Tuesday, December 06, 2022
Jewish Life Is Cheap
For the past five years, the dominant media narrative about race—perhaps the dominant media narrative, period—has built up a hierarchy of racial justice. At the top are the perennially marginalized “BIPOCs,” victim to the lash of the ever-present colonial whip. At the bottom lurks the “white male,” inherently and ineluctably racist, even when (or perhaps especially when) they’re trying hard not to be.Ben-Dror Yemini: How academia omits facts to make Palestinians the perpetual victim
In a manner true to our history, Jews have been sucked into this Manichean whirlpool, cast by radical academics and their media acolytes as an essential, almost distilled element of the global system of racial oppression. We are not just white; we are the plotters and financiers of the entire sysyetm of white supremacy.
Worse still, if Jews are white then they are not, well, Jews. The largely successful effort to assign Jews to the white race means Jews do not have the moral privilege of determining our own identity. The perverse result of dispossessing Jews of their own history is that it grants the mantle of Jewishness to our enemies. Thus Ye, in the same Twitter thread where he threatened to go “death con 3” on Jews, also claimed: “I actually can’t be antisemitic because Black people are actually Jew also.”
When Whoopi Goldberg asserted on The View that the “Holocaust was not about race,” she was advancing a version of the same arguments made by virulent Black Hebrew Israelite hate preachers, professors who insist on the indelible whiteness of Jews, and anti-Zionists who deny the legitimacy of Jewish historical identity. It’s true that only the last two groups tend to have their ideas promoted by the media, but all three share the idea that “Jew” is not a meaningful or legitimate category. Palestinians can be Jews—thus the Democratic political activist and Louis Farrakhan fan Linda Sarsour is invited to participate as an expert in a prominent panel on antisemitism. And by the same logic, Black Hebrews can be Jews. Ye can be a Jew. Only Jews are not allowed to be Jews.
Over and over, Jews have watched this trend play out, and largely we’ve been silent.
In a key scene in the 2014 Oscar-nominated Selma, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. leads a group of activists and protesters across a bridge alongside Black civil rights leaders. Not pictured in the scene was a man who walked in that front line of protesters, fighting for civil rights: the great American Jewish rabbi and leader Abraham Joshua Heschel.
Why would Ava Duvernay, the film’s director, compromise the film’s historical integrity to erase one of America’s most prominent Jewish spiritual figures out of the image? The answer is that over the past decade, the anti-racist movement that has been the media’s single most championed social cause has turned a syllogism into a truism: Whites are by definition white supremacists; Jews are the whitest of whites because they falsely hide behind their fake ethnicity; Jews, therefore, are at the top of the white supremacy totem.
The media has actively spread these ideas by turning woke racialism into the defining moral cause of our time, while at the same time ignoring the consequences of this campaign. While Ye was “canceled” for making open threats and affirming his love for Hitler, little more than a week earlier hundreds of Black Hebrew Israelites marched through central Brooklyn, uniformed and in formation, chanting “we are the real Jews.” Save for some coverage in the New York Post and in Tablet’s daily newsletter, The Scroll, the rest of the media was virtually silent. The media is still talking about the alt-right’s 2017 hate march in Charlottesville, treating it as one of the defining events of the modern era, but when hundreds of virulent antisemites march in Brooklyn—the mecca of America’s media establishment—it was crickets. The silence was appalling but also unsurprising given that the same media has largely ignored the routine violent attacks against religious Jews in New York.
Recently, Prof. Shay Hezkani claimed in an article he wrote for “Haaretz” newspaper that I misled my readers when I wrote that the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine faced an existential threat in 1947 and 1948.Hadley Freeman: It sucks to be a Jew on the left
I challenge Hezkani to an intellectual debate. I am even willing to provide him here with some of the arguments at my disposal - shall he answer my call.
“Every week Ben-Dror Yemini tells readers of ‘Yedioth Ahronoth’ about Arab leaders in 1947 who called to throw the Jews into the sea, planning to systematically murder them,” Hezkani wrote in his Haaretz column last week.
