Monday, September 12, 2022
Seth Frantzman: 9/11 anniversary marks generational strategic shift
September 11 was the beginning of increasingly brutal attacks across the world all linked to similar extremist ideologies that are rooted in what some term jihadist attacks, or Islamist extremism. When we go back and look at the trajectory of those who planned and executed 9/11 we find a group of men who came from places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Many passed through Pakistan to Afghanistan.JPost Editorial: UK's King Charles should visit Israel
Some had volunteered to fight in other places such as the Balkans, or Chechnya. They were men of privilege who saw a world in which law enforcement was fighting terrorist groups and they could exploit that because they had a worldwide network of cells. A decade after 9/11, these groups had shifted to become similar to ISIS. Whether it was Boko Haram in Nigeria or Al-Shabab in Somalia, or groups operating in Thailand, Indonesia, or targeting India and other countries; they had become terror armies and their extremism was reaching genocidal proportions. But they were largely deprived of their ability to execute their designs because governments began to get tough.
Ironically, by the time the US had left Afghanistan, the kinds of groups the US was fighting, like Al Qaeda and ISIS had been defeated. That doesn’t mean they don’t pose a threat. Their threat has shifted.
Where are such extremist groups today?
Extremist groups now operate more on the periphery of the Middle East and exploit weak states in Africa and Asia; rather than threatening the West in the same way Al Qaeda did. That means that where these groups continue to spread terror they do so in places like across the Sahel, or even Mozambique.
Extremist preachers who backed ISIS were more likely to be in Europe, than in the Middle East. Countries are cracking down on the free-wheeling days of the 1990s when too many people thought terrorism was romantic or could justify it so long as it “harms someone else.”
The extremists have also shifted, from desires to fight the West, to sectarian massacres or even fighting amongst themselves. Countries have co-opted them as well, using them, but clipping their wings.
Ankara, for instance, works with extremist groups in Syria, but the understanding is that groups like Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, which was once linked to Al Qaeda, won’t attack the West. Even the Taliban pretend to want to crack down on groups like ISIS.
This is a major strategic shift in how terror groups operate and how countries confront them. The twin shifts, of generations in the West and the geographic shift of terror groups, represents the major changes that we see this decade as we look back on 9/11.
Queen Elizabeth II was Britain’s longest reigning monarch and her passing will inevitably bring about changes. King Charles, who has waited so long to ascend the throne, presumably has his own ideas of how he sees the role and how to adapt it to the modern era. After a suitable period of mourning, necessary both on the personal and the national level, he will no doubt reveal them to the public and the world. One change, in particular, which will be interesting to watch for is how the new king sees his role as head of the Church of England and Defender of the Faith.Israeli cartoonist says Marvel copied superhero Sabra, he’d sue if he had the means
Israel wants an official visit from a British monarch
Something we in Israel would like to see in the future is an official visit. The queen traveled widely to some 120 countries, including those which were part of the Commonwealth and many that were not. Although she visited Jordan, Egypt and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa, she never set foot in Israel.
In 1994, her husband, Philip Duke of Edinburgh, became the first member of the immediate royal family to come to Israel when he paid a private visit. He came to honor his mother, Princess Alice of Greece, a Righteous Gentile who saved Jews during the Holocaust and who is buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Two of the Queen Elizabeth’s sons, Prince Edward and the new King Charles, paid unofficial visits but only in 2018 did her grandson, Prince William, now next in line for the throne, pay an official royal visit, when Israel was celebrating its 70 years of independence. Charles returned in 2020, this time officially, for the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
It is assumed that the reason the royal family in the past avoided Israel was in large part due to concerns by the British Foreign Office about a possible Arab backlash and maybe also due to resentment over the violence that marked the end of the British Mandate here.
The end of an era also marks the start of a new one. We send our condolences to the Royal Family, the British people and the British Commonwealth, and wish King Charles III the wisdom and fortitude necessary to carry out his duties successfully in challenging times. And we hope to see King Charles III and Queen Consort Camilla visit Israel in their official capacity as the heads of the British Royal Family. They would receive a royal welcome.
An Israeli comic book artist has been getting attention since Marvel’s Saturday announcement that it had cast actress Shira Haas as the Israeli superhero Sabra. He claims the character is based on a superhero he created when he was 15 — although he says he won’t sue the US entertainment giant because he doesn’t have the means.
