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Wednesday, December 21, 2022

12/21 Links Pt2: Black America’s Anti-Semitism Problem; 2022 the Deadliest Year for Palestinians? What the Media Didn't Tell You; Chanukah bus incident victims to mark a year since attack

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Contemporary antisemitism should be taught in schools
While Mann commended the “great strides” made in promoting greater awareness of genocide, he said antisemitism “can take many forms” and “it is not enough to teach about the Holocaust.”

As Klein pointed out, Mann’s latest recommendations follow significant progress that has been said to have been made in recent years in combating antisemitism in the UK and worldwide, resulting from two landmark reports published by the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism in 2006 and 2015.

One reason for the new report, supported by valued input from stakeholders across the country, was to identify what more needs to be done.

“If this scale of incidence among young people is not tackled, then we are storing up potentially serious problems for the future as well as for the present,” Mann wrote.

Among the recommendations made by Mann is that school leadership teams should be offered guidance from the government on how to deal with incidents of antisemitic hate. This should include how to report incidents that did not happen at school but involved either the targeting of students or students as perpetrators.

A British government spokesperson said in response to the report: “Antisemitism, as with all forms of bullying and hatred, is abhorrent and has no place in our education system. The atrocities of the Holocaust are a compulsory part of national curriculum for history at key stage 3, and we support schools to construct a curriculum that enables the discussion of important issues such as antisemitism.”

We believe Mann’s findings and recommendations should be taken seriously, not just by the British government but by other governments in Europe and around the world.

It is one thing to teach about the Holocaust in schools; it’s quite another to educate students against hatred of all forms, including antisemitism.

As Mann so elegantly put it, the UK government and others should “act on my new calls for action before this form of racism poisons the minds of many more young people.”


Black America’s Anti-Semitism Problem
The effect was most pronounced among young blacks and Hispanics. Both groups were 16 percentage points more likely to agree than whites in their age group. Anti-Semitism was particularly common among young blacks and Hispanics who called themselves "conservative." But that was a small group, and anti-Semitism was more common even among liberal blacks compared with liberal whites. Black and Hispanic young adults, in fact, were about as likely to agree with at least one of the statements as were white "alt-right" identifiers in the same age group.

Hispanics are often lumped with whites in hate crime data, so it is difficult to trace precisely the implications of this prejudice among Hispanics, which is an under-discussed and undercovered aspect of the story.

Hersh and Royden's survey also allowed them to examine several theories of the causes of anti-Semitism. One was "minority group competition": the idea that fighting over scarce resources like housing provokes anti-Semitism. Another was the idea that anti-Semitism is a manifestation of anti-whiteness: As James Baldwin put it, "Negroes are anti-Semitic because they're anti-white." A third, opposite possibility was the idea that people disliked Jews because they dislike Israel and because they supported the Palestinians. And fourth is that demographic or behavioral differences—for example, that minority groups are less well-educated or more likely to go to church—explains the variation.

None of these explanations stood up to scrutiny.

Take group differences. Hersh and Royden statistically controlled for both church and college attendance. While each mattered for whether or not someone held anti-Semitic beliefs, holding them constant blacks are still much more likely than whites to have anti-Semitic views. The authors also compare respondents in states with and without a lot of Jewish people (doable because most Jews live in just a few states). Again, race still predicts anti-Semitic views, meaning that proximity to Jews—"minority group competition"—doesn't explain the difference.

Similarly, Hersh and Royden argue that black anti-Semitism is more than just anti-white bias. That's because they measure views, like whether Jews are more loyal to Israel than America, that only apply to Jews, not whites. They also rule out the idea that anti-Semitism is just a function of pro-Palestinian views: Remarkably, blacks and Hispanics were more favorable toward Israel than whites across three separate measures.

To supplement this, Hersh and Royden asked respondents who said they believed Jews had too much power in which domains they had such power. Very few respondents—7 percent of blacks/Hispanics and 9 percent of whites—selected only Israel and Palestine. Instead, these respondents said Jews had too much power in areas like news media, finance, and entertainment. This suggests that anti-Semitic bias is not driven by anti-Israel views.

