters at the university carried banners claiming that “all [Israel] wants to see is blood. Arab blood, as much as possible — blood, the more the better — blood, the main thing is that Arab blood is spilled,” as others repeated anti-Israel chants in Arabic.

Yet when a Jewish student wrote despairingly of this in a student Facebook group, the replies that came in were anything but supportive. “Filthy cancer-Jew, I hope that they turn the gas chambers back on,” one person wrote, and another: “your stinking people will be destroyed.”
Anti-Israel campus activity vilifies Jewish students in US - ADL report
A new report by the Anti-Defamation League has found that rhetoric used by anti-Israel groups on US college and university campuses frequently demeans and ostracizes pro-Israel Jewish students, and occasionally descends into antisemitism.

In preparing the study, ADL experts identified what, they said, was “a pattern of anti-Israel groups and activists blatantly demonizing pro-Israel and Zionist students,” who also on occasion espoused antisemitic tropes, such as those alleging Jewish or Zionist power and control over the media and political affairs.

ADL’s Center on Extremism, which monitors anti-Israel activities across the country, found this language primarily came from a handful of student activist organizations that often work in concert to spread anti-Israel and anti-Zionist messages on US campuses.

Such activity negatively impacts large sections of the Jewish student community “for which a connection with Israel is an integral component of their religious, social, or cultural lives and identities”

According to the study, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) was the most active anti-Israel group on campus in the US, with a network of some 180 chapters across the country mostly in the Northeast, Midwest and California, along with around 20 chapters in Canada.

Another of the primary anti-Zionist campus organizations is Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) which works closely with SJP.
NYU publication commits itself to supporting BDS
New York University Law's premier legal journal expressed firm commitment to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel in its 2021-22 edition, released on November 18.

In Vol. 46, the most recent edition of The Harbinger, an online-only publication of the NYU Review of Law & Social Change (RLSC), "solidarity with Palestinians collectively struggling towards liberation" was also conveyed.

RLSC noted that its institutional boycott will include “events, activities, agreements, or projects involving Israeli academic institutions or that otherwise promote the normalization of Israel in the global academy, whitewash Israel’s violations of international law and Palestinian rights, or violate the BDS guidelines.”

In particular, the group announced that it will boycott academic events convened or cosponsored by Israel; funding from Israel or its lobby groups to support academic activities/projects; and addresses and talks at international venues by Israeli state officials or official representatives of Israeli academic institutions.

"BDS is a Palestinian-led movement that urges action to pressure Israel to end its occupation and colonization of Palestinian land, discrimination against Palestinian citizens, and denial of the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes," the publication stated.
NJ closes case on Unilever over ice cream sales ban in settlements
New Jersey will begin pulling $182 million in Unilever plc stocks and bonds three months after a preliminary investigation found that its subsidiary, Ben & Jerry's, engaged in a boycott of Israeli-controlled territories.

The state is divesting after Unilever, whose American operations are based in Bergen County, did not appeal the findings of its preliminary investigation, officials said.

"The Division of Investment did not receive a response from Unilever within the 90-day window, and therefore the provisional determination of ineligibility for Unilever became final on Dec. 1," Danielle Currie, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Department of Treasury, said in a statement.

"The Division has placed the company on its prohibited investment list. It is now looking at next steps to appropriately divest existing Unilever plc holdings in accordance with the statute."

British conglomerate Unilever plc, a multinational consumer goods company, employs 1,600 people at its U.S. headquarters in Englewood Cliffs. It owns more than 400 brands including Dove, Lipton, Vaseline and Pond's.

Its contract with Ben & Jerry's allows its independent board to make decisions about its social mission, the company has stated. In July, the ice cream maker known for social justice activism announced it would end sales in settlements in occupied Palestinian territory because it was "inconsistent with our values."


Omar should point at herself when she denounces hostile rhetoric
Democrats obviously tolerate Omar and Tlaib’s misrepresentations because they cannot afford to lose their supporters, who have evolved to automatically equate racism in America with perceived oppression of Palestinian Arabs. It is insulting to American Jews, most of whom are just as committed to helping our more vulnerable citizens. Roughly 75 percent of American Jews vote for Democrats and can swing elections in close races.