“Throughout 15 years of my research, looking into hundreds of propaganda pieces from 1947-1949, I ran into only one case in which Hassan al-Banna - founder of the Muslim Brotherhood – mentions the ‘sea’ and ‘Jews’ in the same sentence - while calling to expel the Jews from Egypt,” Hezkani wrote.
“The quote [used by Yemini and attributed to ex-Secretary General of the Arab League in Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam] is not backed by credible sources in Arabic, and it’s unclear whether or not it was actually ever said.”
I read the Haaretz article and could not believe my eyes. In the book I published titled “Industry of Lies,” I presented a more detailed list of threats made against the Jews, with credible sources, during that time period.
But, Hezkani looked into hundreds of documents and somehow found nothing. It’s a little weird that I did not spent 15 years researching this topic in an academic setting, yet found so much more information. To clear all doubts, prior to publishing the research-backed chapters of my book, they were reviewed by three prominent academics.
It could be that Hezkani has difficulty reading books. So, let’s start with the leader of the Palestinian Arabs, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who in 1941 arrived at Nazi Germany and called to kill every Jew, before returning to lead the Palestinians.
If Hezkani believes that al-Husseini had changed his mind later on, he should refer us to the relevant sources. In an interview to the “Al Sarih” newspaper, al-Husseini said the Arab goal during the 1948 War of Independence wasn’t to undo the UN Partition Plan for Palestine, but to “continue to fight until the Zionists are dead.”
As Hadley Freeman leaves the Guardian for the Sunday Times, she opens up about her Jewish experienceA rock star channels Jewish outrage at antisemitism
Honestly, what a dumpster fire that whole period was, to the point that it’s almost hard to remember what actually happened. But just off the top of my head, here is a list of things I remember lefty non-Jews saying to me back then:
1. “I don’t think you should write about antisemitism because you obviously feel very passionately about it.”
2. “What, exactly, are Jews afraid of here? It’s not like Corbyn is going to bring back pogroms.”
3. “Jews have always voted right so of course, they don’t like Corbyn.”
4. “It’s not that I don’t believe that you think he’s antisemitic. It’s just I think you’re being manipulated by bad-faith actors. So let me explain why you’re wrong…”
5. “Come on, you don’t really think he really hates Jews.”
All of the above were said to me by progressive people, people who would proudly describe themselves as anti-racism campaigners. And yet. When Jews expressed distress at, say, Corbyn describing Hamas as “friends”, or attending a wreath-laying ceremony for the killers at the Munich Olympics, or bemoaning the lack of English irony among Zionists, we were fobbed off with snarky tweets and shrugged shoulders.
What we were seeing, they said, we were not actually seeing. You could not design an exercise more perfectly structured to cause madness. It was, to be blunt, gaslighting.
Anyway, that’s all in the past now, right? Well it is for me, because I’m walking away. A lot of illusions were broken, and I lost a lot of respect for a lot of people I thought I knew, but it turned out I didn’t. Not really. Not at all. So I have left the garden. And it feels bloody great. (h/t messy57)
The antisemitic utterances of Kyrie Irving and Ye (formerly Kanye West) prompted condemnations from many celebrities, both those with Jewish backgrounds and those who weren’t Jewish but who issued solemn pledges of support for their Jewish friends and colleagues. Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon went as far as to tweet, “This is a very scary time,” to which one follower chimed in with an anti-Israel rejoinder.
Solemnity, however, unexpectedly yielded to outrage at the annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Los Angeles. What was no doubt expected to be one of the evening’s least momentous junctures, the honoring of lawyer-agent Allen Grubman, turned into a consciousness-raising session when rock star John Mellencamp took the stage for a profanity-laden introduction speech.
“Allen is Jewish, and I bring that up for one reason,” Mellencamp said. “I’m a gentile, and my life has been enriched by countless Jewish people.”
Mellencamp then turned it up a notch. “I cannot tell you how f***ing important it is to speak out if you’re an artist against antisemitism,” he continued. “Here’s the trick: Silence is complicity. I’m standing here tonight loudly and proudly with Allen, his family and all of my Jewish friends and all of the Jewish people of the world. F*** antisemitism!”
