Wednesday, January 04, 2023
Stephen Daisley: Challenging anti-Semitism is a moral imperative for non-Jews
They are not the only British Jews to be acknowledged on the New Year Honours list but they have in common a commitment to confronting anti-Semitism and a record of making people in power take notice of the problem. In recognising their efforts, the honours committee is expressing admiration for their public service and an affinity with the cause of fighting anti-Semitism. This is all well and good but it’s not enough. It’s not enough to give recognition or solidarity to Jews then go back to letting them tackle anti-Semitism on their own. Anti-Semitism and its suppression is not a ‘them’ thing but an ‘us’ thing.Seth Frantzman: Eight Wars and Peace Deals That Could Happen in 2023
The first six months of 2022 saw 786 anti-Semitic incidents in the UK, four in five of them taking place offline and one in ten involving assaults. Although this marked a reduction on the first half of 2021, another disturbing trend emerged: where age could be ascertained, one in five perpetrators were under the age of 18. Between 2020 and 2021 there was a 59 per cent increase in anti-Semitic incidents on UK university campuses, taking the total to the highest in the 20-year history of recording this statistic. The CST has also documented how the Covid-19 conspiracist movement has laundered tropes like the blood libel, Jews poisoning the well, and secret Jewish plots into its narratives about the virus and the vaccines.
Anti-Semitism in Britain reflects a mightier tide of anti-Jewish hatred sweeping the globe. In 2021, anti-Semitic incidents rose 29 per cent in Germany, 54 per cent in Canada, 74 per cent in France and 119 per cent in Austria. Jews continue to be the foremost victims of religious hate crimes in the United States, including in New York City, where such incidents increased by 125 per cent last year. Kanye West has given a celebrity hechsher to Jew-hatred while Donald Trump, reportedly gearing up for another White House bid, had dinner with Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who ‘ironically’ denies the Holocaust and says ‘the Antichrist is the Jewish state of Israel’.
Commending Jews for standing up to all this hatred is like applauding when the woman you’re watching being mugged across the street gets a decent punch in. Challenging anti-Semitism is a moral imperative for non-Jews and one that is growing more urgent by the day. Holocaust survivors have been pivotal in educating each new generation about where anti-Semitism leads but vanishingly few remain. Of the six featured on the latest honours list, the youngest is 85. When we lose a survivor we lose a living testament and it becomes all the harder to debunk the lies and madness of Jew-hatred. Gentiles must bear their responsibility to combating anti-Semitism. Achrayut is a Jewish principle but it doesn’t apply to Jews alone.
The first days of the new year have already illustrated that the potential for wider conflict and escalation in the Middle East is a very real concern.The Beautiful People vs. Ugly Israel’s new government
For instance, an airstrike on Damascus International Airport illustrates that Iran will continue to try to entrench in Syria in the coming year. In addition, the decision by an Israeli politician to visit the Temple Mount appeared ready-made as a potential incendiary decision that could lead to tensions. The Kingdom of Jordan has warned Israel against upsetting the status quo in Jerusalem.
Here is a list of some of the potential conflicts that could break out and peace deals that might be signed this year.
Another conflict with Hamas and Islamic Jihad
Iran emboldened Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to attack Israel in the past. In May 2021, Iran encouraged these terror groups to escalate tensions over Jerusalem during Ramadan. This resulted in a short conflict. It’s possible that Iran, under pressure at home due to protests and encouraged by new drone deals with Russia, could push Hamas to heat up a conflict with Israel.
Hamas continues to test rockets and continues to threaten Israel. Hamas may seek to destabilize the West Bank in order to cause this crisis to grow. PIJ has ample resources in Jenin and elsewhere. Constant attempts by Israeli security forces to keep these threats in check are important, but they can always boil over.
A breakdown in Palestinian control, rise of violence in West Bank
The last year has seen a massive increase in violence in the West Bank. While most of this was contained and took place in clashes between the IDF and terror groups and armed gangs in Jenin and Nablus, it is possible that the Palestinian Authority is losing its grip.
Although the PA security forces were trained by the US and Palestinian police have been trained by the EU, the authority itself is losing its grip. Its aging leadership is out of touch. This means that enterprising young men, armed with the flood of illegal weapons that have been a phenomenon of late in the West Bank, could begin to challenge the authorities.
This could lead to violence in which Ramallah asks Israel quietly for more support. With a new right-wing government, Israel’s actions to tamp down the violence could end up enflaming tensions. Jordan, angry about alleged changes in the status quo in Jerusalem could also seek to play a role, exacerbating the tensions.
Beautiful Israel has many ways of keeping Ugly Israel in its place; the media columns on both continents attacking the new government are the least of the weapons at its disposal.
