Friday, September 09, 2022
Dr. Miriam Adelson: Our differences make us adaptable and strong
Two Hebrew words come to mind when a native Israeli like me gazes around at the charming Swiss town of Basel where Theodor Herzl established the Jewish state.
Those words are: "Ma HaKesher??" What's the connection? What links these things – that seem so unrelated and uncanny? Why did Herzl have to come to Basel, of all places, so that we, the Jewish people, could return to Zion? What do these elegant cafés and churches have to do with the souks and synagogues of the Middle East? The cool River Rhine with the blazing Mediterranean coast?
And if you think the contrast is stark today, when Israel is booming and blooming – just imagine how things seemed 125 years ago, when it was a sleepy desert corner of the Ottoman empire. But the contrast is the point. Herzl worked a miracle in this town. And miracles are all about contrast – because they defy and transform reality.
Herzl himself was a study in contrasts: A secular Jew doubling as a bearded prophet. A playwright, taking center-stage in an epic drama without a script. A statesman for a state not yet created. A troubled soul with rock–solid commitment to the cause. A visionary and a pragmatist. That kaleidoscope of traits helped Herzl win over world leaders – as well as the Jewish philanthropists and chief rabbis who resisted his Zionist designs.
And it is a kaleidoscope of traits that makes the modern State of Israel a miracle, each and every day: Its optimism against the odds; its fight for peace; its profoundly diverse people, united by profound destiny; its pride in being so self-critical, its traditions and innovations.
The intersectionality of antisemitism - opinion
Fiamma Nirenstein’s latest book, Jewish Lives Matter, paints an aptly bleak portrait of the way in which Jew-hatred has had a happy resurgence in the West under the guise of human rights.The Purpose of ANTISEMITISM
The term, which represents a genuinely high value, is so abused by the people who earn their livelihoods promoting it through various progressive movements and heavily funded NGOs, as well as by many of the very groups it aims to protect that its original meaning is all but a hologram.
As Nirenstein adeptly illustrates, this inversion of good and evil was given a serious push by champions of the Palestinian cause, whose false claims against the Zionist enterprise provided the perfect cloak for any antisemitism that was dormant, or at least kept under wraps, in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Indeed, while it was no longer acceptable to admit to a desire to annihilate the Jews, Israel became an acceptable target for what Natan Sharansky dubbed the three Ds: demonization, double standards and delegitimization.
“Today’s pro-Palestinian movements have found, especially in America, but also in France through the Islamic nexus, a conceptual link with the themes of racial injustice, colonial racism, and the persecution of blacks and women throughout history,” she writes. “Although Jews could only be identified by a very manipulative observer as the white oppressor or masculinist, this is precisely what has happened. The so-called intersectionality purportedly aimed at realizing human rights for all has become the catalyst for the current wave of antisemitism.”
Why is there so much hatred towards Jews, throughout time and across borders? How does it function? Why does it grow? Are Jews bound to just always being rejected and scapegoated?
It’s time to spark the conversation and to really address the issue. No generation should ever be just looking to manage or survive through the waves of antisemitism, nor should we ever expect the world to solve Jewish problems for Jews.
If one wants to solve a problem they must understand the formula, but before anything they must first believe they can calculate. If you do not believe antisemitism can be understood or solved, then that means it is supernatural, and if it is, then the formula concluded in this video ends up being the same.
Jews carry so much generational trauma that even talking about solving antisemitism or trying to understand why it happens triggers many. However, every chapter of Jewish history, many of which are memorialized through Jewish holidays, is looked through that lens. The Hebrew way of understanding our past is seeing ourselves as our ancestors and understanding what went wrong, where we messed up, what we did to make it out, and the lessons we must pass down from that experience for the future generations not to repeat it.
Antisemitism is not our creation, but it’s our responsibility to prevent its fruition of Jewish annihilation.
Melanie Phillips: A devastating loss
The death of Her Majesty the Queen, announced a short time ago, is a seismic event for the United Kingdom and a profound emotional shock that will be felt by millions.Chief rabbi of UK: Queen Elizabeth II’s affection for the Jewish people ran deep
It was, of course, always an inevitability, as it is for all of us. And in recent months the Queen had obviously become increasingly frail.
Nevertheless, it felt unthinkable that one day she would no longer be with us. We allowed ourselves to imagine that she would go on for ever. For so many of us this evening, this feels like a personal bereavement. Something of priceless value has been torn from us, and we feel devastated.