Having ruled out these popular explanations, Hersh and Royden are left only to speculate on the causes of black anti-Semitism. They point to the rising salience of victimhood in American culture, arguing that it may either make people more prone to embracing conspiracy theories or provoke competition over "victim" status. It is also possible, of course, that anti-Semitic views are just a product of prejudice—no need for further explanation.

What is apparent is that the views propounded by individuals like West and Irving are not unusual, particularly among black Americans. Unlike other forms of prejudice, Hersh and Royden observe, anti-Semitism is not fading among younger Americans: At least among minorities, the oldest hatred isn't going away any time soon.


Jonathan Tobin: Jews don’t need another left-wing advocacy group
The federations, whose purpose is to represent and raise funds from the entire Jewish community, were used to the JCPA acting like a Democratic Party auxiliary operation. But the latter’s behavior could be justified as the product of a consensus among the majority of Jews who are politically liberal and vote for the Democrats.

But its endorsement in 2020 of BLM was a bridge too far for many in the mainstream Jewish world. For Jewish federations—led for the most part by liberal professionals and donors—to be tied to a group linked to radical anti-Israel and antisemitic advocacy was intolerable, although in the midst of the moral panic set off by the death of George Floyd, many acquiesced. But it created a rift that caused JCPA activists to want to liberate themselves from even the minimal restraints that the connection to the federations brought.

Were this merely a matter of a tiff between Jewish Democrats and Republicans or generic liberals and conservatives, it wouldn’t warrant much attention. But the road that the new JCPA and a lot of its competition are taking—by adopting the catechisms of BLM and DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion)—is particularly noteworthy and dangerous.

Indeed, the JCPA is siding with forces that are driving left-wing antisemitism and Jew-hatred in the African-American community—highlighted by recent incidents involving celebrities like Kanye West and the epidemic of black attacks on Orthodox Jews in New York City.

Rather than an invigorated Jewish leadership, the new JCPA is additional evidence of the catastrophic and disgraceful failure of the existing liberal establishment. It’s not only a waste of scarce Jewish resources; it also reveals the intellectual bankruptcy of liberals who claim to speak for Jews but are actually working against Jewish interests and security. Redundancy and waste are bad enough. But the current situation is a moral calamity.
Why the ADL abandoned Antisemitism and went woke
The ADL’s education curriculum had started out teaching tolerance, but now teaches intolerance, and advocates partisan politics. Despite the organization’s origins, its handbook is notable for mentioning Jewish people only three times, once in the ADL’s background and twice in its definition of antisemitism.

But the ADL is not a Jewish organization anymore. It’s a generically lucrative leftist group which provides bias insurance to schools while joining in leftist attacks on conservatives.

A few years after Greenblatt came on board, the ADL announced a new program together with eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar: one of the leading funders of the anti-Israel Left. ADL Senior VP Eileen Hershenov was the former general counsel for Soros’ Open Society octopus.

“Kudos to my former boss, George Soros,” she gushed.

Hershenov oversees the ADL’s partnership with the Aspen Institute, funded by Soros. The joint ADL-Aspen program’s civil society fellows included the founding Co-Director of the Open Society Foundation’s Economic Justice Program.

Small wonder that Greenblatt attacks any critics of Soros and the ADL, formerly critical of the Nazi collaborating billionaire, now has a page dedicated to defending the antisemitic leftist.

The ADL’s funders and partners list increasingly resembles those of most leftist activist groups with $1 million from Craigslist’s Craig Newmark, the Rockefellers, the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation. There’s nothing Jewish here.

As an organization, the ADL doesn’t belong in Jewish circles, and its educational curriculum doesn’t belong in any schools.


The (sad) state of Middle Eastern studies
Last month in Washington, I delivered the keynote address to the fifteenth annual conference of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA). This is the scholarly organization founded by two of my teachers, both departed: Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami. In offering these remarks, I honored my mentors, and hopefully enlightened my colleagues.

