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Thursday, February 02, 2023

02/02 Links Pt2: Ilhan Omar removed from House Foreign Affairs Committee; Gil Troy: Israeli Democracy Is Fine, Thank You for Asking; Jewish population in Judea and Samaria tops half a million

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The entrenchment of Western Jew-hatred
The demonization of Israel is the defining cause of the progressive left. As such, it has become the default narrative in all higher reaches of the culture.

In America, where there is still a bedrock of public support for Israel, this poison has spread through the universities into the schools and infiltrated the Democratic Party. Unlike in Britain, however, the Democrats haven’t even gotten to the Labour Party’s stage of seeking to rid themselves publicly of this moral stain.

The ousting of the Jew-bashing Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar from the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee was organized by the Republicans. The Democrats, who refused to take action against her when they governed the House, opposed the ouster, complaining that it was “revenge” for the Democrats’ removal of two GOP representatives from committees during the previous session of Congress.

Accordingly, the Democrats continue to sanitize Omar’s egregious Jew-hatred. In 2019, she tweeted that U.S. support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins”—that is, hundred-dollar bills. In 2012, before she arrived in Congress, she claimed that “Israel has hypnotized the world” and added, “May Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”

Last weekend, Omar claimed on CNN that she was unaware that the word “hypnotized” and conspiracy theories about Jews and money are anti-Jewish tropes.

“I might have used words at the time that I didn’t understand were trafficking in antisemitism,” she said.

Her protestations of ignorance have drawn widespread incredulity and scorn. In fact, they imply something more unpalatable than being disingenuous.

Omar knows that there’s a prejudice called antisemitism. However, she self-evidently believed that Jews do use their money to exercise covert and harmful power and that they do hypnotize the world.

In other words, Omar thought that what others know to be Jew-hating tropes couldn’t be prejudice because they’re true. So, when she says she didn’t think these tropes constituted antisemitism, she reveals just how antisemitic she actually is.

Yet even now, the supposedly anti-racist Democrats refuse to condemn her. This is because Western progressives either support or refuse to condemn “intersectional” Critical Race Theory.
Ilhan Omar removed from House Foreign Affairs Committee
The US House of Representatives voted on Thursday to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The vote was approved along party lines, 218-211.

Republicans argued that Omar should be removed for past comments against Israel and the use of antisemitic tropes.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy defended the decision to remove Omar from the powerful committee. Speaking to the media after the vote, he said her past statements “make it clear she is unfit to represent the US on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.”

“She repeatedly used antisemitic tropes” and “compared America and Israel to Hamas and the Taliban,” he said.

“She said Americans only like Israel because it’s all about the Benjamins,” McCarthy said. “And three years later, she said, ‘I didn’t know there’s a trope when it comes to referring to someone who’s Jewish with money.’ What does that say to other people around the world? We were right in our action, and she can serve on other committees.”

Omar said regardless of the vote’s outcome, she was “here to stay.”

“My leadership and voice will not be diminished if I am not on this committee for one term,” she said in a speech. “My voice will get louder and stronger, and my leadership will be celebrated around the world as it has been.”

“This debate today, it’s about who gets to be an American,” Omar said “What opinions do we have to have to be counted as Americans? This is what this debate is about.”

RJC applauds the dismissal of Omar
The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) applauded the Republican-led House for passing the measure.

“For years, Democratic leadership has failed to hold Rep. Ilhan Omar accountable for her vile, hateful, and dangerous anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric,” the RJC said in a statement. “Today, Republicans, under Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s leadership, kept their promise to remove Rep. Omar from the prestigious and crucially important House Foreign Affairs Committee.”

“RJC has long advocated for Rep. Omar’s removal from this critical committee,” it said. “RJC thanks Rep. Max Miller for introducing the resolution and House Republicans for their principled votes to pass it. We are gratified that Rep. Omar will no longer be in a privileged position to influence legislation regarding US policy toward Israel and the Middle East.”


Hakeem Jeffries: Democrats “Unanimously” Support Ilhan Omar Though "She Has Used Antisemitic Tropes" (h/t MtTB)

More than 2,000 Rabbis Urge Congress To Kick Ilhan Omar Off Foreign Affairs Committee
An organization representing more than 2,000 rabbis is urging congressional leaders to keep Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) off the House Foreign Affairs Committee over her extensive history of anti-Semitism.

The letter comes as a small group of Republicans, including Reps. Nancy Mace (SC), Victoria Spartz (IN), and Ken Buck (CO) have suggested that they may not support House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) bid to kick her off the committee.