The Queen was most deeply loved by millions, who showed their profound feeling for her and for what she meant to them when they came out in their hundreds of thousands to cheer her at her Platinum Jubilee celebrations earlier this year.
It’s not just because her reign lasted for an astonishing 70 years, the longest in the country’s history. It’s because she was the constant, still centre of the nation, always reassuring, always a beacon of optimism, always felt to be somehow embracing all of us.
She was the symbol of consistency, the link between the generations, the rock to whom we were tethered as the storms of the world raged around us. She was always there. Now she isn’t. And we feel devastated.
Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom Ephraim Mirvis released a video message on Twitter praising Queen Elizabeth II following her passing on Thursday, saying she “embodied the most noble values of British society.”
“Throughout her extraordinary reign, she conducted herself with grace, dignity and humility and was a global role model for distinguished leadership and selfless devotion to society. In an ever-changing world, she was a rock of stability and a champion of timeless values,” he added. “Every week in synagogue we have prayed for her welfare, well-being and wisdom, and she never let us down.”
He applauded the late queen’s “warm relationship” with the Jewish community, adding that she had a particular commitment to “interfaith relations and Holocaust memorial.”
“I recall how, on one occasion, she showed me and my wife items of Jewish interest and value in her private collection in Windsor Castle, including a Torah scroll rescued from Czechoslovakia during the Holocaust,” Mirvis recounted. “Her affection for the Jewish people ran deep, and her respect for our values was palpable.”“She never let us down.” The Chief Rabbi responds to the passing of Her Majesty The Queen. pic.twitter.com/Y3zfw9VEdC
— Chief Rabbi Mirvis (@chiefrabbi) September 8, 2022
Rabbi Sacks Legacy Trust: Her Majesty the Queen
Dear Friends,Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks speaks on the contributions of faith communities
On the sad passing of Her Majesty The Queen, we are sharing below some articles and videos from occasions on which Rabbi Sacks paid tribute to her lifelong service to the country.
The trustees of the Rabbi Sacks Legacy send their condolences to The Royal Family.
“The Queen has spoken gently to the better angels of our nature. Hers has been the quiet heroism of service, the dignity of dedication to the common good, the good that’s so much bigger and nobler than self-interest.”— Rabbi Sacks zt”l
The Queen is Defender of all Britain’s Faiths
Published in The Times on 31st May 2012
The day was 27 January 2005, the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and the place St James’s Palace. The Queen was meeting a group of Holocaust survivors. When the time came for her to leave, she stayed. And stayed. One of her attendants said that he had never known her to linger so long after her scheduled departure. She gave each survivor — it was a large group — her focused, unhurried attention. She stood with each until they had finished telling their personal story.
It was an act of kindness that almost had me in tears. One after another, the survivors came to me in a kind of trance, saying: “Sixty years ago I did not know if I would be alive tomorrow, and here I am today talking to the Queen.” It brought a kind of blessed closure into deeply lacerated lives.
2012 In honour of Her Majesty The Queen's Diamond Jubilee, the Chief Rabbi introduced a debate in the House of Lords on the contribution of faith communities in Britain and the Commonwealth.
In the debate he praised the role the Queen who "has guided and sustained this nation through one of its most challenging transitions, into a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-faith society" over the past 60 years.
The Chief Rabbi acknowledged that whilst "it is not easy for any society to undergo change, least of all when that change touches on such fundamental markers of identity as religion, ethnicity and culture", Her Majesty The Queen was "one of those rare individuals whose greatness speaks across all ethnic and religious divides."
Praising the growth of interfaith relations during Her Majesty's reign, the Chief Rabbi concluded his address saying: "We are enriched by our religious diversity. Each faith is a candle; none is diminished by the light of others; and together they help banish some of the darkness of the human heart."
Queen Elizabeth, whose reign encompassed the 20th-century ascent of British Jewry, dead at 96
Elizabeth’s youth reflected these tensions: Her uncle, Edward VIII, abdicated the throne to marry an American, and soon he and his wife, Wallis Simpson, became friendly with Hitler. Meanwhile, her husband Philip’s mother, Princess Alice, sheltered a Jewish family in Axis-occupied Athens.
The Windsors, perhaps heeding fanciful notions that Britons were descended from a lost tribe, had their sons circumcised — something that unusual at the time. The practice among royals predated by at least a century the belief that circumcision may be medically beneficial. Elizabeth, wanting a professional to do the job, brought in a mohel named Jacob Snowman.