With her words during the CNN interview, Omar could just as well be talking about herself, as when she calls House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy “a liar and a coward.” During her first election campaign in 2018, she told Jewish voters that she opposes the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) drive. After she was elected, Omar was quoted in a Muslim magazine saying she does indeed support BDS.

“Words can cause violence,” Omar says. “And (Boebert) knows that the language that she’s using, the audience that she’s using it for, is going to incite violence against myself and my community.”

Conversely, do words like “evil doings” and “apartheid” explain recent attacks on two Orthodox children and an 18-year-old Jewish woman in Brooklyn, and in-your-face threats toward Jewish diners in West Hollywood?

The Jewish community should thank her for proposing counter-action when she tells CNN host Jake Tapper that McCarthy “doesn’t have the ability to condemn the kind of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim rhetoric that are being trafficked by a member. Because this is who (Republicans) are. And we have to be able to stand up to them, and we have to be able to push them to reckon with the fact that their party right now is normalizing anti-Muslim bigotry.”

If we replace “anti-Muslim” with “anti-Jewish,” it takes little effort to figure out what Omar’s words are “normalizing.”
Labour councillor who chanted “From the River to the Sea” has whip removed and Jeremy Corbyn’s former legal head deselected, but elsewhere local Labour group passes motion praising Ken Loach
A Labour Party councillor who chanted “From the River to the Sea” at a rally and called a former Jewish Labour MP a “hideous traitor” has reportedly had the whip removed.

Sam Gorst, a councillor in Liverpool, is reportedly no longer a member of the local Labour Group and will sit as an independent. Cllr Gorst was filmed earlier this year marching alongside Jeremy Corbyn and chanting “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free”. 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. The rally was addressed by Mr Corbyn and former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, and was endorsed by Labour MPs Paula Barker, and Kim Johnson.

Labour Against Antisemitism has also previously claimed that Cllr Gorst was involved in the now-proscribed Labour fringe groups, Labour Against the Witchhunt and Labour in Exile Network.

Cllr Gorst, who is reported to have been suspended from the Labour Party for twelve months in August 2020, claimed that Mr Corbyn was a victim of a “smear campaign”, described the Jewish Labour MP Luciana Berger as a “hideous traitor” when she declared her intention to run for Merseyside Mayor in 2016, and called another Jewish Labour MP, Dame Louise Ellman, a “disgrace” when she quit the Party in 2019 over antisemitism.

Cllr Gorst reportedly said that he is “appealing this injustice.”
Lib Dem candidate apologises for tweets that appeared to compare English Channel migrants to Jewish inmates at Auschwitz
The Liberal Democrat candidate in the coming North Shropshire by-election has apologised after social media posts emerged in which she appeared to compare the experience of migrants crossing the English Channel to Jewish inmates at the Auschwitz death camp.

Helen Morgan, reportedly wrote on Twitter in September 2020 about her son reading The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, a book about the son of a Nazi camp commandant befriending a Jewish boy on the other side of the fence.

Ms Morgan tweeted: “He commented that the Nazis were only able to do such terrible things because they didn’t think their victims were people. He’s 11. On Twitter this morning, there are people talking about cancelling their RNLI [Royal National Lifeboat Institution] donations because they have picked up ‘illegals’. The language used every day in this country – by the Government, press and people with thousands of followers on social media – it’s nothing short of chilling. We have travelled too far down this road. We urgently need to turn back.”

In the same thread, she apparently ‘liked’ a tweet by another user who claimed: “Having visited Auschwitz concentration camp in the recent past. It really brings home man’s inhumanity to man. Now on a daily basis the language and actions of the Conservative Party make me more and more concerned about the direction they are taking the UK and its people.”

Ms Morgan has also apologised for telling Home Secretary Priti Patel to “tear up your copy of Goebbels’ manual” on Twitter in an exchange on migrants crossing the English Channel. Ms Morgan removed the tweets and said: “I apologise for this insensitive tweet which I have taken down.”
Updated: Montreal Gazette Apologizes For Publishing Anti-Israel Advert From Amnesty International Canada
UPDATE: The Montreal Gazette has sent HonestReporting Canada the following apology for publishing Amnesty International Canada”s anti-Israel advertisement saying it did not meet its advertising guidelines and standards. Furthermore, the Gazette has scheduled a mandatory training session for its sales team to reinforce its polices and standards.

