Friday, July 15, 2022
Yair Rosenberg: Why Does America Support Israel?
Walter Russell Mead is not Jewish, but he knows more about Jews than most Jews. The son of an Episcopal priest from South Carolina, Mead is the Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College, and previously taught foreign policy at Yale, a subject about which he has written several books. But when we first met, some 10 years ago, he wanted to tell me about the Blackstone Memorial.New initiative aims to change anti-Israel discourse among black Americans
The Blackstone Memorial was a petition presented to President Benjamin Harrison in 1891. It was signed by 431 prominent Americans, including J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, future President William McKinley, the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and numerous congresspeople, as well as several notable organizations, including the Washington Post and New York Times. What urgent message did this star-studded manifesto convey to the American president? It was a plea to return the Jewish people to their historic homeland in the Middle East. Far removed from the work of Jewish activists, it was compiled years before the Jewish writer Theodor Herzl would kick off the modern Zionist movement. Mead had come across the remarkable document in the course of researching what would eventually become his next book.
A decade later, he has finally published the results of his inquiry into the historical roots of American support for Israel. The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People tells the story of the non-Jewish relationship to the Jewish state from before its founding to the present day. Part original scholarship, part counterintuitive history, part meditation on American identity, part debunking of anti-Jewish conspiracies, there is nothing quite like it. If I could force people to read one book about America and Israel, it would be this one.
It’s also quite topical. Yesterday, President Joe Biden arrived in Israel, kicking off the latest visit by an American president to the tiny country. If history is any guide, the trip will occasion the same rehashed talking points about the U.S.-Israel relationship, its origins, and its merits. Mead’s book is the antidote to this stale sermonizing. You will learn more from it than from most of the contemporary coverage.
In advance of Biden’s trip, I sat down with Mead to talk about why Zionism succeeded in spite of the preferences of many Jews, how Israel won its independence with repurposed Nazi weapons, and how an imaginary planet explains why so many people believe that Jews control America.
A new peace initiative aims to counter the racialization of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict currently dominant in North American discourse.David Singer: PLO & Hamas give silent nod to Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine
The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs has partnered with the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel to fight the anti-Israel narrative that has swept across America and is being further spread by anti-Israel groups such as Black Lives Matter and antisemitic figures like Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
The intensifying crisis between African-Americans and Jews – both in the United States and when it comes to Israel – has reached dangerous heights. Farrakhan calls Jews and Israel "Satan," and the BLM movement and its self-avowed Marxist-Leninist leaders have triggered a tsunami of antisemitic incidents across America in general and among black Americans specifically.
Now, IBSI wants to reclaim the community from BLM, and to that end is partnering with the JCPA to restore the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and to effectively neutralize BLM's efforts to turn the blacks against Israel.
As per the JCPA, before this initiative, "no think tank or policy institute in Israel has analyzed and offered policy solutions to this serious challenge to Israel and the global Jewish community."
Attorney Olga Meshoe Washington, a board member of IBSI and a US-based pro-Israel activist, spoke on a panel at the JCPA on Monday with the founder and CEO of IBSI Pastor Dumisani Washington (her father-in-law) joining via Zoom. They discussed possible solutions, including their policy partnership with the JCPA and its counter-political warfare program under the direction of senior JCPA scholar Dan Diker, former CEO of the World Jewish Congress.
Washington slammed BLM for turning black Americans against Israel and hijacking the claim of apartheid, racializing Israel's conflict with the Palestinians when, in fact, it has nothing to do with race.
Her goal is for blacks to reclaim their own identity and empower themselves. She explained that by educating young people, IBSI can bring about a change in the mentality among the public, as well as the attitude of diplomats toward Israel at, for instance, the United Nations.
She lambasted the UN Human Rights Council for obsessing over the Palestinians when, at present, Africa is the focus of international terrorism.
She also fretted that African leaders contribute wrongly to the conversation about Israel, the BDS movement, racism, and Zionism when they accuse Israel of being an apartheid state.
The first meeting in six years between PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Algeria this week saw these two protagonists for leadership of the Palestinian Arabs failing to take the opportunity to condemn a Saudi Arabian proposal to unify Jordan, Gaza and parts of the 'West Bank' into one territorial entity.