I spoke about the state of Middle Eastern studies, a subject dear to me. Among other topics, I covered (double) standards, politicization, boycotts, and foreign money. Above all, I explained why ASMEA is now the only scholarly society in America for the study of the Middle East. Its competitor, the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), has run off the rails into the abyss of political advocacy. I prove it with examples.


Palestinian Islamic Jihad ‘master manipulator’ among Indiana University’s ‘distinguished’ panelists
Every so often, “activist” Sami Al-Arian emerges to opine on some domestic issue, reminding us of two things: He’s an inveterate liar who continues to whitewash his years of service to Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and a disappointing number of American academics are willing to ignore that record and treat him as a credible voice.

Al-Arian joined academics and attorneys last Wednesday for a webinar on “Global War on Terrorism and Its Impact on Muslim Charitable Institutions.” It was sponsored by the Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA) in collaboration with Indiana University’s McKinney School of Law and its Muslim Philanthropy Initiative.

MLFA’s willingness to elevate Al-Arian is at least consistent. It helped fund his defense against terrorism-related charges and criminal contempt. But why did two Indiana University branches see merit in lending their school’s prestige to a man recorded exhorting an audience “Jihad is our path … Victory to Islam … Death to Israel”?

Al-Arian meant it literally, telling a 2020 academic meeting that the Muslim world “cannot realize its full potential without defeating and dismantling the Zionist project.”

No one on the MLFA/IU panel mentioned Al-Arian’s documented role on the PIJ shura council, or governing board, let alone the many times he publicly lied by denying any connection to the terrorist group.
Virginia Attorney General Issues Letter on Campus Antisemitism
Virginia’s Attorney General Jason Miyares issued an open letter on Friday urging educators in the state to fight antisemitism in higher education.

“Sadly, antisemitic discrimination in American higher education is not merely a shameful legacy,” Attorney General Miyares, a Republican, wrote, citing statistics from the Anti-Defamation League showing that over 350 anti-Zionist incidents occurred on college campuses during the 2021-2022 academic year, as well as reports about Jewish students concealing their identities on campus.

The letter also discussed an incident in which the Students for Justice in Palestine of George Washington University chanted “GW Hillel, you have blood on your hands” while protesting an event featuring former Israeli intelligence official Doron Tenne on October 11. Accusing Tenne of “mass slaughter,” SJP said later on Instagram that it “proudly” stands by the demonstration.

“This type of religious discrimination is unacceptable, goes against the very core of our American ideals, and is blatantly unconstitutional,” Miyares continued. “Students cannot be active and involved members of their university community in the face of exclusionary policies. Academic freedom and inquiry cannot survive in a maelstrom of religious discrimination.”

Miyares letter follows the release of a report by Virginia’s Commission to Combat Antisemitism, which said that although there have been no antisemitic assaults in Virginia since 2018, 411 antisemitic incidents, including harassment and vandalism, occurred in 2021, a 71 percent increase when compared to data for 2020, when 292 were reported.

The commission recommended banning academic boycotts targeting Israel, explaining their potential for “depriving students or faculty of the ability to study or conduct research in or about a foreign country or interact with its scholars and representatives.”
Minneapolis Councilman Jamal Osman apologizes for anti-gay, antisemitic posts
Minneapolis City Council Member Jamal Osman has apologized for making antisemitic and anti-gay comments on Facebook from 2011 to 2013, calling Israelis “dogs” and speaking approvingly of Hitler.

The Reformer reviewed the posts before they were deleted in October.

Osman, who was elected in the 6th Ward in a special election in 2020 and is up for re-election in 2023, took to Facebook in October 2012 to argue in favor of a proposed constitutional amendment that would have banned gay marriage.

He also wrote, “Voting yes means you against this discussing (sic) act” and said gay marriage “will invite end of days.”

The following month, Osman wrote in Somali, “May god damn these non-Muslims” and CNN for “kissing Israel’s a**. Jews will never be pleased unless you follow their ways.”