The Coalition for Jewish Values addressed the letter to McCarthy and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), asking that Congress follows through on McCarthy’s pledge to remove her from the committee.

“This is not a political matter, but one of moral conscience, and a necessary step to quell the rising tide of antisemitic speech and violence now impacting Jewish communities across America,” wrote Rabbi Yoel Schonfeld, President; and Rabbi Yaakov Menken, Managing Director.

The letter also comes after Omar claimed during a CNN interview on Sunday that she had no idea that her anti-Semitic statements “were trafficking in antisemitism.”

“On three separate occasions, we wrote to the previous Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, to make this same request,” the rabbis wrote. “We were ignored all three times, while antisemitic hate crimes became ever more common in this country. Upon learning of the appointment of Rep. Omar to the Foreign Affairs committee, we wrote to express our ‘alarm, dismay and outrage,’ given that even before her election to Congress, Ms. Omar had repeatedly used antisemitic tropes.”




Gil Troy: Israeli Democracy Is Fine, Thank You for Asking
Many Americans are claiming that Israeli democracy is doomed. No democracy is problem-free, but it is self-defeating to hear every governmental initiative you dislike as liberty's death knell. While there is much to debate about Israel's judicial system, reports of the death of Israeli democracy are highly exaggerated.

Israel is doing just about as well as can be expected on the democracy front. Israel's ever-expanding unwritten constitution, guaranteeing more and more rights to more and more people while sustaining a strong sense of national community, is stronger than ever.

The anti-Netanyahu assault began after his Nov. 1 victory with hysterical cries that a democratic election result threatened democracy. Shouting repeatedly that democracy is in danger stresses the body politic - and individual citizens. It drives people nuts. Such polarization makes it harder to achieve the kind of compromise that Israel requires, and that all healthy democracies seek.

The educational philosopher Parker Palmer, in his 2011 book, Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit, teaches that a healthy democracy needs five interlocked habits. Citizens must understand "that we are all in this together." We need to appreciate "the value of 'otherness,'" respecting genuine diversity of thought, of behavior, of political philosophy - as well as of tribe, or color, or heritage.

We need to be able to juggle contradictions and cope with the messiness of life. Leveraging our rights, we need "a sense of personal voice and agency" - Natan Sharansky and Ron Dermer call this the Town Square Test: Namely, can you denounce the government in public freely, without being punished? Finally, Palmer notes, healthy citizens need the "capacity to create community."

Israelis still live in a small, intimate society that runs on trust. Israel has held five free and fair elections in three years, followed repeatedly by peaceful transitions. The ethereal threads keeping Israelis more or less together are a national treasure that should be actively nurtured, not sabotaged.
Eugene Kontorovich: Why Netanyahu is right to go after overmighty Supreme Court
The proposed judicial reforms of Israel’s new government have provoked eulogies for the country’s rule of law.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken even hinted at his government’s concern about the plans during his visit to the Jewish state this week, with arch comments about the “shared values” of democracy.

He did not comment on how his boss’s recent plan of adding justices to the US Supreme Court until it issued decisions he likes fits with those values.

An understanding of the current tyrannical power of the Israeli legal officials, compared to the modest proposed reforms, demonstrates that such laments are absurd — at least if one considers the UK a democracy.

Israel’s Supreme Court is far more powerful than any of its counterparts in other Western democracies — but without any of the limitations or controls faced by its peer institutions.

Like the UK, Israel lacks a written constitution, and had functioned under the principle of parliamentary sovereignty for most of its history. Unlike the UK, there is no customary constitution incrementally established across centuries.

Rather, the Supreme Court unilaterally declared an end to parliamentary sovereignty in what the judges themselves cheerfully recognised as a “judicial revolution” in the mid-1990s.

The court proclaimed that it had the power to strike down legislation, which it said was granted to it by a “Basic Law” — but unlike constitutional instruments, Israel’s Basic Laws are adopted by simple majorities, and can be overridden by subsequent majorities. The Basic Law the court claimed authorises judicial review was passed 32-21, a testament to the Knesset’s lack of clarity that it would be treated as a constitutional document.

The court went on to eliminate all restrictions on standing, letting it rule on any and all issues in public life whenever it chooses, without any lower court proceedings or fact-finding.

It invented the doctrine of “reasonableness” to allow it to block any government action — including even the designation of a prime minister — that it considers “unbalanced”. Of course, there no invisible scale for balancing trade-offs in public policy. In such cases, the judges merely substitute their preferences for those of elected officials.