But Ugly Israel has been slowly winning ever since Begin mobilized Holocaust survivors tear-gassed outside the Knesset for protesting the government’s deal with Germany. As well as Middle Eastern Jews with little interest in being the slave labor on the socialist kibbutzim of Beautiful Israel, only to then be ridiculed and mocked in TV skits as backward wife-beaters and superstitious “amulet-kissers” who sell their daughters. Russian Jewish immigrants, and religious Americans living in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, have also joined Ugly Israel.
The clamor about the “threats to democracy” posed by Ugly Israel is the voice of an elite establishment that lives in terror of democracy and does everything possible to usurp it.
“I hear the opposition’s eulogies about the end of state, the end of democracy—members of the opposition, to lose an election isn’t the end of democracy, it’s the essence of democracy,” said Netanyahu concisely.
But democracy as a fetish object has little to do with elections. When the media and the elites bemoan threats to democracy, what they really mean is threats to their political power and, more intangibly, to their cultural power. The rise of Ugly Israel is a reminder that Beautiful Israel, with its cafes, its chummy literary awards, its film industry, sneering bottle-blonde anchorwomen and corrupt bureaucracy, is a failed attempt to create a European socialist utopia.
That effort failed a generation ago when the kibbutz fell apart, the economy was liberalized and most of the country stopped paying attention to worthless leftist culture, to Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua, and the rest of the canon, and developed a hearty contempt for its ruling class.
The next time you hear some activist or media pundit fulminating against the new Israeli government, what you’re really hearing is the elite telling the rest of the country to shut up and take it for the sake of higher priorities, like relationships with the Biden administration, the United Nations and the European Union, and for the cultural sensitivities of the scribblers of Beautiful Israel, who deplore a beaten man shouting a slur at the thug who threw a rock at his head more than they do the thug.
Israel is becoming representative of all the people who were shoved to the back to make utopia happen. And despite being the majority, they’re still being shoved to the back, sold out and shouted down. Their lives are incomprehensible to a ruling class overjoyed at the thought of vacationing in more Muslim countries, but with no idea what it’s like to balance six kids, maintain a small business that can be shut down at any moment or shaken down by an African gang, dodge bullets and rocks, or to be threatened by the authorities and mocked by the media.
Beautiful Israel doesn’t care about any of this. Just as America’s political establishment doesn’t care about jobs being exported to China, fentanyl trafficking, the collapse of the family, runaway crime or any of the things that actually matter outside a handful of wealthy sub/urban enclaves.
In 2016, Americans made them care. In 2022, Ugly Israel made Beautiful Israel care.
That’s why Beautiful Israel is angry. That’s why you’ll see columns even from people who claim to be conservative and pro-Israel deploring the “ugly” “far-right” government.
They’ve been made to care, but they still don’t give a damn about the people of Israel.
Caroline Glick: Netanyahu must defend Israel against ‘wokeism’
Political philosopher and author Yoram Hazony joins Caroline Glick in this week’s “Caroline Glick Show.” Hazony heads the National Conservatism Movement, which operates in the United States and Europe. The two discuss the philosopher’s new book, “Rediscovering Conservatism,” and its lessons for Israel.Caroline Glick Show: Yoram Hazony & Caroline Glick: Netanyahu must defend Israel against ‘wokeism’
Glick and Hazony go through the major thesis of the book, namely that liberal democracy has been subsumed into authoritarian Marxism, otherwise known as “Wokeism.”
Hazony makes the case in his book that the tenets of conservative political theory, as expressed in the U.S. Constitution and the works of Edmund Burke, provide the best and perhaps only way for Western nations to pry themselves out of the suicide grip of woke progressives, who view their societies as oppressive, evil and in need of destruction and transformation along Marxist lines. How Israel is different
Israel, Hazony explains, is different from other Western nations, because it never fully adopted liberal democracy as its governing creed. It was only with the judicial revolution of the 1990s, and the Oslo peace process with the PLO, that the main tenets of liberal democracy became the driving force for the Israeli left.
To this day, the majority of Israelis have not accepted most of its precepts, he says. Hazony argues that despite this, the woke tsunami is coming to Israel through its elites and its elite institutions.
To defend Israel against the growing tidal wave that has already begun washing onto the country’s shores, the new Netanyahu government should work to establish conservative media and educational institutions that will be able to competently fight the war of ideas against wokeism that liberal media and educational institutions have proven themselves wholly incompetent to deal with, he says.