Whoa.
What was surprising about Mellencamp’s speech was not his principled stance, but the sheer indignation and the unbottled emotion that gave voice to it. For millions of Jews who have fearfully observed the growing normalization of antisemitic motifs in today’s popular culture, such a righteous outburst was surely a welcome surprise, but it begged a question for the entertainment industry: “Where have you been until now?”
Caroline Glick: The US liberal Jewish establishment is failing at fighting antisemitism
Antisemitism in the United States is rising, and the American Jewish leadership is failing to combat it, Caroline Glick argues in this week’s episode of the “Caroline Glick Show.”
Glick is joined on the show by Mort Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America.
The two begin their exploration of the issue with a discussion of former President Donald Trump’s meeting with antisemites Kanye West and Nick Fuentes and his refusal to date to disavow either.
Just a week before Trump met with West and Fuentes, the ZOA presented the former president with its highest award, the Theodor Herzl Medallion, for his support and strengthening of the U.S.-Israel alliance, and his efforts to fight growing antisemitism in America. However, Trump’s refusal to date to condemn West has embarrassed his Jewish supporters.
Glick and Klein then turn to the status of the liberal U.S. Jewish leadership. Glick notes, “For six years, progressive and liberal American Jewish leaders attacked Trump as an antisemite when the opposite was true. Now that he’s done something that actually deserves to be condemned, however, their cries against him sound like the boy who cried wolf.”
Palestinian antisemitism
Klein argues that as bad as West’s antisemitism is, and as dangerous as voices like his are for American Jews, Palestinian antisemitism, advanced by every member of the Biden administration involved in U.S.-Israel relations, is much more dangerous for those ties and for American Jews themselves.
Whereas during the Obama years, organizations like AIPAC and the American Jewish Committee spoke out against anti-Israel policymakers and lobbied against the appointments of Chuck Hagel and Robert Malley, today most American Jewish leaders have remained silent as Biden appointed one foe of Israel after another to key foreign policy positions, says Klein.
The main reason he cites for their silence is that many American Jewish leaders have internalized the anti-Israel narrative and believe that there is justice to the Palestinians’ fabricated claims about the so-called “occupation.”
Israel’s antagonists in the Jewish community are welcome speakers in Jewish communities and enjoy powerful platforms in the liberal media, which most of the Jewish community consumes, he notes.
A number of Jewish leaders were invited to discuss the rising level of antisemitism in the U.S. at the White House this week; Klein was not invited. He speculates what will and won’t be said by the attendees and explains what he would tell the administration if had been invited.
Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel's Power Proven In One Statistic (Pt. 1) | Rubin Report
Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report” talks to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about how Israel has been able to harness free markets and capitalism to achieve a higher GDP per capita than France and Japan; how socialism was holding the Israeli economy back; the difficulty of forming a coalition government; and what issues matter most to right wing Israelis.
What is the current state of the international political economy? Is US foreign policy damaging international politics? We are more aware than ever of international news stories and the effect of our foreign affairs, but do we truly understand the perspectives of our global neighbors?
Jonathan Tobin: Enough hypocrisy on antisemitism
Seen in this light, President Joe Biden’s declaration, directed at Trump over his dinner with Kanye, that “silence is complicity,” was not so much a necessary call to action as it was a partisan potshot. He’s right that Trump’s silence about the vile hatred spouted by West, Fuentes and Yianopolous is deeply wrong. But his own praise of Tlaib and others who routinely spew antisemitic vitriol is more than hypocritical.Blaming the Jews Explains Nothing, Except to Those for Whom It Explains Everything
If Biden could tell Tlaib, in a speech in Dearborn, Mich., last spring, that, “I admire your intellect, I admire your passion and … thank you for being a fighter,” he has no standing to be calling out anyone, even Trump, for legitimizing antisemites.
It has become axiomatic that those on the right and the left have tunnel vision when it comes to hate and antisemitism. Liberals see only the antisemitism on the far-right, and concoct it in relation to mainstream conservatives—as is illustrated in their utterly duplicitous depiction of any criticism of leftist megadonor George Soros as evidence of antisemitic conspiracy mongering.