The justification for this ground- breaking merger was eloquently expressed by its author – Ali Shihabi – a close confidante of Saudi Arabia’s next King – Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman – in a recent article headlined “ The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine” published in Al Arabiya News - owned by the Saudi Royal Family:
“Jordanians and Palestinians are as similar as any people can be. They are Sunni Arabs from the same neighbourhood. Merging them will not create any long-term ethnic or sectarian fault lines.”
The Saudi proposal made the following hard-hitting truths that would have previously attracted outright condemnation and rejection by both the PLO and Hamas:
-Israel is a reality firmly implanted on the ground that has to be accepted, however grudgingly, by the region around it
-Justice, however, does not make history; hard power does—and Palestinian Arabs must reconcile themselves to this painful reality and move forward with their lives without being held back by false hopes and illusions.
-[The] illusion of “return” has served some Arab regimes’ interests by giving them a powerful excuse to avoid integrating Palestinian Arab refugees as citizens, particularly in Lebanon and even Jordan, both of which have millions of disenfranchised once Palestinian Arabs in their camps. These regimes feared that these refugees-cum-citizens would alter their demographics and threaten their ruling order. Consequently, the excuse given was that since the Palestinian Arabs would eventually return to 'Palestine', giving them citizenship would technically undermine their “right of return” and hence they should be denied citizenship. Palestinian Arab leaders actively colluded in perpetuating this tragedy.
-The Palestinian Arab problem can only be solved today if it is redefined. The issue in this day and age for people should be not so much the ownership of ancestral land but more the critical need to have a legal identity—a globally respected citizenship that allows a person to operate in the modern world. Labor in this day and age is mobile and having citizenship in a country that facilitates such mobility is critical to human development.
Biden lands in Jeddah, set to announce more Saudi steps toward Israel normalization
US President Joe Biden landed in Saudi Arabia Friday evening on what was the first flight by an American leader from Israel to Jeddah for a two-day trip during which efforts to integrate Israel further into the region will feature prominently.New Russian law may make Jewish, Israeli orgs 'foreign agents'
Upon walking off of Air Force One, Biden was greeted by Makkah Province Governor Khalid Al Faisal along with Saudi Ambassador to the US Reema Bandar Al Saud. He boarded his motorcade shortly thereafter and headed to the Al Salam Royal Palace for a meeting with King Salman followed by a bilateral with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and other ministers.
In a highly anticipated interaction, Biden fist-bumped the crown prince who greeted him outside the palace. The president greeted Israeli leaders the same way upon deplaning in Tel Aviv in what was seen as part of the White House’s COVID precautions, but then speculated as part of Biden’s effort to avoid having to shake hands with the Saudi leader who the CIA found was responsible for ordering the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
In a press gaggle aboard Air Force One en route to Jeddah, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan indicated that there would be additional announcements vis-à-vis Israeli-Saudi ties during the visit, which came hours after Riyadh announced that it would open its airspace to all civilian airliners, including Israeli ones.
“We will have things to say on issues related to promoting peace in the region,” Sullivan told reporters.
However, he declined to say whether direct flights between Israel and Saudi Arabia for Muslim pilgrims will be announced on the president’s trip, saying he would leave it up to Riyadh to reveal as it is the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques.
Russia has expanded its definition of "foreign agents," and it will now include "those who take part in any activity that authorities determine goes against Russia’s national interests or who receive support of any kind, not just money, from abroad," according to the Moscow Times.From Ruffalo to Rogen, the Celebs Who Have Spread the Biggest Lies About Israel
In this case, Jewish representatives from the Jewish Agency or representatives of international Jewish organizations may be categorized as "foreign agents."
According to the Moscow Times, which quoted the new law, "anyone who has worked with a 'foreign agent' or received funding from one will be included in a new Justice Ministry list of people and groups 'affiliated with foreign agents.'
The Jerusalem Post reported exclusively last week that the Jewish Agency has been under investigation by Russian officials for the past three years, during which information and hardware from their offices were examined closely.
In a letter sent to the Jewish Agency this week, revealed exclusively by Post, the Agency received a list of what the Russian Justice Ministry sees as violations of the law and the consequences of these violations. As reported, a senior Israeli diplomatic official said that “Russia has claimed that the Jewish Agency illegally collected information about Russian citizens.”