Caroline Glick: A pope for the ages, and for the Jews
Benedict then quoted Lebanese Catholic theologian Theodore Khoury saying, “For Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent, his will is not bound up with any of our categories.”Washington Post bias in full swing
Khoury’s claim was that, unlike Christianity, Islam is entirely based on faith, untethered to reason. Benedict’s fundamental point was that meaningful interfaith dialogue between Christians and Muslims can only be predicated on faith tempered by reason. And in the absence of reason, no meaningful dialogue is possible. His was a challenge to Muslims to show that reason has pride of place in their faith.
Muslim fanatics in Judea and Samaria responded to Benedict’s speech by burning churches. In Iraq, they beheaded a priest. In Somalia, they murdered a nun. The Pakistani parliament passed a unanimous resolution condemning the pontiff. Calls to murder Benedict were heard throughout the Islamic world. In other words, the jihadists proved by their own actions that jihadist Islam rejects reason and anyone who advocates on its behalf.
They weren’t the only ones condemning Benedict. The international left—including its representatives within the Catholic Church— harshly criticized Benedict for what progressives viewed as politically incorrect, culturally insensitive and Islamophobic remarks.
The response to Benedict’s statement by both sides of the Red-Green alliance was notable because it showed that what binds woke progressives and Islamists isn’t a shared vision of what the world should look like, but their common rejection of reason. Progressive identity politics, victim culture and hatred of the West form the basis of a faith just as powerful—and unreasoned—as jihadist Islam.
And this brings us to why Benedict was a friend of the Jewish state and the Jewish people. Notably, and not incidentally, one of the common foundations of cultures characterized by a rejection of reason is Jew-hatred.
Regardless of its source or manifestation, Jew-hatred is a form of unreasoned faith—of fanaticism. Scapegoating Jews, blaming Jews as individuals, as a community, a religion, a nation or a state for all the ills suffered by whatever particular group, is a powerful tool for political mobilization. Jew-hatred is a source of political power because anti-Jewish leaders are able to tell their followers an easy story: The Jews are our misfortune. I’ll punish or get rid of the Jews. I’ll get rid of the misfortune.
The notion is both stupid and insane. But that is part of its power. If you reject reason, you don’t need proof. You act on pure faith. You believe.
The basic illogic of Jew-hatred makes it elastic and enduring. Jew-haters take the zeitgeist of whatever age they live in or creed they live by and define Jews as its antithesis. In Christendom, Jews were the anti-Christ. Religion went out of fashion in the era of Enlightenment. Racism became the rage. So, Jew haters in the era of racism redefined the Jews as a race, called the “Semites.” Out of touch Christian Judeophobia of yesteryear was relaunched as the fashionable and sophisticated “antisemitism” and voila! A proto-Nazi political movement was born.
In the meantime, capitalists said Jews were communists, and communists said Jews were capitalists.
In our post-Holocaust era, antisemitism is unfashionable. Post-nationalism and anti-Western anti-colonialism are all the rage. So, a few decades ago, the new sophisticates repackaged old-fashioned Jew-hatred to align it with the new zeitgeist. Anti-Zionism was launched as a pillar of the post-nationalist, anti-Western creed. For Jew-haters, the beauty of anti-Zionism was its utility as a political defense. The new, refined Jew-haters protest: We don’t hate Jews, per se. Indeed, some of our best friends are anti-Zionist Jews. We just reject the morality of the very existence of the largest Jewish community in the world, and the legitimacy of secular Jewish Zionist identity across the world.
In this rejection of the Jewish state, and the notion that Jews have a right to national self-determination, the progressives find allies in Islamic Jew-haters. Both have worldviews and creeds defined by their rejection of reason. And both use Jew-hatred as an instrumental means to rally the faithful and demonstrate their faith. As they have been throughout history, Israel and its Jewish supporters are an easy bogeyman, because there is only one Jewish state, and less than ten million more Jews worldwide.
Benedict’s speech at Regensburg was both a defense of reasoned Christianity and a strike at unreasoned fanaticism—Islamist or otherwise. As such, it was a profound defense against Jew-hatred in all its forms. Since the beginning of the current century, the Red-Green alliance has been the most powerful force assaulting the Jewish state and Jewish people in Israel and the Diaspora. Our greatest allies in the fight against both radical Islam and post-nationalist woke totalitarians are men and women like Benedict, who reject the culture of fanaticism.
For his courageous efforts to combat that culture, most memorably expressed in his speech at the University of Regensburg, and to cultivate a world of reasoned belief, Benedict deserves our enduring appreciation and respect.