The left ignores the antisemitism that has been mainstreamed within the ranks of their favored political leaders in Congress. The lionizing of the progressive “Squad,” whose growing members demonize Israel and engage in intersectional stigmatizing of Jews, is the most prominent example of this behavior.
Just as bad, left-wing institutions like The New York Times not only won’t speak of the epidemic of black hate crimes against Jews, even when it is happening under their very noses, but can barely be forced to acknowledge it.
The same goes for many on the right, who come up with excuses for Trump’s doing the very things that they consider proof of bigotry when Biden and the Democrats are the offenders.
Were we as a society able to unite around the idea that antisemitism can’t be tolerated in any form or from anyone, our ability to respond effectively would be greatly increased. But, as long as many conservatives can’t be honest about what Trump has done, and black antisemitism remains a prohibited subject on the left, the chances of meeting the challenge are nonexistent.
Addressing the former president’s recent dinner with two prominent anti-Semites, and the fallout in certain precincts of the far-right Internet, Jonah Goldberg reflects on the mental perversions that lead to, and grow out of, obsessive hatred of the Jews.
[T]he idea that a bunch of Jews “control” or “conspire to control” anything starts to sound really dumb the moment you start thinking it through. The only way it works is if you think of Jews not as people, but as an abstraction. Even then it doesn’t actually work because it can only make sense if it’s based upon conclusions you reached before reasoning. Jews are overrepresented in this industry or that profession, and so you start with the conclusion that it’s unfair, unjust, or rigged in some way and then reason backward from that conclusion.
Admitting that you failed because you weren’t good enough (or because you’re not that bright, or because you didn’t do your homework, or because “Your paintings are pedestrian, Herr Hitler,” or simply because no one likes you) is hard. But if you failed because the lizard people, the billionaires, or the bagel-snarfing Rothschilds conspired against you, that makes you not only a Very Important Person, but a kind of heroic martyr. Or at least that’s what losers tell themselves.
If anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools, conspiracy theories are the philosophy of losers.
This is Huda Ammori, her group Palestine Action has caused millions of pounds of damage to an Israeli firm in the UK.
— Harry's Place (@hurryupharry) December 6, 2022
She says There's a "Zionist bias" in Google because some IDF staff got jobs with the tech giant.
Conspiracy theories motivate people to do some crazy things. pic.twitter.com/V0SA5hiGhN
'I wanted to punch Kanye,' Elon Musk said in live Twitter Q&A
Elon Musk said in an interview on Saturday night that he wanted to punch Kanye West for his antisemitic tweets.Kanye West calls on Jews to 'forgive Hitler' in Proud Boys interview
Musk was a part of a live Q&A on Twitter Spaces talking about the "Twitter Files," when one of the hosts confronted Musk with a "blunt" question about the recent Kanye West scandal and how he would balance suspending West on Twitter and freedom of expression.
"I personally wanted to punch Kanye, so that was definitely inciting me to violence," Musk said.
West's Twitter account was suspended again on Friday after he tweeted a photo of a swastika inside a Star of David.
"I think it's important that people know that it was my decision," Musk said.
Musk also pointed out that West went too far in an interview with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones saying, "I like Hitler...I'm not trying to be shocking, I like Hitler. The Holocaust is not what happened, let's look at the facts of that and Hitler has a lot of redeeming qualities."
"He had a really cool outfit and he was a really good architect...and he didn't kill 6 million Jews," he added.
"At some point, you have to say what is incitement to violence because it is against the law in the US," he said. "Posting swastikas in what is obviously not a good way is an incitement of violence."
"I tried my best," Musk wrote in a now-deleted tweet. "Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement to violence. Account will be suspended."
Kanye West defended Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazis who brutally murdered six million Jews in the Holocaust for the second time in a week on Monday, urging Jews to "forgive Hitler" in a conversation with Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes. White supremacist Nick Fuentes mediated the interview.
West reiterated his stance that Jews cannot tell him who he can and cannot love and added that they "cannot force their pain on everyone else."
"Jewish people, forgive Hitler today," he said. "Let it go. Let it go. Stop trying to force it on other people."
