Wednesday, July 13, 2022
Blinken invites Abu Akleh family to DC, will raise killing during Biden visit
The Biden administration has invited Shireen Abu Akleh’s family to Washington to “engage directly” with the slain Palestinian-American reporter’s relatives, who have expressed outrage over the US determination that she was not intentionally killed by the IDF during a raid in the West Bank.Meet the Cori Bush Activist Who Wants To Burn Jews Alive
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Israel on Wednesday that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke recently on the phone with members of the Abu Akleh family and extended the invitation.
“The administration, at the president’s direction, has been very much engaged in helping try to determine what exactly happened around the tragic circumstances of her death,” Sullivan said, adding that “this subject will be one of the subjects at play in this visit.”
Abu Akleh was killed on May 11 while covering clashes between IDF soldiers and Palestinian gunmen. The Palestinian Authority said its investigation proved that the Al Jazeera journalist was intentionally targeted and killed by the IDF, while Israel insists there is not enough evidence to draw a definitive conclusion.
After nearly two months, the PA agreed to hand over the bullet used to kill Abu Akleh to US authorities, who proceeded to conduct a forensic examination. On July 4, the State Department announced that the probe had been inconclusive because the bullet was too badly damaged.
Washington added that it had reviewed the separate investigations by Israel and the Palestinian Authority, concluding that she was likely struck by Israeli fire, though it found “no reason to believe that this was intentional.”
Rep. Cori Bush (D., Mo.) spent years cultivating a relationship with a pro-Palestinian activist who once tweeted that she wants to "set Israel on fire with my own hands & watch it burn to ashes along with every Israeli in it."Nine EU states reject Israeli ban on 6 Palestinian NGOs for terror ties
Bush, a member of the far-left "Squad" of lawmakers known for their anti-Israel attitudes, has been working alongside anti-Israel activist Neveen Ayesh since at least 2017, according to information published by Canary Mission, a watchdog group that tracks anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activists online. While Bush has publicly condemned attacks on the Jewish community, her relationship with Ayesh and other anti-Israel activists is drawing accusations that these statements are empty rhetoric.
Ayesh, who has been active in several leading anti-Israel groups, including American Muslims for Palestine, organized a 2020 fundraiser for Bush that featured Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), one of Congress's most vocal opponents of the Jewish state, and Linda Sarsour, an activist who has repeatedly used anti-Semitic rhetoric. An invitation for the fundraiser, titled "Muslims for Cori," is accessible on the ActBlue website, an online donation portal used by Democrats.
The relationship between Ayesh and Bush is raising fresh questions about the congresswoman's support for anti-Israel causes and willingness to partner with individuals who have expressed hatred toward Jewish people.
"Neveen Ayesh has shown support for terror organizations, wants to kill every Israeli, and called being Jewish a crime worthy of the rope," a Canary Mission spokesman told the Washington Free Beacon. "Her anti-Semitism is publicly known information. It was even discussed on the floor of the Missouri House of Representatives. However, Cori Bush had no problem benefiting from a fundraiser organized by Ayesh and enjoys a long-standing relationship with her."
Bush, the watchdog group said, must provide her constituents with "an explanation." A Bush spokesman did not respond to a Free Beacon request for comment on the 2020 fundraiser and the congresswoman's relationship with Ayesh. Bush and Ayesh were pictured together as recently as 2020 and as early as 2017 during a trip to the Middle East.
Ayesh in February defended Hamas, comparing the group's armed resistance against Israel to Ukraine's war against "their oppressors" in Russia. People "somehow have an issue with Palestinians doing the same," she tweeted.
Ayesh has lambasted Israel on social media and wished death upon its citizens, posts that were made before she formed an alliance with Bush. Many of the most controversial tweets have since been deleted but remain archived online, with original screenshots, by Canary Mission.
"I want to set Israel on fire with my own hands & watch it burn to ashes along with every Israeli in it," Ayesh tweeted in February 2014.
"Once again I want to personally set Israel & all the Israelis in it on fire & watch them burn to ashes. Burn you bastards #IHateYou," she wrote one month later.
Nine European states rejected Israel’s designation of six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations, in a joint statement released on Tuesday.
Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden came out against the Israeli decision, announced in October. The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and the Foreign Ministry said then that Palestinian NGOs Addameer, Al-Haq, Bisan Center, Defense for Children International Palestine (DCI-P), Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees (UPWC) had extensive enough ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to be considered branches of the group, designated as terrorists by the US, EU and others.