The late British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks gives the queen a menorah at a reception at St. James’ Palace in London to mark the 350th anniversary of the re-establishment of the Jewish community in Britain, Nov. 28, 2006. (Tim Graham Picture Library/Getty Images)
The hiring of Snowman for such delicate work characterized the close relationship between the British princess and the Jewish community, one that continued when she assumed the throne. The Jewish community sent her birthday greetings not long after she ascended to the throne, and she eagerly thanked the chief rabbi at the time for the message in 1952. Elizabeth would eventually elevate several chief rabbis to knighthood, and two to the House of Lords. (The position of chief rabbi was one that dates back to the 1700s and later spread to a number of countries and territories Britain colonized, including Ireland, British Mandatory Palestine and South Africa.)
Heeding the advice of the British foreign office, which sought to repair ties with Arab nations after the debacle of the 1956 Middle East War, when Britain, France and Israel sought to bring Egypt to heel, Elizabeth avoided the appearance of closeness to Israel for decades. Her husband Philip — honoring his late mother, who was deemed a righteous gentile — visited the country on an unofficial visit in 1994. Her grandson Prince William made the first kingdom’s first official visit in 2018.
The postwar era was a time of increasing Jewish assimilation into all sectors of British society, including its elites. The fact that Lord Snowdon — the husband of Elizabeth’s sister Princess Margaret — was Jewish barely registered. When Princess Diana, citing Charles’ unfaithfulness, sought to divorce him, she hired Anthony Julius, one of the country’s most prominent lawyers who was also a scholar of Jewish history.
By the time of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, Jewish Cabinet ministers abounded — five at one point — and by the 2000s, two Jews led the opposition: Michael Howard was the Conservative leader from 2003-2005 and Edward Miliband was the Labor leader from 2010-2015.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog called her death the “end of an era.”
“Throughout her long and momentous reign, the world changed dramatically, while the Queen remained an icon of stable, responsible leadership, and a beacon of morality, humanity and patriotism,” he said in a statement. “In her life and in her service to her people, the Queen embodied a spirit of integrity, duty and ancient tradition.”
The walls of the Old City of Jerusalem tonight.
— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) September 8, 2022
Duty, honor, service, dignity - qualities the Queen wholly embodied - seem like they are of a bygone era. Perhaps that accounts for the feeling of great loss. We could all take a lesson or two from the Queen. pic.twitter.com/3qJmz0yJxc
Tom Gross: UK foreign office stopped Queen Elizabeth going to Israel, but minorities flourished under her rule
Queen Elizabeth II visited more than 129 countries including almost every Arab dictatorship, and she embraced Syrian President Assad. But the UK foreign office stopped her going to Israel. At the same time, Jews and other minorities in Britain flourished under her rule. Tom Gross comments on the death today of Queen Elizabeth after more than 70 years on the throne.
PragerU: The Truth About Israel
Interestingly, VICE News shows concern for the civilians on only one side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Wouldn't a true humanitarian be equally worried about the Israeli children targeted by Palestinian rockets?
Not only is Israel one of the freest and most prosperous nations in the world, it is the only democracy in the Middle East. So why is it so controversial to support the Jewish state? Stephen Harper, former Prime Minister of Canada, lays out several fundamental truths about America’s most critical ally.
Morningstar’s Crisis Communications Playbook
Since 2020, Chicago-based financial services firm Morningstar has been under fire for acquiring an ESG (environmental, social, and governance) ratings business that has been quietly seeking to advance the goals of the BDS movement through investment advice. Since the activist-investor group JLens brought this issue to Morningstar and the larger pro-Israel community, Morningstar has worked not to address the root problem but, rather to make the associated PR problem go away.Texas Business Owners Lose Bid for Fees Over Israel Boycott Law
To achieve their public relations goals, Morningstar has employed a prototypical crisis communications strategy. Here’s how that works. First, deny, deny, deny. And, by their own admission, that’s exactly what Morningstar did. Second, if denials don’t work, feign good faith by acknowledging the minor error of being “too quick to end the discussion about the possibility of bias in some of our research.”
Now that the company in question has acknowledged there might be a problem, they need to find an ostensibly unbiased referee to grant them the coveted hechsher to make the PR problem go away. But nothing can be left to chance, so what’s a CEO to do? Simple, hire the referee yourself. And that’s what Morningstar did by paying a white shoe law firm to deliver a report seemingly addressing the pro-Israel community’s concerns.