As every organization would do, especially ones that promote immigration to another country, the Jewish Agency’s offices in Russia collect information about people who apply for aliyah or who participate in their activities.
The fear is that if the Agency has already been under investigation, the new law will create an impossible situation for Jewish and Israeli organizations to work in Russia.
Hollywood actor Mark Ruffalo once again displayed his breathtaking ignorance when he claimed that the death of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank city of Jenin was part of a pattern of “state sanctioned killings,” and not the result of a firefight between Islamist terrorists and the Israeli military, as the evidence points to.
This isn’t the first time, of course, that Ruffalo has made controversial comments about the Jewish state. Last year, he issued an apology after having accused Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza during the Hamas-initiated May war.
Taking to Twitter, the film star announced that he had “reflected” on his posts and said the word genocide — defined as the mass extermination of a particular group of people — was “not accurate” and “disrespectful,” while acknowledging that it was being used to “justify antisemitism.”
He also claimed that it was “time to avoid hyperbole” — a lesson that, judging by his latest intervention, he did not take to heart.
Sadly, Ruffalo is not alone in the celebrity world when it comes to espousing inflammatory rhetoric about Israel.
From model Bella Hadid posting cartoons to her millions of followers that suggest Israel is a land of colonizers, to adult film actress Mia Khalifa quaffing Nazi-era champagne while condemning Israel as an “apartheid” state, the rich and famous cannot help but get their facts wrong as they relate to the thorny, complicated issue of Israeli-Palestinian affairs.
Here are some of the most notable infamous anti-Israel statements made by A-listers.
WATCH: Who's more tolerant? @AmiHorowitz investigates.
— PragerU (@prageru) July 14, 2022
Let us know what you think about this short documentary:https://t.co/g58Idi3aMo pic.twitter.com/2wI3e7rgc8
Roberts: "Bush, has the ongoing financial and electoral support of Neveen Ayesh and other activists who openly call for antisemitic terrorism and violence against Jews and the State of Israel. Cori’s antisemitic friends will be hosting another fundraiser for her this Saturday."
— Canary Mission (@canarymission) July 14, 2022
Ice cream drama scoop: Ben & Jerry's proposes mediation with Unilever
Ben & Jerry's and its parent, consumer products company Unilever, plan to seek mediation over the disputed sale of the ice cream maker's Israeli business to a local licensee.
In a letter dated Thursday, a lawyer for Ben & Jerry's said the companies wanted to "attempt to resolve their dispute through expedited formal mediation" instead of litigating, and would use "best efforts" to finish within two weeks.
The letter was filed just 20 minutes before a scheduled hearing on the matter in Manhattan federal court.
Lawyers for Ben & Jerry's and Unilever did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Ben & Jerry's opposes selling its products in Judea and Samaria, saying it would undermine its brand and the "social integrity" built since Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield founded the company in a renovated Vermont gas station in 1978.
On July 5, it sued to block the sale of the Israeli business to the licensee Avi Zinger, saying Unilever had guaranteed Ben & Jerry's the right to protect its brand when buying the company in 2000.
Unilever countered that it was "fully empowered" to conduct the sale, which could not be undone because it has already closed.
It also said Ben & Jerry's could not show irreparable harm, and that prolonging the impasse risked exposing both companies to further "intense public criticism."
Lessons from @BenJerrysIsrael victory:
— Shahar Azani (@ShaharAzani) July 15, 2022
1. BDS isn’t about building bridges ??It’s about destroying them.
2. Viral posts for Israel aren’t enough. It’s about jobs & bottom line??
3. Leave our ice cream alone??
4. Keep fighting for ???? #justice & never lose hope!
So sweet ???? pic.twitter.com/hwUklWy6rG
Warwick professor who praised comment linking Zionism with Nazis is cleared of antisemitism by University
A University of Warwick professor who praised a comment linking Zionism with Nazis as “a good point” has been cleared of antisemitism by the University.BREAKING: ANTISEMITE WHO HARASSED ME FOR YEARS IMPRISONED
In a video clip of an online lecture organised by the Institute for Palestinian Studies, Professor Virinder Kalra appears to read out a comment that states: “It is important to point out that Zionists were the only group that broke the Jewish boycott of the Nazis, that many Nazis called themselves Zionists since that would accomplish their ideology of cleansing Europe of Jews.”