After someone agreed with him, Osman replied in Somali, “Where’s Hitler when you need him?”

In September 2011, Osman wrote on Facebook, “We live in the United States of Israel” and said former President Barack Obama shouldn’t get the Nobel Peace Prize, calling him a “slave of the Jewish lobby, AIPAC. LONG LIVE PALESTINE!”

AIPAC is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a lobbying group that advocates for pro-Israel policies in America.

In January 2013, Osman posted a video from a pro-Palestine website about “Israeli Jews assaulting Africans in Tel Aviv” and wrote “I can see why Palestinians don’t want (to) share land with these dogs.”

Osman has said on social media he plans to run for re-election.


2022 the Deadliest Year for Palestinians? What the Media Didn't Tell You
According to the United Nations, 2022 has been the deadliest year in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem in almost two decades, with over 150 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces.

However, while this claim might be true, it is definitely not the whole truth. Indeed, these raw numbers fail to acknowledge that most Palestinians who died in recent months were killed while attacking Israelis.

Moreover, almost half of the deaths were publicly claimed as members of recognized terror groups, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades.

By uncritically echoing the Palestinian death tally, some journalists are essentially turning reality on its head. The latest Palestinian assault on Israelis is made out to look like a campaign of aggression by the Jewish state.

We can only hope that the media will do better in 2023.




The New York Times, Zionism and Israel
Adolph Ochs, who purchased the floundering newspaper in 1896, was proud of his Reform Jewish identity, which defined Judaism solely as a religion, not a nation. Early on, his newspaper was hostile to the Zionist movement and welcomed submissions from wealthy and prominent anti-Zionist American Jews.

According to prosperous banker and philanthropist Jacob Schiff, “The promised land of the Jew” was in America. Zionism, he warned, “threatened the very existence of the Jewish race.” The Times published a critique of Zionism by Dr. Henry Moskowitz, co-founder of the NAACP, who labeled Zionism “romantic and impracticable.” The paper printed a letter from Henry Morgenthau, ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during World War I, that identified America as “a holy land,” where Jews “are Jews in religion and Americans in nationality.”

Ochs’s first visit to Jerusalem in 1922 left him “unsympathetic with Zionism,” because “the Jewish religion is secondary.” Speaking at a temple dedication, he declared, “I know nothing else, no other definition for a Jew except religion.” He feared that “Zionist activities in Palestine … would be a menacing danger to Jews throughout the world.”

Adolf Hitler’s rise to power posed a challenge to Ochs. Horrified by Nazi persecution of Jews, he was determined that the Times would not be identified as a Jewish newspaper. He was succeeded by his son-in-law Arthur Hays Sulzberger, who opposed the identification of Jews as the primary victims of Nazi extermination. The plight of European Jews failed to qualify for the Times’ daily ranking of important events.

The birth of the State of Israel compounded the Times’ Jewish problem, heightening its concern lest a Jewish state compromise the loyalty of American Jews. Once the Times began to post bureau chiefs to Jerusalem, beginning with David Shipler in 1979, its coverage of Israel became more focused, probing and, eventually, relentlessly critical. Fascinated by the struggle between “Arab and Jew,” Shipler understood that the motivation of Jewish settlers was “biblical,” while “a Palestinian people has come not from an ancient source but largely in reaction to the creation and birth of Israel.”

Shipler’s perceptive reporting yielded to Thomas Friedman’s persistent criticism. Chastising Israelis for ignoring the plight of Palestinians, he dismissed terrorist attacks as merely “a continual poke in the ribs” and anticipated that “scary religious nationalist zealots” might lead Israel into the “dark corner” of a “South African future.”

Columnist Anthony Lewis identified the occupation of Judea and Samaria with South African apartheid. Roger Cohen suggested that the U.S. should engage in “hammering” Israel in response to the “scourge” of occupation. Jodi Rudoren wrote preposterously that Israel was building 3,500 new settlements. Following horrific Palestinian terrorist attacks during the second intifada, Times editors held “both sides” responsible. Current Jerusalem bureau chief Patrick Kingsley refers incessantly to Israeli “occupation” of the Jews’ biblical homeland in Judea and Samaria.