Finally, the court declared that it has the authority to decide that any new Basic Laws, or amendments of old ones, are themselves unconstitutional.
Aaron Klein: Why Netanyahu Critics Are Really in Meltdown Mode
It may shock some readers to learn that Israeli Supreme Court justices essentially pick their own successors. They are voted upon in secret by a nine-member Judicial Selection Committee that includes three other Supreme Court justices, two members of the Israel Bar Association, and only four Knesset members.

Elitist critics are in hysterics because Netanyahu's coalition wants to restore the pre-"constitutional revolution" status quo ante by democratizing the Supreme Court justice selection process, including adding two government representatives to the Selections Committee so that justices more closely reflect the public.

Some detractors are outrageously going so far as to incite boycotts of the Israeli economy. Notably, some of Netanyahu's American critics are either silent about, or champions of, a harebrained scheme of some U.S. lawmakers urging the Biden administration to "pack" the U.S. Supreme Court with additional justices to ensure a liberal majority.

These self-avowed Israeli "champions of democracy" failed to protest in the streets when the previous Israeli government usurped the will of their own voters and violated election pledges by forming a dangerous and ideologically incoherent coalition that relied upon de facto Muslim Brotherhood support.

In the face of their blatant hypocrisy, then, it is the motivations of Netanyahu's critics—and not Netanyahu himself—that must be questioned.

Netanyahu's critics can't stand that he keeps winning. They are frustrated that the Israeli public keeps rejecting their left-wing ideology. They are frustrated by the manifest correctness of the "Netanyahu Doctrine" of peace through strength and peace in exchange for peace—as opposed to their failed paradigm of unilateral Israeli territorial concessions for empty promises of peace.

Israel's worldwide supporters should stop buying their nonsense and instead unite to strengthen bonds to the Jewish homeland—the one country that is the safe haven for the Jewish people against the rising tide of antisemitism.

Meanwhile, instead of retiring with a legacy of almost-biblical achievements and enjoying what would surely be a lucrative and far more peaceful private life, Netanyahu charges ahead full speed, undeterred by the naysayers as he continues to safeguard the state of Israel.
Ready to run for president, Nikki Haley is a star in the pro-Israel community
Years in the making
Just two years into her term as ambassador, Haley announced she would leave office to spend more time with her family. She was initially rumored to be Trump’s choice as a running mate in 2020 after declaring she wouldn’t challenge him in a primary.

Mike Pompeo, her former colleague, who is also teasing a White House bid, accused Haley in his recently released memoir of plotting Pence’s removal so that she could become vice president. Pompeo deemed her resignation irresponsible. “She has described her role as going toe-to-toe with tyrants,” Pompeo writes. “If so, then why would she quit such an important job at such an important time?”

But for many Republicans, Haley was seen as the future of the party after Trump’s presumed departure. Though Jews, historically, vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, some have opined that she could be the first Republican presidential candidate to win a majority of the Jewish vote.

Jewish support
Haley is currently polling at 3% among Republican primary voters. But a focus on foreign policy and building on her strong donor base could make her a stronger contender.

Haley’s super PAC, Stand for America, raised more than $17 million in the last election cycle and has $2 million cash on hand. Prominent Jewish donors who contributed to her PAC include Miriam Adelson and her late husband Sheldon Adelson; Paul Singer, a veteran hedge fund manager; Bernie Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot; Daniel Loeb, a New York-based hedge fund manager; Jay Lefkowitz, an attorney and former adviser to President George W. Bush; Ira Rennert, a real estate investor; Norman Braman, a Florida auto dealer who supported Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio in the 2016 primary; Samuel Zell, a businessman and philanthropist; and Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress.

Charles Kushner, father of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, hosted a fundraiser for Haley last year.

Since the death of Sheldon Adelson in 2021, the Republican kingmaker in past election cycles, Miriam Adelson has kept a low profile and pledged to stay neutral in the upcoming Republican presidential primary.

Haley’s inner circle
Haley’s longtime advisor, Jon Lerner, who is Jewish, is expected to take a leading role in her campaign.

Lerner was a senior aide to Haley when she was governor of South Carolina and became her deputy at the U.N. A Minnesota native, Lerner considered the late Republican campaign strategist Arthur Finkelstein — who played a critical role in the rise of Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996 — a mentor. In 2013, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg tapped him to help run a political advocacy group that lobbied for legislative reform on immigration and education. Throughout the 2016 presidential primary, Lerner played a key role in the “Never Trump” camp. In the past, he has worked with Republican Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Tim Scott of South Carolina.
Seth Franzman: The anti-Israel talk that defines recent Israeli-Palestinian clashes
The last weeks of January saw rising tensions between Israel and the Palestinians - with nine Palestinians killed in a raid in Jenin and seven Israeli civilians killed in a terror attack in a Jerusalem suburb. Officials, media and commentators described this as a “cycle” or “spiral” of violence, which carries the assumption that a conflict might break out.