“No substantial information was received from Israel that would justify reviewing our policy toward the six Palestinian NGOs on the basis of the Israeli decision to designate these NGOs as ‘terrorist organizations,’” the statement reads.
“Should evidence be made available to the contrary, we would act accordingly. In the absence of such evidence, we will continue our cooperation and strong support for the civil society in the [occupied Palestinian territories]. A free and strong civil society is indispensable for promoting democratic values and for the two-state solution.”
Among the items the Israeli government has made public to show the connection between the organizations and the PFLP is a video from the Palestinian Wattan Media Network of leading figures in the NGOs, including Khalida Jarrar and Abdullatif Ghaith of Addameer, Shawan Jabarin of Al-Haq, Gebril Muhamad of Bisan, and Ahmad Sa’adat of the UPWC, at an event in a hall with dozens of PFLP flags hanging.
Background
The event in Ramallah honored PFLP political bureau member Rabah Muhanna, who according to information posted by the PFLP, took part in the establishment of Addameer, UHWC and UAWC.
In 2019, the PFLP planted a bomb, killing 17-year-old Rina Shnerb and injuring her relatives.
"Should evidence be made available to the contrary, we would act accordingly. In the absence of such evidence, we will continue our cooperation and strong support for the civil society in the [occupied Palestinian territories]"
The joint statement
UAWC’s Finance and Administration director Abdul Razeq Farraj was indicted in October 2019 on four counts, including aiding an attempted murder in the terrorist attack on the Shnerb family. Farraj’s indictment refers to Ubai Al-Aboudi, a PFLP member working with Farraj on recruitment, and the UAWC’s Monitoring and Evaluation Officer until April 2019. The commander of the PFLP terror cell that prepared and detonated the bomb was Samer Arbid, and accounted for UAWC at the time of his 2019 arrest.
The Netherlands previously acknowledged the UAWC’s ties to the PFLP, and that Dutch funds paid the salaries of the NGO’s employees that carried out the attack that killed Shnerb.
A Syrian and a Zionist discuss coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. To watch our discussion on the jizya, head over to our Patreon.
Zionist challenged over Gaza siege. pic.twitter.com/Vfm4h7WiRj
— Israel Advocacy Movement (@israel_advocacy) July 13, 2022
Congressional Latino Jewish Caucus Condemns ‘Antisemitic’ Boston Mapping Project
The Latino Jewish Caucus of the US Congress has strongly condemned an online initiative in Boston known as the “Mapping Project,” which highlights the locations of Jewish communal institutions in Massachusetts it claims offer “institutional support for the colonization of Palestine.”Is Generation Woke responsible for antisemitism?
In a statement issued on Tuesday, the caucus — a bipartisan group of 30 legislators of Latino and Jewish origins — said it was “deeply concerned over the targeting of the Jewish Community in Massachusetts by The Mapping Project and find it troubling that this implicit antisemitic attack directed towards our Jewish brothers and sisters has been allowed to happen.”
The legislators emphasized that the project had been launched amid a rise in antisemitic outrages both locally and nationally.
“We have witnessed far too many hate-based attacks on places of worship, businesses, schools, and public facilities, to wait silently for the next incident to take place. Antisemitic attacks have risen by 42 percent in Massachusetts while nationwide there has been a 34 percent uptick,” the caucus stated. It noted as well that the project had “explicitly stated that the intention of its collective mapping is to reveal local Jewish entities and networks to specifically dismantle and disrupt them.”
“As members of the Latino Jewish Caucus, we stand united with the Jewish community in our response to condemn this hate and xenophobic actions that provoke antisemitism, hate motivation, or incitement of violence,” the statement declared.
In a separate development, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) called on the Icelandic company providing online hosting services to the Mapping Project to take the site down.
A tweet from the ADL on Monday disclosed that the company, the Reykjavik-based 1984ehf, had responded to the civil rights organizations’ appeal to remove the Mapping Project site by pointing to its hosting policy — which includes a commitment to “facilitate the freedom of speech,” but also a pledge to “not host those who advocate violence, terror, suppression or hatred” and to “throw out neo-Nazis and racists.”