For nearly a century, The New York Times has suffered from Zionism- and Israel-phobia. There is no cure in sight.
Haaretz Publishes ‘Palestine’ Map Erasing Israel
Haaretz, an influential Israeli media outlet whose name means “Land [of Israel],” has published a stylized map of “Palestine” erasing Israel.

The Dec. 19 article, “How ‘Baladi’ Became the Star of Israeli Cuisine and a Key to Palestinian Identity and Resistance,” (and in the Dec. 16 weekend print edition) includes an illustrated map of Israel and the Palestinian territories prepared by the Sarendib NGO which expunges Israel, referring only to “Palestine.” Haaretz‘s own caption uncritically adopted the organization’s erasure of Israel, initially stating: “A map showing baladi produce in Palestine by Sarendib, a Palestinian educational NGO based in Haifa.Credit: Sarendib 2022″
CAMERA’s Israel office reached out to Haaretz, urging either revision of the caption to correctly refer to Israel and the Palestinian territories, or clear designation of Sarendib’s terminology as problematic given that it erases Israel off the map.

Editors made a completely inconsequential edit to the digital version, adding scare quotes to the word “map,” as if that made the complete erasure of Israel any more acceptable. As one CAMERA Arabic researcher quipped, “Map is the one word that should not get air quotes, unlike ‘Palestine,’ ‘Palestinian’ and ‘educational,’ and probably also ‘NGO.'”

When CAMERA Arabic previously called out BBC Arabic for promoting a very similar Sarendib map featuring Palestine from the river to the sea, the British news outlet subsequently pulled its promotional feature, demonstrating more accountability than Haaretz on the same issue.


CBC Radio Gives A Platform To Another Broadcast Of An Anti-Israel Film
The world is a vast space with more than eight billion inhabitants spread across more than 200 countries and living on six continents.

But it seems that in some newsrooms and CBC News, the actions – real or imagined – of the tiny State of Israel are what should garner all the attention.

In the January 31, 2022 edition of The Current, a CBC Radio program, host Matt Galloway featured a lengthy discussion with multiple guests about an Israeli documentary film, Tantura, which covered an alleged Israeli massacre of Arabs in 1948.

The problematic segment was featured in an HonestReporting Canada alert published at the time.

Now, just a few months later, CBC Radio’s Day 6 program has given a platform to yet another broadcast of the exact same documentary film. But the issue with this latest broadcast is not only the CBC’s seeming infatuation with this anti-Israel documentary, but with the content of the interview itself.

In the segment, host Brent Bambury interviews Alon Schwarz, the creator of the film Tantura, which is slated to be shown at the upcoming Vancouver Film Festival.

During the course of the interview, Schwarz depicts Israel’s founding as an endeavour built on Palestinian suffering, telling his host that the story that Israelis have told themselves is that “the Palestinians that were here just ran away by themselves and were not encouraged to do this and were not violently kicked out and were not ethnically cleansed,” adding that “The real story is that there was a war here, and during that war, a pretty systematic deportation, a violent deportation of many Palestinian Arabs happened.”

In his retelling of Israel’s rebirth in 1948, Schwarz gives listeners an extremely misleading and one-sided perspective of what took place. During that War of Independence, there was no doubt suffering and ugliness, as takes place in any armed conflict, but to depict Israel as the aggressor is to turn history on its head.


MEMRI: In 135 Instances Across Australia In 2022, Neo-Nazi Place Stickers Recruiting For Organizations, And Promoting Neo-Nazi Ideology, Racism, Antisemitism, And Anti-LGBTIQA+ Hate
Throughout 2022, Australian Neo-Nazi organizations and individuals posted many stickers on public property. A number of these groups were highly active, totalling 135 instances of stickers posted and documented online throughout the course of the year. This report has adopted a chronological approach to categorizing and analysing self-reported instances of stickers posted in Australia from January 1, 2022, to December 1, 2022.