Prof. Kalra described this remark as “a good point” and “an important comment”.
Additionally, he remarked that the International Definition of Antisemitism is “opening a very slippery slope in terms of any criticism of state violence suddenly becomes a criticism of a particular group.”
This incident is particularly troubling given that Prof. Kalra was the individual assigned to lead the antisemitism investigation into the controversial Warwick lecturer Dr Goldie Osuri, whom he cleared of any wrongdoing.
In a lecture on 11th November 2019, Dr Osuri posited in a recording obtained by Campaign Against Antisemitism that “the next time they say that the Labour Party is antisemitic, you know there are some people that are possibly antisemitic, but this idea that the Labour Party is antisemitic is very much an Israeli lobby kind of idea.”
Her conspiratorial comments, alluding to supposed outsized Israeli power and interference in British politics, and dismissal of antisemitism in Labour as a smear, left Jewish students outraged.
I experienced four years of antisemitic abuse from Nicholas Nelson of Cambridgeshire.
Despite being found guilty of such crimes for the THIRD time, Nelson was initially spared jail. However, during today’s review by the Court of Appeal, that lenient decision has been overturned.
Nicholas Nelson’s racial harassment, which included calls for another Holocaust, the glorification of terrorist organisation Hamas, as well as perverted sexual fantasies involving Adolf Hitler, started anonymously. In one of his comments today the judge stated, “For the avoidance of doubt, the fear of violence being perpetrated against Lee was entirely rational and justifiable.”
The judge also stated that the harassment was “some of the worst kind imaginable…about as low as it can get… the most despicable of all in a crowded field”, and noted that it had a “chilling effect” on my life and livelihood.
With the help of Campaign Against Antisemitism and the esteemed libel lawyer, Mark Lewis, we exposed Nelson’s identity and kickstarted a prosecution, which has now reached an appropriate conclusion.
The criminally antisemitic Jeremy Corbyn fanatic, Nicholas Nelson, is now going to prison for eighteen months.
Tweet was deleted, but no Biggie pic.twitter.com/3mSRh58z7J
— RIDESTHEQ46 (@ridestheq46) July 15, 2022
Hate soars at UK schools: Classroom antisemitism triples in five years, report says
Antisemitic incidents at secondary schools have almost trebled over the past five years, according to a bombshell new report.
The findings, published today exclusively in the JC, also reveal that almost no schools have policies to combat the tide of hate.
More than 1,000 incidents have been uncovered by an unprecedented large-scale investigation using Freedom of Information requests.
These included 76 instances judged so serious teachers reported them to police. There were 13 physical assaults.
The alarming report also revealed that fewer than one in 20 schools have a policy to deal with antisemitism.
Both Tory and Labour politicians reacted to the findings by calling for the Government to introduce mandatory antisemitism policies at all schools.
Researchers at the Henry Jackson Society think tank made FoI submissions to more than 3,000 secondary schools in England.
Of these, 1,314 schools — about 40 per cent — responded.
A bargain! https://t.co/LUHhLYpPWB
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) July 15, 2022
Half of Holocaust-related posts on Telegram deny or distort facts, UN says
Around half the public content related to the Holocaust on the Telegram messaging service denies or distorts facts about the killing of six million of Europe's Jews in the Holocaust, according to a new study by the United Nations cultural agency.The BBC ME editor’s portrayal of ‘international law’
The UNESCO report found that 80% of public German-language messages about the Nazi genocide during World War Two denied or distorted facts, and the same was true for 50% of English- and French-language posts about the Holocaust.
The research analyzed 4,000 Holocaust-related posts across five top social media platforms, and found denial or distortion in 19% of content on Twitter, 17% on TikTok, 8% on Facebook and 3% on Instagram.
The report defined distortion as posts that celebrated the genocide, smeared or blamed its victims, equated it to other events such as Israeli policy towards Palestinians, or omitted facts about Nazi perpetrators and their collaborators.
Asked about the report, a Telegram spokesperson said: "Telegram is a platform for free speech where people are welcome to peacefully express their opinions, including those we do not agree with."
The spokesperson said posts that glorified or encouraged violence or its perpetrators were forbidden, and removed through moderation or user reports.