In “Far-right Israeli coalition sworn in” (12-30-22), The Washington Post clearly opposes Israel’s new government, stating that it opens “a divisive chapter of national politics” in Israel.Countering pro-BDS Jews
Additionally, the Post article repeatedly emphasizes what it calls potential anti-LGBT actions by the new government, yet it omits the fact that the new Likud government will have for the first time in Israel’s history, a member of the LGBT community as the next Knesset speaker—the third-most important job in Israel’s democracy. These charges ironically malign a country that will continue to be the most LGBT-friendly country by far in the entire region—a region where LGBT members are routinely murdered for their sexual orientation. But The Washington Post will spin it as the newspaper will, because that’s what The Washington Post does.
The Washington Post front-page article had not one good thing to say about the newly formed government, making sure to quote only its critics—not the mark of a balanced newspaper. When Israel’s neighbor, Egypt, held its one and only election in 2012, the Post acclaimed the victory of the Islamist winner as “a watershed moment”—a much more favorable review than the treatment of Israel’s election. The Post coddled Egyptian election winner Mohamed Morsi, calling him “low key,” while routinely criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “hardline.”
The Washington Post’s reporting on Egypt’s election not only amounted to an endorsement of Morsi, despite his membership in the radical Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, but actively defended the extremist organization. The Post noted that members of the Islamist group were “tortured and repressed” but concealed the group’s role in the assassination of the Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat (who made peace with Israel) along with numerous other acts of terrorism, especially against Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority. The Muslim Brotherhood assassinated or attempted assassinations against other Egyptian leaders and firmly condemned the U.S. military action that killed Osama Bin Laden. The Post reports the news based on its agenda, not the facts. Why the Post aligns with Islamist groups that favor world Islamic domination over the only democracy in the Middle East would make for an enlightening op-ed.
The one bright spot of the Dec. 30 article was when the Post admitted that the West Bank region was “contested territory” and therefore not Arab land—as the newspaper had falsely claimed in the past. Both Israel and the Palestinians claim the land, and the dispute remains unresolved.
This is the most difficult chapter in the ongoing campaign for Israel’s position and good reputation worldwide. This challenge is so painful that most affiliated with it look away, avoid, or circumvent it – so as not to know of it or see it. This is understandable. The most terrible quarrels occur within the family, and in our case – the Jewish family."Wednesday ‘Elite Cohort’ of US Campus Leaders Visit the ‘New Middle East’"
The alarming reality is that a significant number of the calls to boycott Israel, punish and denounce it, impose sanctions on it, define it as an apartheid state, and so on, come from Jews. It is difficult to estimate the number of these people, but it is significant.
In fact, it is doubly significant. First, there are many Jews in radical organizations. Second, their very participation in this movement validates the non-Jews participating in this delegitimization campaign.
The “Jewish component” of the boycott movement has two main groups: the first is the leaders, from politicians such as Bernie Sanders to intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky; the second is the activists, ordinarily young people, who operate out in the field.
These college students sometimes come from a background of heavy criticism of Israel. They grew up in houses, communities, or schools where every possible accusation and claim was hurled at our country without the opportunity for them to hear the answers to these accusations or that the answers supplied were not satisfactory in their eyes.
Forty hand-picked Jewish and non-Jewish, as well as racially and politically diverse, undergraduate leaders start their visit to Israel and the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday to gain a firsthand understanding of the rapidly developing and mutually beneficial economic cooperation taking place between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
The students went through a highly competitive application process to join the inaugural cohort of Israel on Campus Coalition’s (ICC) Geller International Fellowship, a half-year elite master class that culminates in this first-of-its-kind trip. The trip will provide an immersive educational experience about coexistence and cooperative partnerships in the political, cultural, security, economic, and civil rights arenas. Students will be afforded unique access to influential leaders, politicians, entrepreneurs, activists, and professionals that shape Israeli and Arab society.
The student fellows include a student body president, student body vice president, speaker of the assembly, chief of staff, chief justice, three senators, a board of elections chair, director of city relations, and other student government officials. They represent a mix of political persuasions – Democrats, Republicans, and Independents – and come from public and private schools. Five attend Ivy League institutions, four go to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), and 20 are enrolled in state schools. Roughly half the visitors are studying public policy, political science, or history; more than a third are studying economics or business; and just under a third are majoring in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
The visitors will meet with Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, the first Israeli Ambassador to the UAE Amir Hayek, one of the main negotiators in the historic Abraham Accords, Israel’s Head of Economic and Trade Mission to the UAE, the Chief Rabbi of the UAE, numerous high-tech executives, academics, leaders of coexistence projects, and key members of the press and business world.