This report has identified a significant increase in stickering activity in Australia in mid-to-late 2022, with highs of 22 instances in May and 21 instances in September. This report suggests that there may be two main driving factors that may explain this increase.

First, an Australian Neo-Nazi began in May 2022 to produce, print, market, sell, and distribute a wide variety of stickers including Neo-Nazi, white supremacist, racist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, and anti-LGBTIQA+ designs. This individuals' stickers were identified in instances of stickers posted and documented online by other actors, in addition to himself.

Second, several new Neo-Nazi organizations and groups appeared as the year progressed – resulting in more entities aspiring to gain visibility or recruit members, with some adopting the tactics of established neo-Nazi organizations as a means of doing so. Australian Neo-Nazis predominately posted their stickering activities to their Telegram channels, from when they were shared widely online.

This report reviews instances of Australian Neo-Nazi organizations, groups, and individuals posting stickers in each month from January 1, 2022, to December 1, 2022.
Hertfordshire under-fourteens team receives nine-month ban following “Hitler would be proud” Snapchat post
A Hertfordshire-based under-fourteens football team has received a nine-month ban following an inflammatory social media post from one of its players.

Following the Potters Bar United under-fourteen’s win over the Jewish children’s football team Maccabi London FC on 19th September, one of the Potters Bar players uploaded a Snapchat post which said: “4-3 win over some random Jews. Hitler would be proud.”

Accompanied was a petrol tank emoji, seemingly a reference to gas chambers in Nazi Germany.

The team has now been banned from playing games for nine months, two of which are suspended for one year. Additionally, two players have been suspended from playing, must attend an FA online education programme and the club must pay a fine.

The family of the boy responsible for the post has agreed to undertake a course on Holocaust education and Judaism with a rabbi.

A spokesperson for Hertfordshire Police said: “An investigation was launched in September 2022 after police were made aware of a post on social media containing antisemitic language. The post was made in relation to a football match involving two youth teams based in Hertfordshire.

“Enquiries were carried out and a teenage boy was interviewed under caution. He fully admitted the offence and was dealt with by of community resolution.

“Hate crimes can have a severe impact on victims and on the wider community as a whole. Incidents of this nature will absolutely not be tolerated in Hertfordshire and any reports made to police will be taken seriously and dealt with sensitively.”


Israel's Kfar Kama makes UN list of best villages for tourism
The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) announced its 2022 list of the best villages for tourism on Tuesday. Kafr Kama, a Circassian village in northeastern Israel, made the list. The tiny village of just under 3,500 people is one of only two Circassian villages in the country.

"A total of 136 villages were put forward for consideration by 57 UNWTO Member States... for the 2022 edition. From these, 32 were recognized as Best Tourism Villages," the UNWTO wrote on its website. Each member nation is allowed to nominate a maximum of three villages for consideration.

As some countries had multiple nominated villages earn a spot on the list, Israel is one of only 18 countries with a village to earn the accolade.

What Receiving the Award Means
The "best tourism villages" distinction that the winning villages received indicates that they are "rural destinations that are embracing tourism as a driver of development and new opportunities for jobs and income," according to the UNTWO.

Concurrently, the UNTWO says the villages are "preserving and promoting community-based values and products...[and remaining committed] to innovation and sustainability in all its aspects – economic, social and environmental."

Additionally, the laureate villages are pursuing their tourism development in accordance with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
7-Eleven to open in Tel Aviv on January 11
After a long wait, Israelis will finally be able to enjoy 7-Eleven in their country starting on January 11.

The chain's first branch in Israel is set to open its doors at Dizengoff Center on January 11, although the exact time it will open that day is still uncertain.

The storefront is already being prepared with a large façade visible on Dizengoff Street with the 7-Eleven logo and the words "coming soon."

Last year, Electra Consumer Products signed an agreement with 7-Eleven to open hundreds of branches of the convenience store chain throughout Israel.