In 1978, Uri Fink created Sabraman, a comic series about an Israeli superhero whose attire, colors and symbols appear to resemble those associated with Sabra, a little-known character that first appeared in Marvel comics two years later.
Haas, who gained international fame through her starring role in the hit Netflix series “Unorthodox,” will play Sabra in the next “Captain America” film, set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and titled “New World Order,” according to multiple reports Saturday.
In the comics, Sabra, aka Ruth Bat-Seraph, is a former superhuman agent for the Mossad spy agency who sometimes knocks up against other superhuman characters such as the Hulk and the X-Men. Her powers include super strength and stamina, and her costume often incorporates the Israel flag and the Star of David.
Sabra, in Hebrew “tsabar,” is the local term for the fruit of the cactus (commonly known as a prickly pear). It has long been a term for Israeli-born Jews.
Fink tweeted Sunday morning that he had woken up to countless tags and messages telling him it was “time to sue Marvel and make a lot of money.”
He said his publisher and co-creator David Herman had considered doing just that when Sabra first emerged in 1980, but that Fink convinced him otherwise. He said there was no chance of succeeding against Marvel’s lawyers and that it was doubtful he even had a case, since he doesn’t own a copyright for the word “sabra,” and Sabra’s superpowers were different from Sabraman’s.
An Interview With a Muslim Zionist
Since 2017, Noor Dahri, a Pakistan-born British scholar of Islamic theology and counterterrorism, has considered himself a Zionist. He recently was the subject of some controversy in his native lands because of a visit to Israel. In an interview by Steve Postal, he speaks about evolving Muslim attitudes toward the Jewish state:UK Chief Rabbi Hails Crucial Work of New Center to Examine Antisemitism
I believe the Muslim community in England is even more extreme than it is in Pakistan. In 2017, when I first adopted the ideology of Zionism, I received threats from within England’s Muslim community. However, when I visited Israel recently, I did not receive any such threat, which was surprising. I believe that the Abraham Accords have changed many minds. Many Muslims in England sent me best wishes and congratulations on my visit to Israel, and some of them even booked flights to visit Israel for the very first time. I believe this is a victory of Zionism and Israel, the Jewish state.
The Abraham Accords gave a breath of life to us Muslim Zionists, as it gave us an opportunity to support Israel and the Jewish people openly. Before, I was conducting my advocacy from unknown places, hiding in different cities in England. Those who supported me secretly before now openly support me. Pakistanis who once dreamed of visiting Israel are now actually visiting the country and promoting a positive image of Israel. Soon Saudi Arabia will join the Abraham Accords, God willing.
Pakistan has had behind the scenes political and military ties with Israel for decades. Pakistani prime ministers like Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif, Pervez Musharraf, and Imran Khan have sent official delegations to Israel to normalize relations, and these are well documented. Pakistan is close to establishing overt diplomatic ties with Israel. However, such a move must be carefully coordinated, as Pakistan faces a high risk of an Islamist uprising as Pakistan just emerged from a twenty-year bloody war against the Islamists. If Saudi Arabia joins the Abraham Accords, this would give Pakistan sufficient cover to join as well.
A new academic center to study antisemitism that was unveiled in London on Sunday has received praise from Labour Party leader Keir Starmer and the United Kingdom’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, wrote The Jewish Chronicle.The Jewish ‘nakba’ was greater than the Arab
Starmer said the new London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism (LCSCA) had his “full backing” in its “important work” of combating the rise in antisemitism.
He added that “it’s vital that as a society we continue to challenge antisemitism in all its forms and provide the education needed to prevent it. I look forward to seeing the impact of their work.”
LCSCA’s mission statement on its website says that it aims “to challenge the intellectual underpinnings of antisemitism in public life and to confront the hostile environment for Jews in universities.” The institution, which has a network of donors supporting it, opened with a three-day conference and a launch event at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London.
In a video message reportedly played at the conference, Mirvis intends to discuss the “significant threat” of racism targeting the Jewish community in the United Kingdom.
“In my own experience, I have found that when writing and speaking on the subject of antisemitism and when fielding questions on the issue, one’s words will only carry weight and make a deep impact if they are backed up by authoritative and reliable facts and figures,” he said in the video message, according to The Jewish Chronicle.
“Nowhere is this more evident than on university campuses, where it is incumbent upon us to engage in the battle against antisemitism within the arena of ideas,” noted the rabbi. “For this reason, I welcome enormously the establishment of the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, and I wish it much success in its crucially important work for the sake of our future.”