In Israel, the visiting students will explore many models of coexistence and progress in meetings with FeelBeit Jerusalem organizers, Jaffa’s diverse community members, and educators at Groovetech, a fully immersive center on the Gaza Strip border that trains students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
— Shmul Yiddulleh Ben Yisroel (@BenShmul) January 3, 2023
Now that she's in graduate school @TheNewSchool pursuing a career in politics, don't forget that Asma Barakat engages Jews on Twitter with “get the f**k off our land and eat s**t you stupid dog.”https://t.co/yxNbI80WT7 pic.twitter.com/ljwCkbKA4d
— Canary Mission (@canarymission) January 4, 2023
So much to deconstruct about this foam-at-the-mouth brain-fart, but here’s a simple start for you @JamieBelsito:
— Shahar Azani (@ShaharAzani) January 4, 2023
“Genocide” implies a reduction in the population, yet #Palestinian population at the end of 2022 is at 5.33 million, compared with 1m in the 60s.
You were saying? pic.twitter.com/y5h4RI31YO
PreOccupiedTerritory: Palestinian Suggestions That China Blame Open Israeli Dams For COVID Spike Fall On Deaf Ears (satire)
Diplomatic delegates representing Mahmoud Abbas lamented today that their advice to Xi Jinping and his administration on how to handle a resurgence of the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen has apparently gone ignored, specifically the recommendation that Xi follow their society’s example in responding to challenges by accusing the Jewish State of malign activities and letting the world’s knee-jerk antisemitism accomplish the rest.REVIEWING BBC NEWS WEBSITE COVERAGE OF PALESTINIAN AFFAIRS IN 2022
Palestinian Ambassador to China Alyahud Allawm acknowledged Wednesday that Chinese officials have ignored his suggestion that the Chinese Communist Party resolve the burgeoning cases of COVID-19 in the Republic by following the annual Palestinian wintertime practice of blaming Israel for opening non-existent dams. Mr. Allawm disclosed that he had hoped to share his people’s experience and wisdom with the Chinese, having found a sympathetic ear among the international community each time they attribute rain-induced flooding in the Gaza Strip to Israeli cruelty, regardless of the fact that no such dams exist in the vicinity of the flooding.
“We thought our Chinese colleagues and friends might appreciate our input, with our robust record of having handled crises,” he recalled in an interview this afternoon. “However, our mentalities are obviously very different. They evidently prefer to impose draconian, even brutal, measures to contain and suppress the spread of the disease, whereas we are more of the mindset that one’s people’s suffering is an asset to be leveraged in the public opinion arena to make one’s foes appear inhuman, not to be alleviated. Unfortunately, our hosts preferred their way of addressing their COVID crisis to ours. We understand the decision even if we disagree with the reasoning behind it.”
Topics not reported by the BBC in 2022 include repeated violent clashes between rival clans in Hebron, attacks on Christians, repeated allegations of torture in Palestinian Authority prisons, frequent arrests of political opponents and journalists by PA security forces and internal political tensions within the Palestinian Authority. BBC audiences learned nothing about women’s rights in areas controlled by the PA or Hamas.Euronews fails miserably in report on home demolition
Perhaps the most significant issues repeatedly overlooked by the BBC in 2022 – given its focus on “the deadliest year for Palestinians” – were the Palestinian Authority’s loss of control over parts of the territory in Area A and the rising participation of members of the PA security forces in terrorism.
Although the BBC maintains offices in Gaza City, Jerusalem and Ramallah, stand-alone reports concerning internal Palestinian affairs which are not framed within the context of ‘the conflict’ and do not have an Israel-related component continue to be few and far between.
A Jan. 2 video report at Euronews, misleadingly titled “Israel destroys homes of two Palestinians in occupied West Bank”, fails miserably at reporting the IDF demolition of terrorists’ homes in the West Bank village of Kafr Dan.Anti-Israel Activist Firas Al-Najim Accuses Jews Of Being Prophet-Killers On Social Media; Will Twitter Take Appropriate Action?
First, the video embedded in the Euronews article, with no commentary or text, merely shows the demolition, and reactions by Palestinians – with no context on why the homes were demolished. Here’s the accompanying text added by Euronews editors:
Israeli forces have destroyed the house of Abdul Rahman Hani Subhi Abed, in Kafr Dan, near Jenin in the occupied West Bank. The 22-year-old was killed in September by an Israeli soldier during a wave of recent deadly unrest.
Ahmed Ayman Ibrahim Abed, a 23-year-old, was also killed in September.
And Israeli forces also demolished his home. The demolition is part of Israel’s controversial practice of destroying the homes of Palestinian accused of deadly attacks.