Yes, Generation Woke is passionate and generally supports human rights, but they too often ignore human rights when it comes to terrorism directed at Jews. It would be beneficial to examine how groups like SJP are funded – to understand why they do what they do – but there is a fundamental lack of transparency on the part of SJP and its donors. If, theoretically, the PFLP is funding SJP, it is directly participating in promoting discrimination and violence against Jews on US campuses.Questions linger after state board closes investigation into Morningstar for anti-Israel bias
In the US, most students have but a cursory understanding of the conflict between Israel and Palestinian Arabs. The combination of magnified voices on social media and being a minority among minorities leaves many Jewish students with a legitimate fear for their safety on many American campuses. Asking American Jewish students to convert the apprehension they are feeling on campus to inspiration is easier said than done, but it is necessary to ensure a safe environment where true education can flourish.
For better or worse, much of the burden to remedy the hostile campus climate falls on the Jewish students in Generation Woke correctly recognizing the progressiveness of Zionism and the State of Israel. By speaking the language of young and idealistic student activists, they can begin improving the situation on the ground.
So, to the Zionist Jews of Generation Woke, we challenge you: call out the next false post a peer uploads on social media about Jewish people and Israel; ask where the antisemites get their funding and organizational assistance, and stand up to biased professors on campus and reach out to organizations like Zachor Legal Institute and Zachor on Campus when you need help for the backlash you may receive. It will not be easy, but it would do wonders for Jewish students who have been silenced for too long. There are many resources available to Jewish students in their fight against campus antisemitism, and it is progressive Jewish students who must wear their identities proudly and recruit non-Jewish students in this true social justice movement, to ensure this is the last generation that has to fight for basic rights on campus.
An Illinois state board tasked with ensuring that public money is not invested in entities that promote boycotts, divestment or sanctions against the State of Israel has faced criticism in recent weeks over its response to a company found to have anti-Israel bias.
In May, a report by the law firm White & Case concluded that Morningstar—a Chicago-based financial-services firm that provides investment overviews to governments, businesses and individuals—had an anti-Israel bias. The report was prompted by the seven-member Illinois Investment Policy Board (IIPB) claiming that one of Morningstar’s acquisitions, Sustainalytics, which informs investors about non-financial criteria including environmental, social and governance (ESG), routinely used problematic criteria and sources that singled-out Israel over human-rights abuses while neglecting serious abuses in other countries. The report included 40 recommendations for Morningstar to implement that would end its anti-Israel activities.
However, following a June 21 board meeting, the board’s chair, Michael Mahoney, told JNS that IIPB’s investigation into JNS was closed by a unanimous decision, and that it appreciated “Morningstar’s openness and transparency on the issue.”
Members of IIPBS’s Israel committee, including its chair, oppose this decision. In an interview with JNS, chair Andy Lappin said that IIPB held two votes on Morningstar’s investigation. The first was to clear Morningstar of wrongdoing, which failed. The second, which passed, was to keep Morningstar off its do-not-invest list subject to Morningstar implementing not only the recommendations from the investigative report but responding to a memo by Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) senior adviser Rich Goldberg, the architect of Illinois’s anti-BDS law, written ahead of the June 21 board meeting.
In Goldberg’s memo, he accused Sustainalytics of serving “as a conduit for the BDS campaign targeting Israel.”
He argues that the White & Case recommendations are superficial and that they don’t address the heart of the matter, which is Sustainalyics’ overreliance on source material from organizations promoting BDS and corporate culture at Sustainalytics which too often defaults to anti-Israel thinking and coziness with BDS proponents.
“There’s is nothing in the White & Case report that provides a blueprint for how they’re going to verify implementation of those recommendations. The Morningstar CEO said in a moment of frustration [at the June 21 meeting] that they just want to get out from under this cloud, that they’ve done what they’ve been asked to do and been transparent. But the FDD findings show completely different conclusions than the White & Case report. It shows major systemic problems that need to be addressed,” said Goldberg.
Samidoun, a Canadian not-for-profit, continues to publicly align itself with a group designated as a terrorist organization by #Canada.°°This week, Samidoun published PFLP propaganda on their website.°°We reiterate our calls to @Safety_Canada to investigate Samidoun. #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/d4JtO5Fy9r
— CIJA (@CIJAinfo) July 12, 2022
BBC promotes ‘chicken and egg’ narrative on Jenin
Several reports about Israeli counter-terrorism operations in the Jenin area have been published on the BBC News website in the past year:Dropping to one knee, a tearful Biden moved by Holocaust survivors at Yad Vashem
BBC NEWS REPORT ON JENIN INCIDENT SIDELINES TERRORISM
BBC DOUBLE STANDARDS ON TERRORISM CREATE HEADLINES NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE
BBC NEWS WEBSITE REPORTING ON AN INCIDENT IN JENIN
BBC REPORT PORTRAYS UK DESIGNATED TERROR GROUP AS ‘MILITANTS’
OMISSIONS IN BBC REPORT ON INCIDENT IN JENIN
A common feature in all those reports (in addition to the BBC’s serial avoidance of the use of the word terror) is their failure to inform audiences on the topic of the formation of the ‘Jenin Battalion’ Joint Operations Room as reported last September.