Launched in 2013, Dubai-based Telegram is active in 155 countries, according to tech website Backlinko. Other social media companies mentioned in the report did not respond to requests for comment.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement: "We must never forget how easily hate speech can turn to hate crime; how ignorance or indifference can lead to intolerance; or how silence in the face of bigotry is complicity,"
It has been a while since Jeremy Bowen was last in Israel but early on July 13th – some twelve hours before the US president’s Middle East visit was due to commence – the BBC News website published a piece on that topic credited to “BBC Middle East editor, Jerusalem”.
Titled ‘Joe Biden heads to Middle East amid faltering US sway’, the article promotes Bowen’s pre-emptory framing of the visit, focusing mostly on Saudi Arabia and Iran.
However, readers also find the following highlighted statement:
“When he [Biden] visited Jerusalem as Barack Obama’s vice-president, he was humiliated by the former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he called for a freeze on Israel’s settlement projects for Jews in the occupied territories, which are illegal under international law.”
As we have documented on countless occasions, the BBC usually qualifies its claims concerning ‘international law’, with the preferred formula going along the lines of:
“The settlements are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.”
As has been noted here in the past, that more or less standard insert does not include a definitive cited source underpinning the claim of illegality and no explanation is given regarding the legal basis for alternative opinions to the one promoted. The claim is erroneously presented as being contested solely by the government of Israel, thereby erasing from audience view the existence of additional legal opinions which contradict the BBC’s chosen narrative and hence breaching its own editorial guidelines on impartiality.
Who wants to see 100%, unequivocal, evidence of @BowenBBC’s anti-Israel bias?
— Self Declared Zionists (@SussexFriends) July 15, 2022
Today, BBC correspondent @tombateman correctly stated that #ShireenAbuAkleh was killed ‘during an Israeli raid’
Last night Bowen claimed Israel ‘killed her’.
Same channel, same story, 2 versions! pic.twitter.com/y8VHAsYCqh
US State Department Announces Lipstadt Visit to Argentina and Chile
The US State Department announced on Thursday plans for US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt to travel to South America, making stops in Argentina and Chile.Documentary Examines Photos Taken by Inmates at Nazi Concentration Camp as Act of Resistance
According to a news release, Lipstadt intends to discuss with Jewish communities, government officials and civil society representatives “actionable strategies and opportunities to counter antisemitism, which is fundamental in advancing human rights.”
In Argentina, she will participate in a ceremony commemorating the July 18, 1994, bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and injured more than 300 — making it one of the deadliest attacks on Jews in the last half-century. She is then scheduled to travel to Chile, where she will meet with the Jewish communal representatives and other officials to address rising antisemitism in the country.
Photographs clandestinely taken by a handful of prisoners inside Nazi concentration camps in Poland and Germany are the focus of a new documentary opening in select theaters on Friday.Mass Graves of 8,000 Nazi Victims from World War II Found in Polish Forest
In the Polish, French and German-language film “From Where They Stood,” director Christophe Cognet “retraces the footsteps of these courageous men and women in a quest to unearth the circumstances and the stories behind their photographs, composing as such an archeology of images as acts of defiance,” according to the documentary’s official synopsis.
In at least five of the camps covered — Dachau, Mittelbau-Dora, Buchenwald, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Ravensbrück — inmates managed to secretly take pictures from the spring of 1943 until the autumn of 1944. Not all the photographers or their subjects survived the Holocaust, but the images provide first-hand documentation of the daily lives of those imprisoned by the Nazis.
Each photo featured in “From Where They Stood” is discussed in terms of the event depicted, the men and women behind the camera, and the risks taken to capture the images. Cognet visited the sites of the former concentration camps, trying to find the exact locations shown in each photo, while historians and experts explain the pictures and their contexts.
According to Greenwich Entertainment, it is the first film to directly address the secret photographs taken in the Nazi camps.
“Photographs are a physical, material trace of what was. At the same time, they’re an opportunity to present again to our eyes the people and places that were photographed,” said Cognet. “It has often been noted that photography, like cinema, records [as said by French poet Jean Cocteau] ‘death at work.'”