As with the headline and video, obfuscated is the fact that the IDF destroyed the Palestinian homes as punishment for the actions of the two occupants, Abdul Rahman Hani Subhi Abed and Ahmed Ayman Ibrahim Abed. In September, the two – the latter of whom was an officer in the PA security services – ambushed and killed and Israeli soldier, Maj. Bar Falah, 30. Falah and other soldiers were attempting to arrest the pair, who were suspected of planning a terror attack.
The fact that the two suspected terrorists were also killed later in the same battle – noted prominently by Euronews – is not relevant to the demolition of their homes.
Firas al-Najim is the founder of the organization Canadian Defenders for Human Rights (CD4HR), a non-profit group which claims to work “tirelessly to defend the rights of humans of all backgrounds, colours, and faiths.”
But al-Najim has a sordid history of attacking Israel and the Jewish community in general and is an outspoken advocate of the Iranian regime.
Al-Najim has accused “Zionists” of blackmailing Canadian news outlets into supporting Israel, has disgracefully verbally assaulted a Holocaust survivor at a Jewish event, and on Canada Day, along with a small group of supporters, accosted shoppers at an Israeli store in Thornhill, Ontario, before police arrived and sent him away.
Despite his amateurish tactics, al-Najim has amassed a fairly substantial following on social media. On his TikTok account earlier in 2022, al-Najim posted a video accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians by claiming that a “Palestinian Holocaust that is happening every minute and every hour inside the holy occupied land of Palestine that they call Israel” and that “antisemitism is a fraudulent card being used and abused by Zionists to justify occupation.”
Fortunately, following HonestReporting Canada’s alert, al-Najim’s TikTok account – which at the time had 8,281 followers – was removed from the social media platform.
However, his absence from TikTok has not stopped him from spewing antisemitic content elsewhere.
Hey, @AFP, did you conveniently forget that Gaza is also blockaded by the Egyptians? Or does that not fit your narrative? https://t.co/VR8pKFeSWQ pic.twitter.com/RXz8f59J6M
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) January 4, 2023
Deutsche Welle Corrects Two Key Locations Israel’s Capital and the Jewish Temples
In recent days, German public broadcasting service Deutsche Welle has commendably corrected two basic facts concerning key Israeli locations: the nation’s capital is Jerusalem, not Tel Aviv, and the ancient Jewish temples were indeed located on the Temple Mount.Kentucky Jewish Council releases its first-ever antisemitism report
First, an English-language Jan. 2 subheading and tweet had wrongly referred to Tel Aviv as the capital of Israel, using the common journalistic practice of referring to a nation’s capital city as shorthand for the country’s government. The inaccurate wording in both was “Tel Aviv has not yet commented on the incident.”
Jerusalem, not Tel Aviv, is Israel’s capital.
Numerous media outlets have corrected this very point in the past, including Deutsche Welle’s own Arabic service last August, The Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, Reuters, Newsweek and The Guardian, among many others.
Following CAMERA’s contact with Deutsche Welle, along with many on Twitter calling out the media outlet for the error, editors commendably changed the subheadline to refer to Jerusalem as opposed to Tel Aviv. In addition, the German news agency commendably tweeted: “As many of you rightly pointed out in the comments, Tel Aviv is pretty unlikely to comment on the incident as it is not the capital city of Israel.”
Separately, Deutsche Welle today commendably corrected an English-language article yesterday which misreported the location of the first and second Jewish temples on the Temple Mount as a question of belief, while in actuality it is a matter of archeological fact. The article had stated: “Until its destruction by the Romans in A.D. 70, the Second Jewish Temple was believed to have been located [on the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary” (“Why Jerusalem’s holy site is in the spotlight once again, emphasis added).
The Kentucky Jewish council released its first-ever antisemitism report on Tuesday amid record-high antisemitic incidents.
The report lists over 30 antisemitic incidents that occurred throughout 2022, which is an unprecedented amount for the area of Kentucky.
In 2021, Kentucky became the first state to adopt the International Holocaust Alliance's Definition of Antisemitism (IHRA.) The full definition of the IHRA can be found here.
In response to the rise of antisemitism in his community, Rabbi Shlomo Litvin, Chairman of the Kentucky Jewish Council stated that “we have seen a horrifying rise in Jew Hatred, both across the country and right here in Kentucky...From the shocking attempted murder of a Jewish candidate for office to repeated issues in the political spectrum, Kentucky has made far too many headlines for the wrong reasons this year” Incidents
The report makes note of a particularly extreme incident that happened in February 2022 when an assassination attempt was carried out on Jewish Mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg. Greenberg's attempted assassinator, Quintez Brown, had previously made antisemitic social media posts and met with a Black Hebrew Israelite hate leader.
Only a day after the attempted assassination of Greenberg, threats were made against Synagogues in Lexington by phone call.