Additionally – although unsurprisingly given the BBC’s chronic underreporting of internal Palestinian affairs – audiences have seen no serious coverage of the related topic of the Palestinian Authority’s loss of control over that part of Area A, where it is responsible for both civil affairs and security.
On July 12th the BBC News website published a seven-minute filmed report by Tom Bateman titled ‘Jenin in the West Bank: Guns and grief on the rise’ which could have addressed those long-standing omissions but failed to adequately do so.
At 04:15 Bateman tells viewers that the Jenin refugee camp “is now a place where the official Western-backed Palestinian security forces are not welcome, and it is the gunmen here who are in charge”.
Presumably having secured the appropriate permission to “approach individuals or organisations responsible for acts of terror” but without informing viewers who arranged such a meeting, Bateman visits a terrorist’s house and viewers discover that the BBC is in fact well aware of the existence of the ‘Jenin Battalion’.
US President Joe Biden conducted an emotional visit on Wednesday to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, where he honored victims and spoke at length with two survivors.Portraits of Holocaust Survivors Displayed at Paris’ Jardin du Luxembourg on Anniversary of Mass Jewish Roundup
After a welcoming ceremony at Ben Gurion Airport, Biden headed to Yad Vashem, where he rekindled the Eternal Flame in the Hall of Remembrance.
The president also laid a wreath on a slab under which ashes of extermination camp victims are interred.
Biden was flanked during the ceremony by President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Yair Lapid, Defense Secretary Benny Gantz, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Holocaust survivor and Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, and Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan.
Lapid had insisted that Gantz, the son of a Holocaust survivor, be included in the Yad Vashem visit.
After the wreath-laying, a choir sang the song “A Walk to Caesarea,” or “Eli, Eli” written by Hungarian Jewish World War II resistance fighter Hannah Szenes, who was executed in Hungary in 1944.
The emotional climax of the visit was Biden’s warm, extended conversation with two female Holocaust survivors, Rena Quint and Giselle (Gita) Cycowicz. The president told the women to remain seated, then crouched on one knee to speak with them.
Cycowicz was born in 1927 in Chust, which was then part of Czechoslovakia. She was rounded up and confined in the ghetto before being deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and later to forced labor camps, according to Yad Vashem.
The gates of Paris’ famed Jardin du Luxembourg (Luxembourg Garden) are displaying 42 photographs of French Holocaust survivors to mark the 80th anniversary of a mass roundup of Jews that took place in the French capital during the Holocaust.3 arrested as city in upstate New York swamped with antisemitic, racist flyers
The photo exhibit — called “Lest We Forget – N’oublies pas,” and organized by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (Crif) and the French Senate — features portraits by German-Italian artist Luigi Toscano.
The portraits on display feature former concentration and extermination camp deportees, those who successfully hid as children during the Holocaust and children of deportees. Each photo bears a corresponding QR code that visitors can scan to learn more about the survivors and their wartime experiences. The portraits will remain on the gates of the gardens until Aug. 7.
The Vel d’Hiv roundup in Paris from July 16-17, 1942, was organized by French authorities and carried out by French policemen, according to Yad Vashem.
Police conducted mass arrests of Jews living in France, including Jewish foreigners originally from Germany, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia. Over 13,000 Jews were detained at the Vel’ d’Hiv (the Winter Stadium, also known as Velodrome d’Hiver), including more than 4,000 children, before being deported to concentration camps in France. Most of the deportees, as well as the children, were then sent to the Auschwitz extermination camp and murdered.
Three people have been arrested on hate crime charges for blanketing a small upstate New York city with white supremacist pamphlets, authorities said.
The racist, antisemitic literature was left at locations including a synagogue and a largely Black church in Hornell, in New York’s Southern Tier, Police Chief T.J. Murray said Monday in a Facebook statement.
The May 14 shooting that killed 10 Black people about 70 miles away at a supermarket in Buffalo has underscored racist attitudes in the largely white Southern Tier region, near the Pennsylvania border.
Authorities say the white gunman in that shooting drove to Buffalo from his home in the Southern Tier village of Conklin.