Dozens of branches of the store will be opened across the country in the next three years, according to the agreement.

Electra Consumer Products will be the sole franchisee of the chain in Israel for the next 20 years with the option to extend the agreement for up to 50 years. The company is expected to invest NIS 60 million in the 7-Eleven stores in the coming years.
Robbie Williams, Sam Smith to perform in Israel in 2023
Some of the biggest international names in music will be hitting the stage in Tel Aviv in the summer of 2023, with the Summer in the City music festival on May 31 and June 1, 2023.

Take a look at the lineup scheduled to appear at Tel Aviv's Park Hayarkon next year:
Robbie Williams
Set to headline the two-day festival is British artist Robbie Williams, who first came into the public eye as a member of Take That from 1990-1995. Since then, he has achieved extensive commercial success, selling over 20 million albums and 8.66 million singles as a solo artist, and releasing his 10th album, XXV, in September 2022.

Fresh from his trip to Qatar where he performed as part of the FIFA World Cup 2022 celebrations, Williams will be touching down in Israel to perform this May for the first time since 2015.

Sam Smith
Unlike Williams, Sam Smith's performance at Summer in the City will be their debut performance in Israel. The 30-year-old singer-songwriter is set to release their fourth studio album Gloria in 2023, and in 2022, their single Unholy went viral, with millions watching and listening to a promotional clip of the song even before its official release date.

Smith has won four Grammy Awards, three Brit Awards, three Billboard Music Awards, and an American Music Award, as well as a Golden Globe and an Academy Award.
In 2022, the American Jewish community rose as one to save Ukrainian Jews
David Ben-Gurion famously said, “In order to be a realist in the State of Israel, one must believe in miracles.” Looking back on the year 2022, it is not difficult to find reasons for pessimism. This was a year marked by ferocious antisemitism on social media and in the public square. It was so intense that it necessitated condemnation from the highest levels of government. Meanwhile, the rift between Israel and American Jews appears to be growing, with divisive issues looming on the agenda for 2023.

Yet when the history of 2022 is written, I suspect that its first few chapters will be about something else. Regardless of all the challenges we face, 2022 was the year that Israel and the global Jewish community accomplished miracles together, and every single one of us should take at least a moment to reflect on that fact with pride.

Although we are still tabulating exact 2022 numbers at the Jewish Agency for Israel, it is certain that nearly 70,000 Jews made Israel their home over the past year—more than double the number from 2021 and the highest amount of olim in 23 years. Over one in six of them came from Ukraine due to the ongoing war, in which their very lives hung in the balance.

Take a moment to consider the enormity of this development. Many are haunted not only by the horrors of the Holocaust, but by the sad and uncontested fact that American Jews were unable to save their fellow Jews from it. As the years marched on and other wars and atrocities occurred, it was not illogical to ask the question of whether we had learned the lessons of the past.

Make no mistake about it, 2022 was not 1939, and the war in Ukraine—as horrific as it may be—is not the Holocaust in any way, shape or form. That said, in 2022, Jews once again found themselves fleeing war. Cities like Kyiv and Odessa, to which many American Jews trace our roots, shook as rockets hit. Millions of people found themselves without homes. This was a crisis unknown in most of our lifetimes, involving a nation with a significant and strong Jewish community.
'Carthago' tells a strange but captivating story
The much-hyped new series, Carthago, which just premiered on Kan 11 and it is running on Sundays and Wednesdays at 9:15 p.m. - the first episodes are already available at www.kan.org.il - tells a strange story: In the 1940s, at the height of World War II, the British Mandate authorities deported Irgun and Lehi fighters held without trial from Palestine to a number of prison camps in Africa, among them one in Carthago, Sudan. There, these Jews were held alongside Nazi spies and Italian fascists, and the potential for conflict among the inmates was limitless.

The series was created by Reshef Levi (Lost Islands, Hunting Elephants), Yannets Levi (the author of the children’s book series, The Adventures of Uncle Arieh, and Reshef’s Brother) and Tomer Shani (Very Important Person) and is based on the memories of the Levis’ father, who was held in Carthago.