Palestine Declassified
— Harry's Place (@hurryupharry) January 4, 2023
"The controversy over the recent remarks made by Kanye West & Kyrie Irving have shone a light on the Zionist movement's hostility towards the black community"
Some people think it's an example of Kanye making hostile comments about Jews Chris #antisemitism pic.twitter.com/L1O3EdL5GD
Israeli nanosatellite a breakthrough in quantum communications
TAU-SAT3, launched Tuesday on a SpaceX rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida, will pave the way towards quantum communication via a nanosatellite, Tel Aviv University reported on Wednesday.After demonstrating 57% remission rate, Israeli immunotherapy licensed by US firm
TAU- SAT3 was launched to an altitude of 550 kilometers (340 miles) and will orbit the earth for five years carrying out several scientific tasks.
“Its main mission will be to communicate with the new optical ground station set up on the roof of the Shenkar Physics Building on the TAU campus,” said Noam Eliaz, dean of the Iby and Aladar Fleischman Faculty of Engineering.
“This is the first optical ground station in Israel, and one of very few worldwide, that can lock onto, track and collect data from a nanosatellite which, viewed from earth, is smaller than a single pixel,” Eliaz added.
Meir Ariel, head of TAU’s Center for Nanosatellites, said, “TAU-SAT3 is a 20-centimeter [7.874-inch] nanosatellite carrying an optical device that is only a few centimeters long. When the satellite passes over Israel, the device will emit light at various wavelengths, and the telescope of the optical ground station will identify the tiny flash, lock onto it, and track it. The nanosatellite will simultaneously send both optical and radio signals back to earth.
An Israeli immunotherapy has successfully “reprogrammed the immune systems” of cancer patients, with a US-based pharma company licensing it for commercialization, its inventors revealed on Wednesday.Pioneering plan inaugurated to top up Sea of Galilee with desalinated water
The treatment involves removing healthy white blood cells — T-cells — from cancer patients and adding an artificial molecule before returning the cells to the body, said Prof. Cyrille Cohen of Bar Ilan University.
The molecule gives the T-cells powers to recognize and kill cells that cause multiple myeloma, a bone marrow cancer.
Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem tested the therapy with different dose levels and found that, when given at the highest strength, 57 percent of multiple myeloma patients went into remission. Some 90% of patients given the high dose saw an improvement in their condition.
Partial results from the ongoing study, which involved 50 cancer patients, have been peer-reviewed.
The innovation arms of Bar Ilan and Hadassah Medical Center announced Wednesday that they have signed a deal with Los Angeles-based Immix BioPharma for the further development and commercialization of the therapy. It is named HBI0101, with the first three letters referencing Hadassah and Bar Ilan.
“This is very exciting, and represents the first immunotherapy of its type developed entirely in Israel, a blue-and-white cancer treatment,” said Cohen, co-inventor of HBI0101, predicting that it could be in mainstream use within five years.
Water authorities on Tuesday inaugurated an innovative project to pipe desalinated water into the Sea of Galilee in order to maintain the lake’s water level during dry years even as its waters fill growing regional demands.Israeli Professor Honored by Turkey’s Erdogan
One of the lowest-lying bodies of water on Earth, the Sea of Galilee is Israel’s largest freshwater lake and its emergency water store.
It is the first time in the world that desalinated water is being used to replenish a lake.
Water Authority Director Yehezkel Lifshitz said the project “proves that Israel is leading in innovative thinking and a creative planning approach to dealing with the effects of climate change, while guaranteeing a sustainable water supply, safeguarding Israel’s natural resources and maintaining the Sea of Galilee as a strategic buffer.”
As part of the project, earlier this year the national water carrier, Mekorot, constructed a 13-kilometer (8-mile) underground pipe connecting the lake to infrastructure that in turn links to five desalination plants on the Mediterranean coast.
Water can now flow into the lake via the Tzalmon stream, which drains into the Sea of Galilee near Kibbutz Ginosar on its northwestern shore. (h/t L_King)
TUBA's annual awards ceremony celebrates academic achievements pertaining to Turkey by researchers the world over. This year, the social sciences award was given to Prof. Amnon Cohen of the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem for his trailblazing research about the Land of Israel and Jerusalem under Ottoman rule.Black Eyed Peas dedicate Poland concert to Jews, other minorities
The honor comes with a $30,000 grant.
Prof. Cohen, 86, has extensively studied the Jews of the Land of Israel under the rule of the Ottomans — an empire spanning from Southeast Europe through Western Asia and North Africa that ruled over the Holy Land between the 14th and early 20th centuries.