West claimed that Jews gave Hitler a bad reputation because "they were upset that Hitler was kicking them out of the country."
The rapper additionally compared the Holocaust to abortion. "The Holocaust is not the only holocaust. So for them to take that and claim when we have abortions right now. That's eugenics. That's genocide. That's a holocaust that we're dealing with right now."
West doubles down on antisemitic tropes
He also repeated the stereotype that Jews control the media and politics saying that it's wrong because Jewish people don't believe that Jesus is the "king of all kings" and the real king of the Jews.
"I think the Jewish (sic.) like Mossad and Rahm Emanuel and Bibi Netanyahu and all of them, I think they really got soft out here. Like I'm getting to walk around and say the truth out loud, you know," said West, adding that the US needs to be "ran by Christian leaders that don't bow to Jared Kushner, that don't bow to Rahm Emanuel."
The conversation between West and McInnes was defined by the latter as an attempt to "prevent West from becoming an antisemite, a Nazi."
Kanye: "I'm sure we'll get a lot of Jew votes"
— Israel Advocacy Movement (@israel_advocacy) December 6, 2022
??????? pic.twitter.com/fCAhNDPUw1
Interesting choice to talk to Al Sharpton, once best known for inciting a crowd to kill Jews, about this. https://t.co/dPVhGCzY0n
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 6, 2022
WaPo's review of the Sharpton doc seems to be missing something, can't quite put my finger on it https://t.co/0k0YfY9DkG
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) December 5, 2022
There is much more to what’s been happening with #antisemitism, than just a man who’s having a full on, public, mental episode. So in light of all that’s been happening, I want to talk about the Jewish experience as lived by us recently. #blackjewishunity #weareone #solidarity pic.twitter.com/C7hD0fRH4H
— (((noa tishby))) (@noatishby) December 5, 2022
This you? pic.twitter.com/qbBn0EwpWG
— Ian Haworth (@ighaworth) December 2, 2022
Was Kanye unavailable to endorse Asa’s book? https://t.co/RMA9TDFKss
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) December 5, 2022
A complaint has been filed with the NYPD to obtain a protective order against Ruben Chico. Baruch has also suspended his access to the campus.
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) December 6, 2022
It’s truly maddening to see what Jewish college kids in the U.S. are up against in 2022.
We are pleased to announce the Farmington CT school board has unanimously voted this evening to reverse its original outlandish decision to cut all Jewish holidays from the school calendar for 2023-2024. pic.twitter.com/ZJhF2K4mgo
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) December 6, 2022
Islamists Manhandle Journalist for Questioning San Diego Imam About 'Hate Crime'
Freelance journalist Ahnaf Kalam, a frequent contributor to Focus on Western Islamism (FWI), was roughly escorted out of a mosque in Aurora, Colo., on Sunday. He was removed from the mosque after asking California imam Uthman Ibn Farooq to provide the name of the person he said was serving time in jail for attacking him in San Diego in March.PreOccupiedTerritory: Constant Target Of Genocides, Pogroms, Terrorism Told To Stop Overreacting (satire)
Instead of responding directly to questions about the attack — which have dogged the imam for months — Ibn Farooq called Kalam a liar and led the audience in a chant of "Allahu Akbar!" before Kalam was led out of the building by Karim Abu Zaid, imam of the Colorado Muslims Community Center (CMCC) in Aurora where the confrontation took place.
"You see these Islamophobes? They come lying themselves and they accuse us," Ibn Farooq shouted in response to Kalam's queries. The confrontation took place at the end of a sparsely attended annual Authentic Ilm Mission conference featuring Daniel Haqiqatjou.
In his queries to Ibn Farooq, Kalam was following up on two articles he wrote for FWI about an alleged stabbing against the imam that reportedly took place in San Diego in March. The stabbing, which Ibn Farooq portrayed as an "Islamophobic" hate crime was publicized in Muslim news outlets throughout the world and prompted an alarmist press release from the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
In his reporting, Kalam discovered that neither the San Diego Police Department nor the local district attorney's office had any information about the attack months after it allegedly took place. A recent query to the California Attorney General has yielded similar results, indicating that if the attack did in fact take place, Ibn Farooq never reported it to the police.