In Hornell, the first flyer was discovered stuck to the door of Rehoboth Deliverance Ministries as people began arriving for Sunday morning services, church member Marseena Harmonson told the Evening Tribune of Hornell. The flyer promoted the “Aryan National Army” and included a skull positioned inside a swastika.
Harmonson said church members were alarmed, especially given the recent Buffalo shooting.
“And when you have children, young people, older people, they don’t know what to think,” she said. “A lot of them never experienced anything like this.”
Sept. 27 2001 during Jackson's "Do Zionists control the world" livestream - "an unholy alliance of leftists, capitalists and Zionist supremacists has schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation with the deliberate aim of breeding us out of existence”https://t.co/APGPiAKfyg
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) July 12, 2022
Survey hails Jewish, Israeli aid groups’ Ukraine war response
Jewish aid groups worked well together in responding to the humanitarian crises caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier this year, collaborating with one another instead of competing and helping ensure that Jewish refugees were well cared for, according to a survey published Wednesday.Israel and Austria Sign Strategic Pact to Upgrade Relations, Talk Iran Threat and Antisemitism
When Russia launched its brutal invasion, a wide variety of Jewish groups, some of which were experts in humanitarian aid and others that had only limited experience in the field, were forced to spring into action as Ukrainian cities and towns were bombed. These attacks caused both a massive refugee crisis — the largest in Europe since World War II — as people fled their homes, and major issues for those who wouldn’t or couldn’t leave.
To assess the response of those groups to these crises, the OLAM network of Jewish and Israeli global service, international development and humanitarian aid organizations commissioned a survey, having researchers conduct intensive interviews — with a promise of anonymity — with 25 representatives of 21 organizations. They included the Foreign Ministry’s MASHAV, the Jewish Agency for Israel, World Jewish Relief, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Chabad, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, IsraAID and others. The report was compiled by Rosov Consulting, a company that specializes in giving advice to Jewish organizations.
In addition to assessing past work, the survey also made recommendations for the future. The report called for Jewish groups to stake out roles for different groups in advance, to maintain healthy finances to ensure both day-to-day operations and emergency responses, to learn to cooperate with grassroots operations, and to invest in local networks.
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid and Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer on Tuesday signed a “comprehensive” strategic partnership to boost cooperation in areas including security, cyber and counter-terrorism, and green tech.Israel Independence Day observed in Bahrain for first time
“Signing this agreement is an important moment in the great history we have between our peoples, which will take relations between Israel and Austria to new heights,” Lapid stated at the signing ceremony in Tel Aviv.
The two leaders first met privately and then held an expanded meeting with staff, during which Lapid thanked Nehammer for his support of Israel in both the European Union and multilateral fora.
They discussed security challenges as well as regional issues, with a focus on threats posed by Iran and talks to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement between Tehran and world powers, several rounds of which were hosted in Vienna before reaching an impasse.
The pair also spoke about Russia’s war in Ukraine and its implications for the Middle East, and steps to deepen Israeli-Austrian cooperation to fight antisemitism and preserve the memory of the Holocaust. The visit comes after Nehammer in January apologized on behalf of Austria to Lapid for the crimes committed at the Nazis’ Mauthausen concentration camp.
Lapid recounted that when he was asked after taking office as caretaker prime minister to name the most exciting moment over the past year, his answer was ready: “The most emotional moment I had — was with you in Mauthausen concentration camp when you told me that on behalf of the people of Austria, you apologize for the killing of my grandfather who died there.”
More than four hundred guests, including Bahraini government officials and business leaders, attended the Israeli Embassy's Independence Day event on Thursday evening, May 26, to celebrate the close relationship that has developed between the countries since the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020.Arab airlines to screen film about Portuguese Inquisition’s persecution of Jews
Israeli actor and singer Tsahi Halevi, who starred in the hit television show Fauda, and Chef Doron Sasson participated in the program. Bahrain's Ministry of Interior's band played the Israeli and Bahraini national anthems. The event marks the first time that Israel has held a National day event in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, which include Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
This is the first such event of its kind following the opening of the embassy by then-Foreign Minister Yair Lapid in September 2021. Ambassador Eitan Na'eh, Israel's first Ambassador to the Kingdom, arrived in November 2021.