Now it would be too obvious if the bought and paid for referee simply signed off on the company’s practices, so a common tactic is to find a minor, easily addressed fault, fix it and then magnanimously go one step further by saying other changes – all recommended by the “unbiased” adjudicator – are coming.
Again, Morningstar followed this part of the crisis communications handbook as well. Their law firm, White & Case, issued a report, making largely superficial recommendations, and including a few pull quotes that can be used to argue that the poor, little multi-billion-dollar company is doing its best. Under many crisis communications circumstances, these steps could indeed work because, as the thinking goes, nobody’s going to actually read the full 117-page report.
But Morningstar’s initial plan failed because the highly respected Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) did read the full White & Case report. And here’s where things get interesting.
Five Texas business owners aren’t entitled to $342,000 in legal fees stemming from their challenge to a state law barring government contracts for companies that boycott Israel, a federal appeals court in New Orleans ruled Wednesday.Jewish Voice For Labour settles and apologises in John Ware libel case
The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned the fee award, finding that under the circumstances of the case, the lawsuit’s success in obtaining a short-lived injunction didn’t make the business owners “prevailing parties” under federal civil rights law.
Judge Edith H. Jones, writing for the appeals court, noted that the preliminary injunction against the statute was issued after Texas lawmakers began the process of amending it to exempt sole proprietors like the plaintiffs. The case was later ruled moot.
The court acknowledged that a plaintiff who wins a preliminary injunction may count as a prevailing party if the changes making the case moot were a direct response to the injunction itself, or part of an effort to avoid paying fees. But the exemption for sole proprietors was introduced before the injunction was issued, Jones said.
The amendment “almost certainly was not precipitated by the court’s decree,” and there’s “no basis to infer that the Texas legislature was motivated by a desire to preclude attorneys’ fees,” she wrote.
Judges Stuart Kyle Duncan and Carolyn Dineen King joined the ruling.
The state is represented by its attorney general’s office. The business owners are represented by CAIR Legal Defense Fund and John T. Floyd Law Firm.
The Jewish Voice For Labour group, its co-founder Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, and website editor Richard Kuper, have settled and apologised in a libel case brought against them by the journalist John Ware.
A statement tweeted by the pro-Jeremy Corbyn group at 6.49 pm on Thursday stated: “Mediation in the case brought by John Ware against Jewish Voice for Labour and two of its officers has now occurred and we can announce that terms of settlement have been agreed, including an apology from Naomi Wimborne Idrissi and JVL for defamatory statements made on the Jeremy Vine Show and included in a Facebook post which we reproduced on our website on 15 July 2019.”
Asked to comment, Ware told Jewish News: “I can confirm my case against Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, JVL and Richark Kuper has been settled and that there will be a full apology made to me in open court next month.”
Asked if he had been awarded damages, the BBC Panorama reporter said the terms of the settlement did not permit him to disclose the details.
However, JVL has issued a plea for £200, 000 on the Crowd Justice website after admitting the settlement “comes at considerable financial cost.”
The size of the payment suggests JVL have had to pay both costs and damages.
The group added:”The legal costs we had to incur in order to bring about a successful settlement cannot be disclosed but are considerable and have to be paid in a very short space of time.”
JVL declined to give a breakdown of the payment. “As part of the settlement reached neither side is at liberty to comment on the terms of the agreement” they told Jewish News.
Ware had begun the libel claim after saying JVL had defamed his reputation as a professional journalist following the broadcast of the July 2019 BBC Panorama programme that investigated antisemitism within Labour under Jeremy Corbyn.
The day after transmission JVL’s media officer Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi told the BBC Radio2 Jeremy Vine show that Ware had “ a terrible record of Islamophobia, far right politics, he’s been disciplined at – BBC has had to apologise.”
She also wrote on her Facebook page that Ware was a journalist with a “ record of right wing, racist work.”
Ware’s lawyer Mark Lewis responded by stating he has never been disciplined for anything by the BBC, is not an Islamophobe, has never engaged in “far right politics” and that none of his work was racist.
Initially JVL argued that Ms Wimborne Idrissi’s words were expressed as merely honest opinion.
I think @RVilkomerson, formerly of terror sympathizing, antisemitic, hate group JVP, seems rather bitter. I think she should have a glass (or two) of some fine Israeli wine! L’Chaim Rebecca! ???? ?? https://t.co/yGhGccZwcC
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) September 9, 2022
CUNY Queens College antisemitic bigot continues on his rampage against Jews, today filmed throwing dozens of antisemitic flyers vilifying Jews for his graduate study failures (language ??). pic.twitter.com/9EJ5L4Zt79
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) September 8, 2022
Their statement goes on to say "Our job as leaders is not to respond every time a controversial or offensive incident happens on our campus."