The following is an extract from one chapter, including footnotes, from The Industry of Lies by Israeli journalist Ben-Dror Yemini. It is an insightful and concise must-read. The book was published by Norwegian pro-Israel group Med Israel For Fred (MIFF) in 2015 and is now available for free online here in Norwegian (With thanks: Conrad):
A common myth is that the Jews in Arab countries lived in harmony with their non-Jewish surroundings under Muslim rule. [2] “The Golden Age” of equality, tolerance, cultural flourishing and interreligious harmony. “The Golden Age”, a brief period of Jewish flourishing in Muslim Spain, has been taken out of its original context and become a sort of historical label that paints an image of alleged tolerance and harmony under Muslim rule. Only because of Zionism and the escalation of the conflict in Palestine, it is argued, did this harmony collapse. [3] This lie has been repeated countless times. It should be countered.
The majority of Jews in Arab countries did not experience the horrors of the Holocaust. Until World War II, European Jews suffered more. It does not make the situation for Jews from Muslim countries, even before Zionism, much better. There were periods when Jews lived in relative peace under Muslim rule. There were periods – such as after the expulsion from Spain – when the Turkish sultan actually invited the Jews as welcome guests. [4]
But these periods were the exceptions, not the rule. Most of the time, the Jews in Muslim countries lived at the mercy of the authorities, and they were often subjected to humiliation, expulsion, pogroms and systematic deprivation of their rights. It is worth recalling the reply of the Tunisian-Jewish philosopher Albert Memmi to the then ruler of Libya, Muammar al-Gaddafi, after his invitation to the Jews of Arab countries to return, about the myth that it was Zionism that left Jewish -Arabic harmony in ruins:
The truth is that we lived a life of fear and humiliation in Arab countries. I will not repeat the incidents of slaughter before Zionism […] The truth is that the Jewish youth in Arab countries became Zionists before Auschwitz; the state of Israel is not a result of Auschwitz, but of the Jewish situation in general, including the situation in Arab countries. [5]
If this isn’t on the precipice of a #Holocaust denial tweet by @sloughpsc and absolutely no equivalence to 6 million Jews murdered, I don’t know what is . N.B Note the absence of the #Jewish naqba.A dreadful tweet @Campaign4T pic.twitter.com/gngMPLM8Lt
— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) September 12, 2022
Laith Marouf, recipient of over half a million dollars in ???? state funding for his “anti-racist” consulting and other communications expertise, tweeted in February his glee that the Queen was sick with Covid and if she "suffers the worst death imaginable,” well she had it coming. https://t.co/h9NDGcJZ6I pic.twitter.com/laaiEGo3PV
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) September 11, 2022
Long-Hyped New York Times Investigation of Hasidic Yeshivas Fizzles
“In Hasidic Enclaves, Failing Private Schools Flush with Public Money” is the online headline the Times slaps over its long-awaited “New York Times investigation” of Hasidic schools for boys. The print article, under the slightly more sober “Failing Schools, Public Funds,” appears at the top of page one.The Commentary Magazine Podcast: The Great Yeshiva Slander
It’s a measure of how disappointing the Times article is that it fails to deliver even on the basic headline claim that the yeshivas are “flush” with public money. “New York’s Hasidic boys’ schools received more than $375 million from the government,” the Times breathlessly reports. Yet there’s no evidence that the yeshivas are paying their executives large sums, that they are hiring fancy architects to erect palaces, or that they are otherwise living extravagantly on the public purse. In fact, the article admits (albeit in the 29th paragraph) that Hasidic boys yeshivas “receive far less per pupil than public schools.”
Among the subsidies the Times is complaining about are school lunches. This is remarkably hypocritical. When the city of New York made lunch free to all public school students, including those at affluent schools in neighborhoods such as Park Slope, Tribeca, and the Upper East Side, the Times editorial board praised the decision, saying that it “ensures that more children will get proper nutrition during the school day” and that “Missing meals and experiencing hunger impede a child’s ability to learn and achieve.” Would the Ochs-Sulzberger heirs prefer that only the Hasidic children go hungry?