The evening focused on the advancement of the relationship between the two countries and included a recorded message from then-Foreign Minister Lapid and speeches from Ambassador Dr. Sheikh Abdallah bin Ahmad Al Khalifa, Undersecretary in Bahrain's Foreign Ministry and Israeli Ambassador Na'eh, plus a musical performance by Halevi. Chef Sasson prepared a special menu for the evening, offering a fusion of Bahraini and Israeli dishes. ״ "I'm going to bring Israeli food to Bahrain at its best using the local products," he said.
Heads of major companies from Israel's oil and gas, cyber, manufacturing, fintech, high-tech, pharmaceutical/ biotech and logistics sectors were in attendance. Speeches highlighted the business, cultural and people-to-people opportunities between Israel and Bahrain.
Airlines from a number of Arabic-speaking countries have acquired the rights to show a film about the Portuguese Inquisition in Porto.Monty Norman, British Jewish ‘James Bond’ theme composer, dies at 94
Qatar Airways, Iraqi Airways, Kuwait Airways, Egyptair, Middle East Airlines from Lebanon, Syrian Airlines and others now have the rights to show 1618, a film about the Portuguese Inquisition in the city of Porto, which took place 120 years after Portuguese Jews were forcibly converted to Christianity or coerced into exile.
The film was produced by the Jewish community of Porto and sold to the air carriers as part of a program to combat antisemitism by telling the story of the city’s Jewish community.
1618 is about the lives of Porto’s so-called “New Christians” who were severed from the Judaism of their ancestors. In particular, it follows the story of 100 so-called “New Christians” who were imprisoned by the representatives of the Inquisition, which frightened the rest of the community into fleeing.
The film will be released in September 2022 with a premiere to be held in Porto.
With a single driving guitar riff, the man born as Monty Noserovitch changed pop-culture forever — although he had to fight to get the credit for it.James Caan was a proud Zionist actor
British Jewish composer Monty Norman, who died Monday at the age of 94, wrote the original version of the James Bond theme, one of the most enduring compositions in movie history.
Born to Jewish Latvian immigrant parents in London’s East End in 1928, Norman first made a name for himself as a songwriter for early British rock groups and West End musicals, and as one half of a music-comedy double act with Benny Hill. He was an accomplished singer in his own right, too.
Then film producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli called Norman in 1962 to compose the theme music for the film adaptation of Ian Fleming’s novel Dr. No, and convinced him to take the job by offering him and his wife, actress Diana Coupland, an all-expenses-paid trip to the film’s shooting location in Jamaica.
“His sexiness, his mystery, his ruthlessness — it’s all there in a few notes.”
Monty Norman on the James Bond theme
First James Bond movie
The thriller, starring Sean Connery, was the first big-screen adventure for superspy James Bond, and it needed a distinctive bit of music to match. According to reports, Norman repurposed a piece he had written for a planned musical adaptation of a V.S. Naipaul novel, changing the sitar melody to an electric guitar.
“His sexiness, his mystery, his ruthlessness — it’s all there in a few notes,” Norman would later say about how the theme represented Bond.
The song has been used in 25 Bond films to date, as the franchise spanned half a century and multiple lead actors to become one of the highest-grossing film series of all time. The latest entry, 2021’s No Time To Die, grossed more than $750 million worldwide.
The Legacy Of Caan
Jimmy Caan will live on in our favorite films. His death teaches all of us three valuable lessons:
-In a time of horrible Black-White relations, I suggest in memory of James Caan, watch Brian’s Song and learn how Brian Piccolo and Gale Sayers made history living together and loving each other.
-James Caan loved his craft. He didn’t want to be a politician. He had the clout, money and friends to have a republican voice, but chose not to. His conservative views weren’t a secret, but he felt actors should be actors and politicians should have political voices.
-James Caan was born a Jew and died a Jew. He wasn’t religious and had children born to non-Jewish mothers. Caan said he loved Israel and didn’t like people who didn’t. Too many performers today, including Jewish stars, feel they have to abandon the Jewish state or support anti-Jewish issues like critical race theory, and a curriculum that supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.
My favorite role of James Caan was when he portrayed Jewish showman and lyricist Billy Rose in Funny Lady. The 1975 film was the sequel to Funny Girl, focusing on Rose’s marriage to Fanny Brice. It was a role in which Caan could find similarities to his own life. Both men were Jewish, born and educated in public schools in New York and both were respected showmen.
Billy Rose founded the Billy Rose Sculpture Garden at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Israel. For a while, Caan left acting and taught a masterclass at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Rest In Peace, James Caan, and as we say in Jewish: May Your Neshoma (soul) Have An Aliyah (prayer).
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