“The Amnesty International ad copy that was published in the Montreal Gazette on page A-4 on Monday, Dec. 6th, does not meet our advertising guidelines and standards. This advertisement should not have been published and was a direct result of human error. Our entire Local Sales Advertising Team across Canada will be attending a mandatory training session on Thursday December 9th, to further reinforce our processes and standards. We apologize for this mistake and believe the training and additional rigor around our submission processes will help to avoid this issue in the future.”

Regards,

Adrian Faull
Senior Vice President,
Local Sales

We commend the Gazette for recognizing its mistakes and for taking immediate corrective action to ensure that an incident like this doesn’t happen again.
‘Are You a Jeweler and a Jew?’: Elderly French Jewish Man Attacked and Robbed in His Paris Apartment by Antisemitic Assailants
The first details have emerged of the terrifying ordeal of a 70-year-old Jewish man in Paris who was beaten, robbed and tied to a chair in his own apartment by antisemitic intruders last week who remain at large.

Two hooded assailants armed with a handgun carried out the attack on Dec. 1, according to a statement on Tuesday from the National Bureau for Vigilance Against Antisemitism (BNVCA), a Paris-based organization that represents victims of antisemitic violence in France.

According to the victim’s account, one of the two assailants was of Arab origin, while the second was of African origin. After banging on the door of the victim’s apartment with their fists before they forced their way in. The assailants rained blows on their victim and then pointed the gun at his temple.

One of the assailants then asked the victim whether he was a “jeweler and a Jew.” The victim replied that while he was not a jeweler, he was indeed a Jew. The assailants then pushed the victim into a chair, asking him repeatedly where the “gold” was kept and warning that if he attempted to raise himself from the chair, “I’ll put a bullet in your head.”

One of the assailants struck the victim’s face with the handgun, leaving him badly bruised and bloodied. After their search for cash and valuables yielded a sum of 250 euros — about $280 — the two assailants tied the victim to his chair with masking tape and then fled. The victim managed to telephone his wife for help. After emergency services arrived, he received treatment for his injuries at a local hospital and was reported to be experiencing “severe pain” in his right eye as a result of one of the blows to his head.
Spanish town until recently called Fort Kill the Jews hit with antisemitic graffiti
A tiny Spanish town that has veered over the centuries from being a refuge for Jews to a rallying cry for their death was defaced with widespread antisemitic graffiti.

Residents of Castrillo Mota de Judíos, a village in Northern Spain, began to discover the graffiti almost as soon as they woke Monday.

They ultimately found vandalism in four locations: on the entrance to the town hall, the signpost on the road entering the village, the planned site for the future Sephardic center and the sign commemorating the town’s sisterhood with the Israeli city of Kfar Vradim.

No Jews live in the town, which has only about 50 inhabitants. The vandals were instead taking aim at the village’s history, and the efforts by its current mayor, Lorenzo Rodriguez, to preserve it.

Originally named Castrillo Motajudíos, or Jew’s Hill Fort, in 1035 when Jews fleeing from a neighboring pogrom settled there. The town was renamed Castrillo Matajudíos — Fort Kill The Jews — in 1627, during a period of extreme religious persecution by the Inquisition.

It wasn’t until June 2015 that the town’s name was restored to Castrillo Mota de Judíos — following a referendum initiated by Rodríguez. Since then, he has worked to restore the town’s Jewish past. His most recent project is the construction of the Center of Jewish Memory of Castilla y León, which is expected to open in 2022 along the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage route undertaken annually by hundreds of thousands of Christians.
Chanukah display in Primrose Hill destroyed in act of vandalism
It has been reported that a Chanukah display in Primrose Hill has been destroyed.