A particularly striking irony of the Times coming down hard on the Satmar is that it’s a community that historically shares the non-Zionism that also runs strong at the Times. One might be tempted to say the Times and the Satmar deserve each other, but that would be unkind and lacking in empathy. It’s the sort of irony that might be caught in editing by a Hasidic editor at the Times, if there were any to give this article a sensitivity read before publication. As it is, the Times vaunted concern about “diversity,” sensitivity, and inclusion doesn’t extend to a reluctance to insult Hasidim in New York.
The whole project was a missed opportunity, because the story of New York’s effort to regulate its yeshivas does raise some interesting issues about the role of education and the history of New York’s compulsory education law.
Liel Leibovitz joins the podcast today to discuss the New York Times’s hit piece on Hasidic schools in New York state and why it is so egregious. But we begin with the startling news out of Ukraine and what it portends. Give a listen.
Free speech is a core value in any free society but hate speech isn’t free speech.
— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) September 12, 2022
At the same time, there are many who think hate speech is simply something they find offensive.
It’s not, hate speech has actual legal standards.
Let me it break down for you: pic.twitter.com/MKKquE9sOq
BBC News shoehorns Israel into report on internal Palestinian affairs
However, BBC audiences are not informed that under Palestinian Authority law, all executions require approval from the president, or that in 2005 Mahmoud Abbas issued a moratorium on death sentences.BBC romanticises illegal construction in Israel
Curiously, the BBC chose to illustrate this report with a photograph which has nothing to do with the story’s subject matter.
The original caption to that image photographed on August 24th reads:
“Armed fighters of Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Islamic Jihad seen aboard truck-mounted rockets and other weapons, during an anti-Israel military parade in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip. An Egyptian-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Islamic Jihad began late Sunday evening, August 7, 2022, and three days of violence ended.”
The BBC News website however chose to replace that caption with its own:
“Israel often targets sites in Gaza it says are used to launch rockets against Israeli cities”
The final paragraph of the report erases Egypt’s occupation of the Gaza Strip in 1948:
“Israel occupied the Gaza Strip during the 1967 Middle East war. In 2005, it withdrew its troops and some 7,000 settlers.”
As we see (not for the first time), the BBC cannot resist gratuitously shoehorning Israel and ‘the conflict’ even into a report about internal Palestinian affairs.
On September 6th a video report credited to Anastassia Zlatopolskai appeared on the BBC News website’s ‘Middle East’ page under the headline “Hermit faces eviction from beachside cave home”.New Documentary Examines the Murder of Jews by Latvians and Lithuanians in the Holocaust
The Oxford dictionary defines a hermit as “a person who, usually for religious reasons, lives a very simple life alone and does not meet or talk to other people”. Why the BBC chose to use that term to describe a person who used to run a café/ restaurant at the same site, who publicises his telephone number to potential visitors and who gives interviews to the local and international media is unclear – unless one takes into account that Wikipedia uses the same title.
The subject of Zlatopolskai’s two minute and 19-second-long film is presented only as “Nisim”, with no family name given. Almost all the film is given over to presentation of the point of view of Nissim Kahlon, which includes the suggestion that the authorities have only now taken action:
“If they would have told me 30, 40 years ago I would have left.”
However, Kahlon has been presented with eviction and demolition orders in the past.
The film does not include an interview with a representative of the relevant authorities and their view is presented in just four sentences of subtitles:
“He has been ordered to leave by the Ministry of Environmental Protection. They say the structure is dangerous and is harming the environment. […] The authorities say he has no permission to build here. They claim the building work has left the cliff in danger of collapse.”
According to local reports, the Ministry of Environmental Protection states that the structure in question is made up of more than fifty spaces and openings dug into the cliff and damaging it, as well as blocking public access to the beach and harming ecological systems. Experts also say that the compound includes electricity and communications infrastructure, sewage, water and a ten-meter-deep well, all of which were constructed illegally and without the necessary permits.
In one scene from the powerful and horrific documentary “Baltic Truth,” Riga Ghetto survivor Marger Vesterman plays the piano to the tune of a song created in the ghetto. He then recalls what the words were: “If you survive, no one has to remind you that you have responsibilities.”
The chilling documentary reminds us that it was not only Nazis who massacred Jews. In this case, Latvians and Lithuanians were all too eager to quench their thirst for Jewish blood, even if it meant shooting neighbors who they’d previously celebrated birthdays with.
The searing documentary is narrated and hosted by Israeli singer Dudu Fisher. Fisher explains that his mother, Miriam, was born in Riga in 1932, and that if much of his family hadn’t moved to Mandatory Palestine, he would have been “among the millions of unborn Jewish children.”