A tiny ethnoreligious group that has fallen victim to extermination attempts, blood libel riots, assorted religious massacres, legal discrimination, forced conversions, mass expulsions, denial of their humanity, restrictions on where they may live, blame for spreading diseases, fear-mongering that they exert too much control, and organized political violence, among other depredations, should really show less sensitivity when people attack them, according to prominent voices.New York Times walks back false report on Gaza
Jews who face almost-daily attacks in New York City and Israel, plus constant attempts on social media to vilify and blame them for all the world’s problems – within living memory of the extermination of millions of them during the Holocaust to an extent so severe that the global Jewish population has yet to reach its pre-Holocaust numbers eighty years later – are told to stop being crybabies, observers report, when news of fresh assaults reaches them, such as the recent bombings in Jerusalem and the constant stabbing, ramming, and shooting attacks on Jews by Palestinian terrorists.
“Stop overreacting,” the tweets and social media posts read when Jews face attacks, vilification, or threats. “You’re not oppressed. You’re privileged and white, so shut up. Also, you ran the slave trade,” the last portion a falsehood that animates a harsh strain of Black anti-Jewish rhetoric and violence despite Jewish-Black solidarity during the struggle for civil rights.
“Don’t use your victim status as carte blanche to victimize Palestinians,” Jews who have done nothing against Palestinians are admonished when they face violence. “It’s like you haven’t learned the lesson of the Holocaust,” by which the speaker presumably means Jews should let themselves be killed rather than appear aggressive or assertive in any way by defending themselves, and that the chief lesson of the Holocaust somehow does not involve non-Jews doing a better job of defending the defenseless, rather than blaming the victims of the Holocaust for a robust defense of their continued survival.
The New York Times has published an editor's note correcting its false report that Gaza's fishing industry is on the verge of collapse due to an Israeli blockade of the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave.BBC News again gives context-free promotion to NGO campaiging
Using official Palestinian statistics, the media watchdog group Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) proved to the Times that the claim is false. CAMERA provided information indicating that the fishermen have more than doubled their annual catch in the last 15 years. In addition, the number of registered fishing boats has also more than doubled, according to Tamar Sternthal, director of CAMERA's Israel's office.
In a Nov. 27 article, "Amid Israeli Blockade on Gaza a Fishing Fleet Limps Along," Times correspondent Raja Abdulrahim claimed the Israeli blockade has been "devastating for the Gaza Strip's fishing industry."
But CAMERA refuted the claim and provided the Times with research data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics disproving the false statement.
On Dec. 3, the Times printed the editor's note acknowledging the article omitted important context, leaving the impression that the industry has been devastated. "The current catch is higher than that in the early years of the blockade," the note reads.
On December 2nd the BBC News website published a report by David Gritten headlined ‘Israel to deport Palestinian lawyer to France – rights group’. An Arabic translation of the same report appeared on the BBC Arabic website.BBC Prints Barefaced Libel in Report About Gun-Grabbing Palestinian Terrorist Video
The person who is the topic of that report is similarly portrayed in its opening lines as “A Palestinian-French human rights lawyer”. Readers have to get all the way down to the seventeenth – and final – paragraph of the report before they learn that Salah Hammouri has rather more than that on his CV:
“Mr Hammouri previously spent seven years in prison after being convicted by an Israeli court of participating in a plan to murder the late Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. He was released as part of a 2011 prisoner swap with the militant group Hamas.”
Gritten’s report is notable for its promotion of inadequately portrayed political NGOs, the first of which is HaMoked.
“A Palestinian-French human rights lawyer who Israel has stripped of his Jerusalem residency is at imminent risk of deportation, an Israeli group says.
HaMoked said it had been informed that Salah Hammouri’s detention without charge would not be renewed on Friday.
It comes after Israel’s Supreme Court rejected an appeal against the decision to revoke his residency on the grounds of “breach of allegiance”.”
Gritten does not adequately clarify that it was HaMoked which filed that appeal, meaning that it is party to the story.