How were these incidents framed? What narrative was developed? After each round of conflict, it can be framed in a number of ways. In general, Israel and its supporters are consistent: Israel is facing terror threats and it must defend itself. For most centrists, including most governments that have good relations with Israel, the overall sense is that Israel has a right to defend itself but is also under a spotlight for actions it carries in Palestinian territories.

For the critics, the narrative constantly changes because their view of Israel and of the Palestinians has shifted over the years.

What are the anti-Israel narratives?
In recent years, a campaign developed among prominent human rights groups to term Israel an apartheid state, a dramatically expansive definition of the word – taking Israel’s actions in the West Bank and applying it to Jerusalem, Gaza and the rest of sovereign Israel.

Another theme is to paint attacks on Israeli civilians as isolated, either by depicting the victims “settlers” or as part of Israel’s regime. This portrays Israelis as one collective, while simultaneously decrying Israel’s “collective punishment” of Palestinians.

The IDF raid on Jenin didn’t come in a vacuum. Israel, for a year now, has been fighting threats from Palestinian Islamic Jihad and its gunmen in Jenin. The clashes happen because the Palestinian Authority has no control over the city and does not crack down enough on illegal weapons.

Yet for the critics, Israeli security actions there are “collective punishment” and every Palestinian killed in Jenin is a victim of it. This completely disregards the difference between what are usually called “terrorists,” “militants,” or “armed groups” – and civilians. The way the discussion is framed is that Israel killed 30 Palestinians in January – without any specification as to who were civilians and who were not.


Striking teachers union’s links to pro-terror group
The Teachers union that brought Britain’s schools to a halt this week gave funding and support to a Palestinian teachers group whose leaders have met terror chiefs and who have praised murderers as “martyrs”, the JC can reveal.

The National Education Union (NEU), from which dozens of Jewish teachers reportedly resigned in 2019 over its stance on Israel, has been causing chaos with seven days of strike action in February and March.

It supports and provides “financial aid” to the General Union of Palestinian Teachers (GUPT) on the West Bank.

The GUPT’s logo includes a map of the area in whch Israel’s borders not represented. NEU officers have travelled to the region to visit GUPT representatives on a number of occasions.

Teachers on strike
GUPT General Secretary Saed Erziqat — who has spoken at the NEU’s annual conference — recently compared Israel to Nazi Germany, saying: “There are massacres that have happened to the Palestinian people that were worse than the Holocaust itself.”

He has also praised militant network the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which was designated as a terror group by the European Union and the US.

The Palestinian union chief has met the leaders of another Iranian-backed terror group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — General Command (PFLP-GC), which is outlawed by the UK and US.
NUS report shows Holocaust education has failed, says peer
The “disgraceful” antisemitism at the National Union of Students proves that Holocaust education in schools has failed, a crossbench peer has told the JC.

Baroness Deech, who put her name to a letter criticising the NUS over its “vague” action plan that followed a bombshell report on Jew-hate at the organisation, said the scandal showed Shoah education needed to be revised in the light of modern antisemitism and opposition to Israel.

“The students whose disgraceful conduct was detailed in the Tuck Report had Holocaust education at school and clearly it has failed,” she said.

“It needs to be re-shaped as education about Jews, their history, why antisemitism exists and how it contributed to the Holocaust, its persistence today including anti-Zionism, the Jewish attachment to and need for Israel.”

Baroness Deech signed a letter alongside a number of prominent Jewish groups, including B’nai B’rith UK, UK Lawyers For Israel and the National Jewish Assembly, criticising the student union’s action plan to combat antisemitism that followed the Tuck Report.
New York Regents exam blasted for ‘loaded’ questions about Israel
A Regents exam administered to thousands of New York students last week was blasted by critics as “unconscionable and shameful” for including “loaded” questions about Israel.

A group of Jewish leaders and civic organizations ripped a section of the test that showed maps of the changes to Israel’s borders over the decades and asked two questions that gave a “dishonest” impression about the Jewish state’s expansion.

“The maps lack all context,” former state Assemblyman Dov Hikind said. “Specifically that border changes were the result of successive wars started by Arab states to annihilate Israel. Second, the questions, at best, lend themselves to debate, not to singular answers from among false choices.”