On July 4, 1941, Riga’s Great Choral Synagogue was burnt down. Jews at the time thought massacres against their brethren in Poland were only rumors.
Because Latvia had been occupied by Russia in 1940, when it was occupied by Germany in 1941, Jews hoped the fury would be against the Bolsheviks. In the film, George D. Schwab explains that his father gave flowers to the German Army and greeted them and asked what would happen to the Jews. His father was told not to worry, as the main goal was to fight the Bolsheviks. Days later, his father had his eyes gouged out, he was tortured and then executed.
In the town of Akniste, Jewish men had their noses and ears cut off before they were shot to death.
According to some sources, the Boston incident (Saugus) was done by NSC-131 or 'Nationalist Social Club-131' led by neo-Nazi Chris Hood.
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) September 12, 2022
GDL or 'Goyim Defense League', led by John Minadeo II, is responsible for the Houston incident (see his GAB post). pic.twitter.com/HD2OIed52u
In June of this year, Nunes and his group demonstrated outside a Hamburger Mary’s restaurant, wearing shirts with swastikas and holding signs reading, “Child groomers work here,” “F*gs groom kids,” “Grooming progress” and “Judaism allows child rape.” pic.twitter.com/fHJsx9vVsw
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) September 11, 2022
Utah looks to build on Abraham Accords, cement its ties in the Middle East
An unofficial Abraham Accords delegation consisting of Utah governmental and economic officials made its first stop in Israel in the last few days, on a trip that will also see them visit the United Arab Emirates, in a furthering of ties following the landmark 2020 deal.Scientists find way to recycle fertilizer industry’s phosphoric acid wastewater
The Beehive State and Israel are looking to build upon a sizable trade relationship. Trade between Utah and Israel exceeded $55 million in 2021, and over $1 billion since 1996, according to the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity.
But beyond the purely economic benefits of the trade relationship, the trip comes with an additional geopolitical component attached. Saudi Arabia welcomed the delegation’s trip to the UAE, according to Utah Speaker of the House Brad Wilson.
The Sunni-majority country is an influential power among many neighboring Arab countries, and securing its blessing is often seen as a necessary step in furthering their relationships with Israel and the West.
Speaker Wilson told The Times of Israel he was “optimistic” that the Saudis will eventually join as a signatory to the Abraham Accords. “I will say we’re optimistic and we’re hopeful that Saudi Arabia will be part of this. It is a very important element of peace, but also of trade,” he said.
Utah Governor Spencer Cox echoed Wilson’s optimism.
“I’m a big believer in the Abraham Accords, and the work that’s being done there, and how important that is for peace in this region and peace and stability, not just here, but across the world,” he said.
Scientists at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have developed a way to recycle the kind of phosphoric acid wastewater that caused a massive environmental disaster in 2017 when it leaked into the Ashalim Stream in southern Israel.Israeli defense firm selling anti-drone systems to Ukraine by way of Poland
A collapse in the wall of a holding pool for phosphate — the waste product from making fertilizer — sent some 100,000 cubic meters of acidic water and other pollutants rushing through a popular hiking route.
At least eight ibexes — a third of those living in the area — and numerous foxes and birds were found dead in the two weeks following the spill from the Rotem Amfert phosphate mines in the Negev Desert, southwest of the Dead Sea, according to the Environmental Protection Ministry.
The area has still not fully recovered.
Phosphoric acid is the main ingredient in industrial fertilizers, a massive and highly water-intensive industry worldwide.
The recycling process developed at BGU, in southern Israel, turns the environmentally toxic sludge into clean water, valuable acids, and clean phosphate rock, all of which can be reused by factories.
Lior Monat, a PhD student in water chemist Oded Nir’s lab, led the research under Nir’s supervision.
“Phosphoric acid production generates a lot of industrial wastewater that cannot be treated efficiently because of its low pH and high precipitation potential,” explained Nir, the co-lead researcher. “Today, the wastewater is usually stored in evaporation ponds. However, these are prone to breaches, leakage, and flooding.”
An Israeli defense contractor is supplying anti-drone systems to Ukraine’s military by way of Poland, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew sister site Zman Yisrael reported Monday.Israeli Upgrade Will Give U.S. Navy's Super Hornets Pinpoint Accuracy
A source in the firm told Zman that the equipment was being sold to Poland to circumvent Israel’s refusal to sell advanced arms to Ukraine.