A photograph uploaded on Twitter this morning showed a Chanukiah smashed in half. Rabbi Yossi Baitz, the Chabad rabbi to Kentish-CamdenTown London, told Campaign Against Antisemitism that he placed sandbags over the base of the Chanukiah to hold it in place, which would have then been removed in order to smash over the display.

Rabbi Baitz wrote on Twitter: “Im the Rabbi who worked so hard to put this Menorah as a symbol of light. it breaks my heart to see it vandalized. I promise to put this Menorah again every Hanukkah ,we will never surrender to darkness.”

Police are investigating the incident as a hate crime. If anyone has any information about this incident, please contact us or call the police on 101.
Israeli fintech firm Tipalti soars to over $8b valuation after $270m investment
Israeli fintech firm Tipalti, a developer of payments and compliance solutions, has soared to a valuation of over $8 billion after a fresh $270 million investment, the company announced on Wednesday.

Tipalti, which in Hebrew means “I handled it,” raised $150 million last October at a valuation of $2 billion. This Series F round, led by Swiss multinational G Squared, allowed Tipalti to quadruple its worth following a strong year, the company indicated.

Tipalti said it processes over $30 billion in total annual payments volume, growing 120% year over year. The company was founded in 2011 by Chen Amit, who serves as CEO, offering a cloud-based platform that allows clients to handle financial tasks such as payments to suppliers (accounts payable), tax and VAT compliance, and invoice management, across borders in a range of currencies.

Its customer roster includes Amazon, Twitter, GoDaddy, Vimeo, and GoPro.

London-based hedge fund Marshall Wace joined the funding round as a new investor, as did Morgan Stanley Counterpoint Global. Tipalti’s existing investors Zeev Ventures, Durable Capital Partners, and 01 Advisors, a fund founded by former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and COO Adam Bain, also participated in the investment.
Softbank backs $400m investment in Israeli industrial cybersecurity firm Claroty
Japanese investment giant SoftBank co-led a $400 million investment in Israeli cybersecurity firm Claroty, a maker of software to defend factories and industrial plants from cybersecurity attacks, according to a joint announcement Wednesday.

SoftBank’s Israel operations are headed by former Mossad head Yossi Cohen, who stepped down from the security agency position in June after more than five years on the job. As part of the investment, Cohen will join Claroty’s board of directors.

The new investment comes six months after Claroty raised $140 million, which the company hailed then as the “largest investment ever” within the industrial cybersecurity sector.

Claroty also announced an agreement to acquire Israeli cybersecurity startup Medigate, focused on securing connected medical devices within healthcare provider networks, as it moves forward with a mission “to secure all cyber-physical systems (CPS) across industrial, healthcare, and enterprise environments – the Extended Internet of Things (XIoT).”

The company’s CEO, Yaniv Vardi said Wednesday that by “combining Claroty and Medigate’s deep domain expertise and specialized technologies into a single platform, we will take a giant leap forward on our mission to secure the ever-expanding universe of XIoT for every connected organization.
Israeli drug candidate slows Alzheimer’s-causing protein in mouse brains
Israeli scientists say they have developed a drug that slows protein deposits on the brain that are a cause of Alzheimer’s disease, and say it may also be used for treating some autism cases.

The Tel Aviv University team behind the peer-reviewed research saw an improvement in the symptoms of mice. The biggest success, they say, was a dramatic decrease in the excessive buildup of a protein in the brain called tau. The protein performs important functions in normal brains, but among Alzheimer’s patients it tends to build up excessively, and becomes misfolded and abnormally shaped.

The scientists edited the genomes of the mice to give them a rare developmental disorder called ADNP syndrome, which involves a range of symptoms, many of them close to those of Alzheimer’s.

For years, biochemist Prof. Illana Gozes of Tel Aviv University has been working on an experimental drug for ADNP called NAP, which is based on NAPVSIPQ, a snippet of a protein essential for brain formation.

Now, she has used genome editing techniques to produce mice with ADNP and examine the impact of NAP on the different symptoms. She illustrated a strong reduction in tau buildup, and said that if the same effect is seen in human trials, that could make the drug a good candidate for preventing the onset of Alzheimer’s.
Israeli, German Documentary to Chronicle Massacre of Israeli Athletes at Munich Olympics
The German brand Global Screen has partnered with the Israeli production company Tadmor Entertainment and Israel’s Channel 8 to co-produce a documentary series about the Palestinian terrorist attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, it was announced on Tuesday.