Hikind also said that the Global History and Geography Regents II, given last Thursday, included the trope that the Holocaust was the prevailing reason for the state of Israel and that “Zionists and Jewish immigrants” benefited most from the “changing borders.”

“When you show these maps, and ask why the state of Israel was created, it just attributes it to the Holocaust,” said Hikind who added that the Zionist movement toward the Jewish state actually began in the 19th century under Theodor Herzl.

He also complained that the test referred to the Golan Heights region, which was recognized by the US in 2019, as being “annexed” by Israel.

The questions shocked proctors charged with administering the test, he said.
UC Berkeley Should Stand Up for Jewish Students Like Me
Last November, two lawyers filed a civil rights inquiry against the UC Berkeley School of Law with the Federal government. This controversy began on August 23, 2022, when the student group Law Students for Justice in Palestine (LSJP) urged other clubs within the law school to adopt an amendment to bylaws stating that they “will not invite speakers that have expressed and continued to hold views or host/sponsor/promote events in support of Zionism.”

The attorneys who filed the complaint, Arsen Ostrovsky and Gabriel Groisman, both allege a clear Title VI violation of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of national origin.

“The groups that have implemented this discriminatory policy attempt to hide their discrimination against the Jewish community by excluding ‘Zionists,’” the two lawyers said in a statement. “This thin veil is completely transparent, as Zionism is an integral, indispensable, and core element of the Jewish identity.”

Since August 2022, eight Berkeley Law student groups — including the Berkeley Law Muslim Student Association, Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association, Women of Color Collective, Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, Queer Caucus, Community Defense Project, Women of Berkeley Law, and Law Students of African Descent — have amended their bylaws to include this discriminatory clause.

This policy, if enforced, would serve as a litmus test that more than 95% of Jewish Americans would not pass.

While the policy is at the center of the controversy, no one should be surprised that LSJP would call for adopting such a policy.
Unpacked: Unsafe Spaces: When Being Jewish Means You Don't Belong
Everyone knows that Israel is a tough subject, but something has been changing recently. In the past, Jewish students were openly attacked for defending Israel but now they are being marginalized from progressive spaces just for being Jewish. Suddenly groups that are fighting for human rights, civil rights, climate change and other causes no longer want to include Jewish students. As our lives have moved into digital spaces, so has this marginalization.

Dive into this reality by hearing first-hand accounts of what students — and influencers like Blake Flayton, Peter Fox and Julia Jassey — are experiencing today.

It’s not just their story, it’s yours too.




Boston Globe Adds Weight to Bizarre Conspiracy Theories About Palestinian Campus Activism
“There’s a very big power imbalance between pro-Palestinian voices on campus and those that oppose them,” is the view of Nadia Bahour, a recent graduate of Harvard University, in comments given to the Boston Globe.

Bahour, who was raised in Ramallah, contends that when she arrived at the prestigious college in 2018 as an undergraduate, she was disappointed to see there was an “overall fear” among students to discuss Palestinian issues.

However, it would appear that the Boston Globe’s Higher Education reporter Hilary Burns did not bother probing this specious assertion considering not one example is given of this supposedly stifling climate of anti-Palestinian censorship.

Instead, vague reference is made to a group of “professors who want to speak out on Palestine” but are prevented from doing so because of alleged professional risks — this “phenomenon,” Burns claims, is what unnamed researchers and lawyers have dubbed the “Palestinian exception to free speech.”

Again, specific examples of how this apparent exception is manifested on campus are not provided.

Rather, Burns cites the recent Ken Roth controversy, which saw the former executive director of chronically anti-Israel pressure group Human Rights Watch (HRW) sensationally accuse Harvard’s Kennedy School of blocking a fellowship due to his criticism of the Jewish state — a decision that was later reversed after Roth threw the most colossal and public of temper tantrums.

Quoting Roth’s conspiratorial suggestion that there is a shadowy effort to marginalize criticism of Israel on campus, Burns fails to offer readers the most obvious and critical piece of evidence that refutes Roth’s deluded ramblings — the fact that just under three years ago, Harvard Kennedy School announced the late Palestinian politician Saeb Erekat would be among four fellows for its Future of Diplomacy Project.

In Roth’s mind, the same school that had no problem hiring the architect of the so-called ‘Martyrs’ Fund,‘ which rewards Palestinian terrorists, decided to block his fellowship, because he has been overly critical of Israel.

Unfortunately, the wild conspiracies come thick and fast in the Globe’s piece.
BBC News continues to present a partial picture of terror in Jenin
As we see, Bateman’s ‘chicken and egg’ approach to the topic of terrorism in Jenin has not changed much since last July. His explanations of the fact that Jenin is a major hub of terrorist activity cite factors such as Israeli counter-terrorism operations (which of course come as a result of terrorist activity), a military operation from 21 years ago, political vacuum and economic worries in a place which was has been under Palestinian administration since 1996.