What is the series like?
But in spite of the fascinating, little-known story, the series combines a variety of genres and styles in a way that is often jarring. While some will respond to its black humor, others will be put off by its graphic violence and more than that, the cartoonish way the violence is handled. The first episode, in particular, is also marked by an inordinate amount of narration, which is meant to be clever and may have looked good on the page but after a while, you may start to think, “Does that guy have to start talking again?”

This combination of snark and sadistic physical violence (if you don’t like torture scenes, this isn’t the show for you) became a kind of trademark for Quentin Tarantino and at times I wished that the American director, who currently resides in Tel Aviv with his Israeli wife and kids, had been brought in to work on it. Tarantino can blend comedy, tragedy and the sadistic infliction of pain on those who get caught up in historical events or crimes seamlessly, so much so that afterward, it may seem strange to you that you laughed at certain graphic scenes. But most of all, he makes you want to keep watching. While Carthago looks to have been a very expensive series shot abroad with both Israel and international actors, it takes a few episodes to create the kind of suspense that will draw you in.

URI GOV, an actor previously known for the television series, Palmach, plays the main character, Elijah Levi, a flamboyant Tel Aviv comic entertainer who claims not to know why he ended up in the camp. He is first introduced hooded and handcuffed to a small British guy, as both are transported to the camp, and he has come to feel a bond with this Brit during their long journey. But when the hoods come off at Carthago, the British guy turns out to be Thomas Edinburgh (Oliver Buckner), a Nazi spy (whom we later learn is motivated by resentment for his stern, English father). But while Elijah and Thomas are on opposite sides of World War II, in the camp they are both inmates and upon arrival are savagely beaten by local guards, to the enthusiastic encouragement of the deputy camp commander (Shaun Paul McGrath).




New York leaders speak out against antisemitism on 2nd night of Hanukkah
Hundreds of people gathered on Monday night in Manhattan, in Times Square near West 47th Street and Broadway, for the “Shine A Light” on antisemitism event.

Speakers included New York Governor Kathy Hochul; New York Attorney General Letitia James; Gideon Taylor, CEO of The Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, which organized the event in conjunction with other groups; and Eric Goldstein, CEO of UJA-Federation of New York.

“The darkest place right now is in the heart and soul of some individuals who perpetrate antisemitism and harm individuals who I represent with words, physical actions, with assaults, with messages on social media,” Hochul said, adding that she views these actions as an attack on her and all New Yorkers. “There can be no hate in our state.”

James said, “Everyone here understands that it seems hardly that a day goes by without yet another ugly incident of antisemitism targeting an individual or one of my friends within the Jewish community.”

She said that hateful messages toward Jews and Israel must be stopped.

“The only way that we are going to stamp out ignorance is with the light of education, understanding and respect,” James said.

Comedian Ariel Elias performed, as did musical artists Nissim Black, Moshav, Miami Boys Choir alum David Herskowitz and the Ramaz Upper School Choir.
Chanukah bus incident victims to mark a year since attack
Victims of the Oxford Street bus attack have returned one year on to the site where a gang of thugs hurled abuse, obscene gestures and a shopping basket at them as they celebrated Chanukah.

On November 29, 2021, a Chabad-organised Chanukah tour stopped outside Oxford Street Primark.

The group of around 40 British and Israeli revellers began playing music and dancing when a group of four men approached.

The yobs quickly became aggressive and started shouting “free Palestine” and making obscene gestures.

When the Jewish group retreated into the open-top bus, the men began shouting profanities, spitting at the bus, and banging on the windows with their shoes.

And now, a year later, the teens have returned in a defiant show of strength, to celebrate Chanukah once again.

Rabbi Glitsenstein, who organised both last year's event said: "My feeling is that London is open to everyone, everyone can be proud of his nation.

"I give thanks to everyone who was involved in organising this event. We want to spread the light of pure happiness, we pray it will spread to everyone who needs it."




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