The award's governing committee said: "Prof. Cohen's research created several books about control of Israel for 400 years. He was a deserving candidate due to his many years of excellence in a field that looks far beyond Ottoman control of Istanbul, Antalya and the Balkans."
Prof. Cohen embarked on his academic path at the Hebrew University back in the 1950s. He gave lectures all across the globe and served as head of the university's Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies. His books have been translated into multiple languages. His other accolades include the prestigious 2007 Israel Prize, the state's highest cultural honor.
The Black Eyed Peas showed support for the Jewish community during their New Year's Eve concert in Poland when they dedicated one of their songs to those who were targets of hate throughout 2022.Does an Israeli Tourism Expert’s Saudi Arabia Trip Hint at Possibly Warming Ties?
During their headlining set at the Polish "New Year's of Dreams" music concert, hip-hop group members apl.de.ap, Taboo, new semi-member J. Rey Soul and frontman will.i.am performed their hit song “Where Is The Love?”
Will.i.am spoke to the crowd and singled out the Jewish community, as well as people around the world of African descent and the LGBTQ community who experienced hatred during the year.
“The Jewish community — we love you,” he said. “This song is dedicated to unity.”
Though Israel and Saudi Arabia have not remotely normalized ties, and Saudi Arabia emphatically joined the widespread condemnation in the Arab world on Tuesday against National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s visit to the Temple Mount, reports of Israeli businessmen working and convening in Riyadh have nonetheless been on the increase of late.2.67 million tourists visited Israel in 2022
Joseph Fischer’s experience is a case in point.
In early December, one of the world’s most prestigious travel and tourism conferences, the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) global summit, was held in the Saudi capital. Among the 5,000 participants was Israeli tourism specialist Fischer.
While in Saudi Arabia, Fischer neither disguised his nationality nor confined himself to the convention premises. On the contrary, he toured around and chatted with the locals. And while he entered the country on a non-Israeli passport, its identity page clearly stated: “Born in Tel Aviv.”
Even in the absence of formal ties between the Saudi kingdom and the Jewish state, in the years following the September 2020 signing of the Abraham Accords, incremental small changes have taken place. Israeli commercial aircraft have begun to fly through Saudi skies en route to Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and India; a dozen Israeli business executives have publicly visited the country; a Jewish American businessman embarked on a road trip from Dubai to Jerusalem via Riyadh; and a number of Israeli journalists were permitted to enter the country and document their visits.
And in another small step, Fischer joined the Riyadh WTTC summit — after contacting organizers via 4Hoteliers, a Hong Kong-based English website through which he advertises, to ensure in advance that there wouldn’t be a problem with his participation. (He was assured there would not.)
“There is a massive construction of tourism infrastructure on a scale that the world has not seen in decades,” Fischer reported in a recent interview with The Times of Israel. “The Saudis are planning projects on a huge scale — sizable, costly and ostentatious.”
Last year, 2,675,000 foreign tourists visited Israel, compared to 397,000 in 2021 and 831,000 in 2020, when international travel was curbed due to the coronavirus pandemic.More Than 1,000 Years Ago, a Jewish Firm Went Global
Revenue from incoming tourism in the past 12 months stood at just under $4 billion.
Israel’s borders were only officially opened to incoming tourism last March, and all restrictions were dropped in May.
Incoming tourism to Israel in 2022 was about 40% lower than in record-setting 2019. However, more than 20 million overnight stays by Israelis were recorded last year, more than in 2019, reflecting a surge in domestic tourism.
“2022 was a year of recovery from the corona crisis. The trend is positive and breaking the incoming tourism record of 2019 is a realistic goal on the horizon,” said newly minted Tourism Minister Haim Katz.
“Domestic tourism has proven itself as an economic force just as essential as incoming tourism. Our goal is to reduce obstacles, to launch projects that increase the accommodation supply and develop infrastructure, to fully realize the tourism potential in the country,” he added.
Meanwhile, some 70,000 people from 95 different countries immigrated to Israel in 2022, the most olim in 23 years and a dramatic increase from 2021, when about 28,600 immigrants arrived in the country.
Also in 2022, Israel’s population increased by 2.2% to a total of 9,656,000, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics.
Of the country’s residents, 7,106,000 are Jews (73.6%), 2,037,000 are Arabs (21.1%) and 513,000 are of other denominations.
In the 9th century, a group of Jewish merchants called the Radhanites—based, it seems, on the Rhone River in France—established a trade network that stretched into North Africa, the Middle East, what is now Russia and Ukraine, and even as far east as India, China, and Afghanistan. Henry Abramson explains what is known about them, and how the nature of the Jewish Diaspora afforded them economic opportunities.
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