That framing is particularly relevant given Bateman’s closing paragraph:
“US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken arrives in Israel on Monday, with the country experiencing mass protests against the most nationalist government in its history. He says he wants to “preserve” the two-state solution – the long-held international formula for peace. The reality on the ground, along with the stated policy position of the new Israeli coalition, suggests he may as well be speaking another language.”

The missing link here is of course the fact that Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (both of which are barely mentioned in Bateman’s article) have absolutely no interest in “the long-held international formula for peace”, do not accept the authority of the PA and its security forces and, particularly since Mahmoud Abbas’ cancellation of elections in early 2021, have been actively trying (with encouragement from Iran and Hizballah) to erode its standing and replace it.

As long as Bateman and his colleagues continue to avoid providing that bigger picture, BBC audiences will not be able to “engage fully” with this topic as “informed citizens”.


PreOccupiedTerritory: US Media Wonders Why No Arson, Looting At ‘Mostly-Peaceful’ Anti-Bibi Protests (satire)
The weekly rallies in Tel Aviv and elsewhere demonstrating against the Likud-led government’s stated intention to fundamentally alter the relationship between the judiciary and the other branches of government have featured little or no violence, fires, or other unrest, causing American journalists whose outlets have covered ANTIFA-linked demonstrations in America to wonder aloud whether in fact they can describe the Tel Aviv rallies as “peaceful.”

CNN reported Tenn Denschuss included a voice-over segment in his piece today on the anticipated protest this coming Saturday night, stating, “American viewers might wonder how this network can refer to this ongoing series of demonstrations as ‘mostly peaceful’ when we do not stand in front of burning buildings or cars when using the term,” he acknowledged. “It is one of the strange features of the Middle East, where assumptions and vocabulary that describe the western model of behavior do not apply as automatically or broadly to the local context.”

New York Times journalist Tokken Djiu noted that his experience jived with his CNN colleague’s. “I seldom have trouble zeroing in on the Palestine-flag-toting fringe at any public event,” he observed. “This past week there must have been close to a hundred thousand protesters in Tel Aviv alone. Probably a handful of them were trying to make it about Palestine. But it’s my duty as a New York Times correspondent to support the Palestine-central narrative, so I find them. Not so for the arson and looting, which you’d think would be easier to find – but I can’t. I know it has to be there, somewhere, because that’s what a peaceful protest is. Antifa and our coverage of American protests over the last several years have taught us that. Maybe this coming Saturday night I’ll succeed in locating some.”
Christie’s Auction House Ordered By French Court to Return Nazi-Looted Painting to Heirs of Jewish Owner
A French court has ordered the auction house Christie’s London to return The Penitent Magdalene by Dutch artist Adriaen van der Werff to the heirs of its World War II-era Jewish owner after it was discovered that the 18th century artwork was looted by the Nazis, Artnet News reported Wednesday.

The oil-on-panel painting from 1707 was owned by Lionel Hauser, an art collector and Jewish banker in Paris who was also the cousin of French novelist and essayist Marcel Proust. In 1945, Hauser reported that the Nazis confiscated his entire art collection — a total of 40 artworks, including The Penitent Magdalene — from his Paris home in 1942. The French government later included photographs of the stolen artwork in its official catalogue of items looted in France by the Nazis during World War II. Before his death of natural causes in 1958, Hauser attempted to recover his stolen property in Germany through legal proceedings but to no avail, according to ARTnews.

Christie’s sold The Penitent Magdalene in 2005 for $115,185 and in its sale did not include a provenance history that mentioned Hauser’s previous ownership.

In 2017, the painting’s current owner, an anonymous British collector, approached Christie’s about selling the painting. After the auction house researched the artwork and discovered that it once belonged to Hauser, Christie’s legal department contacted his heirs about the looted work. The auction house initially offered to split the proceeds of the work’s sale—minus Christie’s fees—between the heirs and the current owner. In 2019, the auction house estimated the value for The Penitent Magdalene to be between $37,000 and $61,000.