Gritten goes on to uncritically promote quotes apparently taken from the website of Amnesty International but with no effort made to inform readers of that NGO’s long-running delegitimisation of Israel:
“Amnesty International’s Middle East director, Heba Morayef, said: “Salah Hammouri has already spent nine months in administrative detention without charge or trial this year, in retaliation for his tireless campaigning for an end to Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians.
“These latest plans are not only a shameless attempt to hinder Salah’s human rights work, they are also an expression of the Israeli authorities’ chilling long-term policy aim of reducing the number of Palestinians in East Jerusalem.””
Gritten is clearly quite happy to let that baseless ‘apartheid’ smear go unchallenged as well as to amplify false claims concerning a “chilling long-term policy aim” which does not exist in relation to a city in which the numbers and proportion of the Arab population has steadily grown since 1967.
Let us be completely clear, the man was not shot for “simply punching a policeman,” as the BBC reports based on the testimony of several eyewitnesses. Rather, he attempted to steal a gun and was also armed with a knife, which he had used to stab a police officer in the face.
As such, the arresting officer’s defensive shots were not only justified, but completely necessary.
It should also be noted that the BBC only bothers to report the circumstances that led up to the shooting halfway into the article. Specifically, the officer was detaining the man after he used a rock in an attempt to smash his way into an Israeli couple’s car.
Lastly, the BBC’s shoehorning of Palestinian leaders’ condemnation is positively contemptuous. After all, these are the same leaders who offer generous monetary awards to Palestinians who go out and perpetrate terror attacks just like the one this man was prevented from committing.
The BBC has yet again chosen bias over balance — what a predictable shame.
Another libel from the @BBCNews
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) December 6, 2022
The man did not 'punch' a policeman, he stabbed a policeman and tried to grab the GUN of the arresting officer!
Also why aren’t statements from the couple/victims he attempted to carjar at knife point moments before not mentioned in your article? pic.twitter.com/mIEYzgk5EV
Successful Landing: HR Prompts Wizz Air to Correct the Error
Erroneously referring to Tel Aviv as “the Israeli capital city” was particularly surprising given that Wizz Air operates a significant number of routes in and out of Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport. In August 2022 at the height of the summer, the airline operated 669 flights from Ben Gurion Airport, carrying 140,000 passengers, making it the fifth busiest airline there.Morocco celebrates with Palestinian flag after historic World Cup victory over Spain
HonestReporting contacted Wizz Air and LXM Media & Publishing, the company responsible for the inflight magazine. To its credit, LXM responded very quickly by correcting the online version of the magazine (below) and a confirmation that they would rectify the error in the following magazine with an Israel feature and explanation that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital.
Morocco became the first Arab nation to advance to the World Cup quarterfinals, beating Spain 3-0 in a penalty shootout on Tuesday.Ex-secretary at Nazi concentration camp says she’s ‘sorry,’ requests trial acquittal
Pablo Sarabia, Carlos Soler and Sergio Busquets missed their penalties for Spain, with Sarabia hitting the post and Morocco goalkeeper Yassine Bounou stopping the other two.
The teams drew 0-0 in regulation and extra time.
Morocco has been the biggest surprise of the tournament and will next face either Portugal or Switzerland.
As the Moroccan team gathered on the field to celebrate, players raised aloft a Palestinian flag alongside several Moroccan ones, the latest sign of solidarity with the Palestinians at the first World Cup held in the Middle East.
The move came despite Morocco’s increasingly close relations with Israel after signing the Abraham Accords that normalized ties.
FIFA regulations prohibit the display of banners, flags and fliers that are deemed to be “political, offensive and/or discriminatory nature.” In the past, soccer’s governing bodies have issued fines for displays of the Palestinian flag inside stadiums.
Morocco’s players also displayed the Palestinian flag after the team’s win against Canada during the group stage last week.
Lawyers for a 97-year-old former secretary to the SS commander of Nazi Germany’s Stutthof concentration camp asked Tuesday for their client to be acquitted, arguing that she didn’t know about the atrocities committed at the camp located in what is now northern Poland.