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) September 9, 2022
That is exactly YOUR job @UWCDO as diversity, equity, and inclusion chief - to make EVERY student feel safe, including the Jewish ones!
You can read the school's shameful statement here: https://t.co/vHqjqVa8GN
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) September 9, 2022
BBC News website takes ‘Israel says’ to new depths
As regular readers will know, the BBC frequently uses the ‘Israel says’ format as a means of qualifying information – often unnecessarily. Nevertheless, this portrayal of Awawdeh as being “accused by Israel” of belonging to the PIJ is especially absurd given that his release was one of the Operation Breaking Dawn ceasefire conditions demanded by that terrorist group less than a month before this article was written. As reported by the Times of Israel on August 9th:New York Times Walks Back Nonsensical Claim That World Ignores Palestinian Deaths
“The head of the PIJ, who is currently in Iran, said the ceasefire was contingent upon Israel releasing the two members.
“From the very beginning, we insisted that the two leaders be freed — the brother on hunger strike, and Bassam Al-Saadi,” said PIJ leader Ziad Nakhaleh in an interview that aired on the Islamic Jihad’s Palestine Today television network.
Nakhaleh said Israel had agreed to release Awawdeh and Al-Saadi “with explicit Egyptian guarantees.”
“The enemy tried to proceed slowly in agreeing to this demand, but in the end, it has conceded to these demands, with explicit Egyptian guarantees — that our mujahid brother Khalil Awawdeh will set out for the hospital tomorrow, and then he will go home.”
In other words, even though the Palestinian Islamic Jihad has been entirely open about Awawdeh’s membership, the BBC preferred to conceal that information and instead portray him merely as being “accused by Israel” of belonging to a terrorist organisation.
So much for the BBC’s obligation to provide “accurate and impartial news”.
It’s the prescriptive language masquerading as descriptive language, which is particularly grating. The Times editorial lectured, explicitly, “Israelis should care more.”‘The Philadelphia Inquirer’ continues its campaign against Israel
For comparison’s sake, there have been 290 murders in New York City this year to date, according to the New York Police Department. Few of those have garnered international attention or attracted international scrutiny; few of them have even been written up in the New York Times. When they are, they don’t frequently get a context sentence saying that the murders rarely attract international scrutiny. Many of the Palestinian deaths, in contrast to the New York murders, have been accidental or justified by self-defense.
Maybe one reason Palestinian deaths haven’t been attracting as much international scrutiny as the Times news editors and reporters apparently wish they would is that Israeli security forces, while human and therefore imperfect, overall are pretty careful and restrained while confronting a terrorist enemy dedicated to wiping the Jewish state off the map.
In any event, Times readers presumably have their own independent sense and recollection of how much international scrutiny Palestinian deaths do or do not attract. It’s not something that a Times news article needs to elbow them in the ribs about. With the caveat about “except during major escalations” or without the caveat, what the Times is up to here isn’t just-the-facts-ma’am journalism. Instead, it reads more like cheerleading, as if the Times news columns are propagandizing for the Palestinian Arab side.
There are few subjects or areas more controversial and contested than Israel and Jewish self-determination or Zionism. There is no other country in the world whose very existence routinely remains in question; no other nation faces the variety and severity of vows to annihilate it; no other place is under such scrutiny; and there is no other people who have faced the continuous incitement of hatred and resentment and the persecution and violence the incitement sparks as have the Jewish people.British leaders ask ‘BBC’ to stop featuring contributor with anti-Jewish history
Rather than try to bring clarity to readers, Mikati and the Inquirer seem to want to turn them into political pawns. Biased reporting about Israel—the nation-state of the Jewish people—stirs more Jew-hatred and resentment.
Mikati uses the phrases “pro-Palestine,” “advocates for Palestinian rights” and “professors and organizations that advocate for Palestinian rights” in her article. Yet there is nothing “pro” in what [subject of the news article Natalie] Abulhawa and her ilk post on social media or display at events they attend.
They don’t call for elections in the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas; Abulhawa and others do not protest for an end to well-documented corruption and theft of international aid money by Palestinian-Arab leaders; they are not demanding an end to the official incitement which instills Jew-hatred and denial of Israel among successive generations of Palestinian-Arabs; they do not call for an end to attacks against Israelis that compel Israeli governments to respond with force to protect Israeli citizens.