The auction house refused to turn over the artwork to Hauser’s heirs and claimed there is a statute of limitations under British law since more than six years had passed since the painting’s sale in 2005, Artnet News reported. Hauser’s heirs sued Christie’s London in June 2022 in Paris civil court for return of the painting.
Irish Times: Rise in Anti-Semitism Cannot Be Blamed on Israel
"You will find Jews engaged in practically every movement against Our Divine Lord and His Church....[Jews] have chosen Satan for their head." The speaker went on to claim that the international press and Hollywood were controlled by the "Jew-enemy." These words were spoken by the future ruler of Catholic Ireland, Archbishop John McQuaid, in 1932. Anti-Semitism as a political doctrine makes little sense in the Irish context, but this is the irrational power of anti-Semitism: it never needs an actual cause - except the mere existence of the Jews.

It seems irrational. And that is the problem with anti-Semitism, which is so deeply ingrained in Western societies that it can be difficult to identify. Even if Israel didn't exist, anti-Semitism would continue its merry way.
DNA test company donates 2500 kits to help Shoah survivors track down family
The world’s biggest DNA testing firm, Ancestry.com, has gifted 2,500 of its DNA kits to a project working on uniting Holocaust survivors with family members.

The company announced the scheme in honour of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Friday 27 January.

The tests will be distributed buy the DNA Reunion Project supported by the New York City-based Centre for Jewish History (CJH). It will mail free genealogy kits to Holocaust survivors and their children as part of its mission to link them with any unknown living relatives.

According to the project’s co-founder, more than 100 test kits have already been posted since they launched the initiative last November.

The kits are priced at 99 dollars, the equivalent of around £80, meaning the donation's value is the equivalent of almost one-quarter of a million dollars.

This is a major financial boost for the CJH scheme which was previously covering the cost of offering the tests to Shoah survivors and their families free of charge.

In a blog post, Ancestry.com explained: “As a result of the horrific persecution Jews endured during World War II, it is crucial to empower survivors and their families to find new connections and preserve their shared and individual histories.

“At a time when antisemitism and Holocaust denial are on the rise, we are at a critical moment where the facts of the Holocaust are in danger of being lost or misunderstood.

The company said they remain, “committed to preserving original documentation of the Holocaust and making it available for free, so that future generations have access to first-hand evidence and accurate history.”
Florida lawmakers want to classify antisemitic incidents as hate crimes, increase penalties
After incidents such as antisemitic messages being projected on buildings in Jacksonville, lawmakers Thursday called for passing a measure that would define certain acts as hate crimes and increase criminal penalties.

Under the bill (HB 269), people who take actions such as defacing or damaging religious cemeteries, projecting images of religious “animus” on property without permission or harassing others because of religious-based garments could be charged with third-degree felonies.

“I will not stand here and do nothing,” Rep. Mike Caruso, a Delray Beach Republican who is sponsoring the bill, said during a news conference. “I will not be complacent, and I will not sit around. For, with that attitude, are we just going to wait for these haters to start breaking the glass windows and storefronts of Jewish store owners again, like they did in the past, before we wake up?”

The legislation, filed this month, follows a series of antisemitic incidents in the state.

As an example, an antisemitic message was projected on the outside of the TIAA Bank Field football stadium in Jacksonville. Also, antisemitic banners have been hung from interstate overpasses, and antisemitic flyers have been distributed in Jewish communities in South Florida.

Rep. Randy Fine, a Brevard County Republican who is Jewish, said hate speech and hate crimes have made many Jewish people in Florida feel unsafe.
New report reveals four in ten secondary school teachers have encountered antisemitism in class
A new study has revealed that four in ten secondary school teachers who teach about the Holocaust have witnessed antisemitism in the classroom.

According the research conducted by the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education, fifteen percent of teachers also said that they witnessed Holocaust denial from their students either “occasionally” or “often”, while three quarters of the teachers surveyed said that they had encountered students who had repeated falsehoods about the Holocaust that they had read online.

The study recommends that more time in schools be devoted to learning about the Holocaust and its contemporary relevance, particularly as previous research has indicated that the time for learning about the Holocaust is being reduced in the Key Stage 3 curriculum. The study further recommends that teachers are given more time and encouragement to access training to confront the issues that they may encounter in the classroom.
How the OSS War Crimes Film Unit Helped Convict Top Nazis
On July 13, 1945, Marine Corps Sgt. Stuart Schulberg wrote to his wife Barbara that he was heading from Washington to Germany for a special mission involving 10 major cities and covering all of Bavaria and the south of the country, possibly along with parts of the British and French Zones.

“Sometimes I think the job is a few sizes too big for me. I suppose I have never had so much responsibility. There is so much to do, and so much of it is so important that I grow terrified,” Schulberg wrote.