Two mass graves containing the ashes of at least 8,000 Poles killed by the Nazis during World War II were recently discovered in a forest in Poland by archeologists and anthropologists from the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), reported the Associated Press.600-year-old Jewish cemetery in Turkey vandalized, graves destroyed
Speeches and a wreath-laying ceremony organized by the institute took place this week at the site of the mass graves in the Bialuty Forest, about 100 miles north of Warsaw. At least 17 tons of ashes were found in two 10-foot-deep pits. The victims of the forest executions were mostly inmates of the Soldau Nazi concentration camp, in the Polish town of Działdowo, who were killed between 1940 and 1944, said IPN experts.
In the spring of 1944, Nazis excavated the bodies of the victims they killed in the forest, and the corpses were “burned and pulverized in order to prevent this crime from ever being known, in order to prevent anyone taking responsibility for it,” IPN head Karol Nawrocki said on Wednesday. The Nazis ordered other prisoners, mostly Jewish, to take care of the cover-up before they were also killed.
An estimated 30,000 people were held captive at Soldau. Nearly half of the inmates there between 1939 and 1945 were shot dead or killed by starvation, illnesses and mistreatment, according to IPN.
A total of 36 tombstones were destroyed in the Jewish Hasköy Cemetery in Istanbul Turkey in an act of vandalization on Thursday night, according to a tweet by an official Jewish community account.Brooklyn Hasidic man gang beaten in front of five-year-old son
According to the report, the incident took place on Thursday at midnight, and the relevant authorities have been informed.
Ibrahim Kalin, a spokesman on behalf of Turkey's President has condemned the vandalism in the Jewish cemetery, calling it a "heinous attack."
"We will never allow those who attack sacred values to try and sow seeds of strife and enmity in our society," Kalin added.
The Ashkenazi rabbi of Turkey, Rabbi Mendy Chitrik, told The Jerusalem Post on Friday that he was sure that "the Jewish community in Turkey, headed by Chief Rabbi Hakham Bashi, Rabbi Ishak Haleva, together with the Turkish authorities, will deal with the issue in the best way, and ensure that such cases do not happen again."
Chitrik explained that the cemetery in question is 600 years old and is located in the center of Istanbul, with a main highway now cutting through and above it.
According to the Turkish Jewish community's official website, Hasköy is one of the oldest districts where Jews used to live and one of the older still-used Jewish cemeteries is located there. Over the many centuries that the Hasköy Cemetery has been in use, the size of the burial grounds has been significantly reduced, in part due to earthquakes and in part due to the destructive intrusions of private people and official authorities.
A Hasidic man was brutally beaten by a group of three men on Wednesday in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn.
The victim, who has been identified as Crown Heights community activist Yosef Hershkop, reportedly got into an altercation with the perpetrators after hitting their car while trying to park on Montgomery Street, according to COLlIive.
The three men proceeded to follow Hershkop as he looked for another parking spot and eventually caught up with him. Hershkop initially spoke to the men, who demanded money for the damage done to their vehicle. Violence ensued after Hershkop suggested filing a police report, Hamodia reported.
The assault on Hershkop
As seen in the video, the three men punched Hershkop multiple times as he sat in his car before another man crossed the street and appeared to deescalate the situation. A neighborhood patrol volunteer who interacted with the victim shortly after the beating told Hamodia that Hershkop’s face was “busted up” and that he was in a state of shock, unable to speak coherently. The victim’s 5-year-old son was in the car during the attack, per COLlive.
Crown Heights Shomrim tweeted that “Our volunteers responded to a brutal assault by a few thugs. Despite a fast response the victim was in shock and wasn't able to give details.
Heerak Christian Kim (@Heerak4Congress), an unhinged antisemite, ran for election to the U.S. Congress in Virginia's 8th Congressional District. Thankfully, he lost in the vote on May 21 2022. Why was this vile anti-Jewish extremist a candidate for @GOP in the first place? pic.twitter.com/X3PQxMNJ0P
— Never Again (@Never_Again2020) July 14, 2022
“We’re gonna be goin’ hunting for Jews next”- Ethan Schmidt-Crockett (Phoenix, AZ)
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) July 15, 2022
Ethan recently said he hunted LGBT supporters & already faces 6 months in jail for harassing a cancer wig shop.