Irmgard Furchner has been on trial for over a year at the Itzehoe state court in northern Germany. In her closing statement, Furchner said she was sorry for what had happened and regretted that she had been there at the time.
“I’m sorry about everything that happened,” Furchner said at the courthouse, her lawyer told AFP. “I regret that I was in Stutthof at the time,” she said, referring to the location of the concentration camp in occupied Poland where she worked.
Her lawyers requested her acquittal, arguing that the evidence hadn’t shown beyond doubt that Furchner knew about the systematic killings at the camp, meaning there was no proof of intent as required for criminal liability.
Prosecutors accused Furchner of being part of the apparatus that helped the Nazis’ Stutthof camp function during World War II. In their closing arguments last month, they called for her to be convicted as an accessory to murder and given a two-year suspended sentence.
According to the case against her, she took dictation of the SS officer’s orders and handled his correspondence.
During the trial, several Stutthof survivors offered accounts of their experiences at the camp. Tens of thousands of people died at Stutthof and its satellite camps, or on death marches at the end of World War II.
Furchner, who made headlines last year when she absconded from trial, is being tried in juvenile court because she was under 21 at the time of the alleged crimes.
Hassan Chokr’s bond has been set at $1 million; if he is able to post out, he will be subject to house arrest.
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) December 5, 2022
StopAntisemitism grossly disagrees with this bond option as this man has professed a desire to obtain a handgun and harm Jewish individuals, including children.
Lindsay's Instagram account along with a few more antisemitic gems @MONATOfficial
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) December 5, 2022
Account #1: https://t.co/921jX8j29h
Account #2: https://t.co/WpVoJMCyJC pic.twitter.com/UI4M10Xbck
Police investigating swastika sprayed on Missouri elementary school
Police in Springfield, Missouri, are investigating after a swastika was sprayed on an elementary school during a vandalism spree.Israel welcomes over 2 million tourists in 2022 amid steady post-COVID recovery
The vandalism at York Elementary School, which is under construction, was found on Saturday morning, police spokeswoman Cris Waters said.
Stephen Hall, spokesman for Springfield Public Schools, said the district immediately replaced the window where the swastika was found and removed the graffiti. He declined to say how much damage was found but said it will require the district to file an insurance claim to recover the costs, the Springfield News-Leader reported.
Hall said the vandalism will not delay the opening of the new York Elementary School in January.
The vandalism comes amid a surge of anti-Jewish incidents across the country, including antisemitic comments from some celebrities such as the rapper Ye.
In April, the Anti-Defamation League reported a record number of antisemitic reports in 2021. The organization said the 2,717 incidents of assault, harassment and vandalism was a 34% increase over the previous year and the highest number since the ADL began tracking the events in 1979.
Over 2 million tourists visited Israel between January and October and the number is expected to rise to about 2.5 million by the end of 2022, according to the Tourism Ministry.
Ministry figures last month showed some 2,078,000 tourist arrivals in Israel in the first 10 months of the year. Should these continue at the same rate in November and December, the ministry said it expects to record between 2.4 to 2.6 million arrivals by the end of the year.
These figures are a far cry from 2019’s figures when Israel welcomed some 4.5 million tourists, its strongest year on record, but the numbers show promising signs of recovery for inbound tourism, the ministry said (Hebrew link).
Israel only reopened its skies in March, lifting most COVID-related travel restrictions. International arrivals who are foreign nationals are required to carry health insurance policies with coverage for COVID-19 treatment as of this summer.
Hotel industry figures also point to signs of recovery. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), 19.3 million hotel stays were recorded between January and October this year compared to 21.8 million over the same period in 2019.
Overall, hotel occupancy so far this year is estimated at 61% compared to 70% in the first nine months of 2019. Of the 19.3 million hotel stays recorded by the CBS, 5.6 million (29%) have been by foreign tourists and over 13 million by Israelis, or domestic tourists. In 2019, the CBS recorded 10 million hotel night stays by foreigners and close to 12 million by locals. Industry observers believe that a greater number of Israelis vacationing in the country will remain a feature of the market even as foreign arrivals continue to grow.
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