What Abulhawa and the others are is anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist and against the existence of the only Jewish state.
A total of 36 British politicians, Jewish leaders and public figures signed a letter this week asking the BBC to no longer feature as a commentator on its network Abdel Bari Atwan, who has been exposed for making anti-Semitic remarks and expressing support for terrorists.WWI antisemitism was a warm-up for the Nazis, Holocaust - review
The letter, addressed to BBC director-general Tim Davie, was signed by a number of Jewish groups, including the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Leadership Council, the Community Security Trust, the National Jewish Assembly and the Campaign Against Antisemitism.
“This man has no place on our television screens and it is shameful that the BBC has yet to recognise that,” a CAM spokesperson told The Jewish Chronicle. “We shall be writing to the BBC and considering legal action over Mr. Atwan’s possible glorification of terrorism.”
Atwan, the editor-in-chief of the Rai al-Youm Arabic news website, has appeared on the BBC’s “Dateline London” program.
CAM unearthed anti-Semitic comments made by Atwan during an interview broadcast on the Beirut-based, Arabic-language Al-Mayadeen news channel on April 14, releasing them on Sept. 5.
World War I was a dress rehearsal. It permitted the antisemites in Eastern Europe to practice murder, rape and expulsion of their Jewish neighbors along with stealing their property, according to author Larry Domnitch.Murderer of Eyal Haddad has history of anti-Semitism on social media
Twenty-five years later, they would perfect their antisemitic thefts and assaults under the guidance of the Nazis.
What the Poles, Hungarians, Lithuanians, Russians and others lacked in German efficiency and organization, they made up for in their hatred for Jews and in their cruelty.
It’s no wonder that so many people in that region not only enthusiastically supported the Nazis in their “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” but also zealously lent a hand in its execution.
It began with that old, reliable, often-used tool of the antisemite: scapegoating of Jews. When the Russian army suffered setbacks, Jews were falsely blamed for supplying the Germans with money, food and intelligence. Defeats of the German army were caused – in the words of many Germans – by Jewish perfidy and draft evasion.
A man who confessed to murdering a Tunisian-Israeli Jew in France last month has a history of making anti-Semitic posts on social media.We must stop antisemitism from spreading on digital platforms - opinion
According to the French news outlet CNews, Mohamed Baha Dridi, 24, turned himself in at the Montreuil police station in Seine-Saint-Denis, confessing to killing 44-year-old Eyal Haddad on Aug. 19.
French police are continuing the investigation into the murder but have so far not stated that the motive was anti-Semitism.
Social-media posts from Dridi show tendencies towards Islamic extremism and anti-Israel sentiment.
In 2019, Dridi posted a video of himself burning an Israeli flag with an Algerian flag in the background and covering his face, according to posts uncovered by the French Jewish Defense League.
On June 5, 2020, Dridi shared a post on Facebook that stated, “Our Palestinian brothers and their knives operations,” attached to a video of Palestinian terrorists attacking Israelis with knives. The text was not written by Dridi but was part of the video’s original post.
On May 13, he shared another video showing the murder of an Israeli soldier. The post included a comment, also not from Dridi, of “Look at the moment when an Israeli soldier got killed after being hit in the head with a stone.” The video included the “V for Victory” hand emoji often used by Palestinians.
Over the last several years, there has been an alarming increase in antisemitic incidents across the globe. Today, the apparent majority originate online, as part of the larger hate and disinformation campaign seen on both mainstream and dark-web platforms.NYPD says anti-Semitic hate crimes on the rise
Research shows that antisemitic tropes, memes and rhetoric are often incorporated in other online conspiracy theories, with a Swedish expert on combating antisemitism stating that “at the core of the threat to liberal democracy is antisemitism,” labeling antisemitism online as “the mother of conspiracy theories.”
The case and cause of online antisemitism presents an opportunity for digital platforms and policy makers to examine the problem and create comprehensive recommendations, legislation and new institutions that can be utilized in the broader context of addressing online hate and disinformation.
This hate seen online is not just harmless chatter relegated to dark corners of the Internet – it spills onto the streets, and dangerous propaganda can quickly transcend the geographic borders of any country. Combating this global hatred, therefore, requires a global solution.
In July 2020, the #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate campaign took place, serving as a global call to action to combat the virulent antisemitism that goes unaddressed or inadequately addressed on social media platforms.