The company reported to the Defense Ministry that the sale was to Poland and appeared to be claiming not to be aware that Warsaw was acting as intermediary to transfer the weapons to Kyiv, which has been using the Israeli systems to fight against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Defense industry sources clarified that anti-drone systems — which can intercept and disrupt unmanned aerial vehicles — are classified as “advanced defensive technology” and therefore are not approved for sale to Ukraine. However, the Israeli government has appeared uninterested in torpedoing the deal.
There was no immediate comment from the Defense Ministry.
Israel deploys anti-drone systems along its borders with Gaza, Lebanon and Syria and is considered a world leader in developing the technology, which several Israeli firms are involved with — Israel Aerospace Industries, Elbit, MCTECH, Spear and the Avnon Group.
Israeli systems have been deployed by Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia and have also been sold to the US and countries in Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe.
The U.S. Navy’s F/A-18 Super Hornets just completed initial flight testing with the LITENING advanced targeting pod, a targeting system that improves the accuracy of munitions dropped or fired from warplanes.Grandson of Holocaust survivors says family story was inspiration for hosting Afghan refugees
In a statement, Northrop Grumman explained that the first flight with the pod “demonstrated LITENING’s ability to rapidly add modern, upgradeable mission capabilities to the Super Hornet.”
It added that “the pod’s digital video, autonomous target tracking, and laser sensors will give Naval aviators an entirely new set of capabilities for operations over land and sea today, and the growth capabilities built into LITENING’s modular design ensure that the pod can evolve to meet changing requirements.”
Northrop Grumman also explained to The Drive more specifics about the targeting pod.
"LITENING features daylight and infrared (IR) sensors with digital, high-definition video and advanced picture-in-picture capability that can display multiple simultaneous views. Plug-and-play data links enable secure, two-way communications and the pod’s modular design is ready for evolving mission requirements (including the already fielded color CCD and next-generation capabilities currently in development).”
“It also offers an eye-safe laser mode for realistic training. The pod’s laser imaging sensors offer more accurate identification to overcome challenges to traditional IR imaging. After the mission, a full data recording of all sensor inputs is available for analysis. These capabilities will give Naval aviators enhanced and new capabilities for their missions."
A video published by Northrop Grumman overlying a harbor shows what the images from the LITENING ATP look like to the pilot and simultaneously shows infrared, narrow, and high-definition wide views.
Israel’s Rafael defense corporation developed the original LITENING I pod for the Israeli Air Force. However, the United States took note of the targeting pod and in the mid-1990s Northrop Grumman decided to further refine the targeting pod for use on American warplanes. The American refinements improved the targeting pod’s image processing capabilities, resulting in the LITENING II.
The grandson of Holocaust survivors, saved by Righteous Gentiles—non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews—saw the plight of Afghans fleeing for shelter and couldn’t look away.
Jonathan Kantor of Greenwich, Conn., helped lead a volunteer circle in his Jewish community to resettle Afghan refugees. His own grandparents, who were saved from the Nazis, relocated to the United States and later sheltered refugees from the Soviet Union in their home. Kantor, in turn, welcomed two Afghan brothers into his home, supported their integration, and helped them find housing and employment.
“I don’t care what religion you are. It doesn’t matter what religion I am. We’re all human beings. If you need help, I’m going to help you,” Kantor told JNS. “Twenty years from now, when you’re [the Afghan refugees] successful and you have your own business, I hope that you can do the same for other people who are coming to this country.”
Earlier this year, the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) partnered with the Shapiro Foundation in a $1 million initiative to support local Jewish organizations in resettlement efforts for more than 1,900 Afghan refugees across 15 communities and 12 states, as well as through 42 volunteer circles.
The grants enabled Jewish communities to develop a program to match their unique needs, including hiring a full or part-time volunteer coordinator and utilizing funds to provide direct support to evacuees. Kantor volunteered through Jewish Family Services of Greenwich, working in conjunction with UJA-JCC Greenwich.
The brothers welcomed by Kantor are now living in Stamford, Conn., after he helped them find jobs. He said while they were living nearby, Kantor drove them to work each night during the winter, and the brothers spent snow days playing with Kantor’s two little boys.
“I just had breakfast with them last week. They’re much more self-sufficient than they were when they first arrived. Their English skills are improving. They’re like little brothers for me, and they’re always going to be a part of my family,” said Kantor.
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