Indeed, the 23-year-old Schulberg’s mission was daunting — but also critical. He and several others were assigned to the War Crimes Film Unit of the OSS Field Film Photographic Branch commanded by Hollywood film director John Ford, a US Naval Reserve officer. This specialized sub-group was tasked with locating Nazi-made footage showing the evils of National Socialism and the Nazis’ commission of crimes against humanity against Jews and others during the recently-ended war in Europe.

With a picture worth a thousand words, these moving images would be invaluable to the case being built by Associate Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, chief US prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials. The trials were to begin in November 1945, and there wasn’t much time to find such film footage, review it, and prepare it for the court proceedings. The greatest challenge was the fact that the Nazis did everything they could to destroy this visual evidence of their atrocities. Schulberg and the others did not know what and how much they would manage to uncover.

The fascinating story of how this special team tracked down incriminating Nazi films and turned them into evidence that has shaped our understanding and visual perception of the Holocaust to this day is told in “Filmmakers for the Prosecution,” a documentary directed by French filmmaker Jean-Christophe Klotz. The film opens in New York on January 27.

“Our collective memory of those times is a construction of the Schulbergs, and the films they made have influenced other films in the decades since,” Klotz said.

Klotz, who spoke to The Times of Israel from Provence, France, referred to the two films shown in the Nuremberg courtroom, “The Nazi Plan” and “Nazi Concentration Camps,” as well as a later documentary about the trials by Stuart Schulberg titled, “Nuremberg: Its Lesson For Today.” Schulberg was engaged by the US military to make the film in November 1946, one month after the verdicts were handed down, and he completed it in the spring of 1948.
The Jewish Underground in Hungary Saved Thousands
Just before Nazi Germany invaded Hungary in March 1944, Jewish youth leaders there formed an underground network that in the coming months would save tens of thousands of fellow Jews from the gas chambers. Hungary was home to 900,000 Jews before the Nazi invasion. In the 10 months after the Nazi invasion, 568,000 Jews were killed by the Nazis and their allies in Hungary.

David Gur, now 97, oversaw a massive forgery operation that provided false documents for Jews and non-Jewish members of the Hungarian resistance. "I was an 18-year-old adolescent when the heavy responsibility fell upon me," he said. In December 1944, he was arrested at the forgery workshop and brutally interrogated and imprisoned. The Jewish underground broke him out of prison later that month. The forged papers were used by Jewish youth movements to operate a smuggling network and run Red Cross houses that saved thousands.

At least 7,000 Jews were smuggled out of Hungary, through Romania, to ships that would bring them to British-controlled Palestine. At least 10,000 forged passes offering protection were distributed to Budapest's Jews, and 6,000 Jewish children and accompanying adults were saved in houses ostensibly under the protection of the International Red Cross. Robert Rozett, a senior historian at Yad Vashem, called this "the largest rescue operation" of European Jews during the Holocaust.
MEMRI: Global Imams Council Issues Statement On Occasion Of International Holocaust Remembrance Day: We Pledge To Remember The Six Million Jews Murdered In The Holocaust, Fight Extremism And Holocaust Denial
On January 27, 2023, the Global Imams Council (GIC) issued a statement on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, in which it pledged "to never forget the six million Jewish men, women and children who were murdered by the terrorist Nazis and their collaborators" and to "continue the fight against antisemitism and Holocaust denial and distortion."

The GIC is the world’s first and largest international non-governmental body of Muslim religious leaders from all Islamic denominations and schools, and advocates for peaceful coexistence, tolerance, and interfaith dialogue and for tackling extremist ideologies and militant Islam.


Jewish population in Judea and Samaria tops half a million
The Jewish population in Judea and Samaria has surpassed half a million people, according to a report compiled by former MK Ya’akov Katz.

There were 502,991 Jews living in Judea and Samaria as of Jan. 1, according to the document, which culled data from the Israeli Interior Ministry’s Population Registry.

That does not include the nearly 350,000 Jews living in the eastern part of Jerusalem, which the Palestinians claim despite the area being by law a part of Israel’s unified capital.

The Jewish population in Judea and Samaria is up 15.5% from January 2018, when 435,159 Jews lived in the territories captured after Arab states initiated what became known as the Six-Day War.

The report projects the Jewish population in Judea and Samaria to exceed 600,000 by 2030, 700,000 by 2035 and one million by 2047.

The 500,000-plus Jews living in Judea and Samaria account for 12% of all Jews in Israel, according to the report.

Ahead of its inauguration, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government published a list of policy guidelines that includes a vow to promote settlement throughout the country.

“The Jewish people has an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop the settlement of all parts of the Land of Israel—in the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan Heights and Judea and Samaria,” a clause in the document states.




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