New York City police reports its monthly crime statistics, revealing a spike in anti-Semitic attacks. Our senior US correspondent reports that the city is stepping up its law enforcement efforts to patrol heavily Jewish areas of the city.
In first, new Israeli blood test could detect pancreatic, colorectal cancers
Israeli scientists say they have invented a blood test will be able to detect colorectal cancer, which is normally found through an invasive test, and pancreatic cancer, which today has no single diagnostic test.IBM Research, Hebrew University, and Israel’s Technion Partner to Promote AI Efforts
They claim that the test could also simplify screening for other cancers, and save lives by eliminating invasive colonoscopies for colorectal cancer, which many patients are afraid of and skip.
Dr. Efrat Shema developed a special technology for imaging a single molecule from blood samples, and has successfully used the innovation to screen for colorectal cancer — the cancer used for the proof-of-concept.
She detailed the breakthrough, achieved with her colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in a new peer-reviewed journal article published in Nature Biotechnology, revealing that her test achieved 92 percent accuracy in detecting colorectal cancer.
She said initial testing was conducted on colorectal cancer, but the test has been designed to screen for pancreatic cancer as well and will be adapted to detect a wide range of cancers, and possibly other diseases too.
“We’ve achieved a successful proof-of-concept for our method, which now needs to be confirmed in clinical trials,” she stated. “In the future, our approach may serve to diagnose not only various cancers but also additional diseases that leave traces in the blood, such as autoimmune disorders and heart disease.”
Following collaborations with leading universities like MIT, Stanford, and Oxford University, IBM Research has announced that it will partner with one of Israel’s leading academic institutions, the Technion, and the Hebrew University, to invest millions of dollars for Ph.D. students to develop artificial intelligence (AI) research.IBM celebrates 50 years of operations in Israel
The announcement was officially signed by President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Asher Cohen, Vice President AI and Director of IBM Research Lab in Israel Aya Soffer, Executive Vice President for Research of the Technion Koby Rubinstein, and Senior Vice President and Director of IBM Research, Dario Gil.
“What we really wanted to do was bring a little more structure, and in particular, find a way to engage Ph.D. students in a more focused way on topics that we believe are going to be important for the future of science,” explained Soffer, who spoke to CTech during the Tech, Science, and Sustainable Society Summit, hosted by IBM Research celebrating 50 years of its presence in Israel.
Soffer explained that the partnership, which will be spread over three years, will focus on efforts relating to Scaleable AI as an engine of growth. Specifically, emphasis will be placed on three main areas: NLP, accelerated discovery of drug development, and multi-cloud infrastructure, which Soffer described as “the future of cloud.”
50 years ago, IBM helped pioneer Israel's hi-tech sector by opening a research center in Haifa. Now, IBM is celebrating 5 decades of innovation in Israel
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra returns to America to play Carnegie Hall
The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) is preparing for a tour of the United States under the leadership of its history-making conductor, Israeli-born Lahav Shani.‘Maus’ creator Art Spiegelman to receive honorary US National Book Award
The first post-COVID tour for the IPO will hit the States from Nov. 2 to Nov. 14 with concerts in Costa Mesa, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Stanford and Miami, closing out at New York City’s famed Carnegie Hall.
“Any artist will tell you the experience of performing in front of a live audience makes a hell of a difference. There is nothing like the excitement, the need to be at your best at a certain minute,” Avi Shoshani, the IPO’s longtime secretary general, told JNS. “And Carnegie Hall is like Mecca. Everyone who thinks they are a good artist and everyone who is a good artist makes a point to come and perform there.”
Following a three-year halt in U.S. appearances due to the pandemic, the Israel Philharmonic now features Shani at the helm. He is the first IPO musical director to be born in Israel.
This fall, Art Spiegelman will receive an honorary National Book Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He feels honored, and a little worried.Debrecen Sees First Orthodox Rabbinic Inauguration Since World War II
The unexpected pleasure of being cited by the National Book Foundation comes months after the jarring saga of his Pulitzer Prize-winning “Maus” being withdrawn by a Tennessee school board, which found Spiegelman’s graphic novel about the Holocaust inappropriate for the district’s curriculum. Sales for “Maus” and other Spiegelman books surged, but the attention distracted him from other priorities.
“My work schedule just got totally smashed to smithereens,” he said during a recent telephone interview. “I was happy to crawl back into my hideout.”