The project, titled “Munich ’72,” is led in part by Ronen Machlis-Balzam, one of Israel’s top television producers, and award-winning Israeli director Roman Shmunov, whose credits include “Back to Chernobyl” and “Babylon Dreamers.”

It will be the first Israeli television series to chronicle what transpired on Sept. 5, 1972, when the Palestinian terrorist group Black September infiltrated the Olympic Village in Munich and abducted and tortured members of the Israeli Olympic team. Eleven Israelis were ultimately murdered.

Shumunov said the three-part documentary “will shed new light on the tragic events of the Munich Olympics, which continue to cast a shadow upon us to this day.”

The series combines real-life documentary footage with fiction. Newly revealed historical information will also be featured, such as declassified conversations among Israel’s Cabinet during the crisis and never-before-seen German documents that share details about what took place in the German crisis room.

“Through interviews with athletes, security personnel, high-ranking politicians, and experts, [the docuseries] will unpack what really happened on this tragic day in a manner that was not possible until now,” Global Screen said in a press release. “The series will reconstruct the terrorists‘ perspectives on the story and understand their thoughts as they planned and carried out the horrific abduction, while also dramatizing newly declassified protocols from both the Israeli and German governments – two paralyzed authorities unable to act while human beings’ lives are on the line.”
Yisrael Medad: A German Knight Learns Hebrew - in 15th Century Jerusalem
From: The Pilgrimage of Arnold von Harff / Knight / from Cologne, through Italy, Syria, Egypt, Arabia, Ethiopia, Nubia, Palestine, Turkey, France and Spain, which he Accomplished in the years 1496-1499 / Translated from the German and edited with notes and an introduction / by Malcolm Letts. 1946. Pages xxxv, 325

Page 218-219: I found also three German Jews in Jerusalem, as also in all heathen and T urkish places. I kept company with them often on account of the language and learnt to write the alphabet, and retained also certain words from their daily speech, as they are written here:
hee delech gymel hath aleph
pe ayn samech nun nun
men men lamed kafif kaff
taff schyn resz kuff
zodick zodick ffe
leherxi,
jojen,
moim,
boissar,
befinna,
betzim,
hometz,
semeii,
tangol,
taiigoles,
daegim,
meela,
toeff,
va,
onoge,
emmes,
kysiff,
Arnold von Harff (1471 in Castell Harff, Bedburg – January 1505) was a German traveler from the 15th century, from Köln. He went on pilgrimage to many countries, collecting both languages and cultural information.
Israeli Astronaut Reveals Dreidel He Will Take Aboard Upcoming ‘Rakia’ Space Mission
Israeli astronaut Eytan Stibbe will bring along a dreidel when he embarks on Israel’s historic “Rakia” space mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

At a Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony in Houston, Texas, on Wednesday, Stibbe showed Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner the dreidel that will travel with him to the ISS on Feb. 21, 2022.

“I told him I would take a dreidel with me to the International Space Station that will allow me to demonstrate the way in which it works in space in conditions of microgravity and no friction that causes it to slow down and stop,” Stibbe said, according to Israel Hayom. “This is also how Earth rotates, without friction and without stopping.”

Stibbe, a businessman and former fighter pilot who will become the second Israeli astronaut to travel into space after the late Ilan Ramon, previously said that he would take on the Rakia mission “a bag filled with items that have a special meaning to me. It was clear to me that one of these items will be a symbol of Jewish history.” In August, it was announced that Stibbe will also bring to space a 1,900-year-old coin dating back to the second Jewish rebellion against Roman rule, known as the Bar Kokhba revolt.

In his speech at the Hanukkah ceremony, Turner praised the Jewish community in Houston and wished Stibbe a successful journey. “As you lift off and go into space, just know that you’re not just representing the State of Israel, but you’re representing humanity. And as they root for you in Israel, we shall root for you from the city of Houston.”









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