His next court appearance is August 15th at Mesa Municipal Court. pic.twitter.com/dKvstFh16b
A Jewish girl disguises herself as a Christian to evade the Holocaust in ‘My Name Is Sara’
Sara Guralnick Shapiro survived the Holocaust by disguising herself as a Christian and working for a family of Ukrainian farmers. She then went on to live a long and prosperous life as a member of Detroit’s Jewish community.Israel’s Biggest-Budget Film About Egyptian Army’s 1948 Raid on Kibbutz Streams on Netflix
Her story is incredible on its own merits, and it’s hardly surprising that someone might one day want to make a film about it. “My Name Is Sara,” the latest dramatic production by the USC Shoah Foundation, is now seeing a nationwide rollout three years after it was made.
The foundation has recently broadened its mandate from backing documentary works about the Holocaust to dramatizations, including the recent HBO film “The Survivor.” “My Name is Sara” follows the young Sara (first-time Polish actor Zuzanna Surowy) as she and her brother, Moishe, flee the Nazis in 1942, the rest of their family having already been slaughtered. At Moishe’s suggestion, the two split up and Sara, under a fake name, throws herself at the mercy of a farming couple. She wards off their immediate suspicions that she is a Jew by successfully performing the sign of the cross; later, for her first meal under their roof, she enthusiastically eats a plate of pork.
Her ruse an early success, Sara and her story quickly fade into the background as the domestic drama of the farmers (played by Michalina Olszanska and Eryk Lubos) takes center stage. In addition to marital problems, they’re also struggling to make ends meet as they are harassed and intimidated by both Soviet “liberators” and violent Jewish partisans, with Nazis also glimpsed from time to time. It’s a thread of potential interest to budding historians curious about how Eastern Europe’s non-Jewish working class fared under World War II’s occupying forces, but less relevant when it comes to understanding Jewish survival.
Israel’s largest-budget film to date, inspired by true events surrounding the Egyptian Army’s deadly 1948 raid on the kibbutz Nitzanim, will premiere Friday on Netflix.45 years on, Vietnamese refugees are still writing their story in Israel
Directed and written by Avi Nesher, “Image of Victory” is about an Egyptian filmmaker who documents a raid on Nitzanim. When the isolated kibbutz learns of the impending army raid, a young Israeli mother named Mira has to make a difficult decision as war approaches her family’s home.
The attack on Nitzanim, in which 33 people were killed and more than 100 kibbutz members and Israeli soldiers taken as prisoners, took place less than a month after Israel’s establishment. Mira Ben Ari became a heroic figure for sending her toddler son away to safety while she stayed behind to fight against the Egyptian forces.
“Mira Ben Ari was a remarkable woman and this is a tribute to her strength and her unflappable individuality,” Nesher said. “She was a person of uncommon vitality who brought out the best in those around her, and lived life on her own terms… a truly extraordinary soul.”
“These young men and women from both sides fall prey to their superiors’ agendas and they are left to bear the true cost of the conflict,” he continued.
Tongi Noyan, 28, works as a real estate broker in Tel Aviv. He speaks perfect Hebrew, with no accent, and a casual observer might initially assume–given his Asian appearance–that he is a Jew from some far-flung corner of the Diaspora. Or perhaps a recent convert.
“I often get mistaken for Filipino or Bene Menashe [Indian Jew from the Burmese border],” he told JNS with a chuckle. “But older folks are more familiar with the story of how Prime Minister Menachem Begin gave us, the Vietnamese, asylum in the 1970s.”
From 1977 to 1979, Begin permitted entry to around 360 of the so-called Vietnamese “boat people,” in the aftermath of the Communist takeover of the Southeast Asian nation. At the time, Begin justified his actions by citing parallels with Jews struggling to find refuge during the Holocaust.
Tongi’s mother, Tuyet Noyan, told JNS: “I remember Mr. Begin having a very warm and welcoming personality, but I could not understand a word he said because I did not know any Hebrew at the time.”
Of those granted asylum in Israel, most settled around Jaffa and Bat Yam; the community is today estimated to number around 150 to 200.
Tongi says that his parents first landed in Nahariya, in what they described as a “strange new world.”
Hava Nagila by Egyptian ???? born singer Dalida. h/t @Juhaieeem pic.twitter.com/lZoZqQMnGp
— Avi Kaner ??????? ??? (@AviKaner) July 14, 2022
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