Now, the 74-year-old Spiegelman anticipates being back out in the world, an admittedly enviable burden that will require him to set aside time and consider his decades-long legacy, one profound and wide-ranging. His influence extends from “Maus,” winner of a special citation from Pulitzer judges in 1992, to his 1970s work in underground comics to his famed New Yorker covers, notably the darkened silhouettes of the Twin Towers that ran two weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
“Art Spiegelman has captured the world’s imagination through the comics medium,” David Steinberger, chair of the National Book Foundation’s board of directors, said in a statement released Friday. “His masterful graphic novels tackle and illuminate topics from the Holocaust to the aftermath of 9/11, alongside the personal intimacy of the people, events, and comics that shaped him as an artist. Spiegelman’s groundbreaking work has shown us the limitless possibilities for comics as a literary art form.”
For the first time since World War II, the Hungarian city of Debrecen held an ordination ceremony for an Orthodox rabbi.The Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the bombing of Auschwitz
Rabbi Shmuel Faigen was appointed on Wednesday at the Pásti Street Synagogue as head of the local Jewish community. He will also serve as rabbi of the EMIH-Hungarian Jewish Association and Chabad-Lubavich movement.
Speaking at the ceremony, Rabbi Shlomó Köves, chief rabbi of the EMIH-Hungarian Jewish Association, recognized the local Jewish community for its cooperation, which led to the city’s first Orthodox rabbinic ordination in nearly 80 years. As such, he thanked the president of Debrecen’s Jewish community, Tamás Horovitz, for “putting aside differences and keeping the unity and future of the Jewish community in mind.”
He also thanked Debrecen’s local administration for supporting the development of the Jewish community within the city.
“Jews live throughout Hungary—not only in Budapest—and our goal is not to rest until every Hungarian Jew is given the opportunity to return to, and appreciate, the faith of their ancestors,” added Köves.
Unbeknownst to the American Jewish community, however, the Roosevelt administration had already made the fateful decision that would shape U.S. policy on bombing Auschwitz.Murals Around the World Will Honor Heroes Who Saved Jews During Holocaust
In memoranda and policy meetings in early February 1944, senior officials of the War Department (today the Defense Department) decided that as a matter of principle, the U.S. would not use military resources “for rescuing victims of enemy oppression.” The officials claimed “the most effective relief which can be given victims of enemy persecution is to insure the speedy defeat of the Axis.”
Four months later, when Jewish leaders first began urging the administration to bomb the railways to Auschwitz, Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy used language directly from the February decision. “The most effective relief to victims of enemy persecution is the early defat of the Axis,” McCloy wrote. Bombing the railways to Auschwitz was “impracticable,” he claimed, because it would require “diversion of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces now engaged in decisive operations.”
The truth, however, was that no “diversion” would have been necessary, because American bombers were already preparing to strike German oil factories located in the Auschwitz industrial zone. On July 8—two days before the first of the three JTA articles was published—Allied planes carried out their fourth reconnaissance mission over the oil factories.
In his book Night, Elie Wiesel described how he and other Jewish slave laborers in the oil factories were “filled with joy” when U.S. bombers struck on August 20, 1944. Even though the prisoners’ lives were endangered, they were ecstatic at the possibility that the mass-murder machinery nearby would be destroyed.
Despite the efforts of the JTA and others to publicize the issue, despite the behind-the-scenes pleas by Jewish leaders, and despite the fervent prayers of Elie Wiesel, David Blitzer, and other prisoners, the die had been cast long before. The Roosevelt administration had decided it would not bomb Auschwitz or the railways, and it never wavered from that tragic decision.
Artists 4 Israel has launched a global mural project that spotlights individuals who were honored as “Righteous Among The Nations” by Yad Vashem in an effort by the non-profit organization to combat antisemitism and expand Holocaust awareness.
More than 10 large-scale portrait-style murals will be created in cities around the world including France, Greece, Portugal and beyond, to honor the heroic actions of non-Jews who helped save lives during the Holocaust.
A team of local and wold-renowned graffiti, street, mural and multimedia artists have painted the murals in highly populous locations, each honoring a different local hero from the Holocaust.
In Portugal, Artists 4 Israel created a massive portrait of Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a Portuguese consul general in Bordeaux, France, during World War II who issued more than 10,000 transit permits for people escaping Nazi persecution. When word reaching Lisbon about his actions, the Portuguese government dismissed Sousa Mendes from his position in the Foreign Ministry, leaving his destitute. He died penniless in 1954.
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